Billy Blackbird says he's been in the dark about his mother his entire life.

He was only six months old when Margaret Blackbird disappeared in 1951.

“She said she was going to the sanitorium. That’s what she told her dad,” Billy said.

“She just walked out and left.”

He says he doesn’t know why she would be going to a tuberculosis sanitorium in the first place.

After she disappeared, Billy was raised by his maternal grandfather.

“I never knew her,” he said about his mom.

Billy is the biological son of Margaret and Tom Blackbird. He had a sister, Marlene Blackbird, who passed away 15 years ago. 

He and Marlene were taken in and raised by different family members.

“I was 13 years old when I saw my real sister. My dad never came around,” Billy said. 

“At the time, we were pretty isolated.”

He also has a half-sister named Cecile Blackbird, who grew up with Marlene.

What little he knows about his mom was that she was adopted and raised by a family known as the Lepins in Pierceland, a community in northwestern Saskatchewan, near the Alberta border.

An uncle had told him that he saw his mother, Margaret, in Lethbridge, Alta. in 1957.

“I guess my mom used to sing and play music and used to sing in bars,” Billy said. 

“I heard she used to sing country and play guitar.”

Cecile Blackbird says she was just 12 years old when her stepmother, Margaret, went missing.

“Last time I seen her, she was living with my dad and then after that she went away,” she said.

Cecile attended residential school when she was a child and would only come home during the summer break to stay with relatives.

She irregularly stayed with Tom and Margaret.

Cecile remembers her stepmom being pregnant with Billy.

She also faintly recalls seeing an old photo of Margaret, standing with Tom by a car when Margaret was pregnant with Marlene.

“She was kind of shy,” Cecile said. 

“She was smiling.”

When Margaret went missing, Cecile says her dad, Tom tried to find out what happened.

She heard stories that Margaret went to British Columbia.

Cecile says the police have rarely come around to ask questions about Margaret’s disappearance.

She remembers one visit years ago, when she says police may have found a clue in Pierceland, Sask. But in the end, it wasn't connected to Margaret.

“What I would like to know [is] if she is still alive or some place,” Cecile said.

“I told her brother one time, if I had money I could hire somebody to try and find her.”

Dolly Bear, Margaret’s great-niece, said she once heard through a relative that Margaret was killed in a car accident in Edmonton, Alta.

She says she isn’t sure if it’s true.

Bear remembers being told by her grandmother, Nancy — Margaret’s sister — that Margaret left her husband because she was mad at him.

At the time, the family was living on a farm in Loon Lake, Sask.

In 2015, Margaret, who was from  the Big Island Lake Cree Nation, a community in Saskatchewan, would be 82 years old.

Hers is the oldest missing and/or murdered indigenous woman case on record in Canada, and her daughter, Cecile, supports the possibility of a federal inquiry into Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous girls and women.