It's a busy road.
It is.
But
nobody's seen anything.
That's
a dead end, so
I don't see anybody
that has a camera.
But then again, they're
all fenced-off, so
[CHILDREN LAUGHING IN
THE DISTANCE]
Someone
knows something.
I dropped
her off right here
Oh.
at the end of this road.
She didn't want that man
that's her husband
to know that we dropped her off.
Did
she ever say why?
She
was scared of him.
You see?
This is their house
where she lived.
Do you
think they actually
explored this place though?
I don't know.
I think that's a
good question to ask.
I don't know if
there's scuba divers
or what they can do
to look in the lake.
Yeah,
if they could get
people to look in the waters
Do we need to comb
the waters here?
Is she somewhere
else in the woods?
Every
day and every night, I pray.
I pray for you.
I love and miss you, sister.
Come home.
Please, god, please,
god, bring her home.
We're
here on the Tulalip
Tribal Indian Reservation.
That's the road
that we believe Mary
Davis Johnson was last seen,
Fire Trail Road.
She did go missing two years
ago on November 25, 2020.
But we do have witnesses
that place her walking
on this stretch of roadway.
She was trying to catch a
ride, and it's very possible
that she was likely
picked up in a vehicle
and taken from this area.
She could have been abducted.
She could have been picked
up by a known individual
or by a complete stranger,
and possibilities
are limitless of where
she may have been taken.
Mary
disappearing, I never
thought that would happen.
Mary, she's
feisty.
She'd fight.
She'd never give up.
I think that she might have
been taken against her will.
Mary is very giving,
very caring, very funny.
She'll do any impersonation
just to make you laugh.
I'm very close to Mary.
She'd never give up on me.
She was always telling
me, you may be pissy at me
or I may be pissy at
you, but we're sisters.
You got to deal with it.
We love each other
no matter what.
The day before Thanksgiving,
she went missing.
She was
supposed to be meeting
somebody at a white church
on Fire Trail Road.
She was supposed to be going
to a family in Oso, Washington.
Her cellphone made it
there and back to Tulalip.
But we don't know if she
was with the cellphone.
She could be out
there still alive.
There's many scenarios of
what could be happening.
I do have dreams about her
every once in a while, but
I don't think she's gone.
And I do wish she
would come home.
My
name is Terry Gobin,
and I am the chairwoman
of the Tulalip tribes.
We are the fishing people.
We are the salmon people, the
descendants from the Snohomish,
Snoqualmie, and allied bands.
Native women like
Mary Ellen are missing
because they're easy prey.
The numbers of the Native
women that are missing
are higher than any nationality
throughout the United States.
It is like predators know
that this is lawless land.
People use the reservations
as dumping grounds for bodies.
For years, no white man
who abused a Native person
could be prosecuted
through our courts at all.
And it kind of gave
non-Native perpetrators
the open field to come in
and violate Native people.
She is
such a doting aunt.
They are just as
worried as we are.
I'm
sure the whole family
is going through this.
There's not a family
member that doesn't
feel what you're feeling.
When
this first came about,
we didn't have any help at all.
No.
It was just her and I, and we
were just looking at each other
like what should we do?
And I didn't think
it was real at first.
Her husband
told us a couple days
before Thanksgiving that
she was missing for, like,
two weeks prior.
He told us that we should
report her missing, and two,
three weeks after, he
moved to California.
And then went and changed his
number like a couple of weeks
later.
So he calls you and says
that his wife is missing
and for you to call the police?
Mhm.
He didn't want anything to
do with this investigation
and basically just
washed his hands.
He is a white man.
He left.
Tribal cops can't do anything.
So their hands are
tied behind their back.
They already did a cadaver
dog search in the place
that they both lived
in in Marysville.
They found nothing of it.
But
But not along
Fire Trail Road or anywhere.
Now, I'm at the part where I'm
just getting angry now because
there's nothing new.
There's no answers
almost two years.
Is
that your sister?
Yeah.
What was her name?
It was Catherine Teresa Jo.
She was
27 years old when
she went missing.
Life changing, for sure, yeah.
My
name is Deborah Parker.
My traditional name
is Tsi-Cy-Altsa.
I was the former Vice-chairwoman
of the Tulalip Tribes.
Mary Ellen, I know
she's been stolen.
There's foul play.
There's just something
terribly wrong,
and she deserves for
people to fight for her.
Three out of five Native women
will be sexually assaulted.
In some communities, it's
nearly 100% of the women.
This work that we do
is work from our heart.
