Two graduations, two empty chairs and the long shadow of a missing Indigenous teen

BENA, MINN. - The pomp and circumstance of graduation carried somber tones for the Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School class of 2025.

A dozen seniors graduated Thursday, and two classmates received honorary diplomas — their absence marked with a pair of empty chairs on center stage in the school gymnasium.

As the students walked into the gym, they held framed photos of the two friends they lost in 2021 and who should be graduating with them: Preston White, 14, died by suicide that March, and Nevaeh Kingbird, 15, went missing on a cold October night.

In the long shadow of Nevaeh’s unsolved disappearance, friends and family continue to search for answers and purpose. Her mother, Teddi Wind, sat in front row of the graduation ceremony. She has never given up hope in finding her daughter but has taken much of the search into her own hands.

Wind graduated from the law enforcement program at Leech Lake Tribal College on May 17. That same day, she attended a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) event at Bemidji’s Sanford Center, where she spoke in front of supporters.

Wind told them she earned her degree in honor of Nevaeh and because she no longer has faith in law enforcement finding her.

“In my journey at school, I learned that there were holes that they missed while they investigated my daughter’s case,” she said.

“No parent should ever feel the way that I feel ... not knowing where their child is, having to celebrate their milestones without them.”

Wind said she is happy for her daughter’s friends and wishes Nevaeh — heaven spelled backward — was there for this moment.

“She loved school, loved this place,” she said.

For this small K-12 school in the center of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe reservation in north-central Minnesota, reaching this milestone carries additional meaning given the obstacles they have overcome.

In Minnesota, the graduation rate for Native Americans is a little over 60% compared with nearly 90% for white peers. Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig students once had to study in a school that was in dire need of repairs and among the worst in the federal Bureau of Indian Education system. But in 2018, the government finally followed through on treaty obligations and moved them from a leaking pole barn into a new facility.

When the pandemic struck, however, these students had to navigate distance learning, only to return to classrooms in 2021 and lose Preston, then Nevaeh.

“It’s kind of just a lot of emotions today,” Kimmela GrayHawk, who was Preston’s cousin and Nevaeh’s best friend, said as she waited in the library for the ceremony to start.

“But overall, I’m proud of myself, happy that I made it. I’m gonna walk with them in my heart because they will always be there, always.”

Teacher Bambi Brown said in her graduation address that memories of Nevaeh and Preston are vivid. He was known for being a talented pow-wow dancer and drummer. She said Nevaeh took his passing hard.

An incomplete vision board Nevaeh was working on before she vanished in Bemidji on Oct. 22, 2021, included many quotes about loss. She wore Preston’s clothes to feel closer to him, Brown said.

Nevaeh had a passion for volleyball. She was artistic and fluent in Ojibwe. She wanted to go to college in Colorado.

“You could often hear Nevaeh saying, ‘Love you’ to her friends as she went down the hall,” Brown said. “She felt things real deeply and was extremely sentimental.”

Brown’s classroom door is decorated with Nevaeh’s missing person poster and a People magazine article about her disappearance.

Posters that students bring to rallies and marches for MMIR hang in the hallways.

This spring, the idea was floated to put a red handprint that symbolizes missing Indigenous women on graduation caps. So many seniors were supportive of the idea that they all got the decals, which Wind paid to have done at a shop in Bemidji. A silhouette of Nevaeh was in the center of the handprint.

Brown said Nevaeh would be proud of the class showing support of MMIR at graduation. “It’s exactly what she would have done if she were in your shoes,” she said.

“When we find Nevaeh — and we will — she surely will go on to help Native youth in our communities," she said.

Wind said during the first year of her daughter’s disappearance, she couldn’t speak and had to relearn how to be a parent. At the time, she was raising a baby.

She pursued a degree, held two jobs at the casino and Indigenous treatment center, and raised six children, all while searching for Nevaeh and maintaining her sobriety.

“I did what I could to keep going,” Wind said, “and then I had to find my voice again.”

She works closely with Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Office, the first office of its kind in the nation dedicated to MMIR.

She’s planning search efforts for Nevaeh this summer and is seeking employment options to put her new degree to work.

Nevaeh’s sister, LaKaylee Kingbird, 20, is following her mom’s footsteps and will return to the tribal college in the fall to earn the same degree.

“[It’s] inspirational knowing everything she went through, watching her cry when she couldn’t get homework done, and she ended up getting it done anyway,” said LaKaylee, who graduated from Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School in 2023. “Just seeing her push through all that and coming out stronger than she was before is very beautiful.”

Petra Rodriquez is a family liaison at the school who grew close to LaKaylee after her sister’s disappearance.

“I’m just so proud of how she overcame all that heartbreak,” Rodriquez said of LaKaylee.

Rodriquez said Nevaeh should be here. She wants recent graduates to not take life for granted, to be grateful and to be careful out in the world.

“There’s a lot of strong kids,” she said. “I just hope they can honor her by reaching their goals.”

Nevaeh’s letter jacket was draped on the empty chair at the ceremony. When Wind retrieved her daughter’s diploma, eagle feather and Pendleton blanket gifted by elders, she put on the jacket and glanced down at Nevaeh’s name stitched on the front.

“She probably would love this more than anything.”

Anyone with information on Nevaeh’s case can call the Bemidji police tip line at 218-333-9111, or submit tips by texting 847411.