Original subtitles

tense music

I was born and raised here,

and my identity is with my people here on the Northern

Cheyenne Reservation.

I'm very proud because every day I'm reminded of our victory...

'cause right now, I'm still here.

But we've been subdued into this lifestyle we're in,

and we're having a real hard time adjusting to it.

Our menfolk lost our role as a warrior,

protector, provider.

Our spirit's been stripped.

We've been stripped of our language.

We've been stripped of our way of life.

And my grandfather, he always used to tell me,

"If you want to address the problem,

address its roots."

That's why I'm here now.

I work for the Northern Cheyenne Tribe,

and this is the checkpoint security.

We keep track of occupants, plate numbers...

and activity.

Law enforcement is pretty poor at their job right now.

A lot of families have been let down because of their neglect

over my people.

My role as a man... a Cheyenne man in general...

You protect the women, and you protect the children,

and the elders.

Always be ready, 'cause you never know if an enemy is gonna

come.

We have predators, child molesters,

rapists that see the opportunity to prey on a vulnerable female.

We only get one life, and we're only passing through here.

But right now, we've kind of become hopeless.

But that's the worst thing you can do.

Don't give up.

Tense ambient music

tense ambient music

It's 2022.

It's been two years since Selena's case.

It's been three years since Kaysera's,

and four since Henny's.

I've seen more representation of the movement in the media

than I have ever seen before.

You know, five, six years ago, we weren't getting any news

coverage for these cases.

People have been asking me about the necklace I'm wearing.

It represents all indigenous women who went missing.

466 indigenous women and girls were reported missing.

She went missing two years ago.

Her death is part of a pattern of murdered indigenous women.

I'll see MMIW on T-shirts, in music videos,

or in the new season of Dexter.

You know, like mainstream media.

We had a helicopter fly over.

We had people walking.

What these families really did was help solidify Big

Horn County's Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women's

Movement nationwide.

Justice for Selena!

This movement was so loud and it was so strong,

you would think that change would have happened.

But nothing really became of it.

Nobody has answers.

We don't know anything more than the day those girls died.

We've heard nothing on Selena, and as far as I know,

her case is sitting in evidence at the Big Horn County Sheriff's

Office, where her dad now works as the undersheriff,

and there's still no movement.

When I took the oath in Big Horn County, Montana,

I made the personal decision and the professional

decision to insulate myself from any investigations

because...

I, as a law enforcement officer, cannot compromise an

investigation that may or may not be ongoing.

When I resigned as the undersheriff,

the Sheriff, Lawrence Big Hair, I think he wanted a Native

American undersheriff, and Leroy was a good choice at the time.

The Sheriff, he can... he can appoint you and unappoint you

the next day and he doesn't have to tell you why,

and I didn't ask him why.

I was actually relieved.

I mean, if you can imagine the pressure that you felt from just

that one case.

Today, in the Selena Not Afraid case,

the investigation is pretty much complete.

There's nothing left to look into.

In fact, Big Horn County gave the whole case to another agency

to look at it, and they went through it with a fine-tooth

comb to see what we should've done,

could've done, would've done, or if there's anything illegal or

immoral or anything else wrong with the case,

and they came back with nothing.

She died of hypothermia.

They try to say hypothermia, but when we were at the rest

area looking, she wasn't there.

'Cause that's what it is: they took her back.

There's all kinds of roads back there on that little section she

was found.

So there's a way they got there and they dumped her,

and she was right there by that cut across,

just a few feet off of the road.

I suspected that somebody abducted her right away;

I knew that.

'Cause we couldn't find her.

To my knowledge of what law enforcement shared with

me on that day, that was the official cause of death:

hypothermia.

And I'm not gonna dive into conspiracy theories

or bullshit...

on what everyone is saying on social media.

There's nothing I can do today that's gonna bring back my

daughter!

There's a lot of corruption here;

you can't get nothing done.

You can get killed real easily around here,

and there'll be no investigation.

We're probably never gonna know the 100-percent truth about what

happened to each of these girls, but the factors that played into

the situations that they were put in the night that each one

of them died, we know.

The social problems, the family problems...

And when we think about everything that's happened in

the grand scheme of things, we wouldn't have these social

issues if we didn't have...

those first initial ones.

All of that played directly into social problems that are

happening now.

And all of that goes right back to...

those initial days of being placed on reservations.

The historical causes of a lot of the dysfunctions

that we see today was born in colonization,

was born in these federal policies to work towards

terminating Indian nations.

