The maimed body of Tina Washpan was found under a pile of leaves and branches on a rural property near Dawson Creek, B.C. in 1990.

Her family in Carmacks had reported her missing several months earlier.

The 21-year-old had been hitchhiking south, to Saskatchewan.

When her phone calls home stopped, the family knew something was wrong, her older sister, Diane Lilley, said Wednesday.

She was speaking during the second day of hearings at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls on the banks of the Yukon River in Whitehorse.

Nearly two decades would pass before a B.C. man named Paul Russell Deleno Felker would be convicted of Washpan’s murder.

But the story of Washpan’s violent death began long before her encounter with Felker.

On Wednesday, the commissioners heard Lilley give a detailed account of the tragic events of her life and the lives of her sisters, starting with their forced removal from their mother’s home in Carmacks when they were children.

Many who testified this week spoke of being taken from their parents as children, of foster homes where they were abused and made to feel ashamed of their skin colour, and of the horrors of residential school.  

Stories of discrimination by police are pervasive, as is an entrenched mistrust of the justice and system.

Examining the destructive impacts of colonialism and racism is part of the commission’s mandate.

Lilley told the commissioners that when she was very young, many people in Carmacks drank, including her mother, Dorothy Washpan.

Lilley was little girl when an orange car pulled up to Dorothy’s home.

Child welfare officials emerged and piled Lilley and four younger sisters, including Tina, inside.

The first attempt to round up the children failed, said Lilley.

The girls made a run for it and hid in the woods.

But Tina was a baby, and the officials heard her cries, said Lilley. They tracked down the kids and shuttled them to Whitehorse.

“They told us they’re taking us to a safe place,” said Lilley. In reality, where they were taken was anything but safe.  

Lilley and two of her sisters were sent to Yukon Hall, a residential school inWhitehorse. Tina and another sister were taken away.

Tina would be adopted by a family in Regina, and her name changed to Cindy Burk.

“We never went home; not once did we see our mother since they took us,” said Lilley.

“My younger sisters kept crying. I wasn’t allowed to be with them.”

Lilley endured emotional, physical and sexual abuse in residential school. She would plead with her younger sisters to tell her if anyone touched them; if anyone took them from their beds in the night.

School staff would say, “You should be grateful; your mother is a drunk, she doesn’t care for you,” said Lilley.

She promised her younger sisters she would never leave them.

After residential school, the girls were shuffled among foster homes and group homes. The abuse continued, said Lilley.

She described how the sisters were treated like “Cinderellas” in one home – forced to do chores and dressed in second-hand clothes – while the family’s own children were given new clothes and toys.

“It was really hard,” said Lilley. “I had to be the grown-up one for my two sisters.”

Lilley learned to swear and fight back against the foster parents who beat her. The adults called her a “troublemaker.” One summer, she stayed in 10 homes.

“I never had a childhood,” she said. “I was always worried about going home ... I had to be strong.”

Eventually, Lilley ran away. She spoke of meeting other homeless youth, sleeping under the clay cliffs, stealing food and using drugs and alcohol.

“I always felt like I don’t belong to any place, to anyone, because I was always handed around,” she said.

Meanwhile Tina, then called Cindy, was being sexually assaulted by her adoptive father.

The abuse began when Tina was 11 or 12, said Lilley.

“He would give her money to keep her quiet. He said, ‘If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you and tell them you ran away,’” Lilley told the commissioners.

Tina did, ultimately, reveal the abuse to her adoptive mother, who then packed up the kids and left the father, said Lilley.

Tina’s adoptive siblings blamed her for the disintegration of their parents’ marriage.

Lilley and Tina both found ways back to their mother’s home in Carmacks, said Lilley.

There, she discovered her mother had signed her children away unwittingly, not understanding the English that child welfare officials were speaking.

Tina wouldn’t stay in Carmacks for long.

After leaving an abusive relationship, Tina headed back to Saskatchewan, Lilley told the commissioners.

When two weeks passed without word from Tina, their mother grew worried.

Lilley said she called the RCMP and was told that Tina’s “lifestyle” meant she could be anywhere.

In other words, her missing sister wasn’t a priority.

“She was taught to survive by hooking … she was taught that by her adoptive dad,” said Lilley.

For six months, the family heard nothing from the RCMP, she said.

The silence was finally broken with a phone call. Lilley answered.

The RCMP had discovered remains off the Old Alaska Highway near Dawson Creek.

“Ice-cold water went through my body, I was in shock,” said Lilley.

The family and the Little Salmon/Carmacks First Nation raised money to fly Tina’s body home to the Yukon, where she was given a traditional burial.

But her killer remained a mystery.

Dorothy died of cancer before her daughter’s killer was discovered, but Lilley never gave up the hunt.

Thanks to Bobby Blahun, an RCMP investigator who wouldn’t let Tina’s case go cold, Felker was arrested in 2006.

He was ultimately found guilty of second-degree murder.

“Why did you keep her case going?” Lilley asked Blahun after the trial.

He told her, “I have a daughter your sister’s age and I put myself in your mother’s shoes,” said Lilley. “I was blown away by that answer.”

Lilley’s story did not end with the conviction of Tina’s killer.

The commissioners heard how Lilley’s sisters and mother also experienced violence from people and institutions that were meant to protect them, and how the pain of that violence fanned outward, and across decades and through generations.

Lilley found strength in learning her culture from grandparents and from counselling, but said she still carries “shame and guilt for something I didn’t do.”

“When we were taken away, we were told we were going to a safer place,” said Lilley.

“My family were all split up. It broke my mother’s heart.”

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