This past weekend, I watched the 2017 film Wind River with Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen. It’s a story about the murder of an Indigenous woman and her boyfriend, wrapped in a chilling mystery.
There’s one scene that stopped me cold.
The investigators arrive at an oil refinery site. The land is technically federal, leased to the refinery. Everyone is armed: refinery security, local sheriffs, tribal authorities, and the FBI agent played by Olsen. As they approach the dead boyfriend’s trailer, one sheriff’s deputy suddenly senses something.
He freezes, then says with urgency:
“Why are you flanking me?”
He draws his weapon because he can feel it before he fully sees it—the refinery security guards are encircling them, shifting into position to trap them in a shooting gallery.
Olsen’s character urges calm and tells everyone to lower their weapons. But the deputy presses her:
“You didn’t see it? You didn’t see it!?”
That moment has stayed with me. Because what he really meant was: Can’t you sense it? Can’t you feel the danger moving around us?
Take a look and then come back.
Of course, he was right. Violence followed. And it made me think about this moment we’re all in.
We are being flanked.
The encirclement isn’t always visible at first. But if you pause and feel into it, you know. We’re being boxed in politically, socially, and culturally. Rights restricted. Truth distorted. Power is consolidated, and attempts are made to activate a federal militarized police force.
And the question that the deputy asked should be echoing in all of our minds:
Why are they flanking us?
Because there’s a reason.
He was forced to stand down. We cannot afford to. We have to take a protective stance, trust our intuition, and refuse silence.
The danger is real. The flanking is deliberate. And the question now is whether we’re willing to see it and act.
