A&C

“A Coalition of Conscience”

From Somebody’s Daughter (1492-), screening this week in Santa Fe.

Films highlighting missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls come to the Jean Cocteau

BY RILEY GARDNER riley@sfreporter.com

“The reality is this has been happening since 1492,” Tribal filmmaker Rain Bear Stands Last tells SFR. “Tribal people have been confronting this since the first reported European contact. Tragedy was authored through the doctrine of discovery.”

In today’s environment, there’s far more awareness of the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIW) than ever before. And yet, there’s silence—the symbol of a red hand over a mouth displays the complicity of those with knowledge who do nothing about it. It also becomes a striking poster image for Somebody’s Daughter (1492-), Stands Last’s documentary powerhouse examining the tragedy through Indigenous eyes.

For many viewers, it’s their first exposure outside of online discussion.

Somebody’s Daughter and the accompanying short Say Her Name both tackle the crisis with an examination into historical, economic and social aspects involved, as well as the bureaucratic messes that have allowed them to fester. The result is shaky data and even fewer resources, and the numbers are staggering. A major study from 2016 from the Urban Indian Health Institute (UIHI), for example, found 5,712 cases of MMIW in that year alone. For context, that’s more than double the number of American service people killed in 20 years of the war in Afghanistan, 9/11 or the Iraq War. Yet within the United States, where Indigenous women go missing again and again on an annual basis, media coverage is sparse and justice is rare.

Of those 5,712 who went missing in 2016, the UIHI says, the US Justice Department logged just 116 into its database. The study, which examined MMWI in urban areas, found New Mexico led the nation with 78 cases that year, with Santa Fe counting six known cases. A New Mexico-focused task force report released in 2020 noted little change, and bureaucratic jurisdictional questions—and a lack of urgency on the part of lawmakers—have left families stonewalled for years at a time.

“Tribal people are largely invisible to general society,” Stands Last explains. “They live within stereotypical constructs that provide the point of reference. If they disappear, they become ‘invisible,’ and then it doesn’t resonate among the dominant society. The media has a responsibility when it comes to this existential threat.”

Somebody’s Daughter notes issues such as male-dominated extraction industries near reservations and a culture of victim blaming. The UIHI study also found an epidemic of violent language, with common references to victims’ proximity to drugs and alcohol, sex work or mis-gendering trans women. Both the study and task force found Indigenous women are a common target for sex traffickers, whether on reservations or in urban centers.

“[There are] drug cartels, gangs and human trafficking rings. Women on reservations are more vulnerable than in urban areas,” Stands Last notes. “Production of synthetic drugs, such as meth, is a big problem in many tribal communities... and it’s being distributed to the reservations. Then women and girls are trafficked out. What’s the federal government doing to counter this? They are doing nothing. They are completely unprepared, or taking incremental, inadequate steps.”

Stands Last had been working with the late US Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia) on a bill titled the Reduce, Return and Recover Act which, among many aspects, was meant to break down the jurisdictional labyrinth while also providing highly localized tribal liaison offices. Confidential information could be safely shared between such offices, plus survivors and their families could find mental health services that blend traditional tribal healing practices with the Western medicine paradigm. Stands Last describes this as, “a full cultural competency point of reference, relative to the tribal nation.” With Lewis’ death in July 2020, he continues his search for a new congressional sponsor.

The Jean Cocteau screening is part of numerous events planned for New Mexico’s American Indian Day on Feb. 4. A gathering kicks off on the Plaza at 2 pm with organizers planning to march to the Roundhouse to urge legislators to take action. Post-screening, Stands Last and Reservation Dogs actress/activist Casey Camp-Horinek (Ponca) are slated to speak in depth and answer questions from participants. Both are leaders in the grassroots movement House of the Moon, an Indigenous women’s empowerment organization that trains tribal women in self-defense. Proceeds from the screening will go directly to support the organization.

“To address this human rights tragedy is going to take a coalition of conscience and has nothing to do with your ethnic identity, it’s about your common humanity and connecting with compassion,” Stands Last says. “It’s about understanding what’s happening is a direct correlation to what’s happening with the destruction of our Mother Earth, and to understand how everything is connected. Politicians don’t want to make the connections and want to compartmentalize. So it’ll take all of us to come together.”

SOMEBODY’S DAUGHTER (1492-) AND SAY HER NAME.

3pm, Fri, Feb 4. $5 Jean Cocteau Cinema 418 Montezuma Ave. (505) 466-5528

Louder Than Whispers

Local activist, artist, actor and filmmaker Ricky Lee Regan (Cree and Lakota) premieres his first-ever directorial effort this week, the narrative short Whispers in the Wind. Regan’s 22-minute film follows Star, an Indigenous girl investigating the disappearance of her sister while trying to avoid becoming MMIW herself. Staring Sapphire Persinger (Diné) and filmed with local crew on-location in Las Vegas, New Mexico, Regan’s film is a born-and-bred experience for Indigenous people—or what he describes as a part of their everyday reality.

“We had to be very conscious when making the film, how to tell this without making it a horror and to be sensitive to families dealing with this,” Regan explains. “But we had so much support during production from Las Vegas, from the National Indian Gaming Association, Southwest Office of MMIW and more. It really evolved into a community effort. We’d be filmmaking and everyone would be crying—it felt so real to us.”

The film was funded entirely through social media channels, with Regan giving particular praise to the late Tammy Bigday (Crow), an executive producer on the project who worked with him for over a year. The production was a place for Indigenous peoples to come together to express their fears and realities, but also to add to the collection of impressive Native cinema movements gaining strength throughout the country.

“This is an epidemic few people know about,” Regan continues. “This film is to give our stolen sisters a voice, so they aren’t just whispers in the wind.”

WHISPERS IN THE WIND

7pm, Wed, Feb. 9. Free Jean Cocteau Cinema 418 Montezuma Ave. (505) 466-5528