Over the past ten years, hundreds of young Indigenous women and girls have vanished in Montana’s Big Sky Country’s vast expanses. However, little has been done to address it. A highly unsettling set of circumstances are revealed in the brand-new documentary series Murder in Big Horn, which premieres on Showtime today.
In these cases, “arrests are unusual and convictions nearly non-existent.” Law enforcement responds to the questions of troubled Native families with silence or indifference. Razelle Benally, an Oglala Lakota/Diné filmmaker, and Matthew Galkin are the co-directors of the three-part series. It had its world premiere earlier this month at the Sundance Film Festival.
In an interview with Deadline in Park City, Benally said, “As a Native girl growing into a Native woman, this fear of being taken, going missing, or being murdered has always been my reality. I had always felt so deeply about this subject. Additionally, I have always incorporated social justice into my work. As a result, directing this documentary series was simply a natural progression of my career as a director and filmmaker.”
You can watch a clip from the series above for the first time. The excerpt demonstrates that the fragmented authority over Indigenous communities, which ranges from federal agencies to tribal leaders, is one of the critical issues hampering the investigation of missing or killed women.
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The FBI and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have authority over crimes committed on tribal reservations, according to attorney Mary Kathryn Nagle in the video. The first people to arrive at a crime scene would be BIA law officials, after which the FBI would be contacted.
However, if non-Indians commit crimes on tribal lands, the BIA cannot prosecute them as criminals. Therefore, when we reside in our houses on our tribal territory, our government is powerless to defend us against any crime committed by a non-Indian.
Ivan MacDonald, Ivy MacDonald, and Razelle Benally are the show’s producers. Vinnie Malhotra and Matthew Galkin serve as executive producers. Jeff Hutchens is the series’ director of photography, and David Mehlman and Fanny Lee are its editors. Laura Ortman created the soundtrack.
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