August 9 International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples
UNESCO Statement regarding the International Day of Indigenous Peoples
Indigenous Peoples live in all regions of the world and own, occupy or use some 22 percentof global land area. Numbering at least 370-500 million, Indigenous Peoples represent the greater part of the world’s cultural diversity. They speak an overwhelming majority of the world’s estimated 7,000 languages and represent 5,000 different cultures. Despite their cultural differences, Indigenous Peoples from around the world share common problems related to the protection of their rights as distinct peoples. Many Indigenous Peoples continue to be confronted with marginalization, extreme poverty and other human rights violations.
2023 Theme at UN: Indigenous Youth as Agents of Change for Self-Determination
At the United Nations
Wed, Aug 9, 9-10:30 am EDT. Online. Pregistration on website. https://social.desa.un.org/issues/indigenous-peoples/news/international-day-of-the-worlds-indigenous-peoples-
In Rome, Italy
Oct 16-26. The Biannual UN Global Youth Forum
National Museum of the American Indian
Youth in Action Series Online
“Indigenous Street Art”
How are Indigenous street artists using mural painting, graffiti, billboards, and other mediums to build community and draw attention to issues meaningful to them? Join River Garza (Tongva), Melissa Govea (Purépecha), and (Yankton Sioux) as they discuss their personal and cultural inspirations as well as other influences on their practices, such as the importance of place and why they are drawn to work in the public sphere. Recordings of NMAI’s Youth in Action series are available online at nmai.si.edu
FILMS and FESTIVALS
Online and Hybrid (in Theaters/Broadcast + Streaming)
Gimli Film Festival
Aug 4-13. Tickets. Online at website.
WINNER GRAND JURY PRIZE. Tickets. Online everywhere.Twice Colonized Denmark, Greenland, Canada. Lin Alluna. In English, Kalaallisut, Inuktitut. and Award Acceptance Speech with Aaju Peter. Aaju Peter is a renowned Greenlandic Inuit lawyer and activist who defends the human rights of Indigenous peoples of the Arctic and a fierce protector of her ancestral lands. As Aaju launches an effort to establish an Indigenous forum at the European Union, she also embarks upon a complex and deeply personal journey to mend her own wounds, including the unexpected passing of her youngest son
WINNER NEW VOICES AWARD and INDIGENOUS SPIRIT AWARD. Tickets. Online in Manitoba, Ontario and US. Aitamaako’tamisskapi Natosi: Before the Sun Canada. Banchi Hanuse (Nuxalk) and Award Acceptance Speech with Banchi Hanuse. Growing up on her grandfather’s ranch, Logan Red Crow has been around horses as long as she can remember. The Siksika teenager was 15 in her first race and never looked back. As she prepares to make history by joining the men’s competition on the world’s largest stage at the Calgary Stampede, there’s no hiding from the dangers of North America’s original extreme sport.
2023 Pacific Heartbeat
Pacific Islanders in Communications presents the 12th season of this annual documentary series which showcases the diversity and complexity of Pacific Islander culture. Each week four new documentary programs are introduced that can be seen in scheduled broadcasts on US public television stations nationwide, on the WORLD channeling online. The films and their initial national broadcast dates are
Mon. Aug 7. On TV, online and on PBS app (download for free). Ola Hou: Journey to New York Fashion WeekWhen Native Hawaiian fashion designer Sharayah Chun-Lai receives an out-of-the blue invitation from the world-renowned Runway 7 to showcase her brand, Ola Hou Designs, at the prestigious New York Fashion Week, she and her supportive family are tossed into a fast-paced world of planning, preparation, and runway readiness to bring the spirit of the Big Island to the magic of the Big Apple.
Mon, Aug 15. On TV, online and on PBS app. Island Cowgirls Highlights two Hawaiian cowgirls (paniolo) who have dedicated their lives to caring for their family ranches. On the northwest side of Hawai‘i island, as La‘i Bertlemann prepares to graduate from high school, she must make a difficult decision whether to stay home in Hawai‘i and continue her family tradition of land stewardship or leave. Meanwhile, on the south side, Lani Cran Petrie is at a crossroads as she continues to plan for the future of her ranch while faced with the uncertainty of the state-held lease of the land expiring soon.
