Overview:
The FBI releases results of its fourth annual surge of law enforcement personnel into Indian Country.
The results of an FBI personnel surge into Indian Country are in: According to the bureau, a six-month initiative that assigned federal agents to unsolved cases in Native communities resulted in 118 arrests, 41 people charged with federal crimes, and 25 child victims recovered or identified.
Called Operation Not Forgotten, the initiative is in its fourth year and prioritized support for cases involving violence against women and children, including missing and murdered persons cases.
American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) women are murdered at rates up to 10 times the national average in some communities and, overall, at a rate 2.8 times higher than white women. An estimated 84% of Native American women experience violence in their lifetimes. Those figures illustrate the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples (MMIP) crisis, characterized by disproportionately high rates of assault, abduction, and murder in Native American communities, with many cases going unsolved or uninvestigated.
In 2023, a federal commission composed of law enforcement officials, tribal leaders, federal partners, service providers, family members of missing and murdered individuals, and survivors identified a lack of public safety resources and jurisdictional confusion as major drivers of the crisis.
The FBI announced earlier this spring that it would deploy investigative, intelligence and victim services personnel on rotating temporary duty assignments across Indian Country from April through September. The operation involved 11 FBI field offices: Albuquerque, New Mexico; Billings, Montana; Detroit; Denver; Jackson, Mississippi; Las Vegas; Minneapolis; Oklahoma City; Omaha, Nebraska; Portland, Oregon; and Phoenix.
As a result of the operation, 18 people were arrested on the Wind River Reservation for violent crimes, including first-degree murder and child abuse.
In Minnesota, charges were filed in four cases involving violent and sexual offenses in Indian Country, including sexual abuse of minors, domestic assault causing substantial bodily injury, assault by strangulation, and assault with intent to commit kidnapping.
In Montana, Michael Plentybuffalo was charged in the death of Shann Nomee, who went missing during an extreme cold snap in January 2024. Nomee’s frozen body was found in a field on the Crow Indian Reservation after a community-led search and a tip to the Bureau of Indian Affairs that pointed to Plentybuffalo. His case is pending trial.
Also in Montana, Lance Crookedarm was charged in connection with the May 2026 violent assault and nonfatal strangulation of a woman.
In Arizona, at least four cases on the Navajo Nation resulted in charges involving two violent assaults, an arson and the aggravated sexual abuse of a child younger than 12.
