Cletus washes dishes at the family home south of Billings, Montana on the Crow Reservation. The kitchen window before him looks up the hill to the little family cemetery where his son Steven is buried.
Cletus washes dishes at the family home south of Billings, Montana on the Crow Reservation. The kitchen window before him looks up the hill to the little family cemetery where his son Steven is buried.
Fighting for Steven
Editorial Photo Series
USA 2009
Earline and Cletus never imaged that they would lose a child, especially not Steven. When he was killed by a co-worker and friend in the winter of 2005, the tragedy set off a long chain of events that drove this ranching couple from Montana's windstrewn Crow Reservation into the legal battle of their lives. Suspicious of the investigators work and their motives, and angered by the release of the man who took their son's life, the couple has taken their case to some of the country's highest courts, and built a movement in Indian Country calling for justice for the inconsistantly high number of unprocescuted crimes against American Indians.