It's from our spirit.
So we stand today in
honor of the missing
and m*rder*d Indigenous.
We pray for the families who are
longing for their loved ones,
and we ask the people
who see these pictures
to help us fight.
The colonial system of
outsiders coming in,
like, brutally raping our
women has not stopped.
We have a high record
of non-native men
assaulting Native women and
k*lling, murdering our women.
We've learned through
doing research
that some of the men
in jail would say
you can go r*pe a
Indian woman, and you
won't be, you won't get caught.
You won't get in trouble.
The reason behind that
is because tribal police
don't have jurisdiction
over the non-Indians.
They see a crime happen, they
have to back off of that crime.
So we still don't have
jurisdiction, say, for m*rder.
So if there's a
crime committed here,
then we have to really
depend upon federal agents
to come in to pick up the
cases and to prosecute.
We do
a lot of funerals.
We lost another sister today.
Every tribe, they've been having
funerals after funerals back
to back for a long time now.
It's not just Mary
Ellen, all of them.
All the reservations are
going through the same thing
right now.
They're losing
people, young
ladies disappearing.
The Father, the Son, the Holy
Ghost, Haitchka, Haitchka.
I pray for Mary Ellen every day.
I ask God, if she's
gone to the other side,
at least give us closure on it.
Just before she
disappeared, she was
telling me that
her and her husband
were having marital problems.
She was, they weren't
getting along very good.
So I didn't go any
further than that with it.
That, that's, that's
their problem.
I didn't want to get into that.
My sister Mary Jane and David
were Mary Ellen's parents.
David worked in, in a big
casino for a long time.
Well, that's where he died.
He died in the bathroom
at the big casino.
We lost so much.
Everything fell apart.
My Auntie
Mary Jane, her husband
was everything to her.
She loved her husband, and her
husband absolutely loved her.
She started using drugs because
she lost custody of her girls,
and her husband died.
I don't think she
knew what to do
to be able to go on with life.
One time I came home to visit,
and all the girls were gone.
And I asked my auntie.
I says like, what happened?
She goes,
CPS just came and took my girls.
They accused me of multiple
things and just took my girls.
After she did
everything in her power
to try to fight for
them back, she just
turned to alcohol and drugs.
She got really,
really depressed.
And that's how we
ended up losing her.
My Auntie Mary Jane
wasn't the only one
that went through that.
CPS, like, literally did a
sweep through all the tribes,
removing children
from families, and
a lot of the families never
got their children back.
They were adopted out.
They were put with a
lot of white families.
We have a lot of Tulalip
tribal members foster children
that don't even
know our culture.
They are coming
back after they've
turned 18 to know who they are.
Mary Ellen was one of the
first girls that came home.
I know she was lost.
You looked at her, her,
you looked at her face,
and you looked in her
eyes, she was lost.
She wanted to find who she
was and where she came from.
She wanted to know her family.
She had questions about her mom.
She had questions about
her dad, about her culture.
She came home, and
then she was gone.
She disappeared.
The State
and CPS took us away from our
parents, our native culture.
I was five.
Mary was four.
I remember the
knock on the door.
The police came in,
searched the home,
and they ended up
taking Mary and I.
We went to this foster home.
And that's when
the abuse started.
Mary and I were sexually
abused, assaulted.
It was a relief to go to
school in the morning,
not having to see this,
this man, and then
coming home and dreading.
Oh god, is he going to
leave me alone tonight?
Poor Mary was so messed up.
She did unspeakable
things for that man.
Years later, Mary followed
the path to addiction, drugs
and alcohol.
And a result of
winning against the state
of Washington and CPS,
myself and Mary got $400,000
for psychological damage
and being assaulted
as young children.
Her husband stole her money, her
settlement that we had received
from the state, all of it.
He put it into an account.
I'm not sure where it
is or where it's going,
but he took all her money,
didn't leave her nothing.
And then he moved to California.
No one's seen him since.
Way back, a long
time ago, everybody
knew all their relatives.
We knew our uncles, our
aunts, our grandmothers.
When we got into trouble at one
place, everybody knew about it.
And the family sort
of drifted apart.
By doing what you
guys are doing today,
we're taking a step in
the right direction,
trying to come back
to what we used to be.
So go ahead and enjoy the meal.
Enjoy the company most of all.
Yes.
Did she get you guys a hotel?
No, we're not going to stay
the night because we're going
to have the babies with us.
Oh, OK.
I used to
live in the Yakima Valley.
Yeah?
