It’s always the same dream. Melissa Skeet is roller-skating down an open road, slicing through the arid Arizona desert in the heart of Navajo Nation. A jagged rock formation peers down at her, and the surrounding mesas glow red with the setting sun. She feels free. She feels a sense of healing.
After waking up, the 36-year-old former roller derby player laces up her skates and lives that dream. Skeet is currently on a four-month-long skating journey across the United States to amplify Indigenous voices and raise awareness for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) crisis. “The Great Skate,” as she calls her mission, has taken her to more than a dozen states, through the Pacific Northwest, across the Great Plains, and along the Great Lakes, all the way to Washington D.C.
Everything is documented on her Instagram account, @skeet_fighter, where followers can donate to the cause and help fund her travels. “People all over the world might ask, ‘Why is this crazy roller skater skating this crazy-long distance?’” Skeet says. “I want to cut the ties of generational trauma.”
As an Indigenous woman (Skeet is a citizen of Navajo Nation) and a survivor of domestic violence, this journey is about honoring the past while looking forward to a brighter future. “My ancestors fought really hard so that I could be here today,” she says. “I’m telling my story, but also their story.”
The weight of what she’s doing, and the message she’s spreading, consume Skeet, even after she falls asleep. In the recurring dream, which happens most nights, her long black hair is braided underneath a backward baseball hat. Her actual uniform includes a helmet and her face is painted with a red handprint, which symbolizes the thousands of missing or killed American Indian and Alaska Native people ignored by police. “That is what this is about,” Skeet says. “[Too many of] these cases are not being taken seriously.”
The MMIP epidemic has brought devastating grief to Native communities for so long. Indigenous people are murdered at a rate of up to ten times the national average, and homicide is one of the leading causes of death for Native women. While the Bureau of Indian Affairs estimates that there are currently around 4,200 unsolved MMIP cases, some estimate the actual number is much higher.
Last year, the Not Invisible Act Commission—an advisory committee consisting of Tribal leaders, families of missing and murdered individuals, and law enforcement—submitted an official report to Congress identifying factors underpinning the crisis, including grossly underfunded tribal law enforcement, the exclusion of Indigenous people in data collections, and lackluster media coverage.
Awareness has grown in recent years with grassroots efforts led by Native politicians, activists, and celebrities like Reservations Dogs star D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, who donned a red handprint on his face at the 2024 Emmys. But more often, Native people still have to take matters into their own hands. Families whose loved ones have gone missing often report apathy from law enforcement, according to the Not Invisible Act Commission report. Some are even left to carry out their own investigations, all while bearing the weight of extraordinary grief.
Nicole Wagon, a member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, lost two daughters in the span of one year. Her oldest, Jocelyn, was shot dead at age 30 in January 2019. Her other daughter, Jade, was just 23 years old when she was found dead on the Wind River Reservation in January 2020. While Jocelyn’s killer plead guilty to first-degree murder last year, Jade’s case remains under investigation by the Bureau of Indian Affairs Missing and Murdered Unit, which was founded in 2021. Wagon believes her own personal resolve to fight for justice has kept the case from running cold.
“I pushed at all levels,” she says. “I said, ‘You are not going to put this at the bottom of the pile.’ I was consistent and demanding, and that is the drive of a mother.” In 2023, Wagon founded the advocacy group MMIP WindRiver, which provides support for other families in similar situations.
Along The Great Skate, Skeet has met many resilient mothers like Wagon. Her path to get here started at age 11, when she tested out her first pair of rollerblades on the paved bike trails of the Grand Canyon National Park near Navajo Nation, where she grew up.
Both of her parents survived Indian boarding schools, but were stripped of their culture and forbidden to speak their native languages or engage in traditional practices. Skeet connected with her Navajo culture on visits with members of her mom’s family still living on the reservation.
After graduating from Northern Arizona University in 2011, she began working in Flagstaff as an advocate for survivors of domestic violence, providing support, resources, and other assistance navigating the criminal justice system. “You’re working with people on the worst day of their lives, and by the end of the day, you’ve helped them, and that feels amazing,” she says. But in 2017, Skeet’s world was turned upside down when she says that she became a survivor of violence herself.
She fell into a deep depression, struggling with the aftershock and ostracism many survivors face. “I lost friends, I lost family,” Skeet says. “People were blaming me [for what happened].” Roller derby pulled her out from a dark place.
Created in the 1930s—and reaching a fever pitch in the 1970s when it was hailed as the only truly equal playing field for male and female athletes—the contact sport involves two teams of five skaters vying for points on an oval track. The Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA), a governing body for the sport, was formed 20 years ago, and has nearly 450 member leagues around the world today.
Skeet joined a team in Flagstaff and earned the nickname “Skeet Fighter” from teammates, who supported her as she regained her sense of self. “They made me feel alive again,” she says. On her worst days, they lined up on the track and arms linked to form a human wall. “‘Give us all you got, Skeet,’ they would say,” she recalls. “And I would skate into them as hard as I could, just slam into them, and they would catch me.”
