A6 BAKER CITY HERALD • THURSDAY, JULY 28, 2022
Survivor
Continued from A5
Coyote learned skills that
were meant to help her find
jobs immediately after school.
Instead of home econom-
ics and wood shop, Coy-
ote learned how to operate
a mimeograph. She learned
nothing about her culture
and heritage, and any lessons
about Native American his-
tory were “off mark.”
“It was depressing,” Coy-
ote said. “It’s being alone in a
strange place.”
While at school, Coyote
stopped eating and became
“skinny as a rail.” But she came
to appreciate the solitude of
life at school. It kept her from
the home she feared.
“It was just something I had
to go through,” Coyote said. “I
didn’t have a choice.”
The summer months
passed. Coyote returned home
to Idaho.
Another escape
Coyote was home for less
than a month before deciding
to leave again.
Coyote packed a bag and
joined her friends on a back-
packing trip across the Pacific
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. Coyote knew her mother
had grown up on the Umatilla
Indian Reservation, 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 al-
coholism 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 ser-
vice occurred at Fort Riley in
Kansas, where she worked in
communications. It was here
that she met a handsome infan-
tryman from New York, with
whom she bonded over daily
runs around the base. His name
was William Cruz. The two
started dating and would even-
tually marry. 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 be-
gan to notice the “manipulation
and coercion that forms a tight
rope around the leg.” At first,
the signs were subtle. A devout
Christian, Cruz would only al-
low Coyote to listen to Chris-
tian 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 de-
humanize 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 Reser-
vation. Cruz became a leader
at three local churches while
working as a student mechanic
at Blue Mountain Community
College. Coyote worked as a
secretary for economic devel-
opment for the tribe and at-
tended 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
different story.
“For me, as well as all vic-
tims, what we’re going to re-
member 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 officers seldom re-
sponded. She couldn’t take it
anymore. She divorced Cruz
in 1990 and promptly ob-
tained a restraining order.
OREGON
Women
Voices of Resilience
Indigenous women across the country have endured dispropor-
tionately high rates of violence stemming from systemic and cul-
tural obstacles: Mistrust, limited policing, a lack of resources for sup-
port services and a dizzying array of jurisdictional issues for crimes
committed on tribal land are all factors.
This is the first installment of a two-part investigative project in
partnership with Underscore News, a nonprofit publication focused
on Native American issues. The series will show how obstacles to
prosecution prompted Indigenous survivors to use their stories of
trauma to empower others, inspired initiatives encouraging change
and how evolving policies are shaping the legal landscape.
“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
dehumanize you, make like
you’re less than — that’s
when it all begins.”
Desireé Coyote
He moved out.
Coyote’s nightmare didn’t
end there. She would walk out-
side to her car and find her tires
punctured and parts disman-
tled, and because Cruz was a
mechanic, she assumed it was
him. For months, she and her
five children stayed in a sin-
gle room in the four-bedroom
house, sleeping 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 worked with U.S.
Forest Service in nearby Walla
Walla and began going on dates
with a coworker there.
“It was the first 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 says
Cruz kidnapped and attacked
her in the Blue Mountains near
Pendleton. Cruz declined to be
interviewed for this story.
Coyote comes home
After the alleged assault by
her ex-husband on the Uma-
tilla Indian Reservation, Coy-
ote feared for her life and was
contemplating suicide. About a
year later, Cruz was sentenced
to federal prison for child sex-
ual abuse. Coyote moved with
her five children to New Mex-
ico, 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 offered no retirement or
medical benefits. Meanwhile,
her kids were facing racial ha-
rassment in school. And even
though Cruz was in prison,
Coyote was worried that, hav-
ing stayed in one town for
three years, he would find her
again. The family hit the road.
This time for Salem.
Coyote felt that she was a
floater in Salem, “not here, not
there but still trying,” she said.
Soon enough, a representa-
tive from the Oregon Women
of Color Caucus called, asking
if she was interested in con-
tracting with the group. They
were lacking in Native Amer-
icans in the group and they
wanted her help filling that
role. She accepted and became
its director in 2000.
Soon, she also joined Gov.
John Kitzhaber’s council on
domestic violence, becom-
ing the only Native Ameri-
can woman on the council.
She started traveling around
to communities of color and
tribal nations, hearing from
survivors about what services
were lacking. In time, the state
called on her so much that she
considered herself its “token
Indian,” she said.
“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 import-
ant. My voice often was not
heard.”
In 2001, her mother fell ill.
She started driving home to
the Umatilla Indian Reserva-
tion every weekend to take
care of her.
Though they had been
apart for the majority of Coy-
ote’s upbringing, she had al-
ways 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
reservation.
She took a job as the tribe’s
domestic violence coordina-
tor. She began learning about
tribal jurisdiction, law enforce-
ment and tribal courts. She
started meeting with survi-
vors. More often than not, they
would were tribal members,
the offenders were non-Native,
and the abuse occurred on res-
ervation 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 as-
sault. The officer would then
use maps to see whether it was
on or off tribal land, and they
would explain who had juris-
diction to take the case.
