Scorsese's 'Killers of the Flower Moon' Sheds Light on Ongoing Violence Against Indigenous Women

The film underscores a systemic issue that persists due to limited accountability and jurisdictional conflicts on Tribal lands.

Martin Scorsese’s film, Killers of the Flower Moon, highlights the ongoing crisis of violence against Indigenous women, a problem that persists due to limited accountability and systemic issues.
The film is based on the real-life investigation of journalist David Grann, who examined the murders of Osage people during the Reign of Terror in the 1910s to 1930s, a time when the Osage were oil-rich but barred from using their own money.
Disproportionate rates of violence toward Indigenous women, including murder and sexual assault, continue to persist. According to a 2017 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Indian and Alaska Native women have been murdered at more than twice the rate of non-Hispanic white women.
Many of these offenses remain unresolved due to conflicts of jurisdiction, inaction by law enforcement, and a lack of resources on Tribal lands. Since Tribal nations are sovereign entities, they have their own courts and law enforcement, but are broadly barred from prosecuting crimes committed by non-Native people on Tribal lands.
Reforms to the Violence Against Women Act have given tribes more power to prosecute non-Native people in instances of domestic violence, but the impact of past policies and the message they sent lingers.