#indigenousfilms — Public Fediverse posts

[Short film] #Tahnaanooku'

Justin Deegan (Arikara, Oglala, and Hunkpapa) with Jennifer Martel (Cheyenne)

"A grandmother. A source of existence. A portal to other worlds. For thousands of years, the Indigenous Peoples of what is now known as North and South Dakota co-existed reciprocally with the Missouri River, its waters offering life while also inspiring legends and languages. In Tahnaanooku’, filmmaker Justin Deegan takes an experimental approach to the severing of this relationship between his community — the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara — and the river, the result of over 80 years of US government efforts to control the Missouri, including via the Garrison Dam.

"Seen through the eyes of Deegan’s mother, Darline, Tahnaanooku’ intertwines past, present, and future, land and language, dreams and reality. The staunching of the Missouri contrasts with a fluid streak of horses, the diminished river currents interweave with the light of the aurora borealis. In dreams, Darline — a designer, activist, mother, and grandmother — receives messages from the original Mother, Earth itself. Meanwhile, the stark visual backdrop of the Garrison Dam offers an immovable reminder of the ruinous history of the Pick-Sloan Plan, deemed by legendary historian Vine Deloria Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux) to be 'the single most destructive act ever perpetrated on any tribe by the United States.'

"Glimpsed in ceremony, Darline (one of the last speakers of the critically endangered ancient Arikara language) offers care to a fellow grandmother and shares hope for the generations to come."

Watch: https://www.reciprocity.org/films/tahnaanooku

#Arikara #StandingRockSioux #Mandan #Hidatsa #Arikara #MotherEarth #MissouriRiver #GarrisonDam #DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #LandDefenders #ReciprocityProject #Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers #IndigenousWisdom #IndigenousKnowledge #Reciprocity

[Short film] #Tentsítewahkwe

Katsitsionni Fox (#Mohawk) with Xochitl Fox (#Mexica / #Azteca)

"As a young girl, Jessica Shenandoah (Wolf Clan from the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation) learned about harvesting medicine and food plants alongside her mother and grandmother. Contemporary Native People are often separated many generations from their traditional knowledge due to the effects of colonial realities such as boarding school, forced religion, and land theft.

"In the latest Native women-centered film by Mohawk filmmaker Katsitsionni Fox (Ohero:kon - Under the Husk, Without a Whisper - Konnon:kwe), Shenandoah goes on a journey across four seasons and multiple Native territories to connect with other knowledge keepers reviving the land-based knowledge of their ancestral grandmothers in order to return to time-honored practices of pottery making, mat weaving, hide tanning, medicine making, food gathering, and more. Jessica embodies the Mohawk concept of Tentsítewahkwe as she picks up knowledge of the old ways, these slow methods of creating and connecting in reciprocity with the Earth.

"This film is at once a thank you to the Native women who imbued their descendents with blood memory of these practices and a promise to future generations of Native people that these practices will stay alive for generations to come."

Watch:
https://www.reciprocity.org/films/tentsitewahkwe

#DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #LandDefenders #ReciprocityProject #Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers
#IndigenousWisdom #IndigenousKnowledge #IndigenousReclamation #Reciprocity #MotherEarth #Akwesasne #MohawkNation #TraditionalMedicine #LandBasedKnowledge #WomenCenteredFilms