Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country
Written and Narrated By: Sierra Crane Murdoch
Length: 14 hrs and 56 mins
One journalist’s obsession with one woman’s obsession…
Ya know, considering this is 15-hrs long, I’m pretty surprised I was engaged enough to listen to it all in one day (Yesss, I listened way over x1 speed!). EsPECially since a murder takes a TOTAL backseat to what-all the 15-hrs meander around into.
And by the way? Oh gosh, was I DESperately deceived by the author’s name. Sierra Crane? GOTTA be Indigenous, right? Uhm, nope—Sierra Crane is just an awesome name for a white-woman. Ms. Murdoch earns her respectability to write this as she spent eons prior reporting on the area’s stories, plus she spent YEARS following Lissa Yellow Bird, the story’s unlikely heroine. Still, this is a Native American story told by someone who is oh so NOT Native American. Booooo, and feh to me for being taken in by the nifty Crane within the author’s name…
-Also-
What this is NOT about is the murder of a white oil worker named Kristopher “KC” Clarke. Yup, he’s totally missing, Lissa is spending yeeeeears looking for his body, there’s a Facebook group started by KC’s mom devoted to finding him, bringing suspects to justice, seeking closure. And we know that he wasn’t talking to his mom, and his grandpa was his best friend, but oops—he’s just a Gone Guy we don’t get to know. All we know is that for some reason Lissa Yellow Bird, now clean and sober after a stint in prison, is obSESSed with his case.
This also has the standard atrocities done to Indigenous groups and how one community in particular, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation has suffered. And it’s how they continued to suffer once an oil boom on their lands began, from first fracking all the way to the end/bust. Individuals were cajoled to sell plots of land for reeeeally low prices, and then that land was flipped for muuuuch greater prices, earning the buyers big bucks, basically in a dastardly hoodwink job. Tex Hall, speaking for the people, first seems to have the community’s best interests in mind, but then the story turns into a cautionary tale of how money and power corrupt, with Tex using the medical-use helicopter purchased with oil funds for his own pleasure and his own private jaunts. So there’s that in here too. No KC.
We’re given a vaaaaast bio of Lissa Yellow Bird, and we see her eldest daughter’s struggles to figure out how she wants to relate to her mother: Her early years were way complicated by the chaos wrought by her mother’s addictions. No KC.
We learn of the trauma her other children suffered vis-à-vis a broken foster system to go with Lissa’s neglect as she spends oodles of time in her obsession. No KC.
We learn plenty of stuff about the presumed murderer and his partner. No KC.
This is a scholarly treatise on intergenerational trauma, on the history of the Indigenous tribes of that area (North Dakota), on addiction and abuse, on abuse of power, on corruption, on family legacies. Even on how Ms. Murdoch came to write the whole thing.
No KC.
So, what we have is a murder mystery withOUT a victim. And I find that a tad pathetic…
Still, it’s written in an engaging style, enough to keep me hooked listening as I heard of Lissa doing things in a forthright way, as I heard of Lissa doing things in a duplicitous way, as I heard of Lissa doing things in a reeeeally questionable way (At one point, she extends herself to tell one of the suspects that she’s had a change of heart, is sorry for the many and varied wretched things she’s called her, and can’t they now be friends, all in an attempt to weasel info or confessions outta the woman). This is the story of Lissa with some dude named KC getting offed somewhere.
Murdoch narrates this herself, and I saw over on Audible that she was Hit or Miss. Some people liked her, others bemoaned her slow-pace (Gosh, jack the speed up to x1.5!) and near-monotone. I felt she was okay, esPECially at the greater speed, and I appreciated the bit of gravel in her voice, how it made Lissa, with all her rough edges, a particularly relatable person. We believe where Lissa’s coming from by Murdoch’s low and jagged tones. And we believe it when Lissa pulls back on her emotions, as she rationalizes much of her history, much of her continued existence, all through the evenness of Murdoch’s delivery. So I had no problem with her narrating her own work.
It’s just that I felt bad that there was a fairly young man named Kristopher “KC” Clarke who was murdered. I know I know, given the horrors Indigenous groups have suffered, and considering the continued maltreatment, a murder mystery such as this will have MULtiple victims. …just…?
Yeah, there was a dude named KC.
And now, there’s not…
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