Director Sabrina Von Tressel’s powerful documentary, Missing From Fire Trail Road, examines the devastating case of Mary Ellen Johnson-Davis, an Indigenous woman who disappeared from the Tulalip Reservation of Tulalip, Washington in 2020. Johnson-Davis is far from the only case of this nature, as Von Tressel’s film sheds a much-needed light on the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the United States.

Told through the perspective of those involved (the families and local law enforcement officers), the documentary aligns itself with the families and community, all of whom are in continuous pain. Mary Ellen’s sisters (Nona Blouin and Gerry Davis), agreed to participate in the documentary hoping to (as Davis states), “put her story out there and keep her alive.”

Missing From Fire Trail Road premieres tonight (June 8) at the Tribeca festival and will be shown in many tribal lands across the country. Mary Ellen’s sisters and director Van Tassel want to go beyond awareness. The director, and the activists helping her, have committed to use their work to keep the spotlight on the unsolved and ignored cases of Indigenous women who have gone missing.

The film shines a light on the hypocrisy of the media when it comes to missing Native American women. When the victims are White, their stories almost always become nationwide news. Rivers are dragged. The entire state is searched. All resources are used to their full potential. When the victims are Native American, there is rarely (if any) coverage and even less help.

Mary Ellen Johnson-Davis’ family justifiably hounds local authorities for answers, but their pleas too often fall on deaf ears; a fate that befalls almost all families of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Arrests in these cases are rare, and convictions are virtually nonexistent. Quite simply, the F.B.I. and the United States Government are not interested. The heartbreaking link between the Johnson-Davis’ family and all the Native American families who are affected by these tragedies is a sentence too often repeated, “I don’t know who to ask. I don’t know where to turn.”

There is a significant lack of response from law enforcement. Even with the victims who are found (always dead), the police do nothing to investigate. The families and friends of the missing and murdered are forced to stand alone in their fight for justice.

Make no mistake, Mary Ellen Johnson-Davis’s unsolved disappearance is not a ‘True Crime’’ case. She was a daughter, a sister, and (by all accounts) a troubled soul who became a light to her community. As the film follows many of her family members retracing the areas where she was last seen, they speak to her spirit in the face of a hard life. Each remembrance paints a picture of a young girl who was torn from her mother, grew up with drug issues and a bad husband, yet did her best to overcome the darkness in her life; being the best sister and auntie she could be. Mary Ellen was a light in her own darkness.