And your
mom and Auntie Mary Ellen
used to travel all the way
over there to come and visit me
and my sister Veronica.
That's pretty nice.
Mary, Mary Jane, Mary Ellen,
Auntie Ruby, and Auntie Wendy
would go with my dad to go
All together?
All together to go visit us.
I'm starting
to get used to family.
Yeah.
I've been gone for, I don't
know, maybe 10 or 12 years.
I just reconnected with Gerry
when our mom passed away.
Well, we're glad
that you found us.
Yeah.
Welcome home.
Yeah.
Gerry said I look like Mary, but
I don't, I don't really see it.
But I don't
I see it.
But well, maybe the chin.
Maybe the cheekbones,
the nose, maybe.
Maybe.
But Mary was a
good sister, and
I hope she actually
comes back soon.
So do we.
So you
knew Mary for a while?
For a long time,
before she even got with this
last boyfriend that she had.
If we seen her walking,
we would just pick her up,
and she's, she started
opening up to us,
telling us that her
husband was very a*usive.
If she left without his
permission, when she got home,
he'd lock her in the closet.
And I told Mary, if you
need to leave, and she says,
I'm trying to.
He st*lks me.
He
got a lawyer when
this all first happened
and gave the police
about that thick of paperwork.
And he took off, and he
knows what he did was wrong.
But he's five steps ahead of
anybody on the tribal land.
Every
day and every night, I
pray, pray for you.
I love and miss you, sister.
Please god, bring her home.
is my tribal name.
My father, Stan
Jones Jhelum, he was
close with your
grandfather, Joe.
And Joe used to
hang all my dad's gillnets.
So we would come to the
house of your grandparents,
and you ladies, you
were just little kids.
And that's how I remembered you.
It's with heavy heart that
we're here still today,
and we don't know
where your sister is.
If it was on the outside,
a non-native woman,
there would be a
different reaction.
There would be media.
There would be it
would continue to go on,
but that it's an
Indigenous person,
they're not there for us.
We have to be there to
stand strong with each other
and keep pressing and keep
trying to get these answers.
So my name is Gerry
Davis, sister, youngest
sister of Mary Johnson-Davis.
It's OK, Gerry.
I can't talk
in front of all these people.
Just
take a deep breath.
Yeah, OK.
She may not mean
much in others' eyes.
She's just another
Native gone missing.
But she means the world to us.
Every life
should have the same value.
But somehow in
America, it doesn't.
Hey, everybody.
I'm Nona Blouin, the
eldest of four girls.
My sister and I went
through the foster care
system and addiction.
We went through hell together,
being sexually abused
for years by our foster family.
We were abandoned by
the state of Washington.
Today, we ask you please,
don't abandon us again.
This has
happened to all of us.
Every single one of us
have suffered through this
through our moms, our sisters,
our daughters, our grandmas,
our great grandmas.
And I can remember
when my mom told me
when I was a very young boy
how she was r*ped by a group
of men, non-Indian men.
I also recall about how a
non-Indian man picked up
my Auntie from Round
Valley as she was leaving
a party on the reservation
and r*ped her in his vehicle
and then literally kicked her
out the door of the vehicle
into a ditch.
And I'm honored to be the
advocate of this family.
And sadly, I'm sitting
here, nearly two years later
with the same information
that the family has,
which is no information.
All that I know is
what's on this poster.
If this ex-husband
has left these parts,
and he's in California,
the Tulalip Tribes
does not have authority to go
find him and investigate him.
The entity with supreme power
to find Mary and bring her home
is the United States, the
Department of Justice,
and the Federal Bureau
of Investigation.
It is unjust, and it
is r*cist because we
all know that
there are predators
living within our communities
Yes.
- who are
doing this to our women
Yes.
who are non-Indian
and tribal
Mhm.
and they are protected.
Mhm.
My name
is Gabriel Steven Galanda.
I'm an Indigenous rights
lawyer in Seattle, Washington.
The United States
Supreme Court has
said that tribal
governments do not
possess inherent criminal
jurisdiction over non-Indians.
So Indigenous humanity
does not enjoy
the same legal civil
rights protection
as the humanity of every other
Americans born to this country.
That rule has created
havens on reservations
for murderers and rapists.
In an ideal world, you would
have every available law
enforcement officer
joining arms to find
an Indigenous woman who has
been m*rder*d or gone missing.
But that does not happen.
What happens is a
game of hot potato.
Oh, this is the tribe's issue.
Oh, no, this is
the state's issue.