"Kill the Indian, save the Man."

If they couldn't kill the Indians away,

they were going to kill the spirit and make sure that they

no longer had that cultural connection and could just be

assimilated into mainstream society.

The legacy of Indian boarding schools is a perfect example of

that.

Ominous ambient music

Boarding schools is where we see some of the first heartbreaking

stories of missing and murdered Indian children.

Children being taken away and never seen again.

Parents not knowing what happened to their children.

Missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls started with

boarding schools.

Starting in the early 1860s, boarding schools were run by the

federal government but also the religious boarding schools...

Baptist boarding schools, Catholic boarding schools.

There were several agents that Crows feared.

They would steal kids and they were called "kid catchers."

They would literally strip the kids from the homes at very

early ages... I mean, we're talking, like,

five, six years old... and ship them off to the boarding

schools.

The boarding schools wanted to get rid of the

Native way of life.

If they spoke their language, they were beaten.

If they...

tried singing a song that we had,

they were beaten.

My great-grandmother, her name was Jenny Bad Horse.

The agents came and they took her to a boarding school,

and the meat they ate was spoiled meat,

and she was so used to it that, even in her old age,

she would make the meat turn a little bit,

and that's the way she ate it.

And so...

it was sad.

And she would talk about how she couldn't speak her language.

We lost our way of life.

Our clan system, our songs, our dances,

our language...

our norms, mores, because of boarding school.

So there was some success on behalf of the US government

trying to do away with Native way of life.

The people in charge of the schools molested our

children, generations of children being subjected to

sexual assault, and then coming back into our communities.

Those traumas and these cycles of abuse were carried forward.

And so the molestation that they were subjected to goes into

generations carrying that.

For a lot of people, these cycles of abuse are hard to

break.

There was entire generations of Crow people that were taught not

how to be mothers and fathers because they were raised by the

schools.

So this idea of loving homes and all of that goes right out the

window.

When you raise a society with those kinds of social issues in

survival mode, their kids grow up with those same issues.

Typically, there'd be one parent or no parents,

kids living with grandparents.

And even if their parents were in the house,

they weren't raising their kids.

Kids would be raising themselves...

Not to the extent that I see these days,

but the amount of broken families,

children on their own, and the overall dysfunction,

it just was everywhere.

It becomes a self-destructive cycle of shame and degradation

amongst the people, which is exactly what the government

wanted; they wanted us to self-destruct.

And we didn't self-destruct, we just learned how to live within

the dysfunction.

It's heavy, it's hard,

and it's heartbreaking.

These families, they're still trying to heal from the

heartache.

So much of it is this generations of trauma that we

haven't had the opportunity to heal from,

and this ongoing lack of feeling

that we have value in the world.

When we internalize that, we see it play out in higher rates of

domestic violence in our communities,

these cycles of abuse, these cycles of addiction.

So I think we start to see

this Native-on-Native violence.

Ominous ambient music

Pull over.

When a crime is committed in the Native community,

sometimes it's easier for us to blame an outsider coming in than

it is to really look inwardly and say,

"Okay...

we're doing a lot of stuff to ourselves, too."

We can be the villain of our own stories as well.

When we look at the Henny Scott case,

Kaysera Stops Pretty Places, and Selena Not Afraid cases,

I think that if there is any foul play,

then it would have been someone that the girls knew.

The night in question when that happened,

those are all people in the Native community.

The three girls Henny Scott is found dead and

yet she was at a house party...

Kaysera Stops Pretty Places, she was at a house party and found

dead in the next yard...

and Selena was at a house party and found dead out in a field.

It all goes together.

I believe local Indian men lure young girls there to come and

party with them and get them drunk and stuff,

and somebody'll suddenly disappear.

They're Native Americans doing this to each

other.

The proud people are doing it to themselves.

We're not supposed to do that.

We do have situations where our own tribal members are

committing acts of violence against other tribal members.

In a lot of Native communities, there is this idea that there's

this white boogeyman, that there's someone from the outside

that's coming in to harm us.

And the majority of the violence that our Native women are

subjected to is from non-Native people but,

to some extent, we've started to internalize some of that and...

do these things to our own people.

But I think the main vulnerability really is this

hole for accountability in our Native communities.

All too often, when the victim is an Indian person,

it just falls through the cracks.

Tense ambient music

What we do here really feels like a war,

like, the trauma that we go through.

And I feel like it's exacerbated when we add in a murdered and

missing persons crisis in Big Horn County.

