Save Our Sisters Alaska campaign gives voice to unspeakable statistics By Debra McKinney
NO MORE SILENCE A
mos Lane needs answers. He needs to know the full story behind what happened to his mother on July 9, 1985. He was the oldest of five children, growing up in the whaling village of Point Hope on the coast of the Chukchi Sea. On that night, three men tortured, raped, and murdered Harriet Lane. Thirty-five years later no one has been arrested for her brutal murder. Point Hope is a small, remote community, with a population of around 300 in those days, about half of what it is today. Many were related and, for the most part, everyone knew each other. Neighbors had to have heard his mother’s screams; some had to have known who did this. Why has there been no justice? “I keep being asked the same question: Are you okay? I’m not okay, but I’ll be okay. I would like to see my mother rest in peace.”
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A L A S K A H U M A N I T I E S F O R U M FA L L 2020
Amos and his youngest sister, Eunice, tell their gut-wrenching stories of childhoods lost, spirals into self-destruction, and the quest for healing in the film Justice for Harriet. He speaks of his anguish from his carving studio in Anchorage, and she from her home in Point Hope, a place of ancient ancestors, strong traditions, and sun-bleached whale bones. The 22-minute documentary is the first in a series on missing, murdered, and sexually abused Alaska Native women, part of a multimedia campaign initiative, Save Our Sisters Alaska, produced by Affinityfilms, Inc. The campaign aims to raise awareness, improve reporting, and inspire the search for solutions to Alaska’s devastating violent crime statistics for women and the justice system that often fails them. Alaska has the highest per capita rate
