“PBS’s “Bring Her Home” Ignores Male Victims in Mishmash of the Truth

PBS advertised its new documentary “Bring Her Home” as the story of “three Indigenous women…as they fight to vindicate and honor their missing and murdered relatives” and “search for healing while navigating racist systems that brought about the very crisis.” In other words, it starts with stories exemplifying real problems and quickly shifts into ideological propaganda—subtle socialism, not so subtle feminism and loud “indigenous activism.”

The three women central to the documentary are:
 
  1. Ruth Buffalo, a member of North Dakota’s House of Representatives and a “Democratic Socialist.” She took part in the search for the missing (later murdered) Savanna Greywind—a pregnant 22-year-old Indian woman from Fargo.
  2. Angela Two Stars, an artist who treats art as a form of activism. When she was nine years old her great aunt—whom she calls a “grandmother”—was kidnapped and murdered.
  3. Mysti Babineau, a “climate justice” activist employed by the environmentalist organization MN350. Part of MN350’s agenda is the “Green New Deal”—which uses environmental concerns as “justification” socialist economics. Her mother was murdered when she was two. She was raped at nine and at 20, had a friend gang raped by a dozen men and at 13 saw her grandmother killed.
“Bring Her Home” uses these tragedies to demonstrate the real life impact of an undeniable fact—that Indian women suffer from an unusually high murder rate. That could serve as a firm foundation for raising awareness of such important issues as:
 
  1. Difficulties resulting from the unique legal status of Indian reservations and members of Indian tribes.
  2. Ways in which more rigorous law and order policies can be developed for Indian communities.
  3. Ideas for developing greater cooperation between tribal criminal justice systems and those of counties, states and the federal government.
Rather than take advantage of an opportunity to discuss these matters, "Bring Her Home" advocates for the irrelevant ideologies already mentioned.

Early in the film Mysti Babineau blames the murder and abduction of Indian women on “social and economic oppressions which [Indian] communities often face.” What are these oppressions? “Lack of internet and sometimes phone”—which Babineau insists makes it “easy to get targeted by predators.”

That’s right. Lacking communications technology that nobody had prior to the 1990s is an “oppression” and “responsible for abduction and murder.” This isn’t how serious people address serious problems. It’s how radicals find ways to artificially link real problems to the “inequality of outcome” normal in competitive market societies.

Taking a female "angle" on violence against Indians would have been reasonable if it was treated as part of a bigger issue. Indian women indeed “are murdered at more than 10 times the national average.” But "Bring Her Home" ignores CDC findings that 75% of Indians murdered between 2003 and 2018 were male.

Another overlooked fact is that the FBI’s 2020 “End-of-Year Active Missing Persons Record” included almost twice as many Indian men as Indian women (918 compared to 578). The context of that difference suggests police might make greater efforts to investigate cases of missing women than those of missing men. 2020 saw 4,276 Indian men and 5,295 Indian women reported missing. That means 89% of female Indian missing persons cases were closed compared to 78% of male cases.

For feminism to overlook the majority of violent crime victims while pushing a narrative of women as a "victim group" is typical. But it's ironic to find that approach in a film in which feminism takes a back seat to “indigenous activism" and claims that high rates of violent crime against Indians are due to racism.

That ideological approach overlooks pertinent factors including: 1) Government prioritization of problems that impact the bulk of the population rather than small minorities. 2) The relationship between crime and socioeconomic status. Prejudiced interpretations of facts are the only "evidence" which "Bring Her Home" uses to support the theory that racism is a major cause of the problems it addresses.

Police offices are condemned, for example, for not “jumping into action” in the case of Savanna Greywind. Racial bias is suggested. Viewers learn that Greywind’s family thought the police were not taking the matter seriously and organized a search of the entire area.

What were the police doing? Investigating the only suspects—a neighboring couple (Brooke Crews and William Hoehn). Their apartment was Greywind’s last know whereabouts but they had no apparent motive. Police found the key clues at Hoehn’s workplace. The Greywind family search—in which Ruth Buffalo participated—found nothing.

Another is example is Babineau’s lament that “My sisters, my people have gone missing since European settlers [arrived]” was another distortion. Her people (the Chippewa) were going missing long before then. Some of their closest “neighbors” were the Sioux—for whom violence was an ongoing way of life.

In Sioux culture “A man’s success at war [was] critical to his social standing and his marriage.” That required wars in which to achieve success and precluded lasting peace. Sioux warriors “annihilate[d] whole villages of their Indian competitors, killing, torturing, mutilating, enslaving, and trading men, women, and children.” Today Indians remain the most common perpetrators of violent crime against Indians.

High rates of violent crime against Indians won’t be understood by analyzing the problem through leftist presuppositions or by ignoring the (male) majority of victims. The problem won’t be solved by implementing the agenda with which radical leftists try to address all real and imagined evils. Reducing violent crime against Indians requires an improvement in normal “law and order” policing and prosecutions. 

 
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