The plague of missing and murdered indigenous women, long ignored and underappreciated across North America, has become more widely recognized in recent years, thanks to the depiction of awareness in everything from episodic television shows to feature films to award-winning documentaries. Awards. But rarely has barbarism been shown so brutally and poignantly as in “Missing From Fire Trail Road.”
Please do not misunderstand: Documentary filmmaker Sabrina Van Tassel (“The State of Texas vs. Melissa”) does not needlessly delve into images of bloody violence, nor glimpses of human remains, to open our eyes and ache our hearts. Instead, by focusing almost entirely on a single disappearance in Washington state, and talking to distraught friends and family members not only about the details of that case but about its similarities to countless other tragedies, she slowly, incrementally, makes us experience… Constant sadness and sadness. They shared the simmering anger of a people who have long been denied at least some sense of closure regarding their missing loved ones.
We are thrust into the drama of despair nearly two years after the disappearance of Mary Davis Johnson, who vanished while walking alone on the Fire Trail near Seattle’s Tulalip Preserve. Very early in the documentary, suspicion falls on Mary’s abusive husband, who calls his wife’s relatives days after she disappears and asks them to report the matter to the police. Soon after, he staged his own disappearance, setting off for points unknown with a large portion of the settlement she received from the state after suffering a childhood of abuse (and worse) at the hands of Caucasian adoptive parents. During Mary’s time in this living hell, the authorities more or less ignored her situation. Unfortunately, her possible death seems to receive less attention than her life.
But Mary’s sisters and other tribal members refuse to give up hope that if she is not found alive, she can be buried with the respect she deserves. The problem is that the system works against them. As Tulalip Tribe spokesman Terry Gobin and others have pointed out — in voices that suggest they are not angry anymore, but far from resigned — federal law prevents tribal authorities from investigating, let alone prosecuting, white men who mistreat a Native person.
This leads to what one interviewee described as a game of legal “hot potato,” in which government agencies pass crime-solving responsibilities to each other while making various claims that “it’s not our job” as excuses. At the same time, unwelcome visitors to the reserves were able to treat the areas as hunting grounds, where they could more or less rape and/or kill indigenous women with impunity.
An indigenous rights lawyer points out that, in theory, the FBI could come to investigate Mary’s disappearance. But in his view, the Fed is too busy hunting down domestic and international terrorists to devote a significant amount of time to a cold case involving just one Indian woman.
Meticulously intertwined with the specific details of Mary’s case is a comprehensive history of the exploitation and abuse of indigenous people in North America. There is a particular focus on the forced removal of Indian children from their families and placement in boarding schools and foster care settings where they are marginalized, abused, and systematically removed from their culture. In a way, Mary was one of the luckier ones: she was somehow able to return to her tribe and begin to reclaim her heritage. But it’s clear she never forgot the nightmare of her past before her disappearance became nightmares for survivors.
There’s a dark cloud of gloom and despair hanging over “A Lost Path of Fire” — and not just in the metaphorical sense. The long periods of pensive silences and the gray tones of Christophe Astruc’s evocative cinematography reinforce 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 ever have the comfort of a happy ending, or the closure of a resolution.
There is a glimmer of promise near the end that at least one question will get a satisfactory answer. But it didn’t take long for Sabrina Van Tassel to point out that, unfortunately, the truth doesn’t always set you free. In fact, it sometimes makes you realize how little you’ll likely know. Much like the recent “Sugarcane,” another devastating documentary about the chronic mistreatment of indigenous people, it is a difficult film to watch. However, it is also, like sugarcane, undoubtedly essential.