“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.”
Missing posters with Nevaeh Kingbird's picture and details are posted at Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig school. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
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.”
LaKaylee Kingbird, left, comforts her mother Teddi Wind, center, as they sit with Ana Negrete, interim director of Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Office, right, at Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School during graduation on Thursday. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Brown’s classroom door is decorated with Nevaeh’s missing person poster and a People magazine article about her disappearance.