[wind whooshing]
[suspenseful music playing]
[man] They tried to make it look like I murdered some guy in cold blood.
And that's not what happened. I'm a victim of a hate crime.
[man] It tore me apart when I found out he died.
Him being another American Indian brother, you know what I mean?
I mean, that's like killing my biological brother. That's how I felt.
[music swells]
[music fades]
[theme music plays]
[man 1] we could all be dangerous people.
[man 2]
[man 3] saying I'm innocent.
[man 4] some guy in cold blood.
[theme song fades]
[intriguing guitar music playing]
[Makueeyapee] I was born in Montana.
1980. November 13th, 1980.
They brought me back in a cardboard box to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation
because we didn't have the money to afford
a car seat or anything. Know what I mean?
Everybody thinks America is a place that is rich.
But what they don't understand is that American Indian reservations,
we're… we're third world countries.
[music continues]
My grandfather was Chief Running Crane,
who was the last chief of the Blackfeet Indian Nation.
My dad was full-blooded Indian.
That was part of the heritage that I grew up in.
But on my mom's side, they're all white.
My childhood was a rollercoaster ride. Yeah.
[unsettling music playing]
[Makueeyapee] My mother had seven kids, and we're all from different fathers.
She'd move from place to place, all over.
I've been in Montana, I've been in Idaho,
Washington, California, Oregon, all throughout the Northwest.
The happiest time in my life was when I was about eight years old,
and we lived in Idaho with my stepdad.
He lived on a ranch.
I'd go out doing fence with him and everything like that.
We'd chase off coyotes.
But he started beating my mom, and, uh,
that's why my mom eventually left.
So, I hopped off the rollercoaster ride with my mother
and moved in with my uncles.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Makueeyapee] It was wild.
The east side of Tacoma was the worst sector in Washington State.
It had the highest murder rate.
It was filled with gang violence.
I was part of that criminal lifestyle, I suppose.
My uncles worked full-time,
and they didn't mind me running around doing what I was doing.
I'd wake up and start moving around from house to house,
and yeah, it was nothing but criminal activity all over.
[suspenseful music continues]
[Makueeyapee] I got my 18 money, bought a car, everything like that.
And I started spending money.
Drinking, getting high, whatever, you know, just partying around.
And, uh, I ran out of money.
And, uh… You know, I didn't know what else to do.
So, I robbed a hotel.
And, uh, it's kind of funny.
I didn't get nothing out of that robbery at all.
It was an old woman.
And I decided that, "I'm not gonna rob this lady."
But I had already went in there and had the gun out and everything like that,
and pointed it at her, and I'm looking at her, and I'm, like,
"I'm not gonna do this."
[intriguing music playing]
[Makueeyapee] I ended up getting robbery in the first,
assault, assault, assault in the second,
eluding the police, and a deadly weapon enhancement
because the three assaults in the second degree was for
supposedly driving the vehicles off the road.
[dramatic sting]
[Makueeyapee] My dad said, "When you go to prison, take it as a college experience."
And that's exactly what I did. I studied my butt off.
I… I didn't have no schooling either at that time
because I basic… I dropped out in about seventh grade.
But I grabbed book after book after book.
And that's how my writing got so good.
[soft guitar music playing]
[Makueeyapee] When I got to the joint, I was the youngest one on the yard.
The brothers seen it, and they started training me and everything,
about our traditional way of life.
It was called the Indians of All Tribes.
It was all about Native pride.
One of the first things they did
was give me the drum to hold as a drum carrier.
Because it's the heartbeat of the people.
And I found myself.
[music fades]
[hopeful music playing]
[Makueeyapee] From that point,
I started doing very well in my whole life.
[music continues]
Within two months of being out,
I met my baby's mama, and, uh, we just hit it off.
A month after that, she's pregnant with my son.
And then I end up having my daughter within ten months of when my son was born.
I loved it.
My kids were my pride and joy.
I was going to college full-time,
and I started doing good. I was a 4.0 GPA student.
I was on the dean's list at the Blackfeet Community College.
I wanted to get my PhD in Native American studies, in Native American law.
Specifically treaty rights and stuff, and casino rights.
