Hi people, I talked about the movie “Wind River” in my first blog, “Pipelines Bring More Than Just Oil”. At the time, I was not aware of the sphere of influence that is Taylor Sheridan, the writer/director of the film. I had not started to binge-watch Yellow Stone either. Fast forward thru viewing seasons 1 and 2. I am so embarrassed for not having been aware of Taylor Sheridan and his work until very recent, while I was discussing the MMIW topic because Mr. Sheridan has been making great contributions for Indigenous people for years.
I wanted to discuss Savanna’s Act, as it is a very important bill that has passed. It’s quite a victory in seeking justice for Native communities. When I did more research about this bill, I learned Mr. Sheridan supported this in his speech in front of a Senate Committee.
Mr. Sheridan spoke in support of the missing and murdered women on Indian reservations. His testimony highlighted the number of women who have gone missing on Native American reservations. Mr. Sheridan shared a story of “Natalie”, who inspired his screenplay.
During his time in the Oglala Lakota village, he was told the story of a young Oglala Lakota lady, whom he called “Natalie.” With her remarkable athletic talent and academic record, she would become the first member of her family to attend college and a student leader. Natalie’s life path seemed to hint toward her being able to break free of the cycle of poverty that is common on Indian reservations, become a leader in her community and beyond. Natalie’s corpse was discovered in a remote area of the reservation after she had been missing for many days. The reasons for Natalie’s death remain a mystery, but stories like her’s have grown all too prevalent.
Mr. Sheridan added that other stories like Natalie’s helped shaped Wind River, a film about a young woman’s rape and murder on a reservation, as well as the agony and hardships she faced in bringing her killers to account. Researching the number of missing women on Indian reservations, Mr. Sheridan enlisted the help of a legal team. There were plans for an end-of-film postscript detailing the number of missing and killed Native American women. His team needed to contact a variety of government agencies to obtain information on missing and murdered Indigenous women since no one government agency had access to this information. Their search for trustworthy data on Indigenous women who have gone missing or been killed lasted three months, during which time they looked at academic research, government publications and spoke with representatives from every relevant organization. This knowledge really floored him and the rest of his group. In the end, Mr. Sheridan said in the film: “While missing person statistics are kept for every other group, none exist for Native American women. It’s impossible to say exactly how many people have vanished.No one knows how many are missing”.
Mr. Sheridan stressed that Tribal governments need data to understand the problem, freedom from bureaucracy to investigate, and autonomy to combat the problem and urged Congress to pass Savanna’s Act, which would ensure that the voices of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls will not be silenced.”
Until next time…