She's fighting for murdered and missing Indigenous women

Brut America

“Families are so afraid to report their missing loved one as Native for fear of getting them not looked for.”   After seeing fellow Indigenous women murdered or go missing, boxing champion K.O. - Kali Reis decided to speak up ...

Transcript

00:00People don't know what MMIW means.

00:02They know what, you know, a TikTok is,

00:03but they don't know what hashtag MMIW is.

00:05That's, that's a problem.

00:18There's so many cold case files.

00:19It gets to the point where families are so afraid to report

00:22their missing loved one as native

00:25for fear of getting them not looked for.

00:28Maybe if I report them as white, they'll get looked for.

00:29Maybe if I report them as Hispanic, they'll get looked for.

00:31But if I say native, they're going to put it in a box

00:34and it's not going to get worried about.

00:47Paula Castro Stops just found the exact spot

00:50where her daughter's body was discovered.

00:52You have these camps of workers there for years

00:55and they're just there by themselves.

00:57They're in a different area, they're not home,

00:58but they know there's some exotic indigenous women here.

01:01There's a market for that.

01:02The sex market is ridiculous.

01:05Whatever sells, they're going to harvest,

01:07whether it's drugs or women.

01:08And when you're in a certain area

01:10and they know there's a huge reservation

01:13full of native girls that these other guys have never seen,

01:17they're going to get targeted.

01:18And if they know that nobody's looking for these girls

01:20and it's really easy to get them, they're going to get them.

01:22It's when people don't make it a big deal

01:24that these people, these predators

01:26are going to keep on doing it.

01:28What is the role of indigenous women in colonization?

01:35Since colonization, indigenous and Native American women

01:38have been targeted and just have been looked at as weak.

01:41They've been taking our women since they came here,

01:44taking our people since they came here,

01:45and since anybody has colonized any land.

01:47What is the role of indigenous women in colonization?

02:04I have younger cousins that have gotten trafficked.

02:09We had, she's not a relative of mine per se,

02:11but she's of the Wampanoag Nation.

02:14Janasia, she was 18 years old.

02:18She got in a car with somebody she thought she knew

02:22and she got taken away.

02:23Today, police in Felsmere, Florida,

02:25found a body in a field.

02:27They say it appears to be Finkley's body

02:29and that this appears to be a murder.

02:31That was something that hit really close to home.

02:33I mean, I've heard so many different stories.

02:36A Native woman goes missing.

02:45Her tribal government cannot exercise

02:48any kind of police jurisdiction over that crime

02:51unless the government knows that the perpetrator was Native.

03:06I just want to use my platform that I build with boxing.

03:09I have a voice for the voiceless, you know?

03:11These sisters, these people that are missing,

03:13they're gone, they don't have voices.

03:15So I have a voice, so I want to use it to bring awareness

03:17to problems that we have in our community.

03:19I mean, this film is in no way, shape, or form an answer.

03:22It's just an artistic interpretation

03:24to get eyes on something.

03:25You want to grasp eyes and get attention.

03:28Okay, here's a thriller, here's drama.

03:30It's a heavy role, it's a heavy context of a film

03:33or even a context of a conversation,

03:35but I was honored to be able to tell the story.

03:38You know, I have a purpose,

03:40and just like what I do with boxing,

03:42if I had to film in the middle of November, December

03:45in the coldest place on earth, in Buffalo, New York,

03:47I'm going to do that, you know what I mean?

03:49If that's what I have to do,

03:50it was a story that needed to be told.

03:54By any means necessary, I was going to do it.

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