This is part one in a two-part series. This series discusses drug use, violence, and crime scenes.

Listener discretion is advised.

This is the Fall Line.

There are things Sanya Perez knows about her mother, Lily, Aline, Squaie, Quay, Finley. Most everyone called her Cherokee. Those who didn't called her daughter.

Sister, Mama, Auntie, and also, the other one, the other one, the other one.

There are things Sanya Perez knows about her mother. Lily, Aline, Squaie, Quay, Finley. Most everyone called her Cherokee. Those who didn't called her daughter.

Sister, Mama, Auntie, or Mima. Sanya knows her mother was a giving person. Someone who would open her doors to anyone who needed help.

Wherever they lived, whether it was on the confederated Salish and Kutani flathead reservation in Montana or on the Pueola reservation in Washington or anywhere in between.

Sanya remembers moving back and forth between both reservations, with her mother, her stepfather, who she called dad, her siblings.

And she was used to Cherokee taking in others along the way, who needed help, a warm jacket, a sandwich, and place to sleep. She'd offer it.

That was one of the many great qualities that Sanya saw in her mother.

Sanya also knows that her mother was married to her birth father when she was born. The relationship hadn't worked out, and Sanya had spent a few years with her paternal grandparents while Cherokee established herself.

She knows that Cherokee had wanted to know more about her own native heritage, but that Cherokee's own mother, Sanya's grandmother, didn't want her children to carry that knowledge.

It's only recently, through an older relative's documentation, that she's learned more about her mother's specific tribal associations.

Those records led Sanya to the Nakedish tribe of Louisiana, which is Cherokee's home state.

Sanya knows her mother was a passionate, loving woman. She knows her mother struggled with drugs and alcohol on and off throughout her life.

But, Sanya points out, she never let her children go without. She knows that Cherokee loved her grandchildren and her friends and family immensely.

And then there are the things that Sanya doesn't know. The things she's had to try and unravel herself, bit by bit, and the year since Cherokee's untimely death.

Because when her mother's body was discovered in an isolated wooded area of the confederated Salish and Kutni flathead reservation in late April of 1998, Sanya felt that she knew something else.

That her mother, Cherokee-friendly, had been murdered.

There were multiple agencies involved in the case. This was because Cherokee had been discovered on the reservation.

Sanya tells us they included the Lake County Sheriff, the FBI, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Reservations Tribal Police.

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