Mon, Aug 21. On TV, online, and on PBS app. Daughters of the Waves. Although only 20, Vahine Fierro is undaunted by the Teahupoo wave, considered the most dangerous in the world. Vahine surfs as no other Polynesian girl has ever surfed. In Tahitian culture, riding the waves is an ancestral activity from which women had been gradually eliminated, but now surfing is open to women, just in time for the Olympics. Coming from an entire family of surfers, Vahine and her two sisters hope to make a living with their passion and travel the world.
Mon, Aug 28. On TV, online and on PBS app. Hawai’i – Precious Resources Program. Three short films–Kâhuli, After the Endling, Kumu Niu–explore the delicate balance in Hawai‘i’s ecosystems, that encourage us to reflect on our relationship with the natural world and show us that even the smallest species, like Hawaiian tree snails, and ornamental trees, like the coconut, are worth saving.
Lakota Nation vs. the United States
Now playing In theaters and streaming. This week: Upstate Films in Rhinebeck, NY
Documentary feature. US. Jesse Short Bull, Laura Tomaselli. For more than 100 years, the Lakota tribe in South Dakota has maintained its quest to reclaim the Black Hills, sacred land that was taken by the U.S. in what seems to be a clear violation of treaty agreements. The directors and writer Layli Long Soldier (an acclaimed poet) have created a fierce portrait of 21st century activism, as communities seek to repair the wrongs of the past and build a better future for the next generations. Upstate Films in Hudson Valley
War Pony
Now playing in theaters and streaming. This week: Rodeo Cinema, Oklahoma City and Angelika Film Center, New York City
Narrative feature. US. Gina Gammell, Riley Keough. Featuring A swirling mix of hardship and resourcefulness, disappointment and hope. War Pony tells the journeys of twentysomething hustler Bill and school-aged runabout Malho, both living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Grounded by the Lakota scriptwriters Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy, the film won the Caméra d’Or prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
NFB/National Film Board of Canada
Indigenous Cinema Online
Ongoing online. Membership is free
NFB offers a rich online collection of Indigenous cinema–documentaries, animations, interactives–made between 1968 and 2022. Two new feature documentaries filmed in the North–Ever Deadly and Voices across the Waters–and a new interactive, Similkameen Crossroads, are included. In June the NFB launched curated channels drawing from this to observe Indigenous History Month and Pride Month–Wapikoni Mobile channel, Transmission of Indigenous Knowledge channel, Indigenous-Make Animations channel and 2SLGBTQI+ channel https://www.nfb.ca/channels/lgbtq2/
In all, the NFB website now features more than 6,000 online films, as well as a collection of over 100 interactive works. Works are available outside of Canada. It is very easy to access films on the NFB website, which includes an interactive catalog of Indigenous films. https://www.nfb.ca/subjects/indigenous-peoples-in-canada-first-nations-and-metis/
FILMS and FESTIVALS
In-person
First Peoples/La Presence autocthone
Aug 8-17. Tickets and free events. In-person in Montreal
This remarkable, multi-dimensional festival features outstanding films, numerous events on stage and in the Place des Festivals, live musical performances from top Indigenous talent, masterclasses. This year’s special events include a masterclass with Menahan Obomsawin on “Being a TV research in an Indigenous environment”, daily Abenaki cooking demonstrations with Chef Jacques Watso, a conversation and retrospective of films based on his books with Maori author Witi Ihimaera (Mahana (The Patriarch),White Lies), and a virtual reality film, produced by NFB, This Is Not a Ceremony. Feature films include:
Aug 8 Opening Night
Twice Colonized Greenland, Canada, Denmark. Lin Alluna Following the death of her son, Aaju Peter embarks on a frantic quest to recover her language and culture, from which she was cut off by colonial assimilation policies. Aaju Peter in attendance.
