There's a quietness to Sagkeeng First Nation.

Waves lap on the shore of the Winnipeg River, which flows through the centre of the community.

Red dresses tied to trees sway in the wind outside a handful of homes — hollow reminders of the women and girls taken from their families, communities and kitchen tables.

For a long time, many families have kept their grief private.

"When these things happen, you don't talk about it," Gloria Guimond, 72, told CBC News.

But in recent years, this community of just 4,000 people has been thrust into the spotlight.

In April 2017, the death of Serena McKay made headlines around the world after a video suspected of showing the fatal beating of the 19-year-old was shared on social media.

Three years earlier, the killing of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, a Sagkeeng girl whose body was bagged and tossed into the Red River in Winnipeg, gripped the country.

A CBC News analysis after Fontaine's death found that Sagkeeng, a community 100 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, has the highest number of unsolved cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada. There were six.

CBC News is now documenting five more cases dating back more than four decades. Two are unsolved. Three are unresolved, meaning families refute the police findings.

Gloria Guimond's mother, Frances May Ellah, was killed in 1975. She and other families are sharing their stories for the first time.

"Not just for [my mother]," she said.