“Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him, better take a closer look at the American Indian.” — Henry Ford
Only at Wyoming Indian High School would a basketball trophy case display more misery than trophies.
Even if the kids beat the 40 percent high school dropout rate, 80 percent unemployment rate — similar to Zimbabwe's — or path to teenage pregnancy and drug abuse, they can’t escape the inevitable.
Crimes and homicides.
Welcome to Wind River Indian Reservation, known for both its impressive size and crime rates that are now five to seven times the national average. How, then, can U.S News rank Wyoming eighth for public safety if Wind River’s life expectancy is twenty years less than Iraq’s?
The answer? It is impossible to put crime rates on public record when the Native American population is practically invisible to the police, media and social services. Combined with Wind River’s geographic isolation and the police officers’ inability to track crimes, Natives don’t have a chance.
Taylor Sheridan’s “Wind River,” which takes place in — you guessed it — Wind River Indian Reservation, follows young FBI agent Jane Banner, played by Elizabeth Olsen, and animal tracker Cory Lambert, played by Jeremy Renner. Lambert joins forces with Banner when he has to track his toughest prey yet: an unknown murder and sexual assault assailant.
While hunting a coyote, he finds a young Native American woman in the desolate cold lying face down in a pool of blood. What is the most tragic part is this is nothing new to the reservation; both in the film and in reality. Lambert lost his daughter in a similar way three years before. In fact, the new victim was his daughter’s best friend, whose family was already plagued by addiction.
Before the screen turns to black, a chilling fact appears: “While missing person statistics are compiled for every other demographic, none exist for Native American women.”
Native American women, especially those in Wind River Reservation, are almost always forgotten about. Native women are twice as likely to be sexually assaulted as women of other races. Disappearances and human trafficking on reservations are closely related to oil drilling and the construction workers who work there. The men see the vulnerability of Native women and use that as bait. The tragedy on the reservation normalizes such crimes.
Rape, by both Native and non-Native men, is a “rite of passage for adolescent girls.” That is because the federal government has little to no protections for Native Americans, especially Native American women. It wasn’t until 2013 that sexual assault on a Native woman by a non-Native could be prosecuted because it was a state crime on federal land. However, prosecutions are laid harshly on Native Americans who assault non-Natives on both state and federal levels.
The most devastating case was the 2010 murder of 13-year-old Marisa Spoonhunter. Marisa, her 21-year-old brother Robert, and her 19-year-old step-cousin Kyeren Tillman were all drinking in a trailer one April night when Rober blacked out and awoke to her sister and cousin having sex.
He was so enraged that he flung his sister onto a weightlifting bench. Both Robert and Kyeren disposed of the body and resumed drinking. Robert got 13 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter and Kyeren was sentenced to 80 months as an accessory, as well as sexual abuse of a minor. The only problem: Robert is an alcoholic.
“Alcoholism is a big factor in our reservation,” Bernadette Spoonhunter, Robert and Marisa’s mother, said.
It is unlikely that after Robert gets out of prison, he will have a chance to redeem himself. He is just another statistic since the Native American incarceration rate is 38 percent higher than the national rate. Like Robert, over 73 percent of Native American prisoners have a problem with alcohol.
The federal government constantly victimizes Native Americans and charges them with longer sentences than non-Natives. The environment that Native children grow up indirectly impacts them. There is a lack of opportunity and resources to escape their families’ pasts. Vern Spoonhunter, Marisa and Robert’s father, lost his father and brother the same way he lost his daughter. With Robert in jail, he lost his son too. Bernadette and Vern did their best to raise their children, yet they have to live in an empty home.
Marisa’s story is very similar to 18-year-old Natalie’s in “Wind River.” She died right under her community’s nose, and her family struggled with their own demons that collapsed when she died. This just goes to show that the tragedy doesn’t end when the camera stops rolling.
That is the reason Sheridan directed this movie. In a place where crime happens so often, many people turn a blind eye to those who have disappeared. “Wind River” forces those people to watch what happens to the disappeared, as well as the bleak reality of their families. As Cory Lambert said of Wind River, “there’s no luck here, just survivors.”
