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

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.