Up and Vanished - S3E5: Blackfeet Nation

Episode Date: October 2, 2021

In today's episode we dive deeper into life on the reservation To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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questions or concerns about your gambling or someone else close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. Hey guys, it's Payne here. Thank you for your patience this week. So here's the deal. I'm hitting pause on the release of our traditional investigative episodes,

but for really good reason. Today's episode will be focusing on the community and the larger problem here with the widespread epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women. Since we've started releasing episodes this season, I've received countless tips. And what started as an extremely murky case is now becoming much more clear to me. New persons of interest have emerged, and I'm talking to them literally right now.

But don't worry, you're going to hear all of it. Every single bit of it. But I need more time. Up and Vanish will return in full form back to the investigation on Wednesday, October 13th. And from that point forward, we'll run weekly with no breaks. Like I said in the very beginning, I care more about solving this case than I do making this podcast. And you're going to see that. So episode six will be coming Wednesday, October 13th,

because I need more time to continue my ongoing conversations with certain people. Every day we're getting closer to finding Ashley. In the meantime, you can help by just telling your friends and family about Ashley's story. Just by keeping her story alive. It's much harder to keep a secret when everyone around you is talking about it. So please, tell a friend, tell a family member. Tweet about it. Let's get Ashley's story out there.

In today's episode, my producer Mike will be subbing in as the host. And for now, I'm back to my investigation. Let's go find Ashley. First of all, it's a really complex situation. And I think it has to be considered both in light of history and the legal complexities associated with the establishment of reservations and the placement of Indian people in these places and the role of the federal government and states. This is Monty Mills. Monty Mills is a professor and co-director of the Marjorie Hunter Brown Indian Law Clinic at the Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana. We talked to him to get a better understanding

of tribal law and the intricacies of jurisdictions in Indian country. To begin with, there would be tribal law enforcement, which would be Blackfeet Nation, so the tribal police there. And tribal police, for the most part, are the product of tribes taking over those law enforcement functions from the federal government, who had historically been responsible for law enforcement in the communities. Then you'd have the federal government themselves. So Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States

Attorney, US Marshals, who, for the most most part don't really do day-to-day law enforcement. They're mostly interested in big federal crimes, so guns, drugs, racketeering, mobsters, terrorism. That's true everywhere in the country except for an Indian country, because an Indian country, by virtue of this history and the laws and federal Indian law, the federal government is responsible for prosecution of major crimes or even sort of day-to-day crimes committed by certain individuals. And then there's state and local law enforcement too, so county sheriffs, there can be municipal PDs, state patrol, and that's three different authorities

with at least five different agencies, potentially. And in each of those situations, their role, responsibilities, and authorities, because of this complex legal history, depends on who is involved, both in terms of a potential perpetrator and a victim of a crime, what the crime was, and where the crime took place, whether it was an Indian country or not.

The problem with that whole scenario, notwithstanding the number of different agencies involved, is it's often not clear who's responsible for what, particularly when it comes to cases of missing people. The questions of which agency takes the lead, who is responsible, gets very complicated very quickly and can oftentimes lead to agencies pointing fingers at each other. Native women have always held this particular place in American mythology. If you think about Pocahontas or Sacagawea or sort of all of these myths of white men and native women. I think this has been a terrible part of our history and whether it's always been the case

that this has been an epidemic and we're just now sort of focusing on it or whether there's been an uptick, either way it's becoming a major issue to which people are really paying attention to. And part of the problem, given this jurisdictional morass of who's responsible for what, there is the perception and oftentimes the reality that reservations in particular are seen as lawless, free from police or enforcement, with significant gaps for a criminal element to exploit. Part of what's driving this epidemic, I think, is that notion of lawlessness on the reservations and the actual fact that for people looking to exploit vulnerable populations, they are able to do so with, in some instances, mostly impunity because they are never held to account.

