Date: January 31, 2024
On February 21, we will have the privilege of having Luella Brien on the campus. Luella Brien is Editor-in-Chief and owner/publisher of Four Points Press, an
independent online news site covering the Crow Indian Reservation and the surrounding area (near Hardin in south Montana, around 40 miles SE of Billings). She is best known for her work for the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement. Indeed, her pioneering work appeared in TV documentary called “Murder in Big Horn” – a three-part Showtime Original program first broadcast in February 2023, which examines the disappearance and murder of three Crow women.
Southern Montana and within it the Crow Indian Reservation is called ‘the most dangerous place in the country’ for Native American women, with high levels of violence, trafficking along the I-90 corridor, and historic socio-economic and educational neglect. These conditions enable the disappearance of dozens of young women each year, often victims of prostitution gangs, with little or no intervention from local, state, or federal law enforcement. No official statistics are kept by any federal or state agency for the numbers and identities of Indigenous women that disappear each year – the only demographic so neglected in the USA.
In anticipation of her visit, which will be a Deanery evening, I invite us all to view the documentary and learn about the murders of Henny Scott (aged 14), Kaysera Stops Pretty Places (aged 18), and Selena Not Afraid (aged 16). Dr. Joseph Thompson and I have talked about the importance of the Seminary engaging with our own Native American history: I am praying and hoping that this visit will be part of that work.
The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, Ph.D.
Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary and the President of The General Theological Seminary