The plague of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, long ignored and underappreciated throughout North America, has become more widely acknowledged in recent years, thanks to consciousness-raising depictions in everything from episodic television to feature films to award-winning documentaries. But the barbarity has rarely if ever been rendered in as brutally impactful a fashion as it is in “Missing From Fire Trail Road.”
Please don’t misunderstand: Documentarian Sabrina Van Tassel (“The State of Texas vs. Melissa”) does not dwell needlessly on photos of bloody violence, nor glimpses of human remains, to open our eyes and wrench our hearts. Instead, by focusing almost entirely on a single disappearance in Washington State, and speaking with distraught friends and family members about not only the specifics of this case but its similarities to countless other tragedies, she slowly, incrementally, makes us experience the incessant sorrow and share the simmering rage of a people too long denied at least some sense of closure regarding their missing loved ones.
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We are thrust into the drama of desperation some two years after the disappearance of Mary Davis Johnson, who vanished while walking alone down Fire Trail Road near Seattle’s Tulalip Reservation. Fairly early in the documentary, suspicion falls upon Mary’s abusive husband, who called his wife’s relatives days after her disappearance and asked them to report it to the police. Soon afterward, he performed his own disappearing act, setting off to points unknown with a sizeable hunk of the settlement she received from the state after enduring a childhood of molestation (and worse) at the hands of Caucasian foster parents. During Mary’s time in that living hell, authorities more or less ignored her status. Unfortunately, her likely death appears to be getting less notice than her life.
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But Mary’s sisters and other tribal members refuse to give up hope that, if she isn’t found alive, she can be laid to rest with the respect she deserves. Trouble is, the system works against them. As Tulalip Tribal spokeswoman Terry Gobin and others explain — in voices that suggest they’re not even angry anymore, but far from resigned — federal law prevents tribal authorities from ever investigating, much less prosecuting, white men who abuse a Native person.
This leads to what another interviewee describes as a game of legal “hot potato,” in which government agencies pass the crime-solving responsibilities to one another while offering various claims of “it’s not our job” as excuses. Meanwhile, unwelcome visitors to reservations have been able to treat the areas as hunting grounds, where they can rape and/or kill Native women more or less with impunity.
An Indigenous Rights attorney points out that, theoretically, the FBI could come in to investigate Mary’s vanishing. But, in his view, the Feds are too busy chasing after domestic and international terrorists to devote much time to a cold case involving just one Indian woman.
Meticulously entwined with the defining details of Mary’s case is a comprehensive history of the exploitation and mistreatment of Native people in North America. There is particular emphasis on the forced removal of Indian children from their families and placement in boarding schools and foster fomes where they were marginalized, mistreated and methodically removed from their culture. In a way, Mary was one of the luckier ones: She somehow managed to return to her tribe and start to reclaim her heritage. But she apparently never forgot the nightmare of her past before her disappearance became the stuff of nightmares for survivors.
A dark cloud of melancholy and despondency hangs over “Missing From Fire Trail Road” — and not just figuratively. Lengthy pensive silences and the gray tones of Christophe Astruc’s evocative cinematography enhance the impression that for all the determination of those who refuse to give up the search after two years of dead ends, neither they nor we will get the comfort of a happy ending, or the closure of a resolution.
There is a flicker of a promise near the end that at least one question will get a satisfying answer. But it doesn’t take long for Sabrina Van Tassel to indicate that, alas, the truth doesn’t always set you free. Indeed, it sometimes makes you aware of just how little more you likely will ever know. Much like the recent “Sugarcane,” another devastating documentary about the chronic mistreatment of Indigenous people, “Missing From Fire Trail Road” is a difficult film to watch. Yet, also like “Sugarcane,” it is inarguably a necessary one.