Right as we speak, the question of some of those gaps is before the United States Supreme Court. A Montana court case that could shape future jurisdiction laws on Montana's reservations will be heard before the U.S. Supreme Court tomorrow. In 2016, Wyoming resident Joshua Cooley was arrested by a Crow tribal officer and eventually indicted on meth distribution charges. Cooley argues the officer is not allowed to detain him because he's not Native American and doesn't have tribal status. Recently, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, ruling the officer exceeded his authority. Experts argue if the Supreme Court upholds that ruling,

safety will be a concern on the state's reservations. There's a non-Indian on the side of a road who a tribal police officer rolled up on and sought to check out. In the car was a kid, two semiamatic rifles, a pistol, and meth. The tribal cop, fortunately, secured the area and protected himself, but it turned out that he turned the person, the defendant,

over to the federal authorities, and the federal court said, well, the tribal cop didn't have the authority, because this was a non-Indian. The tribal cop did not have the authority to investigate, look inside the car, secure him, once he realized he was a non-Indian, and there wasn't any evidence, at least at the beginning, that he was committing any crime.

That's the type of gap that criminals are aware of and can exploit in this jurisdictional scheme. In 1978, the United States Supreme Court issued a decision called Oliphant. And in that decision, the Supreme Court said, well, given the status of Indian tribes in our country, as what the Supreme Court long ago said, dependent sovereigns, that means that tribal governments don't have the authority to arrest, prosecute, and punish non-Indians who commit crimes within their reservations. So as a non-Indian, if I go to a reservation and commit a crime, the tribal government that's there can't do anything about it.

Anything. You name it. Murder, assault, rape, domestic violence. The tribal government can't punish a non-Indian. More recently, at least since 2012, 2013, Congress has authorized limited tribal authority, largely in response to the epidemic of violence against Native women. Limited tribal authority to prosecute some non-Indians

who commit certain domestic violence crimes. So the door is beginning to open back up a little bit, but that's very limited and for the most part tribes are prohibited because of this 1978 Supreme Court decision. In many tribal communities, the people who are in those communities have an idea of others in the community, right? May have the most information, the most sort of sense of what's going on. But at least when non-Indians are involved or there's these jurisdictional limitations, it demands that folks often from outside the community have to come in and investigate, do that work. Oftentimes, especially

if they're representatives of the federal government, there isn't a whole lot of trust, rapport built up with those communities that can also hinder the investigation of a lot of these crimes. You know, FBI agents show up anywhere. Folks tend to get a little nervous,

but especially in tribal communities, given the long history of federal-tribal relations. There are certain principles and ideals that have been laid down within federal law that respect, to a certain degree, Indian tribes as sovereign governments, here since time immemorial, and able to continue exercising that sovereignty and protection of their cultures, citizens, and communities. And I think that part of the history and really the role of tribes

in protecting that for themselves is commendable. The other part of that history has been the systematic oppression, dispossession, and exclusion, marginalization, and extermination of Indigenous peoples by the federal government and with the federal government's endorsement. And that part of the history is deplorable. The current challenges facing tribal communities, whether it's the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous people or economic development challenges or the loss of tribal language speakers and the decimation of tribal cultures caused by the current pandemic and the disproportionate

health impacts, all of that at some level is tied up in this history of the federal government's treatment of indigenous peoples. The longer history of the Blackfeet people within this area is pretty remarkable. I mean, I think the Confederacy and the history of the Blackfeet here is one of real domination. They were the presence across this whole swath of the country. First, there's the jurisdictional complexities that allow agencies to avoid responsibility for solving those cases. And there really isn't an incentive for other interests like the FBI or even state or local governments to devote the resources needed to solve these cases.

And in Ashley's case, to solve it, someone like you in particular, coming from the outside, I think it requires a significant amount of time and dedication, not just to figure out the complexities of the case. But at some level, I think there's a need to ensure that you're present in a way that is well-intentioned and supportive, and more importantly, that people recognize that and trust what you're doing.

Too many times, people have come to tribal communities and say, I'm here to help, and let me tell you how I'm here to help. And that has led to a significant amount of distrust, for good reason. a significant amount of distrust for good reason. It's a matter of showing up genuinely and building those relationships within the communities that are going to help. Without building some base of trust and reason for them to be honest about what they know and what happened,

that's not going to come out. The bigger story is this culmination of all of these factors coming together to a tragic result. The solution for protecting indigenous people and indigenous communities is, to my mind at least, empowering tribes and tribal leaders to protect their own. Think of the last time you bought something to wear, something to decorate your house,

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Available now on CBC Listen and everywhere you get your podcasts. Payne, Eric, and I sat down with Frank Kipp, owner of the Blackfeet Nation Boxing Club and Youth Center. He uses his gym to teach women and children on the reservation how to defend themselves. Well, welcome to the Blackfeet Nation Boxing Club and Youth Center. This is it. I created this boxing club about 20 years ago. My family, I'm a third-generation boxer, my children are fourth.

