“I feel like I have an objective on my back.”
This is a haunting statement that is especially true for Indigenous American women in Montana’s Big Horn County. The trailer for Oxygen’s upcoming documentary. Montana Missing and Murdered, premiering Friday, Nov. 12, investigates why these cases remain unsolved—and at times, even overlooked.
The trailer states that Native American women are the most raped, abused and murdered of all women in America. They go missing, they are found dead. What is the pattern?
The “crisis of Montana” is caused by the disappearance of 28 women in Big Horn County. Assailants are suspected to have taken advantage reservation laws. A lawyer explained in the teaser that “if a non-tribal individual commits a crime on a reservation, tribal officers can’t even make an arrest.”
Or, as one Indigenous woman explains it, Big Horn County can be a place where someone can “get away avec murder.”
Even a police officer can agree: “Why don’t these cases get investigated?” There were no arrests and there were no charges. It keeps happening over and over again.”