Fort Worth Paschal alum inspired ESPN’s latest powerful documentary
%20.jpg "Donna Kipp is a Native American who trains at a gym on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. She is featured in the new 30 For 30 short, “Blackfeet Boxing: Not Invisible,” which will debut on ESPN Tuesday evening.")
Within the restricted, government-issued confines of the Native American is a tragedy so obscure it does not even register as an official statistic, and yet it applies to all parents of daughters and caregivers of girls and young women.
When Paschal alum Taylor Sheridan wrote and directed the popular movie Wind River, he unintentionally inspired ESPN’s latest film with the last line written on screen that haunted every viewer.
“While missing person statistics are compiled for every other demographic, none exist for Native American women. No one knows how many are missing.”
The 2017 movie starring Jeremy Renner about the disappearance of a young Native American woman on an Indian reservation in Wyoming is Hollywood, but the story is reality.
ESPN producer Kristen Lappas watched the film during a flight, and the next day she jumped into that indelible detail.
Along with ESPN reporter Tom Rinaldi, Lappas has produced an ESPN Film, “Blackfeet Boxing: Not Invisible,” which debuts at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 30.
If you have a daughter, watch it. This is not your typical 30 for 30 about a popular sports team, or icon. Anyone with a significant young female in their life will find meaning in this.
The 30-minute documentary is the story of former law enforcement officer, Frank Kipp, and his effort to start and operate a boxing gym on Blackfeet Reservation, near Glacier National Park in Montana. The gym’s target audience is youths on the reservation, with the hope that girls will join.
Because it is Native American girls who are targets, and the goal of the gym is to teach them how to fight.
Murdered & Missing Indigenous Women is a movement that sheds lights on the situation young Native American women face in a daily existence just to survive.
According to the site, 5,712 Native American women are missing or have been murdered since 2016. Native American women are murdered at a rate 10 times higher than other ethnicities and it’s their third-leading cause of death.
“[Kipp’s wife] told me that Native American women are told to be polite and not speak unless spoken to. It’s generations for these girls,” Lappas said in a phone interview. “The girls come into the boxing gym, and they are just so shy.
“I asked these girls if they had ever seen domestic violence, and they all said they saw it. It’s mind blowing. Every one of them.”
I asked Lappas if this is what happens: A Native American women is sexually assaulted, murdered, and then her body is disposed of in a landscape that is so vast that the limited man power is unable to find the corpse.
In the film, they follow the disappearance of young woman in the Blackfeet Reservation, an area 2,285 square miles with a population of 10,938. By comparison, the island of Manhattan in New York is almost 23 miles with a population of 1.6 million.
“That is often what happens. But it’s more complicated than that,” she said. “There is human trafficking. They drive onto the reservation, and they just take the girls. That happens in Indian country. It’s domestic abuse. The women have been seen as disposable.”
Lappas’ film follows a few girls, whose stories range from inspiring to heart-breaking.
While their existence is virtually foreign to everyone who watches this who is not Native American and familiar with that life, every parent with a daughter can relate to the fear for their own girls.
Kipp’s message to all of these girls who put on the gloves is they have to learn to protect themselves. In the process, they gain some self esteem, confidence, and an identity.
It’s a message that more dads should heed. Scoring a goal in a soccer game is great, but self defense has a place that is often ignored. Because we don’t want to think about those things.
This latest ESPN project won’t receive the type of publicity, and ratings, that the documercial “The Last Dance” did, but it’s story and message are far more significant.
The girls and their stories are real, and they are not invisible.
This story was originally published June 30, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
