Dateline NBC in North Dakota

It's not very often that North Dakota makes the National News. Ok, we did have very recent coverage with the Isaak trial, but usually we only get mentioned by Al Roker if we are going to be really cold in the winter or blasted with a major blizzard.

This Friday night we are in the spotlight, and not a good spotlight, with Dateline NBC..."The Secrets of Spirit Lake". The focus is on MMIW, or Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Many , many Indigenous or Native American women go missing quite often. Dateline will show how jurisdiction between tribal and non-tribal law enforcement entities can complicate cases.

Right now there are 189 active cases of missing persons in Montana. 60 of those are Indigenous, and 20 of those have been missing for more than a year. Too many loved ones are missing even here in North Dakota. Dateline has lined up various people to tell their stories, including Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.

It is a different world we are living in now days. We hear of more attempts by men and women trying to kidnap girls, children and enter them into the world of human trafficking. We hear stories of women gone missing, only to be found months, even years later in a place close to home. Their families will sometimes have a body to bury, but no answers as to what happened.

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women is becoming an epidemic. It is sad, but it is reality. Three years ago that missing New Town woman was found in her truck in Lake Sakakawea. Her family is still searching for answers.

The one hour special airs at 10pm Eastern on NBC.

LOOK: Milestones in women's history from the year you were born

Women have left marks on everything from entertainment and music to space exploration, athletics, and technology. Each passing year and new milestone makes it clear both how recent this history-making is in relation to the rest of the country, as well as how far we still need to go. The resulting timeline shows that women are constantly making history worthy of best-selling biographies and classroom textbooks; someone just needs to write about them.

Scroll through to find out when women in the U.S. and around the world won rights, the names of women who shattered the glass ceiling, and which country's women banded together to end a civil war.