My grandfather, he was one of the first. He was a professional soldier. He come out of World War II and started having boxing here. And my dad boxed in an Indian school, in the military. He was a Korean War veteran. There's a guy named Vernon Grant. He's one of my biggest success stories. He started here, boxing.

Now he's a doctorate, He has a doctorate degree. He was our first Golden Glove champion. He told me something that really hit me. He said, I had a tough time. He said, you know, you've always been like a second dad to me. For me to hear those is really humbling. In all honesty, I don't know how to take it sometimes. I think about it.

He said, the only place I had in the world was this gym. This is different than any other discipline. I always tell kids, learning how to box isn't going to guarantee you to be tough, but you're going to be able to fight back. You're not going to be a victim. I have so many kids that come in here that are bullied. I've lost count of over 20-some kids I've talked about as suicide. Kids that come into this boxing club, they don't want to live.

Somebody is doing something to them. Somebody's hurting them. When they come into a boxing club, it changes them. They get confidence. Kids have tough home lives here. Their grandparents have raised them. They. Their grandparents raised them. They can't always control. They take off and they're going to do what they're going to do

when they hit a certain age, no matter what you do. At the same time, they don't have those tools that you would get here. I don't cut corners when it comes to your life. I'll tell you like it is. Depending on the age, you know, we just tell them don't talk to people. You know, we just tell them, don't talk to people. You know, be careful.

You're important. You're precious. You're somebody. If you're going to be taken and fight, you fight back. You know, whatever it takes. I will show you what you need to do. If it works, it works. If it don't, it don't.

But you have to go 100%. There's no holding back because this individual wants to kill you and take your life and do some horrible things to you this is what you got to do we battle the enemy and the enemy is alcohol and it's meth i've had kids come in here and they said if it wasn't for this club i don't know what i would have went through i probably started drinking or gotten in trouble hanging out with the wrong group of kids, you know, or what have you. I think a lot of the reason for our young people, our young women especially, is just that someone's not monitoring somebody. In my home, we try hard to keep our kids in line. I get called an OPF, and that's an overprotective father. Yeah, and that's all right, you know,

I can live with that, you know, because I love my kids, you know. You know, I hate alcohol. I hate meth. I hate weed. Alcohol for me, or what I've identified in my analogy about it, it's a curse to some families. Their family before them suffered from it, and they lost people, and that goes on to their children you can fight that and stay away from it you know be a positive citizen we here at the boxing club you know i tell people all the kids all the time be a positive citizen we have a lot of things that are happening that little baby i hope they find her you know cute little girl we have one of the kids that were involved with our boxing club. His name is Leo Wagner, and he's missing.

And his brother's Billy, Billy Wagner. He's come out of his boxing club. He's a professional boxer, you know, and he's a good kid, you know. I'm very proud of him. He works, takes care of his family. Everything that I tell these kids to be, be a good parent, love your children, try hard, you know. And he's done that, you know. I knew Leo. Leo's a good, he's just a crazy kid, you know.

That little girl, there were two missing at the same time almost. That little girl, it's been about three or four weeks for her. Nobody knows. I don't know, there's so many things that I think that needs to get done, you know. If I ever won the lottery, you know, I would create a treatment centre that taught people how to live. Clean your house, wash your clothes, send your kids to school. I mean, we have a lot of good families here. The enemy will always be alcohol.

The enemy will always be drugs, meth or what have, pills, or whatever you want to call it. It's a negative variable. I'm trying to help our kids from not drinking, drugging, getting predicaments where we've got missing kids. The gym that you've made here can help prevent things like that from happening? I think we could make a dent in it. How so? I just tell them, I tell girls, this is what you do.

Don't drink. Don't drink. Don't drug. Don't go out and put yourself in a situation where you could get hurt. It's hard. You listen to your mom or your dad or your grandma. They got your best interests at heart. Your friends tell you to try meth or whatever. Run.

