Downtown Eastside community supports mother in her search for missing Indigenous daughter

For a month, the community in what she calls the “dark, beautiful” Downtown Eastside has been supporting a mother searching for her missing Indigenous daughter after she says police left her to find answers herself.

“She’s in trouble. I know that. That’s the feeling I have. I have a feeling my daughter is in trouble,” says Natasha Harrison, who last heard from her daughter, Tatyanna, at the end of March. “It is not just her playing hide and seek. It’s not her avoiding anyone. If she struggles, she just calls out to close on missing persons [file]. It’s that simple. But my child has money in the bank, so it’s been sitting there. And nothing’s being done to look for her.”

Jurisdiction challenges

After a month-long search in Surrey, where her daughter lived, Harrison turned her attention to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside after she learned Tatyanna had been spending time there before she disappeared.

Harrison reported Tatyanna as a missing person to the Vancouver Police, but the case was moved to the Surrey RCMP. The VPD says that’s because Tatyanna was last seen in Surrey.

“I found her friends … her ex-boyfriends. I found where she was staying, who she was hanging around, places she was. All while VPD was pushing a file back to Surrey,” Natasha Harrison says. “I spent 20 days without the support of law enforcement whatsoever on the Downtown Eastside, by myself, looking for my daughter as a mother, because nobody’s going to look for her.”

Despite tips indicating her 20-year-old daughter was seen in the Downtown Eastside, Harrison says that officers ignored her, and she had no choice but to search for Tatyanna alone.

“She’s Indigenous. I had to do it myself.”

Community help

On Wednesday, volunteers and Tatyanna’s family, including her mother, searched for her in some of the neighbourhoods in which she was last seen. They spoke with businesses, sought camera footage and followed up on leads.

That’s something Tatyanna’s mother has been doing for months.

“It was the people of the Downtown Eastside that helped. It was them who actually got answers for Tatyanna. It was not VPD,” Harrison says.

“A mother had to go in, and talk to [police] and give them the information that I had. As a mother who’s distraught looking for a child, now I’m livid. Livid. [Police] are the people that are supposed to protect me, protect my daughter and protect the community. They left me to fend for myself without any resources, any real outreach.”

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Harrison says she was left to solve the case on her own.

“I want to know why we don’t have answers on where Tatyanna is. I want to know why there’s no answers. All the answers had to be found by mum. And I want to know why that is.”

At the end of May, VPD renewed an appeal for information in Tatyanna’s case after the Surrey RCMP asked for the public’s help to find her.

The VPD took over after investigators found evidence Tatyanna had used a bank machine in Vancouver at the end of March, the VPD tells CityNews.

In an email statement, the VPD says that “Police agencies are required to follow clear provincial policing standards for missing persons. These standards dictate that a missing person investigation must be carried out by the police agency in the jurisdiction in which the missing person was last seen.”

“It was the people of the Downtown Eastside that helped. It was them who actually got answers for Tatyanna,” says, Natasha Harrison, the mother of a missing Indigenous woman.
"[Police have] left me to fend for myself without any resources, any real outreach."@CityNewsVAN https://t.co/O4LKxvzyuZ

— Nikitha Martins (@nikitha_martins) June 17, 2022

According to Harrison, Tatyanna has been seen in the Downtown Eastside near Main and Hastings, and on Carrall Street.

She says people in the Downtown Eastside have helped fight to keep the posters of Tatyanna up when city workers tried to remove them.

And, she says Chelsea Poorman’s father asked that the mural there of his daughter be taken down after she was found dead, so that a mural of Tatyanna could be put up.

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“It was the people of the Downtown Eastside that put it up on their walls and protected that poster at all costs. It was them who said, ‘go here,’ ‘go there,’ ‘go there,’ ‘talk to this person.’ It’s the people in the Downtown Eastside that everybody walks past without seeing their faces, that helped,” Harrison says.

A mural of Tatyanna on Carrall Street has gone up because of reports she was spotted nearby at Pigeon Park and Victory Square.

Addiction is a disease

Tatyanna’s mother describes her as a strong advocate for others, who had Naloxone training and saved multiple lives.

Harrison says members of her family have struggled with addiction in the past, including Tatyanna.

“She’s always there to help people. She was always a very smart and intelligent girl, very articulate at a very young age. Her friends adore her. But she struggles,” Harrison says. “I see a lot of people struggling without the proper support and the help that they need in order to get better. Our systems is flawed through treatment, detox, rehabilitation afterwards. There’s so many cracks and you can’t expect people to be able to come out of it.”

Harrison says it’s been hard to find affordable support for her daughter.

“It’s devastating to see so much judgment come when you don’t know about addiction and are ignorant to it. So when you go down and understand this is a sickness, it’s no different than somebody who’s sick with cancer. They’re sick in addiction. And when you learn to have compassion for that, and then you learn to drop the judgment around it and understand why people get so stuck in addiction, it’ll really change your perspective on a person and allow you to talk to them like they’re a human being.”

Operating on autopilot

Through this lonely search, Harrison says she’s had to operate on autopilot, as she does not have time to be emotional about her daughter’s disappearance.

“I work, I go find my kid every single day. I’m down there looking for her. Every single day, I barely have time to even have an emotion. Because all I have to do is find my child.

“The only safe place I have an emotion is in my home. You don’t have time to cry on the Downtown Eastside when you’re looking for your kid,” she added.

“You have to go fight for your kid. I’m grateful that I have a spiritual ceremony that I can attend where I can actually get empowered and in touch with my emotion. Because otherwise, I’m gonna end up losing my vulnerability. Fighting for her like this, it’s going to get squashed.”

She says services to help have been limited and financially out of reach.

“If you want to find your kid and your child’s Indigenous, you have to go find them yourself. You have no other choice.”

As time goes on without contact with Tatyanna, Harrison says “it’s looking really grim at this point.”

Looking for a witness

Vancouver police have released photos of the last person seen with Tatyanna on March 23, and are hoping the public will help identify him.

He’s described as a man in his 30s or 40s, with a slim build, a moustache and stubble. Police say he was last seen wearing a two-toned dark grey or dark blue and white jacket, a dark hooded sweater, and a dark-coloured toque.

Vancouver police asking for the public’s help to identify a witness related to Tatyanna Harrison’s missing persons case. (Courtesy VPD)

Harrison says that man was seen on security footage going into a bank with Tatyanna. She adds that day was the last time her daughter took money out of her account.

Tatyanna is described as 5’1″ with a slim build. She has dark, medium-length hair and brown eyes. She is usually wearing her prescription glasses and loose-fitting clothing.

Harrison is hoping her daughter sees the efforts being made to find her.

“Come home. Call me. Call somebody and tell them you’re okay. Tell them you need help. We’ll come get you. I’ll come get you no matter where you are. I’ll come get you. I’ll find you,” she said. “I love you.”

– With files from OMNI News