Months later, missing teen's sister still waiting for promised DNA test
'I don't know where to turn to get help': RCMP asked for sample in June, but haven't followed up since
When Eva Yassie got a call from RCMP last summer her heart soared, she said. That's because they'd finally offered to take a DNA sample from her, to help find and identify her long-missing sister.
Months later, however, that still hasn't happened.
"I never heard from them again, not even a phone call," Yassie told the CBC. "I don't understand why."
Yassie's sister Annie was 13 when the Dene teen went missing just outside Churchill, Man. on June 22, 1974. She was last seen drunk and being helped into a cab by two men decades older than her.
Her disappearance has haunted her older sister ever since.
Surprise glimmer of hope
That's why in June 2016, Eva Yassie sat down with the CBC to tell Annie's story.
Days after that story was published, she received a surprise phone call from the RCMP.
"Shortly after that documentary we did, they phoned me from Winnipeg. They wanted a DNA [sample]," Yassie said, adding they needed it to add to their missing persons database, "just in case."
It was a rare contact from RCMP but their message was welcome, she said, "just to say that the file's not closed and I'm not forgotten about."
But almost eight months later, Yassie fears that's exactly what's happened. No one has taken a DNA sample. No one has called to explain why.
"It's not like I am hard to find. They know where I live."
Advocate slams inaction
Nahanni Fontaine calls the situation "unacceptable."
The Ojibway NDP MLA — a longtime advocate for Manitoba's missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls — also calls it surprising, given that right now, across the country, police agencies are preparing for a national inquiry into MMIW.
"You're giving hope to a family with nothing to back it up, with no action," she said.
An RCMP spokesperson confirmed to the CBC that they did approach Eva Yassie last summer to obtain a DNA sample, saying "obtaining familial DNA can potentially prove very helpful in an investigation of a missing person."
The spokesperson said, however, that they were waiting for Eva Yassie to get back to them with names of siblings to take a sample from.
Meanwhile, the RCMP database on missing persons and unidentified remains has long been criticized.
It was launched in 2010 and at the time, was hailed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper as "concrete action" to deal with the growing number of missing and murdered indigenous women.
But six years later the database was still incomplete and not fully functioning. It was also grossly over budget — the initial price tag of $1.6 million had inflated to more than $2.4 million.
Neither the price tag nor the politics of the database matter to Eva Yassie, however. She just wants her sister Annie back.
"She was one of the oldest ones to go missing, you know," Yassie said.
"I don't know where to turn to get help."