From Cheyenne royalty to federal informant to 'tribal member'

Or, how to exploit #MMIW for financial gain

When it Rains it pours. Screenshot from Dr. Phil episode titled “Missing and Murdered in Montana”

This is the first part of a Pretendian Country Today series into Rain Bear Stands Last. It’s gonna be long!

The Indian internet lit up on the afternoon of Friday, July 1, 2022. And it wasn’t because y’all were getting ready for the Fourth of July — powwows, fireworks and all.

Instead it was an episode of Dr. Phil that got people talking. A rerun — no less — of a show that originally aired in November 2021, during National Native American Heritage Month.

But with Indians watching TV at home (or maybe watching at work? no judgment here!), this replay of a program about the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women started making the rounds, with many seeing it for the first time.

It’s giving...Bret Michaels? There’s more orange in this portrait of Rain than at Mar-a-Lago.

Well that means it’s time for Pretendian Country Today to spill the tea about a “tribal filmmaker” and his spouse, both of whom played a role in getting one of the biggest shows on the air to focus on an issue that Indian Country has been talking about since the dawn of colonization on Turtle Island.

So if you want to learn more about two Pretendian figures — Rain aka Rain Bear Stands Last aka Serle Chapman aka Serle Lovell Chapman and Sara Atiqtalik aka Sarah Ann Gilbertson aka Sarah Mathuin aka Sarah Anna Mathuin aka Sara Anna Mathuin aka Sarah Chapman — and their fascinating journey from the United Kingdom and into Indian Country, all with the help of the U.S. Department of Justice and tribal and taxpayer dollars, you’re gonna have to keep scrolling.

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