Oh, no, this is
the federal issue.
Oh, that man's no
longer at Tulalip.
He now lives in some
non-Indian community.
So what they end
up doing is playing
political hot potato
with the matter,
and no one ever gets to work.
The FBI has robust
criminal authority
over reservation crimes and
investigate and ultimately
prosecute crimes.
The challenge, however, is
that the FBI rarely, if ever,
does that.
They are more interested
in counter terrorism,
which is legitimate,
and domestic terrorism,
which is legitimate.
But when it comes right down
to whether an Indigenous
woman matters enough to receive
federal interest when she goes
missing or is r*ped or
m*rder*d, generally speaking,
the interest is not there.
And that is why
it's not just Mary,
but it's hundreds to thousands
of other women and girls
who are no longer
even accounted for.
I need 24 volunteers
to please come and grab and hold
one of these missing persons
I'm so glad you guys are here.
Yeah?
I want you
guys to be able to get a photo
with media to share your story.
And I'll put you
down on the list
of one of the
people that's going
to carry one of those banners.
OK.
OK, thank you.
ROXANNE WHITE
My name is Roxanne White.
So when I say
why you looking nerv
ROXANNE WHITE
We want our families.
ROXANNE WHITE
- which means
walks with the people.
If you're a family member
and you got a banner,
please come to the front.
Please come to the front.
When a Native
American goes missing,
we don't see anything happen.
There's not going
to be a search.
There's not going to
be an all-out broadcast.
It's not going to hit the news.
You'll be lucky to see it within
that week if it makes it there.
It happens far too
often because how
often are our loved ones going
missing or being m*rder*d?
But yet, we don't have justice.
Yet, we're fighting
for visibility.
Yet, we're fighting
for human rights.
Ella Mae Begay, say her name.
Ella Mae Begay.
Say her name.
Ella Mae Begay.
Mary Johnson.
Help us find.
Mary Johnson.
Help us find.
I knew
early on that there
wasn't going to be anybody
held accountable for what
happened to Mary.
I was once told by FBI that I
watched too many crime shows.
And I've heard them say, well,
there's nothing you can do
if they don't want to be found.
And that's the assumption.
They just disregard
families when families
say this is not normal.
She was supposed
to come right back.
She hasn't been on
her social media.
Her phone is dead.
Nobody's seen her.
The third leading cause
of death for Native women
is homicide.
Why are we being muzzled?
Native families are being
muzzled on what they can say
or how they feel
about their loved one
being m*rder*d or going missing.
Our women should
not go missing or be
m*rder*d and have no justice.
Unless you really fit that,
that blonde-haired, blue-eyed
man or woman, or if you're
that person that appeals
to white America,
then yeah, you, they
might exhaust all resources.
Break the cycle
- for our future.
Break the cycle
- for our future.
Break the cycle
- for our future.
Break the cycle
- for our future.
Break the cycle
My name
is Richard A. Collodi.
I'm the Special Agent in charge
of FBI Seattle's field office,
including the
investigation of Mary
Johnson-Davis' disappearance.
Because it's an
ongoing case, I can't
speak about the
specifics or the facts
as to what investigative
action has occurred.
And when we do conduct an
investigation into crimes
in Indian country, the
FBI is fully engaged,
will commit all of its resources
within that investigation.
The decision to use a seeking
information and a reward
was to elicit additional
information that
may be out there, locate
Mary, bring Mary home,
or hold the person responsible
for her disappearance.
Just by an individual
being missing
does not mean that a
crime has occurred.
I think categorizing
Indian reservations
or Indian territory as
lawless or loopholes
is wildly mischaracterizing
what the truth is on those.
Typically, our Indigenous
women would be victimized
the same as any other person.
They could be the victim of any
crime, just like anyone else.
It would be inappropriate
to say they are
targeted for specific crimes.
I don't have statistics
that definitively
say that Native women
are the most targeted.
I don't have statistics
to say that they're
more at risk than others.
The statistics of what
the actual number is
varies greatly by reports.
Does Washington
underreport or overreport
compared to other states?
That's one of the challenges
why there are questions
related to this issue.
A criticism that an agency is
not contributing or does not
have enough
resources, my response
is that is why we
work collaboratively
with all the partners
within the community.
The FBI'S mission throughout
the United States is broad.
The number of agents
is dictated to us.
And so we must prioritize
the programs and the threats
that our agents work.
We take it very seriously
and are heavily invested
in time and resources
to address violent crime
on our Indian reservations.
