Searching for Savannah: Eight months and no answers since woman’s disappearance

There are rumors. About what’s known and who knows it. About why what’s known has never moved out of the realm of rumor and into the investigatory record.

Savannah Standing Bear’s family and friends have plenty of rumors, but not many answers. It’s been eight months since she disappeared from the Parmelee community on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, and the only thing that feels certain, they say, is the feeling that someone knows something.

Telling their stories: MMIP in South Dakota

South Dakota Searchlight and ICT have partnered on a long-term project, funded in part by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, that aims to provide a snapshot of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People cases by combining multiple sources of data.

The publications have also created a form for people to share a tip about their missing loved one, for possible inclusion in the project.

There’s also a nagging suspicion that something either won’t be shared with authorities, or won’t bring resolution if and when it’s reported.

“The feeling around here is you can murder a Native woman and get away with it,” said Hollis Flowers, a family friend who’s helped lead the push to keep Savannah’s story in the public eye as temperatures drop and another season of uncertainty begins.

There’s still hope, though, that an answer will emerge — especially after a celebration last week in Parmelee meant to mark Savannah’s 23rd birthday and keep her name on the tip of the community’s tongue.

About a week before the event, Savannah’s mother, Gayla Smith, said the eldest of her two daughters has a heart for those who suffer. It’s a personality trait that’s been evident for as long as Smith can remember.

“She’d see people on the street, like when we would go to Rapid City,” Smith said, referring to the homeless population. “She’d see people like that, she would always want to go and help them.”

It’s Smith who’s suffered since March 24. That was the last day she heard from Savannah, setting off a police investigation and a series of searches that’s continued into the fall.

60% of missing South Dakotans are Native Americans

Savannah is one of an unclear number of Native Americans who’ve gone missing or been killed in the state of South Dakota. Nationally and internationally, the movement to draw attention to Indigenous people who disappear or die under violent circumstances is commonly called Missing and Murdered Indigenous People.

South Dakota has taken some steps to track the cases in recent years. The South Dakota Missing Persons Clearinghouse, which launched in 2020, lists the names of those whose disappearances have been reported to law enforcement locally and passed along to the South Dakota Attorney General’s Office. On any given day, the list has at least 100 missing people, though the names shift in real time as people are found or go missing.

On Tuesday morning, Native Americans made up 60% of the 112 listed names. Of 59 missing females, 66% were Native American. The percentages, as compiled periodically by South Dakota Searchlight, typically fall in or near that range.

Around 8.5% of South Dakotans are Native American, according to census data.

Ten of the cases in the state missing persons clearinghouse as of Tuesday morning — Savannah’s among them — came from the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Police Department. That’s approximately 9% of current missing person’s cases. Residents of the Rosebud Reservation represent less than 3% of South Dakota’s total population.

A mother’s warning

The last time she saw her daughter, Smith remembers warning her to stay at home and stay out of trouble.

“But when I got up, she wasn’t in her room,” Smith said.

In the days following, Smith said she heard different things from different family members. Some said that Savannah had ended up in the tribal jail and would be out later, but when Smith looked into it, her daughter hadn’t been in jail.

So Smith went to check in with other relatives around the Rosebud Reservation. One relative in Parmelee said Savannah had “walked off” with a friend, Smith said, but it wasn’t a friend she recognized.

‘Truly a homebody’

Smith and Standing Bear are close. They’ve always been.

One of Savannah’s distinguishing features, noted on the missing persons posters hung up around the Rosebud Reservation and posted to social media, is a tattoo of her mother’s first name under her right eye.

It’s now been eight months since Smith last heard from her daughter, since Savannah played with her nephew and since Savannah logged into the social media accounts where she loved to chat.

“She has a really big heart,” Smith said. “She’s my baby.”

She loves to listen to music, take photos and just hang out, Smith said. Her absence has left a void for her family.

“She loved the sunset, taking pictures of it,” Smith said. “It’s really hard for me to see the sun go down without her.”

Tips don’t yield results

Tips have yet to aid in the search for Savannah, the family said.

Early this year, reports that Savannah was sighted at a Maverik gas station on the north side of Rapid City — two and a half hours from where she was last seen — led investigators to switch gears and focus on the Black Hills city.

Police spent days combing over footage from the gas station, only to find the “sighting” was a different Native American woman, tribal officials said.

“There’s no proof she ever left,” Flowers, the family friend, said in May.

More frightening tips have emerged, as well.

Once, the family heard that a body was found on the reservation. Family members jumped in to respond alongside law enforcement, but it turned out to be animal remains that had previously been reported and documented, according to officials with Rosebud Sioux Tribe Emergency Services.

Frustration grows

That all-for-naught excursion over animal bones was just one entry on a long list of disappointing searches for Savannah’s father, Severt Standing Bear, who was among those to accompany police when the alleged human remains were discovered. He told South Dakota Searchlight this month that he’s lost track of how many trips he’s made through the areas he thinks Savannah might be. It’s been that way since March.

“When I first heard it, my thought was, ‘Let’s go. We’ll go find her,’” he said.

He’s also passed along more tips than he can remember to the Rosebud Tribal Police and the detective assigned to Savannah’s case.

“I can’t say that I call them every day, but I bug the s— out of them,” Severt said. “To no avail.”

Rosebud Police Chief Waycee His Holy Horse did not reply to South Dakota Searchlight requests for an interview on Savannah’s case this month.

Having spent as much time searching as he has, Severt said, he’s come to understand the frustration felt by other families that go months, years or longer without knowing what happened to a missing loved one.

“These officials are always coming up and saying, ‘We’re doing these things,’” he said. “But I’ve learned and lived it now, and watched these other people that are missing their precious ones, too. They’re having the same darn problem.”

Communication, collaboration

Dolores “Totes” Waln, a Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council member, said her experience helping the family has exposed gaps in communication between emergency managers, police and the volunteers who’ve pitched in.

“When they were going to drain the dam, nobody knew about it until we heard it live on the air from the tribal president,” Waln said of a summer search effort from the tribe around a stock dam about 6 miles east of Parmelee, which was discussed on the radio. “And we’re all like, ‘What?’”

Shelby Lorenzo Homer, of the 4Corners K9 Search And Rescue nonprofit, said collaboration and communication has been a struggle for months. Recently, however, she worked with agents from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs on a search in October.

“That’s when we really started seeing some communication and some collaboration,” Homer said.

In a statement, a BIA spokesperson said the agency is working closely with the FBI and Rosebud Sioux Department of Public Safety on Savannah’s case, coordinating search operations, offering a $5,000 reward through its Missing and Murdered Unit and “actively supporting Savanah’s family during this difficult time.”

After Savannah’s birthday celebration and candlelight vigil in Parmelee over the weekend, the hope is that extra attention can be combined with improved collaboration to yield results.

The hope goes all the way to the top in Rosebud. Tips sometimes land in the inbox of Rosebud Sioux Tribal President Kathleen Wooden Knife. When that happens, the president said, she passes them along to police.

Then, like everyone else, she waits.

“And my hope is that ‘OK, this time will be the time we’re going to find her,’” Wooden Knife said. “It hasn’t happened yet.”

The BIA’s $5,000 reward is open to anyone with information that can lead authorities to Savannah. The BIA can be reached at (833) 560-2065, by email at OJS_MMU@bia.gov, or by texting keyword BIAMMU and a tip to 847411.

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