Sentencing today in 2018 slaying of two Nevada tribal members

By Jessica Hill

Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022 | 2 a.m.

When she sits in the federal courthouse in Reno, Esther Sam doesn’t look at the man who killed her daughter. Instead, she looks forward, with her eyes on the judge.

Her daughter, Adeline “Gug” Sam, 31, and Adeline’s cousin Amy Hinkey, 40, were killed Jan. 31, 2018, in shotgun slayings on the Fort McDermitt Shoshone Paiute Tribe Reservation along the Nevada-Oregon border.

A federal jury convicted Stoney Prior, 43, of two counts of second-degree murder in August. Prior, also a member of the tribe who according to court records said his motive for killing the women was because they were “calling him a molester,” a “child molester,” and a “rapist,” is scheduled to be sentenced today.

Sam hopes the sentencing will bring her daughter justice, she said, but she knows the cases of many other Native American women who go missing or are murdered never get resolved.

A 2020 report documented about 2,306 Indigenous women and girls who have gone missing in the U.S., and 58% of those are homicide cases, but in reality, there are probably more, as advocates and federal officials are still working to get the most accurate data.

‘Our family fell apart’

Adeline Sam was born in 1986 in Winnemucca and spent most of her life on the Fort McDermitt Reservation, a 35,000-acre tract of land along U.S. 95 with a population of about 400.

Tall with long, wavy hair, she loved driving around listening to music. She loved everything, from rock and rap to Indian Country and powwow music. A hands-on person, she would gladly get under the hood of a car or dig with a shovel.

“She wasn’t afraid of hard work,” Esther Sam said.

Everybody called her “Gug,” because her brother — only one year older — couldn’t say “sister” when he was learning to talk. But he could say “Gug.”

When Adeline was a toddler, she would wake up and play Mickey Mouse music on a little record player, Esther Sam recalled. “Every morning we’d hear the music come on.”

“She loved to laugh and joke around,” Esther Sam said. “She was always very witty, very smart.”

She thought about other people, Esther said. Once she gave her friend her own car, since her friend and her kids had to walk to work and school.

“She would give something to somebody if they needed it,” she said. “If she gave it away, she would just say, ‘something will come my way later when I need it.’”

Adeline Sam was also close with her grandfather, and they’d drive around as he would tell stories.

Adeline Sam had been living in Burns, Ore., with her mother but went back to McDermitt to take care of her grandfather’s house. She was afraid that it would burn down, Esther said, because there are a lot of wildfires in the area.

She volunteered to cook for the tribe’s Sun Dance Festival, making whatever food she had in her kitchen, Esther said. She and her cousin Amy Hinkey were in touch with their culture, their cousin Russella Castillo said.

When there was a prayer gathering or some tribal event, they worked hard to get everything done, never expecting anything in return, Castillo said. They also knew herbal remedies passed on from their ancestors, she said.

Adeline Sam’s Facebook page is full of posts about music, Indigenous culture, food and some problems she was having with mice. One of her last posts, dated Jan. 30, 2018, was bringing awareness to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement.

She opened up her home to whoever needed to stay there, and she would never turn anyone away, Esther said.

That includes Prior, who said he needed a place to stay because he wasn’t getting along with his family. The grandparents of Prior and Adeline Sam are siblings.

Hinkey was visiting the night the murder occurred.

“Our whole world just fell apart,” she said. “I don’t even remember going through, doing the funeral arrangements.”

Neither her family nor the tribe had money to pay for funeral expenses, so the FBI helped financially, she said.

Esther Sam still doesn’t know quite what happened that night, as the FBI will not release a lot of information, even after Prior was convicted.

Esther also does not know if justice will be served in the death of her daughter. If Prior gets off with a “slap on the wrist,” she would consider that injustice.

Federal prosecutors are asking the judge to impose two terms of life imprisonment that would run consecutively to each other. Prior’s attorneys have asked for sentences of 30 years on each count to be run concurrently, which the U.S. Probation Office also recommended. He would be 73 when he is released if given the concurrent sentences.

The judge will determine how to interpret federal sentencing guidelines in the case. Should the judge determine there are extenuating circumstances in the case, he can “depart” from the guideline range, imposing either a stricter or a more lenient sentence.

All of which has Esther Sam concerned about today’s outcome. Yet, she heard other of other women’s cases that aren’t investigated at all, getting chalked up to suicide or natural causes.

“I miss everything (about her),” she said. “Her laughter. Her joking, .... her wise words that she would tell me even though I’m her mom. Our family fell apart. She was the one who was holding us together.”

‘An epidemic’

There are 572 federally recognized tribes in the U.S., with 27 of those in Nevada, each with their own creation stories, songs and foods, said Stacey Montooth, executive director of the Nevada Indian Commission.

But there are a couple commonalities among the tribes: their connection to Mother Earth and their experience with the “epidemic” of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, Montooth said.

“You won’t find a Paiute, Shoshone or a Washoe who doesn’t have a firsthand account of a loved one or a close family member who has been murdered or is missing,” she said.