My Crow name translates to "Keeps Things Good."

I've never actually tried to live up to this name,

but somehow along the way, I have.

Sharing their stories is so important,

and I'm doing my part as, you know,

an Indigenous woman and as a journalist to inform and

protect.

Well, nearly two years after the body of a Crow tribal woman

was found facedown in the backyard of a Hardin home,

the Big Horn County Attorney says,

"The death of 18-year-old Kaysera Stops Pretty Places is

not forgotten and is still under investigation."

We waited, and finally,

almost two years to the day Kaysera went missing,

the County Attorney released a public report.

It was pretty vague.

There wasn't a lot of detail in it.

There were no names.

And we're not quite sure if there was an investigation into

the people involved in her last days.

We know that testimony was taken,

they were questioned... We know that...

But we don't know how far the investigation went into those

people.

18-year-old Kaysera Stops Pretty Places went missing on August

24th, 2019.

Five days later, her body was found by a jogger along Mitchell

Avenue.

This one is Kaysera's memorial, but she was found on the other

side of the fence.

Due to the decomposition, they had to go into dental records to

identify her officially.

The cause and manner of death are undetermined.

There's still a lot of mystery surrounding this case.

But at the same time, I don't think that...

that sheriff's office has ever been equipped for a murder

investigation.

Would you mind taking some over there?

I don't mind at all.

Okay, great. Should I take two?

There's some more there if you need... take!

- Okay. - Take four.

I think it would do, four.

Tense ambient music

Kaysera was the first case I took on in Montana.

That really opened my eyes to how many barriers are in place

to a family who's fighting to get justice.

Do you just want "Justice for Kaysera?"

Is that what you want?

- Yeah, yeah. - Okay.

This is a family who has worked tirelessly and advocated

tirelessly, and they still can't get a law enforcement agency to

undertake an actual investigation.

All these names out here, right?

These are all our relatives who are missing or murdered.

I know every single family here who's lost a loved one has had

doors slammed in their face.

You've had law enforcement refuse to talk to you.

After Kaysera's murder in 2019, we were writing letters and

emails and phone calls to the Big Horn County Sheriff's Office

and the FBI saying, "Hey, here are the names of the people who

last saw her."

And really nothing was ever done.

And so we're not going away, right?

We're gonna keep demanding justice until we get the justice

that we deserve.

Big Horn County Sheriff's Office might claim to have

investigated the people Kaysera was with the night she went

missing.

I don't have any evidence to indicate they actually did.

Today is May 5th.

It's a National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered

Indigenous Persons.

President Biden has proclaimed it to be a national day.

The rally that was happening here today was organized by

Yolanda Fraser.

She's Kaysera's paternal grandmother.

She invited all the families in Big Horn County who have lost a

loved one to demand justice for all of the 44 victims

who have been murdered or gone missing in this area.

So, in your case, with the family of Kaysera,

what are the next steps?

We had our first meeting with an agent from the Missing

- and Murdered Unit this morning. - Mm-hm.

This unit was actually started during President Trump's

administration; it was called Operation Lady Justice Task

Force.

This office had our letter asking them to investigate

Kaysera's case.

It took a year and a half for them to agree to just talk to

the family.

Secretary Haaland became the first Native secretary in the

history of the Department of Interior.

She transformed it into the Missing and Murdered Unit.

At the Department of Interior, we will have a Missing and

Murdered Unit that will focus specifically on this crisis.

We're being told by President Biden and Secretary Haaland that

this unit of BIA law officers, the MMU,

is what's going to solve the problem for missing and murdered

indigenous persons.

Did anything new or fruitful come out of that meeting?

He engaged, he was very respectful,

he listened to everything they had to say,

and then sort of was very honest and said that there really isn't

anything at this time that the MMU can do since her body was

found outside of federal jurisdiction because it was 300

yards off the border of the Crow Reservation.

If the Big Horn County Sheriff's Office were to say,

"MMU, we want your help," then the MMU would investigate her

murder.

But then the Big Horn County Sheriff's Office is refusing to

consent to that, and that's why the MMU can't do anything for

Kaysera's family.

What is the point of the MMU if you're not gonna work on cases

where local law enforcement sometimes is corrupt,

or prejudiced, or doesn't prioritize or value Native

lives?

And so, when is the federal government gonna show up,

and when are they going to work on these cases?

Because we just continue to lose Native lives out here.