My way of life is the Blackfeet Indian way of life.
But I also believe in the unity of our people.
I know different songs from different tribes.
I'll sing everybody's songs.
Whereas some people, it's all about their tribe versus my tribe,
or this tribe versus that tribe.
It should be about the unity of our people, not the disunity.
And tribalism,
that was kind of one of the things that happened with this homicide.
[intriguing music playing]
[Makueeyapee] My friend Adrian After Buffalo,
him and his wife were having issues,
and he wanted to get back with his wife.
She was over in… in Polson, Montana.
He started looking for a ride. I said, "I can take you over to Polson,
and you can find your wife and your kids."
So we headed over there.
[music continues]
[Makueeyapee] We rented a hotel and stuff.
I bought a 30-pack of Budweisers.
I told him, I said, "You can drive, and I'll just sit back."
That's what we did.
We started cruising around, going from one spot to the next.
We checked some of the bars.
Right before closing,
we ended up getting invited to a house party.
[suspenseful music playing]
We get over to the house party, and I said,
"Well, back up there, and we'll pop the trunk, and we'll listen to music."
I was feeling good.
But, uh, the party was more inside than it was outside.
So I decided, "Well, maybe I'll… I'll go inside."
When I went in, I tried to make a joke to try to fucking break the ice.
I said, "Hey, man, where are all the Blackfeet at?"
And I looked like this,
because this obviously is the Flathead Indian Reservation.
It's not the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.
I wanted it to be a funny little joke just to kind of introduce myself to this group.
Some guy… Some kid standing next to me…
looks over at me, and he says… he says, "Shit, motherfuckers get fucking…
get their asses fucking jumped for talking shit like that around here."
These guys had some kind of issue with Blackfeet, Salish, Kootenai
rivalry that dates back to the 1800s.
But, uh, I didn't know any of that.
I didn't know that Salish and Kootenai, there was things going on there.
And automatically I'm, like, [blows] "Whoa."
I'm in a house standing next to a group of people
and… that I don't know, and you're talking about jumping me?
I didn't even say nothing
that I would consider,
uh, any kind of derogatory statement.
And one thing that I learned in prison is don't show fear.
Don't show fear, because the moment that you show fear,
these guys are gonna jump you.
I had a knife because that's the number one thing we protect ourselves with
on the reservations.
And I… I pull out my knife, and I said, "Look, man, if anybody tries to jump me,
I will defend myself."
[tense music playing]
Another guy turned around, and he says,
"You know, uh, we all got knives in here."
Pulled out his knife.
His knife was like that. That was just the blade.
And I'm looking at them, and I'm, like…
"All right. We all got knives. [chuckles] You just calm down."
And I turned back around, and I walked out.
And I took a deep breath 'cause I was outside. I was like… [exhales]
"All right, you're outside."
"You're cool."
This guy, John Pierre, Jr., comes out of the shadows,
comes walking right up to me like he's going to fight me.
[dramatic sting]
He said, "Hey, you know what?"
He said, "You know, Blackfeet and Salish Kootenai are archenemies."
I said, "Look, man, I ain't even about that. I'm about Native pride."
"I ain't about all that."
He just kind of looked at me.
And I started walking towards my car.
And then all these people come walking out…
[music swells]
…coming surrounding me.
John Pierre, Jr. came at me.
That's when I struck out
and stabbed this guy.
[engine starts]
[tense music continues]
[Makueeyapee] It was self-defense from a hate crime.
I stabbed this guy one single time. That was it.
[uneasy music playing]
I knew that those guys had knives.
I felt that they were gonna come jump me.
Why were these guys targeting me?
Because I was Blackfeet.
That's a hate crime.
That's what it comes down to.
[music fades]
[intriguing music playing]
[man] I was working patrol.
Another officer and myself were, uh, dispatched
to a loud party disturbance.
Just go ask them to quiet it down.
We got two to three blocks away from that address,
and, uh, we got told that there had been a stabbing.
[music continues]
This is the place.
And there was young men and young women running from the scene down the driveway,
running around our vehicles.
As I got closer,
I could see a group of people around a male
that was sitting on the ground here.
That was John Pierre.
I've known him for a long time. I've known the family a long time.
