ROLLINS – A University of Montana student is walking 80 miles (about 130 kilometers) across the Flathead Indian Reservation to raise awareness about missing and murdered indigenous women.
The Missoulian reports Marita Growing Thunder started the planned four-day trek Thursday morning along with sixteen other walkers.
Growing Thunder, a member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribes who grew up on the Flathead Reservation, has made the trek each of the past three years. She started raising awareness of missing and murdered Native woman as a senior at Polson High School.
Growing Thunder dedicated this year’s walk to Jermain Charlo, a Dixon woman who vanished from Missoula last June and remains the subject of an extensive, multi-agency search.