Television series uses CSKT imagery without consent
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On the same week members of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes were meeting with the U.S. Department of Justice and other law-enforcement agencies to hammer out protocols to address missing people on the reservation, the ABC series, “Big Sky” – a drama about missing women in Montana – sought to use tribal imagery without permission.
The crime thriller debuted Nov. 17 and is based on a book by Wyoming author C.J. Box. The series, set in Montana and filmed in British Columbia, follows two women, a private detective and an ex-cop, who team up to search for two sisters who have been kidnapped by a truck driver on a remote highway. Along the way, they discover a spate of other abductions in the area.
The truth is much more painful than the fiction. In Montana, Native Americans account for 26 percent of the state’s missing person cases and just 6.7 percent of the population. And most of those Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) are young women, 18 years old or younger.
When “Big Sky” debuted, Indigenous groups chastised the series for its lack of representation of native people. The producers vowed to rewrite episodes four-eight to help bring attention to the MMIP issue.
Last week, Salish and Blackfeet filmmaker Brooke Swaney received an email from a post-production supervisor looking for aerial footage of the tribal complex in Pablo; she, in turn, forwarded the request to Communications Director Rob McDonald and Tribal Chair Shelly Fyant.
McDonald received a second email a day later, this time, from an indigenous consultant who was portraying a councilwoman in the series. The actress requested information on the military insignias that appear on the veterans’ memorial outside the tribal headquarters in time for Saturday’s shoot. The images, McDonald said, “appeared to be taken from our website.”
“It’s kind of ironic that all of this was happening at the very moment we’re working with the Department of Justice on developing specific protocols for missing person cases originating on the Flathead Reservation,” said Fyant during a press conference last Thursday.
Fyant was particularly incensed that the Big Sky producers did not follow the tribes’ guidelines for using tribal imagery on film. “You come to the tribal council first and introduce your project and seek permissions,” she said. “That’s our protocol.”
She noted that the producers of Paramount’s popular “Yellowstone” series approached the Tribal Council directly and rented the Gray Wolf Peak Casino in Evaro for one of its episodes.
“We’re not subcontracting out our identity or our government,” she said of the “Big Sky” series’ attempt to coopt imagery.
The producers of “Big Sky” not only aroused the ire of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, but also other indigenous organizations. When the series first aired, the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders (of which CSKT is a member), Global Indigenous Council, Coushetta Tribe of Louisiana, the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs and The Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Association reached out to ABC executives and the series’ creator, David Kelley.
According to McDonald, CSKT did not hear back, but the Associated Press received a statement saying, in part, “After meaningful conversations with representatives of the indigenous community, our eyes have been opened to the outsized number of Native American and indigenous women who go missing and are murdered each year, a sad and shocking fact.”
Fyant suggests that ABC could begin to rehabilitate its rocky relationship with the tribes by airing “Somebody’s Daughter,” the documentary created in 2016 by the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders, Global Indigenous Council and the Coushetta Tribe of Louisiana. The film was created to educate legislators about MMIP by telling the stories of those who have lost family members.
“These are very real families that are affected by this,” said Fyant, adding that two of those families participated last week in developing the victim services component of the tribes’ response.
“That’s exactly what this is about – strengthening the response to missing persons and especially for victim’s families,” she added. “It’s just very heavy work. It’s a very hard thing to do.”
Fyant also explained that CSKT is among six tribal nations in six states chosen to take the lead in developing Tribal Community Response Plans for responding to MMIP.
“We were the first tribe in the nation to pilot this program and just out of left field came these two requests,” she said.
“If you’re going to tell a story, you need to ask permission from the people you’re telling it about,” she added. “You need 100 percent consultation with us, and not just the Tribal Council. We have elders; we have cultural protocols in place. They ignored all of that. It just feels, again, like an erasure of us as a tribal nation.”
As of press time, the tribes had not heard back from ABC.