The data, however, doesn’t match up, Montooth said. Federal reports typically overseen by the Justice Department and the FBI indicate there’s just a handful of missing and murdered indigenous women in the area, Montooth said. Jurisdictional issues and a lack of communication between law enforcement agencies are inhibiting the ability to have good, accurate data, she said.

“Native Americans, especially women and children, suffer from disproportionately high rates of violence, including domestic violence and sexual assault,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Christopher Chiou in a statement.

Asked how many murder cases that occurred on tribal lands the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of Nevada has prosecuted, spokeswoman Trisha Young sent a list of six cases from 2017 to present.

While tribes have the inherent right to govern themselves, Montooth said, when it comes to major crimes such as murder and kidnapping, the federal government steps in.

“If a non-Native commits a crime on tribal land, our chosen procedures and methods for justice are superseded by Uncle Sam,” Montooth said.

That opens a whole other can of worms, she said. Even before the pandemic, the federal government, which is a huge bureaucracy, was short staffed.

“I understand what a difficult job (law enforcement officers) have,” Montooth said. “But when it comes to prioritization, our women and girls are not at the top. And I struggle to try and reconcile that for some reason in this country, in this area, my people’s lives aren’t as valuable.”

A lack of media coverage on Indigenous women and girls going missing also perpetuates the problem. In the span of about two years, Montooth said, she has seen mostly regional headlines about Adeline Sam and Amy Hinkey. And then another headline about a pregnant mother named Amanda Davis, a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe who was murdered at one of the northern Paiute tribes, she said. There was little to no national coverage of those cases.

“Because my people have been marginalized for so long, because the federal government intentionally put my relatives on isolated landbases, we just don’t get the coverage,” Montooth said.

Deep roots require complex solutions

Paula Julian, senior policy specialist at the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, said the roots of the violence against Native women run deep, and solutions needed to be local and put in the hands of the tribes.

When nonnative governments first made contact with native governments centuries ago, introducing disrespectful views of women, the epidemic of violence against Native women took root, Julian said.

Historically, the U.S. government has eroded tribal governments’ abilities to take care of their own people by instituting policies such as boarding schools, Julian said, which attempted to make them more like white people.

“That legacy of ‘we’ — as the U.S. government — know what’s best for Indian people’ continues,” Julian said. The solutions, Julian argues, require shifting more responsibility to tribes, focusing on self-determination and “local solutions to local problems.”

“The solution has to be local, the solution cannot be from the outside, from nonnatives. It has to be rooted in tribal customs, traditions, teaching, culture,” Julian said.

The National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center published a six-point action plan for reform and restoration as next steps. It includes supporting the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act of 2021’s expansion of special domestic violence criminal jurisdiction for Indian nations, which would authorize tribal governments to prosecute cases against nonnatives in domestic violence cases. The act passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is now before the Senate.

“The fears of some lawmakers that tribes could not mete out justice fairly or according to U.S. justice standards is not true,” Julian said. “The fears that they would trample over the rights of defendants or that the justice that they provide would be irrational or nonsensical. We basically really debunked those misunderstandings.”

The action plan also includes supporting the Family Violence Prevention Services Improvement Act of 2021, which is also before the Senate. It would ensure adequate resources for advocacy and services for Indigenous women.

Other solutions include a dedicated funding stream for tribes in the Victims of Crime Act and requiring every federal department to develop action plans in consultation with tribal nations.

While many of the solutions involve giving more responsibility to tribes, advocates also argue that more changes need to be made with law enforcement. Law enforcement officers need more cultural competency training, Montooth said, and they need to use technology that works.

“It doesn’t do any good if the sheriff’s office in one Nevada county has a database with reports of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls if two counties over that city police department can’t access those reports,” Montooth said.

Steps have already been taken in recent years to address some concerns with data and reporting.

On Oct. 10, 2020, Savanna’s Act and Not Invisible Act were signed into law, aiming to address the crisis. Both were introduced by Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto.

Savanna’s Act, named after Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, a 22-year-old pregnant member of the Spirit Lake Nation in North Dakota who was murdered in 2017. The act looks to improve data collection and access, according to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. It also directs the Department of Justice to review, revise and develop law enforcement and justice protocols to address missing and murdered Indigenous people.

The Not Invisible Act creates an advisory committee composed of tribal leaders, law enforcement, federal partners, service providers, and survivors, that will make recommendations to the U.S. Department of Interior and Department of Justice to combat violence against Indigenous people.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order Nov. 15 directing the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security to address the epidemic by coordinating investigations into unsolved cases and creating a strategy to improve public safety for Native Americans.

The Justice Department’s District of Nevada has made strides in addressing the lack of data, lack of coordination and jurisdictional gaps that caused many cases to go unsolved, Chiou said in a statement.

“Work remains to be done but, by working together, I believe we can end the (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons) crisis and bring some degree of peace to the families of missing and murdered tribal victims,” Chiou said in the statement.

Three years after Adeline Sam was killed, Esther and her family have begun to heal, Esther said. She is ready to go back to court and hear sentencing pronounced on her daughter’s killer, so she can finally rest.