A River Through Two Harbors

When Deidre Johnson fills in for Silver Bay’s only police officer for six weeks, she doesn’t anticipate facing anything of consequence. She is so wrong. She discovers the frozen body of a Cree Indian girl within the city limits, and in the process of her investigation uncovers a sex-trafficking ring involving native women being transported from Canada and sold in the Duluth Harbor. She is torn between the normalcy she sees around her and the long-kept secret river of young girls that flows through Two Harbors to Duluth. “SEX TRAFFICKING during hunting season?” the question on the billboard erected outside Two Harbors asked. “The sign is intended to raise awareness of sex trafficking to the hundreds of deer hunters traveling through the country over the next several weeks. ‘They’re all over—walking by abandoned buildings and down long [logging] roads’ according to a Lake County Commissioner.” —Lake County News Chronicle, November 8, 2013 “Trafficking of Native women is rampant in northern Minnesota. The Duluth harbor is notorious among native people as a site for the trafficking of Native women from northern reservations.” —Christine Stark, Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 4, 2013 “Known as the Lake Superior sex trade,” says author and researcher Christine Stark, “teenage girls and boys, and even babies are being sold on ships in the Duluth, Minnesota harbors and being sent to Ontario, Canada. Indigenous women from Canada, specifically Thunder Bay, are also being sold on ships headed for Duluth.” —MintPress News, September 19, 2013

Dennis lived on the North Shore for many years. He now lives in Sartell, Minnesota.