We've got a murder of an 18-year-old girl that no one's

investigating.

Everyone's trying to blame everyone else or say,

"Oh, it's not my responsibility because it's 300 yards off of

where my responsibility starts."

Even in this administration, with a president that says he

really cares about this issue, we're still being told,

"No, we can't help you.

No, there's nothing we can do."

Kaysera's life ended in 2019, but there's still information

out there that can be found.

There are still people that know what happened to her that can be

talked to.

Poor Kaysera, it was so tragic.

I mean, it happened so fast and quick that...

we never...

expected to lose her the way we did.

Mm-hm.

I want closure.

Yeah, I do want closure for Kaysera 'cause she deserves it;

she deserves justice.

So I know this is probably gonna be difficult,

but I wanted to talk to you about the timeline of events

that happened when Kaysera went missing.

Well, she...

See, she went out August 24th.

She had her best friend with her.

Her name was Nakia.

And at the time, we had Isabella Villegas living with us;

she's my cousin.

And...

they wanted to take her out.

I was like, "Okay, well, I want you guys back at midnight."

They went out...

and Kaysera never came home.

One of the things that I had read in the public report was

that...

there were people in a driveway along the houses in the area.

Yeah, because she was at a house next door from where her

body was found.

And they were there with a male, who was the one that provided

the alcohol.

Do you know that man's name?

Natosi Summers.

Do you know where he's from?

His mother is Crow.

His father...

He's from a different tribe; I don't know exactly.

But his mother is the one that has the house in town there on

Rangeview.

Tense ambient music

In Kaysera's case, I wanna know who she was with

the night that she died and what they were doing.

I wanna know why she was in that yard...

and why she just laid down and died.

What could have possibly happened and how could it be

undetermined?

That's where Natosi lives with his grandmother.

is not available.

After the prompt, please record your message.

Hey, Malisa, it's Luella Brien calling.

I just wanted to give you an opportunity to see if Natosi

wanted to talk to me.

He's not a minor, but Natosi's mom,

she's the family spokesperson.

She's a lawyer.

I think this one is difficult because there's been so much

rumor and conjecture surrounding it.

And the people that I'm trying to pin down are people that

those rumors are...

about.

I'm on my way to Lodge Grass.

Nakia Spotted Horse lives just outside of town,

and she was one of the people that was last seen with Kaysera

Stops Pretty Places, and she's actually agreed to give me an

interview.

She has not spoken to media at all,

so what I get from Nakia today will be completely new

information for the public.

Okay.

Thank you for coming.

I really appreciate it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Tell me about the night that you lost her.

So it's August 24th, it's Saturday night.

When you got to her house, what was the plan?

I was there with Kaysera and Isabella.

We were just gonna wait 'til the nighttime and just head out.

To do...?

Party and...

drink.

Tense ambient music

Isabella, she said that her baby daddy Natosi could be a buyer.

Oh, okay.

So we went to his house.

So that would be you,

Kaysera, Isabella, and Natosi?

Yeah.

And then what happens after that?

We were just drinking,

and Isabella and Natosi,

we could hear them arguing downstairs.

And then he came and grabbed her.

Mm-hm.

He was just holding onto her, and she didn't know what to do

'cause she was trying to pull away from him.

So Kaysera stepped in and was like,

"Hey, leave her alone!

Quit doing that!

She don't have to stay!"

We walked out the house, and I remember he ran down the road

and he grabbed her and was, like,

trying to say sorry and ask her to stay.

And I remember, at the end of the road,

we got in front of that house, and they were yelling around at

each other, and then me and Kaysera didn't know what to do

'cause, like...

they weren't listening to us.

Yeah.

And then that's when I looked over and then that car was,

like, going, like, chk-chk, locking and unlocking.

And then a cop went by and it, like, scared us.

Everyone just kind of panicked and started taking off.

We kind of just all lost each other,

and I was hiding under a truck.

I waited there for a while.

That's when Isabella was like, "Where's Kaysera?"

And I was like, "I don't know!"

We were yelling her name, and she wasn't saying nothing,

and then we didn't see her anywhere.

We started to walk back to Natosi's house,

and then Natosi was pulling out of his driveway.

And when he saw us, he started going faster and kind of chased

us with his truck.

So where did you guys go then?

We ran through these houses,

and he was following us in the alleys and stuff.

And it scared us.

We, like, cut around that house and hid into these bushes,

and then we saw him drive by, and he drove by real fast,

like he was looking for us.