Aug 9
Two Rivers Guatemala Anais Taracena, Laura Bermúdez, Betty Vásquez is a Honduran environmentalist and feminist, María Caal is a Mayan Q’eqchi’ community leader and lives in Guatemala, without knowing each other, they are united by a clarity: the necessity of the defense of the rivers on their territories. Blueberry Land: EpgomanegatiCanada, US. There are literally hundreds of Mi’kmaq who have gone and still go to Maine to take part in the annual Maine Blueberry harvest . Filmmaker Brian Francis, storyteller, filmmaker, author, activist, crab fisherman and blueberry picker, will be in attendance.
Bones of Crows Canada. Marie Clements Unfolding over 100 years, BONES OF CROWS is a feature film told through the eyes of Cree Matriarch Aline Spears as she survives a childhood in Canada’s residential school system to continue her family’s generational fight in the face of systemic starvation, racism, and sexual abuse.
Caminos Peru. Rodrigo Otero Heraud Cero Azul is an ancient Inca site, where fishing, surfing, archaeology, and tourism intersect on ancestral paths. The living coastline of a fertile and nourishing ocean embodies the enigmatic figure of time who carried generations of Men on its infinite waters.
Aug 10
Broken Angel Canada. Jules Arita Koostachin. Angel, mother to Tanis, escapes into the night from her abusive partner Earl to a women’s shelter on the reservation. As the prospect of a new beginning comes to light, he tracks her down and she is forced to flee or fight.
Ever Deadly/Chasseurs de son Canada. Tanya Tagak, Chelsea McMullan. This immersive, visceral music and cinema experience featuring Tanya Tagaq, avant-garde Inuit throat singer, and created in collaboration with award-winning filmmaker Chelsea McMullan. This documentary explores Tagaq’s transformation of sound with an eye to colonial fallout, natural freedom and Canadian history.
La rebelión de las flores Argentina. Maria Laura Vasquez In October 2019, a group of Indigenous women from conflict zones peacefully occupied Argentina’s Ministry of the Interior for 11 days, demanding an end to “terricide” in their communities.
Aug 11
Dark Nature Canada. Berkley Brady .Joy joins her friend Carmen and her therapy group on an isolated weekend retreat in the Canadian Rockies, led by the enigmatic Dr. Dunnley
A Boy Called Piano Fiji, Samoa, Aotearoa/New Zealand Nina Nawalowalo This heart-breaking story details Luafutu’s time as a state ward. At its core, it is a story about fathers and sons, intergenerational trauma and redemption. Using his voice for the voiceless, Luafutu vitally brings his own story to light.
Aug 12
Kaatohkitopii: The Horse He Never Rode Canada. Trevor Solway. A Blackfoot filmmaker from the Siksika Nation evokes the living memory of his grandfather, a residential school survivor, a cowboy who competed in rodeos and taught the art of horsemanship to his grandchildren.
DƏNE YI’INJETL Canada. Luke Gleeson. Told from the perspective of the Tsay Keh Dene Nation the film recounts the events that took place before and after the flooding of a Rocky Mountain trench. Viewed by many critics as a provincial vanity project, the dam was pushed forward and completed ahead of schedule, with little thought given to the resulting impacts that the natural environment and Tsay Keh Dene people would soon face.
Un pont au-dessus de l’océan France. Francis Fourcou. The film evokes the fertile exchanges between two cultures: the Osage and the Occitan. Not to mix them up, but to shed light on the bridges that have linked them for decades, if not centuries. Two cultures, languages and historical tragedies that speak to each other,
“Innu Wapikoni : le Wapikoni et les langues autochtones” Short films from Wapikoni, the mobile Indigenous filmmaking workshop, produced in Quebec in Innu communities and in the Innu language.