I haven't
wore this in a long time.
And it's one of my old ones.
Dear
older ones, yeah.
Well, do you think I
should these look too big?
No.
Native women
have been going missing
since the beginning of time.
Even I was missing,
kidnapped and abducted
right from my home
after being sexually
assaulted by more than two men.
Violence is a, it's
a normal thing here.
To see it happen or to be a
victim of it, it's normal.
First, my aunt was shot and
m*rder*d in front of me,
and then also my niece
Eveona Lakota Cortez
was also m*rder*d with
another 13-year-old girl
in Burien, Washington.
And then my cousin
Rosenda Strong
went missing October 2 of 2018.
My sister
was at this casino
when she went missing.
She was seen here on
September 30 of 2018,
and that was the last
time she was seen.
When I tried
reporting her missing,
I was dismissed as
my sister just being
an alcoholic and a drug addict.
She's probably too high
or maybe she's too drunk.
She'll come back.
I feel like they just wanted to
sweep my sister under the rug.
I went on Facebook every day
asking if anybody had seen her.
If they did, please
reach out to me.
I just want to know if she's OK.
I got text messages that
my sister was injured,
and she wasn't OK, that
I needed to find her.
There probably
still are people
that are doing drugs and
selling drugs around here.
When we came
looking for my sister here, me,
my niece, and her two friends,
there was people living there,
but they cleared it out.
This is where they would
come and dump garbage.
So they figured garbage is here.
This is where we can put her.
Once she was found, two homeless
men came upon the freezer.
By the smell, that
wasn't an animal.
When they opened it,
they could see the hair.
So they called the authorities,
and that's how she was found.
It hurts that someone would just
put any human inside something
and get rid of them that way.
And then it happened
to be my only sister.
We're going
to put down some tobacco.
See, this land grieves.
That's what they say.
The land mourns.
A piece of Rosenda,
maybe part of her
didn't fully get to rest maybe
because of all the places
they took her
For me, coming
back here is healing.
She's not hurting anymore.
Yeah.
Well, I think I'm going
to pray right here.
I just want to pray
that, that she went home
and she's laid with
our mom and she's not
stuck back here in the freezer.
What happened to her
shouldn't have happened
or to anyone else,
and I pray that nobody
else has to go through this.
And just know that
we love you, Rosenda.
We love you, Rosenda.
Rest in peace, cousin.
Rest
in peace, cousin.
That's probably
where she was walking from.
From where?
That drug dealer's house.
Oh, probably.
So this is the spot.
I guess.
She was
supposed to go meet up
with a friend over there at
the church and then get a ride,
but her ride left.
And she ended up not
being seen after that.
Or maybe the
ride didn't leave, right?
Maybe the ride picked her up.
Mhm.
Did they check
the church cameras?
I'm not sure
if the police did or not.
She never talked
about going to church here.
She met people at the end
of the road to get picked up
or dropped off.
Yeah.
Yeah, I didn't even know that
they lived over that way.
Not very far, right?
Yeah.
I think her husband
has something
to do with it because we dropped
her off one time right in front
of the house, and he
was under the truck,
working on the truck.
And then he got up, and he
seen her get out of the van.
And he looked at Veronica and
I, and then he grabbed her
and dragged her in the house.
He was pissed.
Why was he so angry that she
had family dropping her off?
He never let
anybody in their home.
Nobody was allowed there.
She told me one time that he had
total control over every penny
she had.
Most of the time when we picked
her up, she didn't have money,
and we would buy her
chips and a drink.
Did your
sister ever talk about trying
to get away from him?
Mhm.
She was on her way to
get divorce papers.
She was?
Mhm.
That's where she
was wanting to go
right before she disappeared.
The Mary
Davis case is complicated.
Mary was a person that
was semi-homeless,
doing a lot of couch
surfing and living
with various people, not
as a primary residence,
but moving around a lot.
And she had her challenges
and issues with a very
hard and difficult life.
She had an inner circle of
people that are all being
reviewed by the police, and we
certainly hear the accusations
and rumors and
pointing of fingers
at different people, estranged
husbands or family members.
But when somebody is not
charged with a crime,
and there's no
warrant or subpoena,
we cannot restrict movement.
And we're aware of the history,
and the allegations of abuse.
We still are treating this
as a abduction-homicide case,
but we don't have a body.
Due to our proximity to a major
metropolitan area, Seattle,
and the interstate freeway,
which goes from Mexico
to Canada, we know that there
is movement and transportation
of women across state lines.