We saw him go back to his house.

And then that's when Isabella started crying,

"I'm scared, I wanna go back."

And then that's when I just said,

"Well...

Kaysera will probably go back home.

She's smart.

She always... she always comes back,

and she'll be back."

So we took off back to Percelia's house.

When you guys were yelling for her,

you were still in that immediate area where the house was.

And you didn't hear anything?

You didn't hear her rustling in bushes,

you didn't hear...

There was no response?

Oh my goodness.

What kind of stuff did you know about Natosi before this night?

I don't really think I knew who he was.

I don't think I ever met him or heard about him.

tense ambient music

What I want to do is either speak to Natosi or

speak to Isabella to tell their stories.

Reaching them is incredibly difficult because...

I had texted Natosi's mom previously.

She said that she would think about...

possibly letting him do an interview.

Hi, it's Luella.

I was just wondering if you had given any more thought to an

interview with Natosi.

I just want to make sure I give you every opportunity to have

that interview.

I texted his mother one more time,

and she wasn't too pleasant in her response.

Basically, I shouldn't bother them.

His family says he didn't do anything to her.

We're heading over to the Big Horn County courthouse.

I gotta fill out a couple of forms to get public information

for, um...

Kaysera's case.

I hear a lot of outcry from the public about how

the County Attorney's Office is not doing their job,

but I see lack of investigation on the part of the Sheriff's

Office.

Because that's where any County Attorney's Office is gonna get

their evidence.

Hi, this message is for Jeramie Middlestead.

I'm writing a story about the Kaysera Stops Pretty Places case

and I wanted to get some input from you.

Jeramie Middlestead took the initial police report

for the disappearance of Kaysera.

Trying to talk to law enforcement is like pulling

teeth.

It's incredibly difficult.

Nobody in the Big Horn County Sheriff's Office

would ever even return your calls to do an interview with

you while they're still employed there.

They just wouldn't do it.

I'm in Idaho, I'm not in Montana anymore,

so, you know, their tentacles can't reach me here.

I'd have never done it in Montana.

Never.

The Sheriff's Office in Big Horn County would have retribution

against you if you spoke up.

They'd just make your life hell there.

You'd have to move.

I don't appear today in my official capacity as the

undersheriff for Big Horn County, Montana.

I came to the conclusion that I would have to come in my

personal capacity as a dad.

The Big Horn County sheriffs really are hands-off

when it comes to the media.

BIA and FBI has a no-media policy in place for unsolved

cases, so law enforcement hasn't given anyone any clarity.

The mailbox is full and cannot accept any

messages at this time.

Tense ambient music

Kaysera's case is one of many cases they have

mishandled and failed to investigate.

Still to this day, there's evidence there that hasn't been

collected.

There are witnesses that haven't been interviewed.

But knowing what we know about this sheriff's office and this

criminal justice system in Montana,

I think law enforcement will leave it where it is unless we

build up enough public pressure and momentum that requires them

to do their job.

But it is a crisis in Indian country.

You have jurisdictional issues, and oftentimes,

in border towns, you've got law officers and sheriffs who do not

respect Native lives and have no desire to do anything to save a

Native life or to investigate who may have murdered a Native

woman or girl.

- What do we want?! - Justice!

Nearly a thousand people made their way down 27th

Street, finishing at the Yellowstone County Courthouse

lawn.

Murdered and missing women have gone on far before it has come

to attention!

I had to decide if I was gonna stay quiet or if I was gonna

stay loud, because there are so many that haven't been brought

back.

I have to be here; I have to be advocating.

If I don't, who will?

When they close your case and put it in a filing cabinet,

that's a bad thing.

So that's why you keep advocating for your loved ones.

Keep saying their names because once their names are forgotten,

once you stop, they're done.

In a lot of our traditions, they're told,

"Forget about 'em."

You don't talk about 'em.

You let 'em go."

Why would you forget about somebody?

Why would you wanna do that?

We've got families 25, 30 years later finally able to say,

"Hey, what about my sister?

What about my mom?"

Our life without Henny is...

very hard.

I can't mourn her death because of the anger I feel.

Don't give up on Shacaiah.

Her being so strong-willed, she's still fighting.

And I hope that she knows that we're still fighting for her.

Kaysera deserves justice.

She would take the shirt off of her back to help others.

Why couldn't they do that for her?

Selena shouldn't have gone through this.

There should be justice for her more than what she got.

Tense ambient music

Since these doors back here are closed to us,

the justice that we need, answers that we need,

we don't get it.

