'When Power Silences Truth;' Jancita Eagle Deer's voice still matters

Editor's note: confusion still exists whether it's spelled "Jancita" or "Jacinta."

When Power Silences Truth

Jacinta Eagle Deer’s story is often misunderstood. It is not simply about personal harm it is about how authority, systems, and silence can outweigh truth.

In the late 1960s, Jacinta was only fifteen years old when she reported being assaulted by Bill Janklow, a lawyer working on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. She spoke to adults she trusted. Medical staff documented her condition. Her account was recorded. Yet no charges were filed.

What failed her was not a lack of evidence but a maze of jurisdictional rules that left Native women without protection, especially when the accused was a non-Native official. Her voice was caught between federal authority and tribal limitations, where responsibility was passed and accountability disappeared.

Years later, Jacinta chose to act where the courts had not.

With the support of the American Indian Movement and tribal legal advocates, she brought her case before the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Court. In 1974, the court took a rare and powerful step, removing Janklow’s right to practice law on the reservation. It was a defining moment an assertion of tribal authority in defense of a Native woman.

That victory was brief.

In April of 1975, Jacinta was found dead along a rural Nebraska road under circumstances that raised unanswered questions. Her death was never resolved.

Her stepmother, Delphine Eagle Deer, refused to be silent. She spoke openly, demanded accountability, and continued to press for recognition of what had happened. One year later, Delphine was also found dead, her case likewise left without answers.

While two Lakota women were lost, the man Jacinta accused continued his rise eventually becoming Attorney General, Governor of South Dakota, and a member of Congress.

Today, his legacy is marked in public memorials. Jacinta and Delphine’s names are not.

Yet their story endures not through statues, but through memory, advocacy, and the refusal to forget. Their lives expose a system where credibility often follows power, and where Native women have too often been denied justice.

Jacinta Eagle Deer and Delphine Eagle Deer are remembered not only for what happened to them but for the courage it took to speak when silence was safer.

Their voices remain part of a larger call: to listen, to protect, and to believe Native women.