They can be trafficked,
moved, m*rder*d,
and their bodies
dumped or buried.
And it may take years
or sometimes never
to find those
missing loved ones.
Often, these are marginalized,
disenfranchised women who don't
have a voice, who may be just
barely hanging on in society
to survive, and their
perpetrators know that.
Somebody knows what
happened to Mary.
I believe we do have a
k*ller loose in our community
or in our surrounding
area, and somebody knows
or saw or heard something.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
There are so many
stories of someone's loved one
going missing or being m*rder*d.
We have here on the
Yakama Indian Reservation
the highest rate of missing
and m*rder*d Indigenous women
and people.
Girls like that, see?
She's walking around,
out of her mind,
a man looking to
do harm to a woman
would see someone
like her as desperate.
Nobody cares about her.
Look at her.
She's almost a perfect
target for a predator.
These young women walking
around, that was me once.
They find a lot of bodies.
They find bodies.
These are what you
call man camps.
These are farm workers.
Nothing but guys live here.
And they're not from here,
not from our community.
There's farmworker man camps.
There's fisheries.
There's those kind of campments
that are all on tribal land.
They just fill them
with these men that
have no attachments, right.
Maybe they can't even
get a good job because
of their criminal history.
On the weekends,
they're drinking,
and they'll listen to music.
We know they're partying there.
What do they want?
It's just all guys.
They want women.
It's not like somebody's coming
out here to do random checks
on these men out here.
They definitely see us as
disposable as sexual objects,
throwaways, garbage.
We're nothing.
We're Indigenous.
I wish I knew
every story
where our women are,
where they've been taken
and left for dead or buried.
But the woods are really dense.
On this road right here,
when I was younger,
I was told that my
aunt, she was r*ped.
She was assaulted, beaten.
They could barely recognize
her, and it was actually
someone who was
walking their dog
the next morning who found her.
And every time I drive by,
I just think about how,
how afraid she must have been.
I was told there were four,
four men who hurt her.
And although she lived
to see another day,
she never lived.
She, they, they, they
took her life here.
She was never the same.
So are you
coming here because of what
happened to Jody then?
Yeah.
When
that happened to her,
it was like, oh, yeah,
well, that happens.
No big deal.
They knew nothing
would be done about it.
We didn't have our own
police, and the police,
that so-called police, they
don't care about us as women.
So there was no
sense of turn it in.
They just said she deserved
it or you know how they do.
I just don't
understand that violence,
that r*pe culture.
Why?
Why, why target
Natives?
- Natives?
Why are we such extreme targets?
To
me, it's power.
With Native women, they feel
they have the power over her,
and nobody cares.
They can't really tell
anybody because nobody
will believe them.
And even if they
did believe them,
there comes that
prejudice again.
So Great Grandma, my
grandma, all of them,
has gone through that.
Your great great grandma was
put in the boarding school.
She was r*ped there.
I don't know if you know that.
But has it changed?
No, we've gone through a lot.
It's a lot I can say,
but we're strong women.
That's what's made us strong.
Just
a lot of painful,
a lot of painful history.
And like we're born
into this world,
and you just, you're
a child and so excited
to live your best life
and experience and taste
and have a good time.
And then you see your
family members hurting
and go to funerals.
And you're like,
what happened to us?
What happened?
The ages of
these kids is just so sad.
One year and two
months before they
died, and they
were six years old.
So they came in at five
years old and died at six.
But can you imagine what
the children went through?
There's boarding
school survivors,
but then there's a lot
of people who never
survived the boarding schools.
My dad was on
council for 44 years.
He was on the board of directors
and 26 of those as chair.
He had spent three years
at the Cushman Hospital.
It was supposed
to be a hospital,
but it was still
a boarding school.
His older brother died in there.
Over time, mom has been
giving me dad's documents,
and there's a lot
of different ones.
This document is from Chemawa
Indian School Cemetery.
So it's kind of a little bit
hard to read where it tells
all of the names
of the children,
their ages, what
tribe they were from,
the date they entered school,
and the date that they died.
And then I started
noticing my dad
started putting marks
on each one of these.
Those were his relatives
or people he knew.
The kids that came
were from all over.
And it's to assimilate
them into white society,
to take away their
Indian identity,
to take away the
existence of Indians.
Basically, if you take the
kids, oh, where's the future?
And then you have another page
that shows what they died from.
In a lot of them,
they say consumption.
And that means that they just
get weak and weak as what
I understand.
But there were some
that were really weird.
