A8
OFF PAGE ONE
East Oregonian
Saturday, July 9, 2022
Coyote:
though Cruz was in prison, Coyote
was worried that, having stayed in
one town for three years, he would
fi nd her again. The family hit the
road. This time for Salem.
Coyote felt that she was a fl oater
in Salem, “not here, not there but still
trying,” she said.
Soon enough, a representative
from the Oregon Women of Color
Caucus called, asking if she was
interested in contracting with the
group. They were lacking in Native
Americans in the group and they
wanted her help fi lling that role. She
accepted and became its director in
2000.
She also joined Gov. John
Kitzhaber’s council on domestic
violence, becoming the only Native
American woman on the coun-
cil. She started traveling around
to communities of color and tribal
nations, hearing from survivors and
seeing what services were lacking.
In time, the state called on her so
much that she considered herself its
“token Indian.”
“I was invisible on these teams,
but they needed me to represent
communities of color and tribal
nations,” she said. “I was an object,
not something that was important.
My voice often was not heard.”
In 2001, her mother fell ill. She
started driving home to the Umatilla
Indian Reservation every weekend
to take care of her. Though they
had been apart for the majority of
Coyote’s upbringing, she had always
appreciated how hard her mother had
tried to be there for her children.
After Coyote’s mother died in 2002
at the age of 62, Coyote moved into
her mother’s home on the reserva-
tion.
She took a job as the tribe’s
domestic violence coordinator. She
began learning about tribal juris-
diction, law enforcement and tribal
courts. She started meeting with
survivors. More often than not,
they would be tribal members, the
off enders would be non-Native, and
the abuse would have occurred on
reservation land, meaning that tribal
authorities could not prosecute them
due to a 1978 Supreme Court ruling
that barred them from doing so.
Alongside law enforcement, she
would drive survivors out to the spot
of their alleged assault. The offi cer
would then use maps to see whether
it was on or off tribal land, and they
would explain who had jurisdiction
to take the case.
“This job really taught me what it
means to be an Indigenous woman,”
she said.
At the same time, Coyote began
learning about tribal customs and
traditions. Having grown up in her
father’s home and attended board-
ing school, she knew little about the
traditions of her people. But when
she moved to the reservation, she
met with elders, attended powwows,
and learned about dancing, drum-
ming, singing and tribal regalia. Her
mother’s land and the people there
made her feel at home.
Coyote helped the Umatilla
tribe gain essential legal protec-
tions for survivors. She helped the
tribes become authorized for the
sex off ender notifi cation registra-
tion act and helped tribal authorities
regain jurisdiction over non-Native
perpetrators of domestic violence on
tribal land. She also pushed forward
a batterers intervention program to
help perpetrators.
But much of Coyote’s most nota-
ble work has been behind closed
doors, away from courtrooms,
legislators and police. It has focused
instead on the untold number of
survivors whose lives she has
touched.
Coyote changed her last name
from Cruz to Coyote in 2012.
Coyote still searches for any
record of what happened that night
in 1991, some written acknowledg-
ment that, for her, reaffi rms what
happened. What records she fi nds
she keeps in a corner of her shed, far
enough back so she won’t stumble on
them. She keeps them stacked next
to the journal she has kept for years,
which she used to prove her story of
struggle with her children.
Reservation, but she would visit jails
and prisons, sharing her story with
perpetrators, hoping to instill empa-
thy.
But even today, she wonders
what might have happened if the
man standing nearby that night
had stepped in and saved her. “I’ve
always wanted to ask him why he
didn’t help me ... I just have not had
the courage and opportunity.”
Frank saw Coyote speak at a
domestic violence conference in
Pendleton in the early 2000s. She,
like many others, was struck by her
bravery and felt encouraged to help
others.
“She was making change, doing
what I wish we could have done in
Warm Springs,” she said.
There is Kola Shippentow-
er-Thompson, a member of the
Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla
Indian Reservation, who said she
was raped in Pendleton at age 19 and
later experienced domestic violence
at the hands of her ex-boyfriend and
her ex-husband. One day, she said,
her ex-husband hit a clogged duct
in her face, causing a severe hema-
toma. Her face was so deformed that
she needed surgery. A mixed martial
arts fi ghter since 2010, she told her
friends that it was just an accident
from practice. Today, she still can’t
feel the right side of her face.
