“Native women make up less than 1% of the U.S. population, yet face murder rates that are more than 10 times the national average,” said director and producer Leya Hale (Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota and Diné).
Her new documentary, “Bring Her Home,” follows three Indigenous women: an activist, Mysti Babineau; an artist, Angela Two Stars; and a politician, Rep. Ruth Buffalo from North Dakota. Each woman has faced the trauma of having a missing and murdered relative. The film uses the annual Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s Rally and March in Minneapolis as the main setting.
“As the fight for social justice continues to accelerate in this country, it is important for Indigenous people and allies to encourage and support Indigenous women like Angela Two Stars, Mysti Babineau and Representative Ruth Buffalo, who are fighting to bring awareness to this ongoing epidemic while reclaiming Indigenous women’s strength and status,” Hale wrote in her director statement. “As an Indigenous female producer with access to a trusted public media platform, I feel a responsibility to leverage this access to help bring further attention to this crisis. Although telling stories of pain and loss can be traumatic, I have made it my obligation to not only highlight the challenges my people face, but to offer stories of hope, resilience and healing.”
The film will debut nationally on Monday on PBS – local viewers can catch it on Rocky Mountain PBS.
We caught up with Hale on Wednesday morning:
Q: How did you pick Ruth, Misty and Angela?
A: I definitely was doing a lot of research and development probably a year before I decided who I was going to cast to be in the documentary. I really planned about the topics I wanted to cover, more or less like the story structure and knowing that I wanted to interweave the Minneapolis MMIW March and Rally because attending the first annual march and rally definitely inspired me to do the documentary – just seeing the huge amount of community support from the Twin Cities area – so I already knew the feelings I wanted people to feel, what I wanted them to see, what topics, so I just started researching all of the key players that were involved in the movement at the time, locally, nationally. There were just things that inspired me from each woman’s story that I was just paying attention to. I think there was probably at one time 18 to 20 women on my list, so I was just like paying attention to all of them and following them and trying to find out inspirational moments that were happening in their lives during that year or so.
One of the things that ended up inspiring me to reach out to Ruth Buffalo was this picture I’d seen of her getting sworn in with her regalia – it kind of went viral on Facebook and I’d just seen so many Native people sharing it over and over and just the pride and the strength that came from that image, so I started digging into more research about Ruth and found her connection to Savannah Greywind’s story, so I ended up meeting her at a local Facing Race Awards that happens in downtown St. Paul, where she was a keynote speaker. I just quickly pitched her the story and she told me that she was interested and wanted to hear more about it, so that’s how our conversation started.
And the same goes for Mysti Babineau, the activist in the story. She was definitely on my list, too, and I was researching her about the testimony that she was giving and the one moment that I heard her say this quote that’s in the film: ‘My people have gone missing ever since European settlers set foot on this continent,’ so that alone and just her strength and energy when she said that, I was like, ‘I want that in the film.’ She was definitely the next check mark.
And with Angela Two Stars, I felt like I connected with her story the most also being Dakota from the same band, Sisseton Wahpeton band, just her learning about her true ancestral homelands and her people being forcibly removed from the lands – just that connection and historical trauma when it comes to our contemporary issues like MMIW. That also guided me to include her as well.
Watch ‘Bring Her Home’
Leya Hale’s documentary “Bring Her Home” will air on Rocky Mountain PBS and at tpt.org beginning Monday (March 21).
Q: Do you feel hopeful?
A: I definitely feel hopeful, especially with the new generation that’s coming up and I’m hearing women that are really being outspoken and talking about this openly. And you’re slowly starting to see women reclaim those spaces of decision-making power, such as Rep. Ruth Buffalo and Sen. (Mary) Kunesh that were also featured in the documentary. ... A lot of this abuse and trauma when it comes to sexual assault, is also coming from within our own communities, and that’s something that a lot of our communities don’t talk about. And it’s starting to be talked about now. So if it’s starting now, then I’m hopeful for the future that these things will become common and that communities will find ways to keep people accountable, especially Native men that do these things behind the scenes but yet maybe they might be leaders in the community and people don’t question them and those types of things. And that also goes for everyone, even women that are abusers because it’s being discussed so openly now, I feel like it’s going to keep becoming more common and becoming more normalized, but these changes, I’m hopeful, but these changes take time.
Q: What do you want people to take away from your film?
A: The first takeaway would be just awareness that Native women suffer from high rates of violence and that we only make up less than 1% of the population yet we face violence 10 times the national average. Another thing too is I wanted people to feel the empathy of what we go through, and when it comes to becoming leaders in our communities, especially Native women, that all the struggles and extra stuff we gotta to go through to get there. And that when you see Native people around you in your community – when you see them doing good work, I just want people to support us. And that could be watching my film, or telling your neighbor to watch my film, or if you see somebody running for, like a representative or for the school board, because there are so many Native people in our society around us but we feel invisible. And it’s nice to always feel like we’re supported and to feel that people, especially non-Native people want to support us ... I feel like we’re coming to a time where you’re starting to see more and more Native representation in media. Even like supporting that in regards to watching somebody else’s film or watching a series and just learning more about us. I think it’s mainly just to help us be visible – that would be my suggestion for takeaways for non-Native audiences.
But for Native audiences, particularly Native women, what I want them to take away from it is a sense of empowerment because ... with this slow progression to making change, these things are still going to be happening around us, and just because a policy passed or two is not going to stop it, so what could we do as individuals to help our communities through it, and also when it comes to things like where Native women that may be homeless or they’re suffering from substance abuse and then maybe they might get entangled with sex trafficking for survival, so I also want to reach those individuals somehow and to remind them by talking about our strength and our resiliency and how we were once revered, to remind them that we’re worthy and that there’s support out there and that utilizing these three women’s stories as an example to see how these tragic events happened in these women’s lives, but yet they found the support in the community and they were able to overcome it and now they’re pushing forward and doing amazing things to bring awareness to not only the topic if MMIW, but the visibility of us in the greater society by having those platforms that they were able to create for themselves, so I feel like it’s also one of those if they can do it, I can do it.
Editor’s note: Answers were edited for clarity and length.
katie@durangoherald.com