I mean, some of them
they put drowned.
There's a lot of no cause.
The government paid the
boarding schools for every child
that they had.
They were taken at a young age,
could even be four years old,
taken from their families,
and put in a boarding school.
The children only
knew their language.
They would be beaten if
they spoke their language.
Their hair was cut.
There was abuse, sexual abuse.
And a lot of children died.
Taking the kids just
devastated the families.
That's where alcoholism came in.
Some of those that were
in the boarding schools
have turned around and
physically abused their child
or neglected their children.
They lost their
parenting skills.
So then that goes down
to the next generation.
It's about stopping
the generational trauma
and the hurt that's went on.
But we're still being
challenged with this.
We're trying to receive
all those records
from the Catholic organization
for the amount of children
that died and that were buried.
And I'm sure there's a
lot of unmarked graves
that we haven't found.
Christine
passed away December 27, 1917.
And she was 12 years old.
Ella passed away in
September 7, 1903,
and she was six years old.
Wilbur was 13 years old.
And Edith was 14 years old.
Anthony was 18 years old.
The boarding school
destroyed the family.
My mother was traumatized
by being taken away
from her parents, and then
she saw her three sisters
and two brothers pass away.
She was flaunting Lushootseed,
but when she went to Toledo
Boarding School, they
put soap in her mouth
every time she spoke a
word of the Lushootseed
and told her that
that was a dirty word.
And so they washed the
language out of her.
The boarding schools
didn't happen overnight.
The whites wanted more land, and
so they had to plan something.
So they took away the
spirit of the Indians
and the language and the custom.
My father was from
Haines, Alaska.
He was at Chemawa Boarding
School for 11 years.
In all the years he was there,
he never got to go home.
He was always writing
to his mother,
and his mother was
always writing to him.
But neither one of them
got any correspondence.
And so when he graduated
from Chemawa in 1915,
he went back to Haines, Alaska.
He was upset with her and
saying that she never wrote,
and she said she
wrote all the time.
And he said, I
never got any mail.
And she said, I wrote to you,
and she never got any mail.
They parted on
non-speaking terms.
They were so upset
at each other.
The boarding school
created this resentment
and animosity and anger.
It was conquer and divide.
Years later, somebody
showed up at the door
and was people from
the Catholic church.
And my father slammed
the door in her face.
Good morning, sir.
Good to see you.
I never heard that story.
Yeah.
It is about justice for the
children, hearing the history,
hearing the truth, so
we can move forward.
It's taken the testimony
from those who have survived.
And then we have many that
didn't survive at all.
Thank you.
My
name is Deb Haaland.
My Indian name is
Crushed Turquoise,
and I'm here to
listen to all of you.
Your voices are important to me.
And I thank you for
your willingness
to share your stories.
My ancestors and
many of yours endured
the horrors of Indian boarding
school assimilation policies
carried out by the same
department that I now lead.
This is the first
time in history
that a United States cabinet
secretary comes to the table
with this shared trauma.
That is not lost on me, and I'm
determined to use my position
for the good of the people.
In Washington State alone,
there were 15 boarding schools.
I'm grateful to each
one of you for stepping
forward to share your stories.
I know it's not easy.
This is one step among many
that will take together
to strengthen and rebuild the
bonds within Native communities
that federal Indian
boarding school
policies set out to break.
BOARDING SCHOOL
I thought
I might have been the only
survivor of boarding school.
But it's so good to hear
that we're all the same.
We keep our secrets
all the time.
We don't talk about it.
We should talk about it.
We're not healed yet.
In my heart's memory,
I think of the kids
I went to school with.
This has never been
about religion.
It's been about
people been missing
children, men abusing children.
I was one of those that
went to the Tulalip Indian
Boarding School being strapped.
Oh, years later, we found
out that that strap was,
that kind was also
used in penitentiary.
But the physical hurt
was not as bad as how
I felt in my own mind.
Well, I don't
think anybody quite
realized what it was
that was happening
to the Indian children.
All the
trauma that we see today,
all the mental health issues.
It stems from the
boarding schools.
This genocide has
to be acknowledged.
Children were abducted
from their home, neglected,
locked in rooms, beaten.
If a parent withheld
their child from going
to the boarding school, those
parents were put in jail.
The goal was not only to
destroy the Native spirit.
There was the term "save
the man, k*ll the Indian,"
which was coined
by Richard Pratt,
the founder of
the first boarding
school in the United States.
It's a whole manual that was
printed by the Bureau of Indian
Affairs and distributed to every
Indian agent in the country.
