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It’s difficult with everything going on in the world to know exactly where I fit, to know where my son’s murder fits, in the grand scheme of things. Since the beginning, I have been conscious about what I should say and what I shouldn’t say. Fear of public shaming, othering, and how we value individual human beings is a difficult issue to juggle while standing in the subjective eye of the public.

Let’s roll things back a bit so that the conversation I am compelled to have has a point of reference based on facts. Many of which might touch on biases you have whether you are aware of them or not. I’d invite you to pay attention to any sway, the rise and fall of compassion, indifference or accusation, you experience as you read through the details. Observe what is happening in your body—if you get uncomfortable, how your chest feels, how deep your breath is. This is where our reactions come from—how we treat one another, when we shut down and quit listening, quit caring about the person (rather than the topic) that is in front of us.

These are some of the facts of my son Josiah’s case:

• In June of 2019, my only child was murdered in a carjacking while on his way to a Dead & Company concert at the Gorge Amphitheatre in Eastern Washington. To get there, they had to pass through the Yakama Reservation on Highway 97. 
• They were running late, making it well after dark when they drove that stretch of highway.
• About 50 miles north of the Columbia River, they encountered two men stranded on the side of the road and decided to stop and help them.
• Rather than accepting a ride, the assailants shot both my son and the driver in the head, dumped their bodies and stole their car. 
• They drove north to Wapato and abandoned the car in an orchard, attempting to light it on fire to cover up what they had done. 
• Hours later, the suspects James and Donovan Cloud, murdered five more in a small town to the west of Wapato called White Swan. A total of seven would be dead in the course of about 16 hours.
• Both my son and the driver’s remains were missing for 14 months.
• The suspects believed to have committed the crime were both native, enrolled in the Yakama Nation. 
• Both had criminal records and both suffered from addiction. 
• Josiah was caucasian, had a criminal record and wrestled with addiction.
• I raised him as a single mother. 
• He was born into a home that collected food stamps, relied on public assistance and taxpayers paid for his birth and healthcare. 
• I worked my way off of public assistance when Josiah was a small child. I went back to school and got an associates degree with the help of pell grants and scholarships.
• Josiah was a high school graduate. He attended the Mendocino County Fire Academy and had plans to become a firefighter.
• Charges were brought in the case of White Swan, but never for my child despite evidence tying the killings together. 
• Federal prosecutors not only did not file charges, they offered immunity from my son’s murder as part of a plea deal in the case of White Swan.

Now lets try to take all of that information and plug it into a working dialogue. One that engages the largest audience and alienates as few people as possible along the way.  It’s going to  be a challenge. 

First, I think I’ll retract that Josiah had a record and that he struggled with addiction because a number of you might judge him for his challenges rather than who he was. I’ll also let you think that we are most certainly middle class and I’ll let my intelligence and ability to write make you think I’m highly educated and that we’ve never accepted help in the form of public assistance. I won’t tell you that his father was absent so you don’t judge our family for that either. And most importantly to me, I’ll share with you all the things Josiah truly was—the love of my life and a warm, loving and generous, give-you-the-shirt-off-his-back kind of friend. I have never known anyone to say anything negative about him. 

After all, what do we hear in the news? Who are the victims with the highest value? Ones we can make statements like, “He did well in school. Beloved by his teachers and friends,” and although these statements were true about Josiah, I feared that his imperfections would diminish him, devalue him in both the public’s and law enforcement’s eyes because this is the world we live in. It is a time when everything gets categorized as this, not that.

Now let’s figure out what might happen in the judicial system for everyone involved.

He’s white, so justice should be on his side. Right? Wrong. Why not then? Was it his criminal history? Do you think it’s because Federal Prosecutors looked at us, our socio-economic class, and thought us only worthy of being a pawn in their game?  What is your truthiest truth? Whatever your initial answer, I’d ask you to think again. 

What do I scream when crowds gather? How do I label the injustice? And if I do, if I scream from the mountaintops why we were screwed by the legal system, would it be true? If I tell you Josiah was white, would it seem more or less tragic to you? If I tell you that he was killed by natives, would you call me a racist? Or them? What would you do? What does it take to get everyone’s attention and what do I have to be afraid of saying that would cause me to lose it?

Is it possible that all of this stuff can be laid aside so that you and I and our society at large can recognize the collective pain we carry that isn’t white or any other color or rich or poor? Is it possible for us to stand in the middle of what has become an ever widening divide?

Shortly after Josiah was killed, plenty of people were tempted to speak of race and violence on the reservation. I wouldn’t bite. Why? It is my belief that whoever pulled over would’ve been killed regardless of their skin color because the people who committed the crime were criminals. It had nothing to do with race.

So now what? What does that mean 46 months after they took Josiah’s life? And why did I reference Cancel Culture when I titled this piece? Because I want to connect with the public without fear of being shut out of conversations as they narrow in scope, each of us further defining what’s okay and what’s not. Who’s who and who’s not.

One thing I think we can all agree on is that the world is a mess and seems to be getting worse. Hate crimes, violence, civil unrest. The stripping away of rights is fueled by centuries of oppression, attempted to be soothed by decades of false promises in the matters of sex, economics and race. Is there a way to move towards engaging in compassionate and inclusive dialogue, the antithesis of cancel culture, trolling or worse? Is it possible to accept that there isn’t only one answer? That my experience doesn’t invalidate yours? Can we share openly without adding to the pain in the world? It is certainly something we have more than enough of.

Before we go, did you accept the invitation given at the beginning of this piece? How are you feeling? Are you uncomfortable, compassionate or angry? What are you experiencing in your body? Do you feel adrenalized, light or heavy? Is your heart steady or racing? How is your breath? Is it deep or shallow? Are you holding it in?

There is a tightness in my chest—part fear, part longing—because I don’t want to be cancelled for telling my story.

I want to connect. 

Losing Josiah, especially in the way he died, has been the most isolating and painful experience of my life. His murder catapulted me into the ethers and I am still crawling back. Ultimately, connecting with others is what saved my life. My hope for all of us is that we will find a middle ground where we can speak about anything and everything, the details of our lives, our fears, our traumas, our deepest of pains, so that collectively, we can heal our society.

My truthiest truth is this: we need to feel safe, to be heard and be seen in order to create unity, community, compassion and change.

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