Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country in NonFiction Pulitzers

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Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country

Sierra Crane Murdoch

Start date: July 1, 2024

Finish date: August 31, 2024

Discussion: General Nonfiction Finalists

Why we're reading this: 2021 Finalist General Nonfiction

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Yellow Bird
By Katy · 28 posts · 20 views

last updated Jul 19, 2024 11:14PM

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What Members Thought

Jul 10, 2024 Teri rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, pulitzer-2024, read-in-2024, true-crime

Lissa Yellow Bird is an exceptional person dedicating her life to finding missing Indigenous people. Yellow Bird is a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation in Western North Dakota. The three affiliated tribes center around the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. For many Indigenous people on the Reservation, surviving the oil boom life is difficult. Drugs and alcohol are plentiful as oil workers and local Indigenous partake to addictive levels. And with these elements, crime also follo Lissa Yellow Bird is an exceptional person dedicating her life to finding missing Indigenous people. Yellow Bird is a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation in Western North Dakota. The three affiliated tribes center around the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. For many Indigenous people on the Reservation, surviving the oil boom life is difficult. Drugs and alcohol are plentiful as oil workers and local Indigenous partake to addictive levels. And with these elements, crime also follows. Lissa Yellow Bird found herself strung out as a young woman, turning tricks to pay for her addiction and make ends meet. Along the way, she connected with abusive men and had several children before being arrested on federal charges.

The difference with Yellow Bird is that during her time in prison, she got sober and stayed sober, trading one addiction with another. The new addiction involved being a whole-hearted advocate for missing people. The first case she would involve herself in was of Kristopher Clarke, an oil worker who suddenly disappeared on the eve of a planned vacation.

Journalist Sierra Crane Murdoch shadowed Yellow Bird for eight years as the case for Clarke would turn from missing person to murder for hire. It is through this case that Murdoch unfolds the details of Lissa Yellow Bird's life, from addiction and poverty to hero. In many ways, Yellow Bird's story is reminiscent of Reservation life steeped in substance abuse, physical abuse, poverty, and governmental overreach. However, Yellow Bird is able to break out and turn her life lessons into life-saving advocacy. Throughout her work to help find the answers to the Clarke case, we see the dichotomy of Lissa's life. She is a kind, loving mother, tribal member, and neighbor, but she uses many of the survival skills and manipulative techniques she learned as an addict to get the answers she needed to help solve the Clarke case. This is a beautiful story of a true hero searching for justice layered between the horrors of true crime among an Indigenous nation. ...more

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Jun 07, 2024 Debbie rated it really liked it

Shelves: zz2024, women, western-pioneers-cowboys, yz-audio, non-fiction, women-writers, detective, mystery-murder-crime, pulitzer-nonfiction, family

This book touched my very heart. I have long seen the U.S tribal peoples as the true Children of Mother Earth. That they still remain, a reference to the PBS series, is a testament to them as Her Treasured People. Not one promise made to them by the US Government has gone unbroken. They are treated as irrelevant by companies seeking to gain access, and not fair access, to their natural mineral resources. When white conservatives whine about "cancel culture", I roll my eyes. If you really want to ...more

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Nov 30, 2019 Katy marked it as physical_to-read_stack

Shelves: goodreads_giveaways

I received my copy free through 欧宝娱乐 Giveaways.

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Jul 14, 2024 Alisa rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: crime-and-grime, native-americans, commodities, kindle

Greed breeds corruption, and isolating power in the hands of a few and then left unchecked, well, nothing good comes of that. There is so much sadness in this book. The oil companies took advantage of the Native communities with lopsided deals that polluted and ruined the land and financially exploited the people who held the mineral rights and occupied the land. The tribal leaders acted out of self-interest in furtherance of their own power and ego, and did little to act in the interest of the Greed breeds corruption, and isolating power in the hands of a few and then left unchecked, well, nothing good comes of that. There is so much sadness in this book. The oil companies took advantage of the Native communities with lopsided deals that polluted and ruined the land and financially exploited the people who held the mineral rights and occupied the land. The tribal leaders acted out of self-interest in furtherance of their own power and ego, and did little to act in the interest of the tribes. That people could live in poverty during an oil boom that could have benefited this community in more productive ways was really sad. The heart of the story is one native woman, Lissa Yellow Bird, and her quest to solve the murder of KC who went missing under suspicious circumstances. She didn't know him. She was tireless in her investigation, and were it not for her pursuit who knows if the Feds would ever have taken up the mantle. Which feeds into another important topic raised in this book: the plight of missing indigenous people. Lissa Yellow Bird had a challenging life herself, hampered by drug addition, caught up in abusive relationships, at one po9int losing her children to foster care, and serving time in prison. She fought through all of that to put herself on a better path, finding a way to turn her attention to the plight of others and helping her community.

As I write this, I am reading a news report that the federal government reached a $241.5M settlement with Marathon Oil for air quality violations at its operations of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. The penalty is for Clean Air Act violations and mandates Marathon to reduce emissions that harm both climate and health, and holds the company accountable for its illegal pollution. It's the same land (part of it, at least), covered in this book. I'm not sure this goes far enough (what about all that ground and water pollution?), but it helps.

This is a complicated book with intricately woven issues, at times very difficult to follow but a fascinating and enlightening narrative. A solid 3.5 stars for me. ...more

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Jun 28, 2021 Helga Cohen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history, biographies-and-memoirs, true-crime, pulitzers-2021

In this Pulitzer Prize finalist, Sierra Crane Murdoch writes an intriguing account of the disappearance of an oil worker. She writes about Lissa Yellow Bird who seeks for the truth of what happened to him. The author portrays an extraordinary profile of her. She also writes in detail about the tribal politics and corruption surrounding the oil and gas boom in the Black Hills of North Dakota. It is an extremely well written piece of investigatory journalism. All the stories are woven together to ...more

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Nov 21, 2024 Koren rated it really liked it

Shelves: american-indian

I think this book would have been better as a stand-alone biography of the Native American woman Lissa Yellow Bird, instead of weaving the story of her search for a missing man. There is also another sub plot here about the devastation the oil industry is doing to our native lands and environment. Lissa is a very interesting woman who overcame a lot but still struggles. The murder plot never really fleshes out and is almost an afterthought. Worth a read to find out about this amazing woman.

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