So if you read through
it, there's a quote that
always strikes a chord with me.
It says, "the goal is not to
make scientists or doctors
or lawyers out of the citizens.
The goal is to make
domestic housewives
and farmers and laborers."
The terminology
that was used was
dirty, savage, uneducated,
wild, untamed, murderous.
And so keeping this new
population suppressed.
It affirmed their superiority.
It's a history that's
been buried intentionally
by the US government.
And of course, there's the
stories of sexual abuse.
The trauma has been passed on.
The correlation between
the r*pe of Native women
and the boarding
school is we have
this culture where children
went missing all the time.
This is still happening,
but in a different way.
And it's not seen as a
priority to the authorities.
This is just the cycle
that we need to break.
Hello?
I've
heard through the grapevine
that you used to hang out
with my little cousin Mary.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was like a,
like a week before
Yeah.
before she went missing.
Do you remember what kind
of conversations you guys had
or what she talked about or
She was
struggling with her husband.
But she was also still,
like, hurt from everything
she went through
in the foster care.
So did
you used to use with her?
Yeah.
Oh.
What was her choice of drug?
She wouldn't take heroin.
And we're just hanging out with
drug dealers, which the people
that I was hanging out
with when I was around her.
And they weren't in their
right mind sometimes.
Or do you think one of them
would have tried to hurt her?
Or do you think they
wouldn't have hurt her?
It's hard to say.
Like anything's possible.
This
is the area right here.
This is the place where, where
they always brought them.
She said that was
thick full of woods.
Even during the daytime, if
somebody was parked back there,
you couldn't see.
They let the guys beat them.
They let the guys r*pe them.
She said that her and Mary
hung out with these guys
because they were drug dealers
and that these guys had
everything that they wanted.
So they did everything that they
had to to get the free drugs.
That's sick.
Makes me sick to my stomach
that people are out there
doing that kind
of stuff to people
who can't defend themselves.
Sick.
She also
said that she heard the two
men plotting on how they were
going to get Mary's money,
not knowing that Mary's
husband already had it all.
That's why they kept her around.
Poor Mary.
The young lady
has never talked to the police.
She's, she's scared
to talk to the police.
She's scared of the two men.
She says they're dangerous men.
I thought it was Mary's
husband that hurt her.
But after I heard these
stories, I honest to God
don't think it's the husband.
It's one of these two drug
dealers that hurt her.
Hello?
My name is Lynette.
I'm Mary's first cousin.
Oh, hi.
We heard that
Mary used to hang out here.
Mhm.
She
stayed here a lot?
Yes, she did,
came over here.
She was getting away
from her husband.
Did you want to know about
what happened that day
or that night or you just
want to talk about Mary?
Yeah, what happened
that day would be
That night, Mary showed up,
and she just was really quiet.
And then as the morning progre
we got here almost to
the morning, oh, yeah,
it was, maybe she came
over really early.
Now, that I think
about it, yes, she
came over like in the morning.
That's what it was.
So all of a sudden,
it's getting later on,
and she called somebody
to come and meet her
at the church for some reason.
But anyway, she's
walking up the hill,
and I never seen her after that.
And that's just weird that
she's not around anymore.
It's really, really
hard to take.
Do you
think she's dead?
I hope not.
But you know what?
They called me up one day
after 2 and 1/2 years,
they go, oh, we want
to do a lie detector.
Well, guess what?
Because I didn't do that, they
came 40 deep into my house,
and they took my phone.
And then I couldn't find, I
couldn't remember the code,
the passcode.
There, they thought that I
was, OK then, what is it now?
I forgot it.
Then they cut my locks
and broke my door down
and took all my electronics.
And I have nothing,
nothing to hide.
OK, well,
we're going to get going.
He's lying about something.
He knows something, and
he's hiding something.
He's covering
somebody's a*s, or he's
protecting somebody because
he was getting pretty nervous.
He was getting sweaty.
The more he stalled
and everything,
and he backtracks
on what he said,
well, he was talking
about her life
and as she, you know,
she lived as in like, she
was already gone, past tense.
That right there says
something, too, so
Like he
already knows that she's gone.
Yeah.
And the way he was talking, I
think we have to find her body.
With the fluff.
We are going to look
for all of these cards.
Clam.
Only
Clam.
Here.
I've got one.
Now, we've got
It's [non-english].
Don't come to the shore
because octopus is here.
Let's sing
"Eagle, Owl, Blue Jay."
Oh, [non-english].
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