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

Murdoch writes an amazing story of what certain aspects of the oil boom were like on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota during a truly extraordinary time. I disagree with the reader who felt that the book was a "slog" to get through. I couldn't put it down. I will be re-reading this book to look at how Murdoch frames this story as there is an extraordinary amount covered: from problems in social services, the terrible history of how the three affiliated tribes on the reservation were treated by the government and the legacy of poverty and how hard it is to break. She does all this by profiling and telling the story of Lissa Yellow Bird.I purchased this book because I lived in North Dakota from 2012 through 2014 and worked for in oil and gas company there. It was truly unbelievable at times to be living in the boom that existed there and this book helped me relive and process some of that. I was aware of the murders described in this book and the affiliation to Tex Hall, then the chairman. Doing business on the reservation was a unique experience and I understand now reading this why some of the challenges existed.It's incredibly devastating to know how much money the oil industry brought onto the reservation, with much of it going directly to the tribes, for so little benefit of the majority of the MHA members. Yet if feels like it was inevitable, since there is so little trust between the parties involved.Sierra, thank you for dedicating so much time to the research and writing of this book. I am so grateful that it exists.

Well written and well researched. Certainly opened my eyes to the oil/fracking boom on the reservation in North Dakota. Tragic circumstances from beginning to end but Yellowbird finds her way to help herself, family and tribal members. A bit slow in the beginning , as the details of events are developed but I enjoyed the book and felt it offered an education and perspective of the events before, during and post oil boom.

Sierra had made her readers really think, really try to understand the differences, the difficulties, the trauma, the negativity and the task of trying to solve a crisis with different people, different agencies all having a different perspective and tying it all together. Well written!

This story of addiction and redemption is a story worth telling, but the story didn’t need to be as detailed and circuitous as it is. Sierra Crane Murdoch spent years of her life delving into the facts of a murder connected to the oil boom on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota because she didn’t think the story of the murder could be told, as it was in the press, without the story of the reservation and in particular of one woman, Lissa Yellow Bird, who made the case a personal crusade. What the book makes clear is that the national addiction to oil that spurred the boom—the Bakken contains about a six months’ supply of oil for our country—also created a toxic local economy that brought out the worst in some humans, leading to corruption, vice, and violence. Native peoples on this reservation had already been betrayed and mistreated by the US government, and the oil boom and the wealth it generated for a few only made things worse. Crane gets a lot of credit for digging in and exposing all of this.I found the most engaging parts of the book to be the chapters narrated in first person, and indeed, I think Crane could have used the Author’s Note at the end as a preface instead, setting the book up as a story told from her point of view and grounded in her experience. Too many of the chapters jump back and forth in time and bring in too many characters and too many details. About halfway through the book, I became overwhelmed and bored, and wanted to bail out. I Googled “James Henrikson and Sarah Creveling” to find out what happened, then skimmed the rest of the book. Though I applaud the author’s intention and evident hard work, I wish she had involved an editor who could have helped her find a better way to tell the story.

This was an extraordinary example of journalism. It centers on the disappearance of a oil worker and on the efforts of Lissa Yellow Bird to find out what happened to him. And it depicts Native American life on the Great Plains with a gritty precision and an unrelenting objectivity that at times is painful to read. I have traveled much across the Indian lands in the Dakotas, Montana, and Nebraska. "Grim" is the word that so often comes to mind. How could people live in Mobridge or Standing Rock or Pine Ridge or the Ft. Berthold region? And what happens to the children in a world of relentless substance abuse and spousal abuse and hopelessness? Lissa has gotten herself clean after two stints in prison. She hurls herself into the sleuthing project as a way of staying off drugs by focusing on it. She succeeds, as far as we know. But as she proceeds with her project we see unfold before us a truly awful world of deceit, despair, poverty, corporate chicanery, grinding hopelessness, and outright criminality. We as a nation have never known how to deal with the native people living among us. There is much that we could do to help, to put it mildly, but they aren't a large enough voting bloc to attract the attention of the federal government, except when they act up as they did to halt the Canadian pipeline project a couple of years ago, and of course with the Wounded Knee uprising by the AIM group a few decades ago. I recommend this story to anyone wishing to get a sense of the lives of people, fellow Americans, all but forgotten by so many of us.

I believe it was Cree actor-comedian, Lorne Cardinal, who delivered the line above. Anyways the two come together in the book, Yellow Bird, only they aren't too organized and not too bright. The protagonist in the story, Lissa, targets a suspected murderer and keeps the pressure on them. So read about a unique individual and her circle of family, friends, fellow tribal members and law enforcers. Then shake your head over the stupidity of it all--the murder, those involved and an oil boom and bust. Note: the murder was covered in an episode of American Greed where they interview the protagonist Lissa. Check it out too.

Loved it. Could not put down.

As an author I can appreciate and admire the history and attention to detail in this book. Such a great message and fascinating story that needed to be told!