And when I… [sighs] …uh, went up and talked to John,
he… he did not respond back to me.
[sighs]
I… I would say that he was already in a state of shock.
The small amount of blood that, uh, that was coming out of his shirt
made me believe that he had a substantial bleed internally.
I… I talked to him until we finally… He… He went unconscious.
And we laid him back, checked for pulse,
and then we started CPR.
[soft music playing]
[music swells]
[Donald Bell] You know, we deal with a lot of bad things, and
it always, uh, is hard when
somebody from the community, uh, dies senseless like this. So…
[soft music continues]
[exhales]
[dramatic sting]
[unsettling music playing]
[dramatic sting]
We have the motel surrounded.
[suspenseful music playing]
We knock on the door, and the person that comes to the door is Mr. Whitford.
The room is quite in disarray.
Garbage on the floor. Blankets on the floor.
He initially denies even being at the party.
Then he admitted that he had been there,
but denied any, uh, part of an altercation.
When we have somebody that we're talking to and they change their story,
what are you trying to cover up?
Why would you do that? An average person has nothing to hide.
But that's just how some people operate when they try to get out of trouble.
[dramatic sting]
[Makueeyapee, on recording] The cops came to my room, and I tried to bullshit them.
I'll be the first one to admit I was scared as hell to… to even say anything.
That's part of my raising.
Don't talk to the cops. Don't say nothing.
You know? We have a very deep distrust for the cops.
My… My uncle David was shot and killed by the Tacoma Police Department.
We don't… We don't trust the cops for nothing.
[uneasy music playing]
[breathes deeply]
Just because somebody in some other place
had been treated poorly by law enforcement,
um, doesn't justify not trusting us that we're going to do our job here.
So, I think that was his motivation,
is to lie to try to get out of, uh,
the consequences for his actions that night.
To me, he's not showing any remorse for it.
Um, he's not happy that he was caught,
and he did not want to be held accountable, uh, for what he'd done.
[dramatic sting]
[soft guitar music playing]
[woman] The state, their version of the events
was to paint Whitford as the only aggressor of the… of the evening.
But the concept just really didn't add up.
Whether it was justified or not,
in any argument or fight, there has to be
two people to engage.
There had to have been some interaction.
So, I personally found Mak's version of the events to be credible.
[guitar music continues]
My name is Jennifer Streano. I was Mr. Whitford's trial attorney.
You are parole eligible at a quarter of your time.
He received a 60-year sentence,
which means he should be parole eligible in 15 years.
And the judge put a 25-year parole restriction,
which would equate to him receiving a sentence of 100 years.
It is a brutal outcome.
Everything that he worked his adult life to try to regain is now gone.
[dramatic music playing]
You know, all of that because of a two-to-three-second decision.
You know, that's heartbreaking.
[music continues]
[kettle whistling softly]
[whistling stops]
Legally, Mak committed a homicide.
There's no question about that.
I'm sure he regrets that decision.
A life was lost, and that's the ultimate tragedy.
But it is legally allowed to commit a homicide
if you're afraid for your own life.
And so that's really where the question comes down to.
Did Mak make that split-second decision because he was afraid for his own life,
or because he was angry or defensive,
or just, um, overreacted?
It's completely understandable that Mak would react
impulsively in those circumstances.
He had… had a pretty rough upbringing.
And his trauma definitely played into how he responded that night.
[music fades]
[birdsong]
[pensive guitar music playing]
[woman] Sometimes violence is so shocking
that I think it just kind of overshadows all the good things.
After Mak got out of prison in Washington,
he honestly was on this path where he was amazing.
[music continues]
He was doing everything he could to make his life stable
and really push towards advocacy for the Natives.
And that was really important to him. That was a huge thing.
It is a tragedy to me that it didn't work out.
But I think that Mak reacted
in the only way he knew how at that moment.
My name is Amie, and I am Makueeyapee's sister.
Mak's dad was a Blackfeet National, and my dad is Cherokee.
But we share a mother.
She came from a really bad background, a really hard background.
She had kids very young, at 12 years old.
She was 16 when she had me.
[Amie] At that time, the government could come in and take children,
and it was perfectly legal.