I just wanna tell everybody, "Don't give up.

Don't give up."

I want justice.

I want to keep pushing and get these officials to do the job

that they're supposed to be doing.

This is what Kaysera would have been doing.

She was an advocate for anybody that was an underdog.

I didn't know who to go to, I didn't know what to do in my

situation, and...

it took a while.

I believe if it didn't take that long,

that we would have found her, and she would've still been with

us.

I have no faith in our justice system.

When I pass that sign of Henny's,

I wanna find justice for her,

that she didn't pass for nothing.

She's spreading awareness.

I want her to be remembered.

Justice for Henny!

May 5th is National Missing and Murdered Indigenous

Person's Awareness Day.

There are many events across the country to highlight

the huge problem facing Native American communities.

No more stolen sisters!

It's light and dark; it's like out of the worst,

most horrifying thing that could ever happen,

we're able to see this community of mothers and families who have

lost their loved ones coming together and offering each other

support, and the love that we show each other as community

members through this is that light.

When push comes to shove, our people are resilient,

our people care about each other,

and we support each other.

Emotional music

I don't ever come over here.

I don't think your grandma and papa ever come here either.

Sensitive ambient music

You know how your papa had a sister?

Her name was Beverly... Beverly Diane...

And everybody called her "DeeDee."

When they found her, they found her over here,

somewhere between...

the cattle chutes and the fence.

Gosh, she was 16 when that happened to her.

And your grandparents, they won't...

they won't really talk about it.

Come here over here.

Come stand by me.

Do you know why they don't talk about it?

'Cause it's sad.

In my family, I don't think my parents have come

to a place of acceptance yet for what happened to my dad's

sister.

I don't think that any of us can tell them it's okay.

I mean, we've tried.

I think they hold onto a lot of guilt.

And...

I don't think that, um...

I don't think they'll ever get there,

really.

People who have lost a family member tragically like this...

there's a guilt associated with

moving on.

If they move through their grief,

then they're forgetting that person.

They were one of the last people that saw her.

I think that's why I'm so overly protective of you

guys...

'cause I'm so scared something's going to happen.

My daughter's gonna be 13 and...

has already had a target on her...

just simply by being born a female Native in this area.

Tense ambient music

That, in itself, makes me fearful,

but it also makes me more vigilant as a parent.

Everything, really, that I do with her is based in

situational awareness and keeping her safe.

And that feeling of being in danger goes back...

My generation, my mother's generation,

my grandmother's generation.

It makes up who we are.

I feel like it's part of the fabric of Native women in this

community.

We grow up thinking that survival is culture,

and pretty soon, we're doing things that we think are

cultural practices when really, they're just survival

techniques.

We have to think, "Okay, what can we do to preserve what we

have left?"

And figure out what to do to thrive.

I think sometimes, we're trying to find a

non-Indian solution for a Native problem.

The majority of us don't look to our culture for the answer.

Tense ambient music

Traditionally, we believe that tribal members hold value.

That you're something.

That you have self-respect; that you were made by the most

Our universe.

That they took mud from the ground and the Creator breathed

into it...

and then placed life into it.

And said,...

"The people on top of the ground."

So, at that point, it's no longer a male and a female

thing.

We hold value and we know we're something.

Drumming and chanting

Then he said,...

"You're the ones beside me."

That's not a place to be discarded.

Tense ambient music

If we just return to those values,

nobody can be hurt within that system,

because the traditional Crow value places the women at a very

high position.

Pre-colonization, violence against Native women was not

tolerated.

Our communities, our tribes held perpetrators accountable,

and in the very few instances when it did happen,

it was addressed.

Because women form the backbone of our communities,

their safety forms the foundation for the safety of our

communities.

When we protect our Native women,

we're able to protect our families.

It extends out.

We're able to see strong communities,

strong nations.

Success in all aspects of our community comes from the home

and the home being a safe place.

It's time that we go back to our traditional teachings that women

are sacred, that violence does not have a place in our

community.

Tense ambient music

In order for us to have hope,

we have to see a future that doesn't include...

murdered and missing indigenous women and girls.

I can't see that future yet.

But these stories have to be told.

These girls were incredibly bright...

talented...

and worthy of living,

not because they were Native women...

not because they were somebody's daughter,

but simply because they were human beings.

And we're all worthy of living, we're all worthy of a good life,

because we're human.

Emotional music

ominous ambient music

tense ambient music