In 2016, Shippentower-Thomp-
son made a social media post about
the alleged domestic abuse, with
a photo of her face pre-surgery.
The post went viral. Soon, she was
speaking with survivor after survi-
vor, many of whom were Indigenous
women. Now, she travels across the
West, providing safety training and
self-defense classes for women,
while also competing in MMA.
“That’s where I felt most at home:
fi ghting,” she said. “That’s what
most Natives are. We’re fi ghters.”
Shippentower-Thompson said
that, as she faced domestic violence,
she met with Coyote. She helped her
feel safe and understood. She, too,
was a fi ghter.
There is Althea Wolf, the grand-
daughter of the late Umatilla Tribal
Chief Raymond Burke, a sexual
assault survivor. After she had a
daughter of her own, she spent eight
months contemplating whether to
enroll her as a Umatilla tribal
member. She worried that, if her
daughter was enrolled, she would
have fewer protections.
Eventually, Coyote helped
convince Wolf, to enroll her daugh-
ter, saying that her daughter would
be safer today than Althea was as a
young girl: “We can’t let fear stop
us.” But Wolf wanted to help survi-
vors like her. So she began working
alongside Coyote as an advocate,
writing letters to lawmakers for
support and raising funds for rape
kits for the tribes’ victims services,
speaking at annual events around
sexual and domestic violence.
“It’s almost third world,” she said,
“the way women and girls are not
protected in Indian country.”
Wolf described Coyote as “a
graceful fi ghter” who “doesn’t hesi-
tate to believe.”
The three Indigenous women
telling their stories today, all said it
was Coyote who empowered them
to help others.
Continued from Page A1
When the abuse from her aunt
ended, her dad returned from a work
trip. For the fi rst time, he hit her. She
was surprised, and the abuse esca-
lated quickly. One day, he thrust her
head into a wall, scraping her scalp
against a nail, creating a scar that
remains on the back of her head.
Another escape
Coyote was home less than a
month before deciding to leave
again.
Coyote packed a bag and joined
her friends on a backpacking trip
across the Pacifi c Northwest, visiting
Portland, Salem, Yakima and Seat-
tle. She began to think of her mother,
wondering where she was. About a
decade had passed since she had last
seen her, just like dad had wanted.
Coyote knew her mother had grown
up on the Umatilla Indian Reserva-
tion, so that’s where she found her.
Coyote lived with her mother
for six or seven months, but life
even there wasn’t safe. Her mother
struggled with alcoholism and
threw parties full of scary men who
would break into her room. Without
much of an education to lean on, she
decided, at 16, to join the military.
Her mother was by her side when she
signed the papers.
The bulk of Coyote’s service
occurred at Fort Riley in Kansas,
where she worked in communica-
tions. It was here that she met an
infantryman from New York, with
whom she bonded over daily runs
around the base. His name was
William Cruz. The two started
dating, and when Coyote left the
military, they moved into a home
in Kansas, where they remained for
three years. She took care of their two
children as Cruz’s service moved
them from Kansas to Germany to
New York and back to Kansas.
Early on, Coyote said she began
to notice the “manipulation and coer-
cion that forms a tight rope around
the leg.” At first, the signs were
subtle. A devout Christian, Cruz
only allowed Coyote to listen to
Christian music and watch Christian
television. She was not allowed to
leave the house unless she was going
to church. “Being a good Christian
woman, I did what I was told,” she
said.
“Everybody thinks that domestic
abuse is a physical thing,” she said.
“It’s not ... when they take who you
are away, piece by piece, when they
Kathy Aney/For Underscore
Desiree Coyote lets her thoughts roam as she stands June 10, 2022, near the spot on the Umatilla Indian Reser-
vation where her ex-husband assaulted her after kidnapping her from her home at the time in Mission.
dehumanize you, make like you’re
less than — that’s when it all begins.”
Cruz and Coyote arrived in
Oregon with their four children in
1983, moving into a home on the
Umatilla Indian Reservation near
Pendleton. Cruz became a leader
at three local churches while work-
ing as a student mechanic at Blue
Mountain Community College.
Coyote worked as a secretary for
economic development for the tribe
and attended the community college.
On the outside, he appeared as a
polite husband, walking Coyote to
class and taking her to lunch. But life
at home was a diff erent story.
“For me, as well as all victims,
what we’re going to remember is
all the holes in the walls, the holes
or dents in the doors, because they
know not to hit you physically,” she
said.
