Melissa Harris-Perry: You're with The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.

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Speaker 1: "There have been stories that go back generations of women going missing and then found dead with little to no explanation."

Speaker 2: "Is it a hypothermia death? Is it a beating? Drug-related? Trafficking? We have all the questions in the world, and we don't have the answers."

Melissa Harris-Perry: Nationally, four out of five Indigenous women have experienced violence in their lifetime. According to the Montana Department of Justice, in 2021, 67% of the missing Indigenous persons' cases in their state were women. In truth, we don't really know the full scope of the problem of murdered and missing Indigenous women because according to a report from the Urban Indian Health Institute, there's a nationwide data crisis that almost certainly leads to underestimating the problem. Still, there is a way to learn these stories.

Razelle Benally: My name is Razelle Benally.

Matthew Galkin: I'm Matthew Galkin, and we are the directors of the docu-series Murder in Big Horn.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Oglala Lakota/Diné filmmaker, Razelle Benally, is in her thesis here of MFA candidacy of film production at NYU. Her co-director, Matthew Galkin, has directed multiple projects for Showtime and HBO. Their new collaboration is Murder in Big Horn, a gripping three-part docu-series, airing now on Showtime. Razelle and Matthew stopped by The Takeaway to tell us about the series.

Razelle Benally: Murder in Big Horn investigates the disappearances and possible murders of a group of Indigenous girls and women on the Northern Cheyenne and Crow Reservations in Montana, which is located in Big Horn County, Montana. What we did with the series was focus on a specific place and region because the reality is that this issue, this crisis is happening in every single Indigenous community across North America and even in other Indigenous communities around the world.

We illuminate these two particular reservations because we found a high concentration of cases in such a small area. Also, the grassroots movement of MMIW was starting to gain momentum with three particular cases, Henny Scott, Kaysera Stops Pretty Places and Selena Not Afraid.

Melissa Harris-Perry: The first episode of the series features the story of Henny Scott.

Matthew Galkin: Henny Scott was a 14-year-old girl who was a freshman in high school at Lame Deer High in Lame Deer, Montana. In December of 2018, she went missing after leaving a party one evening. Her mother and stepfather ultimately met with a lot of negligence from local law enforcement and ended up having to do their own search party. They filed a missing person's report, which sat on a desk for almost two weeks. Ultimately, three weeks after she had disappeared, she was found frozen to death about 500 yards from the house where the party took place.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Has there been justice in this case?

Matthew Galkin: Of course not. There has been absolutely no justice in this case, unclear whether it was ever truly investigated, whether the people who were at the party that night were talked to. There's been virtually no communication from law enforcement to Henny's family. Her mother still to this day truly doesn't know who to turn to. Paula Castro, Henny's mom, is an incredible person and has become quite vocal in the MMIW movement. It's one of the stories we end up telling in the series is how that movement was put on a national stage, by and large, due to the advocacy work of people like Paula.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Murder in Big Horn is told solely through the perspectives of native families, local native journalists, and local law enforcement. Their voices clarify that the epidemic of murdered and missing Indigenous women is one with a long history of continuing injustice.

Narrator: "There are cases stretching back so far that it feels like we're born into it. It feels like as native women, this is something that's in our DNA, this is something that's in our blood, but that has to change. These cases are not true crime stories to us. These cases are our relatives."

Melissa Harris-Perry: Razelle discussed the complex colonial legacy that continues to affect how these cases are managed, more mismanaged.

Razelle Benally: What a lot of people don't know is that we're sovereign nations. We have borders that allow us in theory to self-govern. Because of this, law enforcement is sanctioned by the federal government. Basically, your everyday police from town cannot be called upon on the Reservation in the event of a crime. What happens when there is a crime taking place on the Reservation, it requires federal agencies to come and investigate.

In regards to Crow Reservation and Northern Cheyenne in Montana, what happens is that if a non-native person commits a crime on native land, they can essentially get away with it. When a girl goes missing on the Reservation, the sheriff's department in Big Horn County cannot basically investigate. It gets really confusing amongst different agencies as to who's going to investigate which crime depending on who the victim is and who the suspects are or is. It basically becomes a game of hot potato.

Melissa Harris-Perry: To be clear, Razelle's point about overlapping jurisdictions and the limitations of law enforcement is not by any means an indictment of tribal sovereignty.

Razelle Benally: Our lands were taken away from us. We were put on plots of land where there are hardly any natural resources, put on the most decimated pieces of the land. Basically, any sort of autonomy that we had pre-colonization was taken away from us. Fast forward to today, tribes are notoriously underfunded. We don't have many resources, and we are basically set up to fail.

When you're putting it against a larger picture of the government and the way the government was set up to protect basically white male property, there's a big disconnect when we're talking about girls going missing and nobody being held accountable.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Stay with us. We'll be back in just a moment with more from the co-directors of Showtime's docu-series Murder in Big Horn.

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I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and you're with The Takeaway where we're continuing our conversation about the Showtime docu-series Murder in Big Horn, which explores the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women in rural Montana, specifically Big Horn County.

[Murder in Big Horn trailer]

Participant 1: "Our girls don't just die."

Participant 2: "Somebody abducted her."

Participant 3: "This is the most dangerous place for Native women in the country."

Participant 4: "I don't think the issue's real."

