Today's Reading

As part of a new generation in the agency—and Native myself—I do my best to make inroads with tribes and show that I'm here to help, not harm. But there's three hundred years of terrible history that tells another story.

I also greatly respect Ellis as a tribal leader who must live in two worlds. The need to preserve the past but also continue building the tribe's future through what's allowed by the government. He must find some version of balance between what the tribe needs to continue existing—language, land base, culture, medicine—and what the government will agree to give.

My role as an archeologist is simpler. I see myself as a midwife to the past for the future. To support the tribes by advocating for what they need to continue traditions that honor their thousands of years of history as they carry this knowledge into the future.

"Syd? Did you hear me?"

 "Sorry."

He clears his throat. "Small cranium size."

I focus back on the bones between us. "Even without the dress, the narrow ridges of the eyebrows suggest female to me."

He crouches near the feet. "What's the stratigraphy?"

I almost grin at his question, which shows his knowledge extends well beyond what's needed for his job title. It's something I immediately respected in him when we first met after I took this job five years ago. I like to think he appreciates it in me, too. Neither of us is a fan of the status quo, especially not when it comes to justice.

"The same layer of earth," I say. "Two feet four inches deep, except the skull and feet were three inches higher on each side."

"Shallow grave dug fast," he says with a sigh. "What do you make of the skull fracture?"

A memory of Emma Lou in a screaming fight with her ex-boyfriend floats past, but I return focus. I want to step beyond the status quo of my job, too. To not let my sister and all her problems distract me from justice.

I drop to my knees and return to the position I was in right before he arrived, toothbrush and all. I take away a few more layers of mud on the right eye socket, where the fracture begins. "There's a section of avulsed bone on the right cheek." I pause as Ellis squats next to me, and I point out where the face was cut, starting at the left eye socket. "The trauma extends from the inferior orbital border under the eye socket to the left canine tooth root."

He tightens his lips like a flinch. "Stabbed in the face."

"There's only blood splatter along the left shoulder." I motion to the small spot I'd noticed when inspecting the dress.
 "Her assailant—let's take a wild guess and assume 'he'—could have grabbed her from behind and stabbed her as he held her. I didn't see any more trauma, though, so this was the only injury by the knife. But that wouldn't necessarily kill her."

"You can tell all that?"

"Best guess," I say, because that's all I can do with the constraints of time, money, and going gray before seeing any lab results. Plus, I'm not a forensic archeologist, a specialist in excavating crime scenes. I studied it in school, extensively, but kept returning to the land and culture over labs and bones— to honor indigenous history and support projects that make the future possible.

Ellis rubs under his eyes, as if he wishes there was more available than guesses. "Keep going, please," he says with a weariness I understand. This is not an average day.

I fumble with the flashlight in my pocket but manage to click it on. The sun is only starting to rise, and we need more light to properly examine the neck bones. "This break indicates a laryngeal fracture. The attacker probably stood on her neck until she suffocated or bled to death."

Ellis blows out a long breath. "How old, do you think?" 

"Late teens, early twenties."

"Just the right age to disappear." He scrapes his knuckles under his clean-shaven chin. "What about the dress?"

"Machine stiches. No tag on any seams or initials sewn inside." "We're not that lucky."

"Well, I wouldn't say that." I reach over to a brown paper bag holding our only clue. I use my pencil to lift out a pink plastic quartz Swatch watch. "Looks like something from the eighties."

"Yeah," he says with the lightness of memory in his voice. "My sister and her friends had Swatches like that when they were teenagers. Probably 'eighty-five."

Trends in teenage culture are fascinating, no matter the decade, but I stay on topic. "Approximate year of death would help. We can see if there are any missing women in the national database."

"There were plenty of women that went missing back then," he says. "Maybe ran off, maybe not. Few reported, though."

...

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