It isn’t just the oil boom. Native Americans disappear or are murdered at an alarming rate all over this nation. FBI statistics listed nearly 10,000 missing in 2018. Some eventually return to their families. Many don’t. These are a few of their stories.
Kateri Mishow
Kateri Mishow would call her father every day. The 22-year-old brunette from Minneapolis enjoyed going out with her friends and traveling. She had a Tweety Bird tattoo on her shoulder and was extremely close to her brother and sister-in-law. The three even lived together for a time. Then one day in late January, 2007, Kateri vanished.
“She was probably 98 pounds soaking wet, but she thought she was invincible,” Said Kathy Mishow, Kateri’s mother.
Kathy said these last 12 years have been mostly a blur. Some days, the pain of a mother missing her daughter is nearly unbearable. She’s retired from her career as a nurse for the University of Minnesota. She spends much of her time at the community center in Little Earth, a Native American neighborhood in Minneapolis.
She said it didn’t really sink in for her that Kateri was missing until her friends began to come over asking for her. Kathy and Ira filed a missing persons report with the Minneapolis Police Department on Jan. 23, 2007. They notified local TV news stations which aired Kateri’s story and urged anyone with information to step up.
Not long after, Kathy got a call from a friend of Kateri’s in jail. He said he overheard two other inmates saying Kateri wasn’t missing, she was in the river. They passed this information along to police, who promised to investigate. After hearing what Kateri’s friend had to say, Ira spent the next two years walking up and down the Mississippi river every day, looking for any signs of a body. He never found anything. And after years of the same daily result, he finally stopped.
Sgt. Hatchner has been the lead investigator on Kateri’s case since the beginning. He declined to comment on the case, citing it as an ongoing investigation. Kateri has been missing for 12 years. There are currently no suspects. Her information is listed on all missing persons pages in a tri-state area.
Kateri’s family has attended a march for the Missing and Murdered Native American Women for the last few years. Kathy said she wants to whatever she can to get Kateri’s name out there. There is a mural on the front wall of the Little Earth Community Center with the names of every Missing and Murdered Native American in Minneapolis. Every person asked in the neighborhood said they knew somebody who’s name is on that wall.
Anyone with information is asked to call MPD at 612-348-2345.
Olivia Lone Bear
Olivia Lone Bear loved her family. She cooked meals for her kids and her dad regularly. Bernadine Young Bird, Olivia’s aunt, remembers she would deliver homemade soup to Bernadine’s mom on the regular.
“What happened to her could happen to anyone,” Young Bird said.
Olivia was last seen on Oct. 25, 2017. She left a bar in New Town driving her oil worker friend’s truck and just disappeared.
Her family assumed something was wrong immediately. Her dad became suspicious when she didn’t come home. They filed a report with the police, asked around and conducted searches on their own. Olivia’s Brother, Matthew, led the operation.
After she’d been missing for four days, her family discovered the police misfiled the report and they had to come down to the station to file a new report.
“We were abandoned right from the beginning,” Young Bird said. She said she doesn’t believe the police took Olivia’s case seriously from the start. Olivia remained missing for nine months.
Folks gathered from around the whole area to look for Olivia. Even some came from out-of-state to help find her. Her family created a facebook page and conducted regular searches.
Olivia’s story gained national attention. Other news organizations flocked to New Town to tell her story.
On July 31, 2018 a private search group came across a truck over 200 feet out in the bottom of a lake. It was the truck Olivia was last seen in. The FBI announced the body recovered in the truck was Olivia’s.
Investigators still haven’t released a cause of death. The FBI declined to comment on what they called an ongoing investigation. “We were shocked, upset and angry,” Young Bird said, the expression on her face never changing.
Susan Poupart
Susan “Suzy” Poupart was a victim of murder and elusive justice.
Her killers have never been charged, prosecuted or convicted of a crime.
Poupart’s remains were found nine months after she went missing from a party on the Lac Du Flambeau reservation in Vilas County, Wisconsin.
The 29-year-old was the mother of two children, who suffered tremendously from her death:
Jared Poupart, who grew up with a grandmother crushed by sadness and Alexandra Poupart, his younger sister who grew up with her aunt and battled – for years before settling down.
Vilas Sheriff Joseph Fath, who picked up Poupart’s case in 2013, said he needs people in the community to come forward if the persons of interest in the case are to ever be charged.’
“There’s people out there that know what happened. I just need them to come forward.”
Alex said she remembered people telling her about how her mother attended American Indian University in New Mexico, was left-handed and an artist.
But those memories have been overshadowed by how long her mother’s murder has gone unsolved.
“I mean it’s, it’s, it’s basically forgotten,” she said. “… but all that pain, it’s still here.”
Both she and Jared look forward to the day when their mother’s memory will be honored.
“She touched so many people in ways that I cannot explain,” he said. “People tell me, she was a good person.”
“The laws don’t protect us,” he said. “The value of an Indian is nothing — and it shows.”