Run away from them. That is not your friend. That's how I feel, and that's how strong it is to me, you know. When I was by myself, I was living in my camper, that overhead camper that I had, and I said, well, you know, it was my birthday, and my grandmother was in a hospital, and I had somebody telling me, making me feel bad, you know, and I lost this, this, this, you know. I know that already. I know what I lost. I stood there, and I remember thinking, well, you know, I called up my family, and my little boy's too little to understand.

My daughter, you know, she felt bad, but she had her own little life, I guess. And I felt like, you know, nobody needs me here. They don't need me. had her own little life, I guess. And I felt like, no, nobody needs me here. They don't need me. I think I'm gonna go, you know, I think I'm gonna go out as a warrior. I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna pick a fight with a cop. You know, he's gonna kill me. I'm gonna go to death by cop.

That's what I'm gonna do. I ended up in one tavern. I don't know who this guy was. I don't know what I told him. You know, I don't remember. And he said, only God has the right to take your life, Frank, not you. So you got work to do. I remember sitting there and I think about it.

You know, I thought, what would I put that police officer that I'd take my life through, what would I have put him through, knowing that this was just something that he wanted him to kill me? If I wasn't here, nothing would have been created for boxing. All the little kids that I've helped, all the young people that I've helped, I'm going to have been there. I remember that night, they left, there was a $10 bill sitting in front of me. I remember sitting there thinking about it, and I left, went back to my camper,

and I had a couple beers and went to sleep. I never thought like that again. Sometimes you need someone to talk to. Sometimes you need to understand that it's not the end of the world. And so I'm still here. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health,

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Sunday, March 24th at 8 Eastern on CBC and CBC Gem. Chauncey was going to take me on a trip to the place he's from. From the producer of Megan, Five Nights at Freddy's and the Black Phone. Alice! Alice! Alice! Get out! Now. Many kids have imaginary friends. Ready or not. Just because you stop believing in them doesn't mean they're gone. Here he comes. And they're angry you left. Imaginary. Now playing only in theaters. This is Roxanne White.

She's a social justice advocate who helped pave the way for the MMIW movement. We're sovereign when our children are being taken from us. We're sovereign when there are real crises happening in Indian country. But we're not sovereign when it comes to our minerals, the land that we protect, the timber, the salmon, the water, the things that we value the most. We're not sovereign in those ways. We're not sovereign when it comes to casinos.

Iknaashwanaxha Roxanne White. I am a family member. I'm an indigenous grandmother. I'm a survivor, an advocate, an organizer, an activist for Native rights, for environmental justice, and for missing and murdered Indigenous women and people. My cousin Rosinda went missing on October 2nd of 2018. And at the time, I was already doing this work. While I was on the road, I received a message that Rosinda had gone missing.

When I returned, I reached out to my cousin Sissy, and I'm like, has anybody been in contact with you, the tribe, anybody? What do you feel like you need right now? And she's like, I don't know, you know, nobody's really done anything. She's like, expressed to me how she felt tribal police didn't care. I started like talking to my cousin and just sharing with her like what I believe she needed to do to make sure that you know something was done. If you don't have anybody working, like a campaign, an active campaign of visibility and action, oftentimes, like, nothing happens. We're here fighting. That's what I do.

In all actuality, I don't think that they'll do anything unless we mobilize. That's what I've been seeing. That's the algorithm here. It's like, if you have capacity, and you have the resources, and you have the support, and you're out here, and you're hitting streets, and you're rallying in front of police stations, or doing whatever it is, FBI, whatever you've got to do, talking to every media, then and only then will they do something. to every media, then and only then will they do something. I'm here, like, telling my cousin, we have to throw vigils, we have to get out here, we have to march, we have to do rallies, we have to, like, stay in the public's eye, we have to keep Rosenda in the public's eye.

She went missing on the reservation, on the Yakima Reservation, was found almost 300 days later. And it wasn't an actual dump site, but it was where people dumped things. And that's what they did to her. They dumped her. They put her in a freezer and they dumped her there. And she had four children. She was a mother. She had sisters and a brother, and she would now be a grandmother, first-time grandmother.

