SEATTLE — Mary Ellen Johnson-Davis, a member of the Tulalip Tribes, disappeared in 2020 without a trace. On the FBI website today, below several photos of a woman with dark hair and a resolute expression, a Missing Person poster notes, “Mary was traveling to a friend’s house and never arrived.” Her family believes she was taken against her will, but after four years, they still have no idea what happened to her.

Johnson-Davis’ story is explored in the new documentary “Missing from Fire Trail Road,” which examines both one specific case and a longtime pattern of violence against Indigenous women, disproportionate mysterious disappearances or murders of those women, and a seeming lack of interest by law enforcement to solve those cases. According to the National Crime Information Center, there were 5,712 reports of missing American Indian or Alaska Native women or girls in 2016, though the U.S. Department of Justice’s federal missing persons database only logged 116 of those cases, according to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Seattle-based Urban Indian Health Institute, in a report released in 2018, identified 506 missing or murdered Indigenous women since 1943 from specifically urban areas across the U.S. (including 45 in Seattle alone), noting that it was extremely difficult to gather such data from the 71 cities, and is likely a significant undercount.

It is, said the film’s director, Sabrina Van Tassel, “an epidemic, because there’s not one (Native) family that’s not impacted. Everyone knows someone who went missing.” Deborah Parker, former vice chairperson of the Tulalip Tribes and executive producer of the film, said, “These are our daughters, our aunties, our relatives. … When a Native woman goes missing, the chances of our sister not returning is high.” May 5 is now recognized as a national Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Van Tassel, a French American investigative journalist whose work focuses on social justice (her latest film, “The State of Texas vs. Melissa,” brought attention to a woman facing the death penalty), said she wished she could tell the stories of “all the women who disappeared.” But she chose this story because she was familiar with the Tulalip Tribes (having previously worked with Parker on a project more than a decade ago) and she found something enormously moving in Johnson-Davis’ story, which was one of long struggle: As a child, Johnson-Davis was removed from her family and placed in foster care, where she was subjected to sexual abuse, says her sister in the film. Returning as an adult to the Tulalip Reservation, she struggled with addiction, and with a volatile marriage.

“There were so many unknowns about Mary — we had to do a lot of investigation,” said Parker. “Sadly, that’s the case when families are broken apart and other relatives don’t know much information about the children that were taken by the government.” She and Van Tassel searched for “relatives, friends, anyone who knew anything about Mary,” ultimately focusing on the missing woman’s three sisters, who had been looking tirelessly for her for years with little help from law enforcement. They were guided, Parker said, by Mary’s spirit — by “paying attention to Mary’s energy that was left around us. We had to pay attention to maybe her direction, from the other side.”

Though it meticulously walks us through the case (and presents a few possible suspects), “Missing from Fire Trail Road” is not simply a true-crime documentary, but an examination of the impact of multigenerational trauma. Like “ Sugarcane,” a documentary released earlier this year, the film traces the horrifying history of Native American boarding schools in the U.S. and Canada, where for decades, Native children were subjected to cultural erasure and abuse. Van Tassel said she was particularly interested in the link between the cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and what happened in the schools — “putting the two together, that’s really what my film is,” she said. “I do believe that when you have unsolved issues in the past, you can’t go forward to the present.”

The film, completed some months ago, notes at the end that there has been no official U.S. government apology for the damage caused by the boarding schools. That changed a few weeks ago, when President Joe Biden issued an apology, calling the era of the schools “a blot on American history” and “a sin on our soul.” Parker, who’s now the CEO of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, was among those personally asking for that apology, and was pleased to see it.

“It’s never too late to apologize,” she said. “I was on Air Force One with him from D.C. to Arizona, and we had a long discussion about the boarding school era. … He was very visibly sad, he had tears in his eyes, he was just angry that we could have a society that behaves so horribly toward Native children and families.” Having the president acknowledge that pain and make an apology, Parker said, is an important step.

Now available on multiple digital platforms, “Missing from Fire Trail Road” is still making the rounds of film festivals and screenings, including a special local screening for the Tulalip Tribes held on Nov. 10. Parker is hopeful that the screening “really sparked some interest in folks who want to do something,” and that perhaps it might bring about some new leads in the case. Many of Johnson-Davis’ family members attended that screening and, Parker said, found some hope in the sense of community.

And both filmmakers are hopeful that the documentary might help effect change. “I think this is really the right moment,” Van Tassel said. “Society has changed so much in recent years — we all of a sudden understand where victims come from. I think this is the right moment for people to really acknowledge that there is one population in the U.S. that we have really not dealt with their past trauma.”

Parker hopes, first and foremost, that the film helps solve the mystery of what happened to Johnson-Davis, to give her loved ones some resolution and peace. She also hopes it will bring a realization that it’s time to “take a pause, listen to Native people, start to honor the Indigenous culture that surrounds us, and pay deep respect for those who are still with us, those who are survivors.” The government, she said, tried to devastate a people — “but we’re still here, and we have a story to tell.”

———

'MISSING FROM FIRE TRAIL ROAD'

No MPA rating

Running time: 1:41

How to watch: Available on demand from Amazon Prime, Google Play, Apple TV, Microsoft Movies and other services.

———

©2024 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.