“This job really taught me
what it means to be an Indige-
nous woman,” she said.
At the same time, Coyote be-
gan learning about tribal cus-
toms and traditions. Having
grown up in her father’s home
and attended boarding school,
she knew little about the tradi-
tions of her people. But when
she moved to the reservation,
she met with elders, attended
powwows and learned about
dancing, drumming, singing
and tribal regalia. Her moth-
er’s land and the people there
made her feel at home.
Coyote helped the Uma-
tilla tribes gain essential legal
protections for survivors. She
helped the tribes become au-
thorized for the sex offender
notification registration act
and helped tribal authori-
ties regain jurisdiction over
non-Native perpetrators of
domestic violence on tribal
land. She also pushed forward
a batterers intervention pro-
gram to help perpetrators.
But much of Coyote’s most
notable work has been behind
closed doors, away from court-
rooms, 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 is still searching for
any record of what happened
that night in 1991, some writ-
ten acknowledgment that, for
her, reaffirms what happened.
What records she finds she
keeps in a corner of her shed,
far enough back so she won’t
stumble on them.

Reporter: 541-617-7814,
zdemars@bendbulletin.com
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Survivor resources
Continued from A5
Data is missing in the system for one or
more tribal police departments for seven of
the last eight reporting years, and more be-
fore that.
The federal data reporting system doesn’t
require local police agencies to submit crime
statistics, and federal officials don’t track why
agencies choose to report data or not, ac-
cording to an FBI spokesperson.
What the data lacks is revealed through
an untold number of Indigenous 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 says she was kid-
napped, beaten and sexually assaulted by
her ex-husband in the foothills of the Blue
Mountains near Pendleton in 1991, as re-
ported to tribal authorities.
In the years to come, Coyote would im-
pact the lives of countless Indigenous people
as one of Oregon’s preeminent advocates for
survivors of violence, and she would em-
power many women to help others, too, ac-
cording to interviews with state and tribal
officials. Starting in the early 2000s, she was
among the first Indigenous women to work
as a victim advocate with the governor’s of-
fice and the Oregon Department of Justice.
In time, she would spearhead the Umatilla
Indian Reservation’s efforts to gain essential
protections that, had they been implemented
decades earlier, could have helped her.
Sarah Frank, an Indigenous woman who
grew up on the Warm Springs Indian Res-
ervation and in Pilot Rock, was raped as a
17-year-old by two men at a party on the
Warm Springs reservation, she said.
As she shifted in and out of conscious-
ness, she could see a man standing nearby.
He could have stepped in and stopped
them, but he 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 rapist. One day,
she stood alongside her friend and family
as the man lay dying from alcoholism in a
Madras hospital, a moment she would re-
flect on for years to come.
“Even now, I look back and realize that
I was able to forgive him,” she said of that
day. She would go on not only to advocate
for survivors like her on the Warm Springs
Indian Reservation, but she would visit
jails and prisons, sharing her story with
perpetrators, hoping to instill empathy.
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.”
Resources are available for trauma survivors at
the Strong Hearts Native Helpline and the Na-
tional Sexual Assault Helpline.
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.
Kola Shippentower-Thompson, a mem-
ber of the Confederated Tribes of the
Umatilla Indian Reservation, was raped
in Pendleton at age 19 and later experi-
enced domestic violence at the hands of
her ex-boyfriend and her ex-husband, she
said. One day, she said, her ex-husband hit
a clogged duct in her face, causing a severe
hematoma. Her face was so deformed that
she needed surgery. A mixed martial arts
fighter since 2010, she told her friends that
it was just an accident from practice. To-
day, she still can’t feel the right side of her
face.
In 2016, Shippentower-Thompson made
a social media post about the alleged do-
mestic abuse, with a photo of her face
pre-surgery. The post went viral. Soon, she
was speaking with survivor after survivor,
many of whom were Indigenous women.
Now, she travels across the West, provid-
ing safety training and self-defense classes
for women, while also competing in mixed
martial arts. “That’s where I felt most at
home: fighting,” she said. “That’s what
most Natives are. We’re fighters.”
Shippentower-Thompson said that, as
she faced domestic violence, she met with
Coyote. She helped her feel safe and under-
stood. She, too, was a fighter.
Althea Wolf, the granddaughter of the
late Umatilla Tribal Chief Raymond Burke,
is 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 wor-
ried that, if her daughter was enrolled, she
would have fewer protections.
Eventually, Coyote helped convince
Wolf to enroll her daughter, saying that her
daughter would be safer today than Wolf
was as a young girl: “We can’t let fear stop
us.” But Wolf wanted to help survivors like
her.
So she began working alongside Coyote
as an advocate, writing letters to lawmak-
ers for support and raising funds for rape
kits for the tribes’ victim services, speaking
at annual events around sexual and do-
mestic 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
fighter” who “doesn’t hesitate to believe.”
The three Indigenous women telling
their stories today all say it was Coyote
who empowered them to help others.
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