Hilary Swank’s ‘Alaska Daily’ shines light on missing indigenous women

ABC’s Alaska Daily, starring Hollywood heavy-hitter Hilary Swank, is taking on a big issue at a pivotal time. The show’s premiere was perfectly timed as it made its debut on Oct. 7th, just a few days prior to Indigenous People’s Day. The series highlights a huge crisis on an Alaskan backdrop, but one that is also prevalent all over the nation, exploring the thousands of documented and wholly ignored cases of missing and murdered indigenous women or MMIW.

The show follows the story of the fictional character, reporter Eileen Fitzgerald, played by Swank. Fitzgerald is a no-nonsense big-city reporter who gets booted from her posh gig at a flashy New York paper and somehow finds herself at the dinky periodical known as the Alaska Daily. Although she soon finds this little paper has a big story, one that could change the way the world looks at Alaska and the MMIW crisis forever.

Tom McCarthy, the show’s creator reported to Forbes that the inspiration behind the show is actually based on a real article. “One of the reasons I decided to set the show in Anchorage,” he said, “was a piece of reporting by Kyle Hopkins who wrote a series in conjunction with the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica, that took a hard look at the missing and murdered person crisis, otherwise known as ‘MMIW,’ missing and murdered indigenous women.”

The series takes a long hard look at this crisis in Alaska specifically, but also as it applies to the whole nation. It explores how indigenous women go missing and little is done to find them. They turn up murdered, and no arrests are ever made. While the series plans to dig deep into this issue, the creators are careful to tread lightly on an issue that has caused a lot of heartbreak for many victims and families. Peter Elkoff, a producer and showrunner on Alaska Daily, explained to Forbes, “We’ve tried to tell this story in a respectful and not sensational way, [asking], ‘Why is the system broken? Why is the whole operation, particularly in Alaska, failing indigenous women?’”

According to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, four out of five Native American and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime. The homicide rates are 10 times the national average, and according to U.S. News and World Report, NCIC reports over 5,000 documented records of missing indigenous women as of 2020, many of which remain unsolved. Alaska has declared a statewide crisis around MMIW, and the rest of the nation is not far behind. It’s a critical issue that has remained mostly tucked away in the shadows, but Alaska Daily aims to bring it into the spotlight.

Speaking of spotlights, McCarthy is no stranger to the concept of breaking big stories through the route of good journalism. He is also the creator of the 2015 movie, Spotlight, starring Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo. The film addresses the issue of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church and is based on the true story of a small Boston news team that broke this huge controversy through incredible investigative journalism. The movie was a big success and continues to spotlight a problem that was largely ignored and swept under the rug. Never one to shy away from the tough stuff, McCarthy’s newest creation is sure to be just as big of a hit as his previous one.

The Alaska Daily premier was well received by fans and has already garnered a lot of attention, especially from the indigenous community. We think it’s safe to say we are all looking forward to seeing what exactly this groundbreaking series has up its sleeve and how it tackles this important issue.