But the emotional abuse turned
into physical violence, she said. She
sometimes called the police two
or three times a week, but offi cers
seldom responded. She couldn’t
take it anymore. She divorced Cruz
in 1990 and promptly obtained a
restraining order. He moved out.
Coyote’s nightmare didn’t end
there. She would walk outside to
her car and fi nd her tires punctured
and parts dismantled, and because
Cruz was a mechanic, she assumed
it was him. For months, she and her
fi ve children stayed in a single room
in the four-bedroom house, sleep-
ing stacked against the windows
and door, hoping to feel the slightest
breeze in case he broke in.
Soon enough, Coyote’s life
appeared to be improving. Her
mother had moved in, and Coyote
was helping her get sober. She had
taken a job with the forest service in
nearby Walla Walla and began going
on dates with a coworker there.
“It was the fi rst time I’d been
happy in I don’t know how long,”
she said.
What happiness she had found
would be shattered in a single night.
The night she said those familiar
hands grabbed her. The night she
said Cruz took her up toward Dead-
man Pass. The night she’d recount
for years to come as an advocate for
other women, to help them feel less
alone.
Her account of that night was
documented in a tribal police report.
Cruz declined to be interviewed for
this story.
Coyote comes home
After the alleged assault by
her ex-husband on the Umatilla
Indian Reservation, Coyote feared
for her life and was contemplating
suicide. About a year later, Cruz was
sentenced to federal prison for child
sexual abuse. Coyote moved with her
fi ve children to New Mexico, where
she lived for around three years
before moving back to Oregon.
In 1995, she began her work in
domestic violence services and
advocacy while living in Lakeview.
It didn’t pay well. It off ered no retire-
ment or medical benefi ts. Mean-
while, her kids were facing racial
harassment in school. And even
Voices:
Continued from Page A1
The federal data reporting
system doesn’t require local police
agencies to submit crime statistics,
and federal offi cials don’t track why
agencies choose to report data or
not, according to an FBI spokesper-
son.
What the data lacks is revealed
through an untold number of Indig-
enous women in Oregon who share
their stories of trauma to empower
other survivors. They are now rais-
ing their voices.
At the center of the women
who shared their stories is Desireé
Coyote, the manager of Family
Violence Services on the Umatilla
Indian Reservation. She said she
was kidnapped, beaten and sexu-
ally assaulted by her ex-husband in
the foothills of the Blue Mountains
near Pendleton in 1991, as reported
to tribal authorities.
In the years to come, Coyote
would impact the lives of count-
less Indigenous people as one of
Oregon’s preeminent advocates
for survivors of violence, and she
would empower many women to
help others, too, according to inter-
views with state and tribal offi cials.
Starting in the early 2000s, she was
among the fi rst Indigenous women
to work as a victims advocate with
the governor’s offi ce and the Oregon
Department of Justice. In time,
she would spearhead the Umatilla
Indian Reservation’s eff orts to gain
essential protections that, had they
Kathy Aney/For Underscore
Althea Wolf weaves a wapas bag Monday, July 4, 2022. Hanging on the tee-
pee poles are two items especially meaningful to the Umatilla tribal mem-
ber: a jacket her son wears while performing in the Happy Canyon Night
Show and a buckskin dress given to her by her mother. Wolf, a sexual assault
survivor, helps other survivors by writing letters to lawmakers for support,
raising funds for rape kits for the tribes’ victims services and speaking about
sexual and domestic violence.
been implemented decades earlier,
could have helped her.
There is Sarah Frank, an Indig-
enous woman who grew up on the
Warm Springs Reservation and in
Pilot Rock, who said she was raped
as a 17-year-old by two men at a
party on the Warm Springs Reser-
vation. As she shifted in and out of
consciousness, she could see a man
standing nearby. He could have
stepped in and stopped them, but he
just chose not to, she said. When she
came to, she realized that her friends
had abandoned her, too.
“Nobody was there to help,” she
said. “I really think it was a set-up. I
feel like I was targeted.”
Frank would remain friends with
the sister of one of her alleged perpe-
trators. One day, she stood alongside
her friend and family as the man lay
dying from alcoholism in a Madras
hospital, a moment she would refl ect
on for years to come.
“Even now, I look back and real-
ize that I was able to forgive him,”
she said of that day. She would go
on not only to advocate for survi-
vors like her on the Warm Springs
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