Indigenous matriarchal justice as counterpoint to the carceral feminist extension of US empire in Issa López’s True Detective: Night Country

Abstract

This study views the Indigenous matriarchal system of justice in writer/director Issa López’s True Detective: Night Country as a contribution to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement and the genre of Indigenous futurism. The HBO series uncovers Alaska Native and matriarchal epistemologies and practices while interrogating liberal/carceral feminisms for their participation in state systems of justice that contribute to the erasure of intersectional experiences of violence suffered by Native women. It contrasts the lead characters–police chief, Liz Danvers, and Alaska Native trooper, Evangeline Navarro–with the Alaska Native collective of mother figures who midwife a new era that can potentially reform the heretofore complicit protagonists alongside viewers identifying with them. The article finally places the series–filmed in Iceland, set in Alaska–in the context of Pacific transactions in conversation with the Atlantic world.