PBS ‘Bring Her Home’ Under Fire for Abusing the Truth

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

PBS ‘Bring Her Home’ Under Fire for Abusing the Truth, Shows How Emotion-Fueled Narratives Can Overwhelm the Truth

WASHINGTON / March 24, 2022 – The PBS film, Bring Her Home, released earlier this week, has attracted widespread criticism. Bring Her Home recounts the efforts of three Indian women who sought to bring visibility to the problem of missing and murdered Indians. But the program is flawed by its exclusion of Indian men, who represent a majority of such cases.

The DOJ NamUs database reports that nationwide, 68% of all missing American Indians are men and boys (1). The NamUs website also allows searches to be conducted at the state level. And men represent 75% of all Indian victims of homicide, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (2).

Within days of its release, three commentators issued statements strongly critical of the video:

Rebecca Stewart: In the PBS video, “men are spoken of as perpetrators with the comment that society must ‘reteach men how to be in a relationship with women.’ This generalized misrepresentation damages the truth of the process and sadly, stagnates progress for the entirety of indigenous society.” (3)

James Baresel: “Taking a female ‘angle’ on violence against Indians would have been reasonable if it was treated as part of a bigger issue. Indian women indeed ‘are murdered at more than 10 times the national average.’ But Bring Her Home ignores CDC findings that 75% of Indians murdered between 2003 and 2018 were male.” (4)

Jack Kammer: “Here we have the possibility that a young boy attending one of these rallies might get the impression that he and all other males are excluded from protection and being cared about. And quite likely get the message that you better not talk about what you need because nobody cares.” (5)

The problem with Bring Her Home is that it systematically omits all mention of the existence of missing and murdered men, even though the plight of these men has been the focus of numerous articles and editorials (6). Bring Her Home represents a reprehensible violation of the civil rights of Indian men.

By suppressing key facts, creating false stereotypes, and preying on viewers’ emotions, Bring Her Home threatens to pit Indian women against Indian men. Bring Her Home reveals how emotion-driven narratives can spawn the exclusion of scientific fact.

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