With years of experience helping survivors of abuse and violence, Skeet says she is intimately familiar with the myriad ways in which the criminal justice system continues to fail Native victims. “These cases are not being taken seriously,” she says. “Families are left with no answers, and they don’t hear from anyone. That is the reason I got into this.” Accustomed to seeing little resolution, Skeet thought to herself: What is it going to take for people to listen?
In 2021, she took a stand by attempting something that had never been done before: skating 300 miles across Navajo Nation to raise awareness. The distance and route honored the infamous 300-mile Long Walk where, from 1864 to 1868, Navajo people were forced by the U.S. military to travel by foot in relentless desert heat across current-day New Mexico. It’s estimated that up to 3,500 Navajos died on the harrowing journey. Skeet made it 192 miles, and her attempt was documented in the short film 300 Miles for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
However, her mission was successful in other ways. Families all across Indian Country began contacting her to share their own stories. “People started coming to me saying, like, ‘My relative has gone missing and nothing is being done,’” Skeet says. One day, she turned to her fiancé, Nate, and announced: “I’m going to skate across the nation for this.”
The Great Skate took two years to plan. After much consideration, Skeet settled on a route that would take her south through Washington state, across the Great Plains to Michigan, and finally to Washington D.C., where she would meet with families of missing women and MMIP survivors. Every detail from her journey would be shared on social media, and Nate would drive alongside with their two dogs. At night, they planned to set up makeshift campsites.
After securing sponsorships from Patagonia, socially conscious drinkware company Miir, and Indigenous educational nonprofit Pretty Shield Foundation, Skeet nailed down her most important collaboration of all: A majority of her GoFundMe proceeds would be donated to Ohkomi Forensics, founded by Haley Omeasoo, a citizen of the Hopi Tribe and a Blackfeet descendant. The nonprofit provides forensics services, such as DNA testing and excavation field services, to assist MMIP search missions in Montana. Skeet’s goal is to donate $15,000 to the organization.
When Skeet reached out to her, Omeasoo felt an immediate kinship. “I thought, ‘Wow, another Indigenous woman taking matters into her own hands, and wanting to make a difference,’” Omeasoo says. “And what a cool way of doing it by roller-skating across the country.”
On July 9, 2024, Skeet hosted a livestream conversation on Instagram with Indigenous actor and professional boxer Kali Reis to promote the tour and educate viewers about MMIP. Earlier this month, Reis made history as the first Native American woman nominated for an acting Emmy for her role in HBO’s True Detective: Night Country.
The two women talked about spreading awareness not just for MMIP, but also about the Native experience today. “Ignorance,” Reis said on the livestream, “is a chance to educate.” And with that, a week later, Skeet was off on the first leg of The Great Skate.
I recently met Skeet at a convention center in Lansing, Michigan. She recounted one of the most heart-wrenching stops on her mission so far. In Montana, the mother of a 23-year-old woman named Mika who was found dead along a highway last year, gave her a T-shirt emblazoned with “Mika Matters.” Even though Skeet has made Indigenous activism her life’s work, some days it still doesn’t feel like enough.
She tears up describing the urgency she feels to keep going, often sacrificing rest and her own mental health to get a few more miles in. “I’ll think, ‘I didn’t go far enough, I didn’t skate enough,’” she says. “My body hurts. I almost fainted the other day while skating. It’s really, really hard.” But meeting Mika’s mom—those are the moments that make it all worth it.
Already more than halfway to D.C., Skeet speaks to me in Lansing for Skate Wars, an all-women’s roller derby tournament. She feels at home surrounded by other women in helmets bearing their derby names. Across the hall from where we are sitting, an Indigenous derby team called Team Indigenous stretches, while a documentary crew films.
Skeet recounts that, earlier that morning, they asked her to join a smudging ceremony, during which a prayer was offered and sage was burned to cleanse negative energy. Afterward, they all chanted the phrase “strong resilience” together. “We just screamed it super loud,” Skeet says, “because I do feel strong, resilient, and Indigenous.”
Most days, the journey is painful. Her skates weigh five pounds each, and there is little to no shade on the road. In Illinois, she nearly fainted from heat exhaustion. Her body hurts, but her heart hurts more. “It has taken so much out of me,” she says. “And this is what families are going through every single day.”
For Skeet, the Great Skate is an act of ceremony; like her ancestors before her who survived the Long Walk, she is also carrying grief, hope, and healing all at once. And the handprint on her face is more than just a harbinger of the MMIP cause. Many Native American cultures believe that red is the only color spirits can see. “The lost souls are following that,” she says.
Elyse Wild is an award-winning journalist and Senior Editor for Native News Online. She covers health equity in Indian County through a solutions-focused lens, with an emphasis on the overdose epidemic and Missing and Murdered Indigenous People. Her work has been published in The Guardian, Tribal Business News, McClatchy and NPR’s Washington State affiliate station. She publishes a weekly newsletter called Vulgar Advice and is the co-host of the Missed Connections Podcast.