Our adoption mentally broke our mother
in ways that she was never able to get back from.
It left something, just a hole there that she couldn't fill.
Nothing was ever stable or normal.
She inevitably made really horrible choices when it came to men.
A lot of alcohol, drugs,
a lot of physical and verbal abuse.
[wind chime tinkles]
Mak grew up with that.
[soft music playing]
[music fades]
[Makueeyapee, on recording] incident with violence, I was three.
These two children that lived across the street from us,
we always used to play in the mud puddles and stuff.
[voice breaking] It's… It's hard.
It's hard to talk about.
[Makueeyapee clears throat]
That ended up coming to a close, uh, with our next-door neighbor,
who I guess had been having an affair with my mother,
and I didn't know it. Um…
We went over there. She took me and my sister,
and there was an argument in the house.
He ended up shooting his, uh, wife five times in the chest
with a .357 Magnum. And…
[inhales deeply]
This lady died in my mom's arms.
I don't remember where that guy went, but when the cops caught up with him,
he'd ended up shooting his kids once in the stomach, killing both of them,
and himself in the head.
Shot himself in the head.
[sighs] And, uh…
all I could do was grab my sister and cover her up and hold her. And…
I could tell you other violence and stuff that happened.
But that was how my life started.
[voice breaking] Just… That's a real powerful memory.
[soft music playing]
I feel for the child that Mak was, because going through that was,
I'm sure, absolutely hideous.
He's, from his youngest age, dealt with the reality
that these men can kill you.
You know, that was a life lesson that I don't think he ever lost.
I think that it definitely speaks
why he would react so violently
to being in a situation where he felt that he was in trouble.
Somebody tries to hurt you,
and you go straight back to childhood and protecting yourself.
[music swells]
The Pierre family have every right to be angry at Mak.
John Pierre never should've died.
But I don't think Mak meant to kill him.
I think he just wanted to get away before he got hurt.
[music fades]
[unsettling music playing]
[man] Way in there like that.
-How are we? Yep. Throw him in there. -There he is!
Good job. Then bury him. You ready? Go. Go.
-Very classy, buddy. Yeah. -[child babbles]
[unsettling music playing]
[Magnus Harlow] I got up to that party about three o'clock in the morning.
Everybody's partying outside.
Everybody's laughing.
As I'm going into the house, I ran into Whitford.
[unsettling music continues]
Whitford was a little bit tense.
The Blackfoot Reservation and this reservation
are… two completely different… uh…
pieces of earth, man.
Is there still that mistrust between our two tribes?
Yeah.
We started talking, and he says, "Hey, do you know all these people here?"
And I said, yeah. I said, "Yep. I know 'em all."
Like, out of nowhere, he just stops in the middle of our conversation,
and he decides to, you know, share with me, you know, that,
"I'm feeling threatened."
It was, like… [fingers snap]
… some switch.
He says, well… He…
He takes a knife out of his pocket, a paring knife,
and it's got white tape or duct tape around the… around the handle.
And he says, "This is for anybody who wants to, uh,
you know, try to talk shit or start some shit."
And I was, like, "Put that away!"
I was, like, "All these people here are my family and friends."
I was, like, "Everybody's cool here."
God knows what could be going through his head, you know.
The guy looks like he's seen some shit.
[unsettling music playing]
[Magnus Harlow] We start having a conversation.
And, uh, Whitford or Adrian said,
I remember it just, like, hitting John in the face like a punch.
Piikani
And John says, uh,
"So, you're Blackfeet?"
And he says, "Yeah." And John says, "I'm Kootenai."
And, uh, Kootenai and Blackfeet have been sworn enemies for hundreds of years.
I think what John was doing was kind of trying to establish that dominance.
"This is my reservation, you know, and if, uh…
if you got problems or whatever, we can handle it."
And fights happen, you know. People get beat up sometimes.
So, my first thought of it… of it is, "Don't let it go any farther than this."
I remember trying to defuse the situation.
"No, that was hundreds of years ago, man. Times… Times have changed."
[unsettling music continues]
I'm in there for maybe a minute and a half,
two minutes.
My friend runs in the house and says, "They stabbed John."
