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Members of the Native community in Lawrence, Kan. and Kansas City, Mo. are supporting Haskell Indian Nations University students and the family and friends of missing Haskell student Cole Brings Plenty.
Brings Plenty, 27, who’s also an actor is known for his role in the TV show “1923,” was last seen in Lawrence on Sunday.
This week, members of the Native community have held gatherings at Haskell, which is located in Lawrence, to hold space and offer prayers, as police search for Brings Plenty and are seeking his arrest in connection to an alleged domestic violence incident at an apartment in Lawrence on Sunday.
The Kansas City Indian Center is offering its support as staff attends the gatherings and shares information including “missing person” fliers of Brings Plenty.
In a telephone interview Wednesday with Kansas City Indian Center Executive Director Gaylene Crouser, she said the Native community is coming together, because when a Native person goes missing, they often do not get much public attention or media attention to help find them.
Crouser says she’s been in brief contact with his family, which has expressed that it’s out of character for Brings Plenty to be out of touch with his family and friends.
As for the accusations against Brings Plenty, his family has posted on social media that the most important thing right now is to locate him and that there’s a time and place to address the allegations.
Crouser agrees with the family’s sentiments and says the Indian center will continue to offer its support in the search.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the Lawrence Kansas Police Department had no new information or updates on the search for Brings Plenty.
According to the police department regarding the incident, officers responded to reports of a female screaming for help, but the suspect fled before officers arrived.
Police say the investigation has identified Brings Plenty as the suspect and that traffic cameras showed his vehicle leaving the city, traveling southbound on 59 Highway.
Brings Plenty was last known to be driving a 2005 white Ford Explorer.
Anyone with information is asked to call police.
Meanwhile, students at Haskell have built a fire and will keep it burning until Brings Plenty is found.
Students are also meeting Thursday to plan a search party.
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Courtesy Avera Research Institute
Researchers are working to understand all factors underlying maternal health care for Native Americans in western South Dakota.
Most counties west of the Missouri River are considered a maternal health care desert.
As South Dakota Public Broadcasting’s Lee Strubinger reports, that means women live more than 100 miles away from medical providers that specialize in delivery.
Distance, weather, transportation, and trauma are just a few of the barriers standing in the way of pregnant Native American women needing or wanting prenatal health care.
That’s coupled with a lack of providers West River — both in reservations and in the Black Hills.
Dr. Amy Elliott is a chief research officer at Avera McKennon. She describes the issue bluntly.
“It’s crisis levels. With the lack of obstetrics providers especially on the western side of the state. How do we find solutions, not just for recruiting more people, but also do we have to think a little bit different about how we deliver care?”
According to the South Dakota Department of Health, from 2012 to 2021, American Indians made up 20% of all live births, but 44% of all pregnancy-associated deaths.
Dr. Elliot and others want to fully understand what’s causing that issue, and others.
Dr. Elliot says a lack of data hinders insight into understanding causes or generating solutions.
“An advantage of being in a health system is we have access to quite a bit of data and we also have close partnerships with the Department of Health, Great Plains Tribal Leaders Board and other agencies around so we’re able to help maybe combine different data streams that haven’t been combined before.”
That, Dr. Elliot hopes, will lead to lasting and systemic change in better health outcomes for Native women on the great plains.
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