- by Graham Holton
- The Guardian
- Issue #2178
Alaska Daily stars Hilary Swank as Eileen Fitzgerald, a disgraced New York journalist hired by a small newspaper in Anchorage, Alaska. The series is based on the real problem of hundreds of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls suffering a significantly higher homicide rate than other ethnic populations.
The show uses investigative journalism to uncover the systemic cover up by the police and politicians of dozens of missing and murdered indigenous women. It explores the culture of corruption, incompetence and lack of caring by authorities and hits hard on the Alaska political system. The series was inspired by a joint investigative journalism series by the Anchorage Daily and ProPublica into the under investigated problem of murdered indigenous women.
Only one season of eleven episodes was done after numerous attacks by the press on Swank who was co-executive producer, and its portrayal of modern Alaska. The portrayal of journalists seems realistic, although Swank’s character has been frequently slated for being unlikeable. This might reflect the ‘liberal’ demand that the protagonists on the side of truth be good and likeable people. There’s also a lot of discomfort in the US with depictions of US racism against Indigenous people.
However likeable or unlikable the viewer finds Swank, the series does a good job of presenting a serious issue. As Alaska Daily says, no one knows the exact number of indigenous women murdered each year, due to under-reporting, inconsistent ethnic classification, and incomplete law enforcement records. Many cases go unrecorded, or misclassified, being coded as accidents or undetermined death. Law enforcement databases do not consistently track indigenous identity, so homicide numbers of Native Alaskan women could be underestimated. State and federal systems use different definitions and reporting standards, making annual comparisons difficult.
A study by the Urban Indian Health Institute shows Alaska has hundreds of documented cases of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. In one decades-long study there are 229 cases identifying 80 murdered and 149 missing. In 2020 the homicide rate for Alaska Native women killed by men was 12.6 per 100,000 women, far higher than other groups in the state. The Urban Indian Health Institute identifies 506 cases involving Alaska Native and Native American people, of which 56 per cent were murder cases and 25 per cent were missing persons. National research shows that four in five Indigenous women experience violence in their lifetime, and two-thirds experience sexual violence.
The US Department of Justice has said that it’s working to the accuracy of data collection in this area, but far more needs to be done – now – to keep indigenous women safe, and the culprits convicted. The systemic disregard for the issue is shocking, especially as it is only now that it is being tackled.
To maintain these investigations is very difficult under the Trump administration. A groundbreaking report on missing and murdered women was released during the first Trump administration, and now has been pulled from its home website in keeping with the government’s war on any mention of people of colour – either achievements or persecution.