Participant 5: "They can take our women and nothing will happen.

Participant 6: "We're just supposed to stay in the back and be a good Indian."

Melissa Harris-Perry: I spoke with co-directors, Razelle Benally and Matthew Galkin. Matthew told us a bit about former Big Horn County News editor Luella Brien, who's featured in the docu-series.

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Luella Brien: "I decided that this is definitely where I wanted to be. I wanted my kids to be connected to the family, to the community because despite all of the bad things that happened here, despite missing people, despite high crime rates, despite domestic violence, despite everything, this is our home."

Melissa Harris-Perry: Her reporting and her lived experience illuminate the endemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Matthew Galkin: One of the things that was so staggering to me, obviously not to Razelle, but to me as a white male, the pervasiveness of this issue within virtually every family that we met in that area. What I've come to understand is virtually every native family in this country has been touched by this issue, whether it's a sister or a mother or an aunt or a brother, or son. It's just everywhere.

There's so much loss. With someone like Luella Brien, who ultimately, at the beginning of this process, we reached out to: (a) because she was the editor of the local paper, but (b) she had written a beautiful op-ed piece about Selena Not Afraid's funeral, which we had seen and thought, because Luella is Crow, because she has the perspective of a journalist, so she's able to bring in context to help understand this issue at ground level. Because she had an aunt named Deedee Brien who in the late '70s was found frozen to death in the snow, and has never been any answers to that murder.

One of the first things that Luella did when she got the job as editor-in-chief is look up her aunt's case and assess the media coverage, or the very slight media coverage that was ever offered for that case, which is pretty heartbreaking.

For Luella. one of the objectives for this project because she became quite central to what we're doing is to honor her aunt whose story has not been told for almost 40 years.

Melissa Harris-Perry: These stories carry profound personal meaning for co-director Razelle Benallyas well.

Razelle Benally: Growing up, I have two older brothers, and I am the youngest. Growing up, I just wasn't allowed to go places on my own. I wasn't allowed to hang out for long periods of time away from my parents or without my older brothers' presence. Growing into a teenager and living in Rapid City, South Dakota, which isn't too far from Montana, I realized I had to be hyperaware of my surroundings. Quite a few times I was followed home as a high school student walking back from school.

In the area, it was just common for people relatives to go missing and for people to just wonder what happened. Growing up, you just understand that somebody will disappear or somebody will turn up dead, and nobody will ever know how this happened or why it happened. It's just something that it's ingrained in a lot of everyday life. It didn't become apparent to me until I became a young adult that this doesn't happen in other communities, you know what I mean? It was heartbreaking to one day just let that absorb and understand that.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I asked Matthew and Razelle if their filmmaking journey had led them to solutions.

Matthew Galkin: One of the most eye-opening things to me coming into this project was learning the historical context of why MMIW even exists as an issue in 2023. It goes all the way back to colonization. This to me, the two-plus years I've spent on this project becomes part of my continuing education of the real American history, the things that I was never taught growing up.

I would like to see more stark honest conversations about the ways in which Native American communities were and are being held down by the rest of our country. Things that were eye-opening to me, Razelle and I tried to engineer the series to be eye-opening to every other non-native that watches the series so it's really important for us to reach the widest possible audience with this issue. All of these historical aspects, hopefully, will be as shocking and eye-opening to those audiences as it was to me.

Razelle Benally: For us, we're filmmakers. We're not policymakers. We're not even private investigators. We're not law enforcement. We're not military trained. We went into this, basically, trying to give a platform to people whose voices have been silenced and shunned. All we can do is help illuminate and give platform to the truth of these families and get these stories out there.

I know there's been some criticism on our series regarding there's no answer, there's no solution that we presented in the series. The goal was to present the issue and as much as we can sit all day and go back and forth on solutions, if people feel something about an issue, they will want to do what they can, and they will activate themselves. We can all come together to make change happen, but if people don't know about it, then why are they going to care? It's really just about creating empathy amongst audiences and elevating the visibility of this crisis.

I really want people to feel something for the victims and for what these families are going through. For me, it was so important to create an experience where empathy is fostered because natives, Indigenous people, we still exist. I think oftentimes people forget that we still exist and that we're not just relics of the past and it's really important. If you see us as human, then you're going to care, and you're going to want to do something.

As uncomfortable as a series might feel at times, or as enraged as somebody might feel, there's so many other natives out there that are feeling that, that have felt that, and will continue to feel that until justice is served, until things change, until young native girls and our women can feel safe and protected.

When one of our girls goes missing, what does it take for it to be the perfect case to get national coverage? What does it take for somebody to fight for our case when one of us ends up being found deceased, and there's no suspect in the possible murder? What does it take? I'm sure if any of these things which I do not will on anybody, but I'm sure people would be upset and outraged just as these families are, but in our case, we're constantly being silenced, and we constantly have to fight to get heard. I can't stress that enough but hopefully, something is felt amongst the broader audiences about this issue. Our lives matter, because we're human.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Razelle Benally and Matthew Galkin, directors of the docu-series Murder in Big Horn. Thank you both for joining us.

Matthew Galkin: Thank you.

Razelle Benally: Thank you very much.

Melissa Harris-Perry: The final episode of Murder in Big Horn airs on Showtime this Sunday, February 19th.

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