"They stabbed John! Get out here right now!"
So, I take off running outside.
John was laying down on the ground.
He wasn't responding to… anything.
He's still breathing. And, uh…
[inhales]
[clears throat]
[sighs] There was nothing we could do about it.
[exhales]
[soft music playing]
John believed in throwing hands.
Maybe a little fight, you know, that's probably what he wanted or whatever.
But he did not deserve to die.
John was a family man.
Took care of his two sons.
They were the center of his universe.
He should still be here. And he should be with his family and his loved ones.
And he can't.
I think Whitford was paranoid.
I met him for 15 minutes, and he took away a lot of people's friend,
brother, father, and uncle.
So, I couldn't care less about Whitford.
[music fades]
[unsettling music playing]
[man] I believe that Mr. Whitford believes in his own mind
that he does nothing wrong,
and everybody else is out to get him or hurt him.
And he's had that hardwired into him since he was young.
My name is John Todd. I'm one of the jail commanders
for the Lake County Sheriff's Office in Polson, Montana.
I was one of the senior guys in the jail at the time Mr. Whitford was here.
Mr. Whitford could be violent,
and often was.
If he didn't get his way, then he immediately went to the violence.
We never knew from one minute to the other,
are we gonna be fighting with this guy, rolling around on the floor,
or is he gonna cooperate with us?
He was, I'd have to say, kind of a bully.
He would poke at the smaller, weaker guys
and just poke and poke and poke until they exploded.
And then he would hurt them, or attempt to hurt them.
And then it was never his fault.
He was, "They did it. They started it. It was their fault."
Even though he was the one doing the poking and the… and the prodding.
[suspenseful music playing]
He'd always say, "Well, I'm Blackfeet."
"And this is the Salish and Kootenai reservation that we're on."
And he was instantly on the, uh, defensive with whoever it was.
He just chose to believe that he was being oppressed and… and picked on,
and so his… his reaction was to fight.
That was just Mr. Whitford.
[suspenseful music continues]
[music fades]
[soft music playing]
[man] Whitford's position was that he was the victim of a hate crime.
But there wasn't anything much to support his version of the events.
All of the other witnesses, all of the other evidence and so forth
seemed to be contrary to what his self-defense claim was.
[music fades]
[pensive music playing]
The Blackfeet and the Salish were historically at war.
But that was 170 years ago.
While there may still be sometimes some, uh, competition or tension,
in the meantime, they've intermarried and interacted.
And a lot of Blackfeet come over here
and attend the college here or get jobs here.
So, Whitford's position that he was surrounded by Salish,
and therefore it was a hate crime and he had to defend himself,
wasn't a very persuasive argument.
There was no reason for any of this.
I sentenced Whitford to 60 years in prison
with a minimum of 25 years before he would be considered or eligible for parole.
I thought that that was a fair sentence.
The consequences to John Pierre were pretty darn serious too.
[music fades]
[Makueeyapee, on recording] never even got a sentence.
I should have been… I should have walked out of that courtroom.
You know, this was self-defense.
They didn't like the fact that I had mentioned anything about being Blackfeet.
It's a hate crime because of my nationality.
Their nationality as a Kootenai nation
and my nationality as a Blackfeet tribal.
That's what it comes down to.
[pensive music playing]
Well, it's troubling to hear him, uh, speak like that,
because in his mind, he did nothing wrong.
Most people, even honest people,
recreate an event in their mind, often subconsciously,
so that it's consistent with their psychological needs.
I suspect that some of that was in play.
Mr. Whitford and the fellow he was riding with,
they'd had something like 30 beers before they ever got to this party.
Whether he could remember accurately his emotions or motives or why he did things,
I find that… questionable.
From what I understand about Mr. Whitford's behavior
in prison since then, he hasn't changed.
For his sake, I hope he will at some point.
Because otherwise he'll probably spend the rest of his life in jail.
If I were to ask him one thing, it would be,
"After all this, have you learned nothing?"
"Have you learned no lesson from this tragedy?"
He killed another human being, and that doesn't seem to bother him.
He's only feeling sorry for himself.
[pensive music continues]
[clears throat]
[music fades]
[end theme music playing]
[music fades]