And I really, truly believe that if we had not done what we did together, me and my cousin Sissy, that we wouldn't have found her at all. Nobody would have been looking. Nobody would have been looking. It was us. It's been us. It's been us fighting for her. It's been us getting out there and doing the work and pushing law enforcement. work and pushing law enforcement. I do what I can with who I can, but I often feel like,

like inadequate and powerless because there's so many families, so many. And even with what I can do, I'm just one piece. If your sister went missing, I can guarantee you she'd probably be on HLN every hour on the hour. You'd probably be on HLN doing interviews. What harm would it do for HLN to share one Indigenous family per week? Because we can give them one indigenous family per week because we can give them one indigenous family per week. We can connect them to one indigenous family from this country, original people, native people from this area. We can give them one every week. People in general don't see Native American women as mothers or, you know, loving mothers or like single parents trying to work to do something. We're just viewed as like this,

by the stereotypical Pocahontas, very sexualized and made out to be exotic or worthless. I'm not saying every girl has my story on the reservation, but I'm saying that I grew up on a reservation where I know that I wasn't the only one. For a lot of my childhood, it was, I felt like, you know, everything was kind of like not safe. And not happy. And that abuse, like sexual abuse, happened throughout my childhood. like sexual abuse happened throughout my childhood. I was abducted from my own home at the age of four and sexually assaulted by more than two men. They came through a window.

They opened a window, and the person knew my name and asked me to open the back door, and I did that, you know, just being a little kid, you know, a little four-year-old, you don't know any better, somebody knows your name, you know, you answer to that, and there was nobody there to say don't, there was nobody there to say don't. There was nobody there to say anything. Nobody. I didn't know. I was only four. So when I opened the door, the man picked me up and covered my mouth and took off running. When you're four and that's how you view the world, like I viewed the world as that four-year-old girl all this time. You know, viewed the world and viewed people and men and my surroundings. Literally, I had no fight in me. It

was like men have been taken from me. They've been stealing from me, like, abusing me. And one of my abusers never did a day in jail, never. I mean, in fact, I continued to just be raised around him, and he continued to, like, abuse myself and others. So I say all of this to say that, you know, this is why I do this. I mean, why I didn't have a choice. I just gave you, like, the tip of my story, right? In 1996, you know, she was my dad's, he had two sisters. And she was like a mom to me, like a best friend, like my favorite aunt.

And I don't speak about her very often, and I'm not going to elaborate too much into her story, but she was murdered in front of me in 1996. And when her life was taken, when her life was taken, she didn't get that trial. There was no, like, I didn't get to be a witness. Prosecutors didn't care to even take it to trial. You know, someone could say, well, family members had to ask the prosecutors to not prosecute. But I want to just say this, like, to not prosecute but I want to just say this like where in America do you get to murder somebody shooting point blank in the face and then not not be tried not be charged with homicide when is that a manslaughter you know back then I didn't. There was no talk of MMIW or there was no talk of like, and I'm a kid too, like, I did not understand what justice looked like.

That's what it looked like growing up. We didn't have that. We knew that we were hated by the world around us. Growing up on the reservation, we knew that we were less than. That's how everybody looked at us. We had to deal with racism and oppression and poverty and historical trauma. All of these things, intergenerational trauma. When that happened, like, I didn't know that I could fight back.

I didn't know that I could fight for her. So today I get to. I could fight back. I didn't know that I could fight for her. So today I get to. Today, everything I do is, like, fighting for her. It's making sure that, you know, nobody else has to just, like, accept it. Don't just accept somebody murdered your loved one because the law doesn't step in to protect you or your family

like it would a white girl or a white man. It's unacceptable. The law is the law, but yet here we are. We're fighting for justice over and over again, time and time again, with bills, laws, just for simple human rights. It's this battle that we've been fighting hundreds of years since colonization. Up and Vanish is a production of Tenderfoot TV. Created, hosted, and edited by Payne Lindsey. Executive producers are Payne Lindsey and Donald Albright.

Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set. Our theme song is Ophelia by Ezra Rose. Sound design, mixing, and mastering by Cooper Skinner. Additional production by Cooper Skinner, Eric Quintana, and myself, Mike Rooney. Our cover art is by Trevor Eiler. Special thanks to Grace Royer and Oren Rosenbaum at UTA, Ryan Nord, Jesse Nord, and Matthew Papa at The Nord Group, Station 16, Beck Media and Marketing,

as well as Chris Cochran and the team at Cadence 13. Visit us on social media at Up and Vantage, or you can visit us at upandvantage.com, where you can join in on our discussion board. If you're enjoying Up and Vantage, tell a friend, family member, or co-worker about it. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening.