It’s been decades since Marlene Jack saw her sister, Doreen, but she’ll never forget what she did to protect her.

Marlene and Doreen grew up in an abusive home, and when their father had parties at night, men would sometimes wander into the girls’ bedroom looking for sex.

Speaking at a hearing in Smithers, B.C. into the inquiry on missing and murdered Indigenous women, Marlene recalled through sobs how her older sister tried to keep her from harm.

"They tried with me and Doreen wouldn't allow it. She said, 'I'm older, you can try with me,'” she said.

Doreen hasn’t been seen since August, 1989, when she, her husband, Ronald, and two young boys, nine-year-old Russell and four-year-old Ryan, went missing. At the time, they were travelling on B.C.’s Highway 16, also known as the Highway of Tears.

Marlene spoke at the hearing in hopes of acknowledging the troubled past and coming to terms with residual feelings of guilt.

“You know, I feel ashamed of my life,” she said. “I was just trying to survive.”

Marlene told the hearing about how her mother abandoned her family while she and her sister were young. Their father was known to beat the girls.

“He’d come home, all angry, really drunk … I could hear screaming, yelling, banging.”

The sisters were later placed into a residential school. That’s when Marlene said her strong bond with her sister was shaken and eventually broken.

“If we were in the same room and were talking to each other and bonding as family, the nuns would grab us by our ears and pull us apart,” she said.

In the years that followed, Marlene and Doreen fell out of touch. Marlene moved to Vancouver’s downtown eastside, where she struggled with an addiction to alcohol.

When Marlene found out about her sister’s disappearance, she reached out to police, but said they refused to share much information with her. She said an officer warned her that if she shared information with the media, he would stop speaking with her.

"I was afraid to talk because I needed to stay in touch with Doreen's case," she said.

The disappearance of Doreen Jack and her family remains unsolved. Regardless, Marlene said she shared her story in hopes of joining other Indigenous voices seeking meaningful change and, possibly one day, answers.

With a report from CTV’s British Columbia Bureau Chief Melanie Nagy and The Canadian Press