Aug 13
Nil, Thelesh Nishinkashin (My Name is Thelesh) Canada. Carl Morasse and Michèle Mishen Martin. After living in the territory and spending years of abuse in residential schools, Pekuakamiulnu Thelesh, through her resilience, overcame her traumas to become a cultural carrier and an inspiring Kukum
Rosie Canada. Gail Maurice A film about family, love, and misfits, ROSIE tells the story of a young, orphaned, Indigenous girl who is forced to live with her reluctant, street-smart Aunty Fred (Frédérique). Rosie is thrust into the fringes of 1980’s Montréal. A second screening later this week.
“Maori Shorts 1” With Leo Koziol (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Rakaipaaka), director of the Wairoa Film Festival, in attendance.
Aug 14
Whetū Mārama – Bright Star New Zealand/Aotearoa. Toby Mills, Aileen O’Sullivan Three men from far flung islands met by chance. Nainoa Thompson from Hawaii, Mau Pialug from Satawal, Hek Busby from Aotearoa / New Zealand. Together they revived the Polynesians’ place as the greatest navigators on the planet.
Mamá Mexico. Xun Sero. A dialogue between a Tzotzil mother and son exploring their contradictions, knowing and recognizing each other, and reflecting on naturalized violence and its reproduction.
Aug 15
Solo el mar nos separa…Only the sea between us Two Syrian directors in Za’atari Refugee Camp, in Jordan, and two Indigenous Shipibo-Konibo directors from Lima, Peru, correspond through film diaries in a cross-border project from Another Kind of Girl Collective.
“Maori Shorts 2 “ With Leo Koziol (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Rakaipaaka), director of the Wairoa Film Festival, in attendance.
Aug 16
Demon Mineral US. Hadley Austin. On the Navajo reservation, a group of scientists, elders and native activists are working to protect a vital space on a vast contaminated area in the Diné Bikeyah, the sacred land of the Navajo. In this region, 523 unremediated mines are scattered over an area the size of West Virginia.
Life of Ivanna Russia, Norway, Finland, Estonia. Renato Borrayo Serrano. 26-year-old Ivanka, who is Nenets, is a single mother of five who survives in her cabin No frills, no romanticism, a rigorously realist snapshot of life in the Arctic tundra.
Aug 17
The Doctrine (Work-in-Progress screened and discussed with director Gwendolen Cates). The Doctrine of Discovery is the term for 15th century laws of conquest and colonization issued by the Vatican that became international and U.S. law. The film explores how The Doctrine codified racial inequity, impacted Indigenous communities globally, and enabled corporate forces driving climate change..
140 km à l’ouest du paradis France/Belgium. Céline Rouzel. In Papua New Guinea, tribes are paid to dance and provide a change of scenery for busloads of tourists, while families have ceded their land to companies like ExxonMobil in exchange for the promise to build schools and hospitals. But nothing came of it.
Get Indigenous Film Festival
Thurs, Aug 17, 7:30-9 pm. Tickets. In-person at Violet Crown in Santa Fe
Watch episodes of Reservation Dogs and Dark Winds and mingle with film industry talent. Co-sponsored by SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market, IAIA, and AMC. An in-person panel about this screening will be held on Sat, Aug 19.
New Zealand International Film Festival
Now through Sept 19. Tickets. In-person in 15 towns and cities across Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Films with Indigenous stories and creators include the following. Go to the festival website to see the complete listing of Indigenous films.
The New Boy Narrative feature. Australia. Warwick Thornton. A young Aboriginal boy (Aswan Reid) is left at an outback convent run by Sister Eileen (Cate Blancett), and the story “sweeps the viewer into a battle of wills and faiths between the boy’s spiritual connection to the land, and Sister Eileen’s Catholic faith, all blood and thorns, and tensions rise.” – Sally Woodfield.
GAGA Narrrative feature. Taiwan. Laha Mebow (Atayal) In Ayatal and Chinese. Grandpa Ha-yong (Wilang Noming), the patriarch of an Indigenous Taiwanese Atayal family living in the highlands, has followed the tradition of gaga—a traditional values system—all his life, but the younger generations have little interest in keeping it alive. Between financial stress, an unwanted pregnancy and simmering family tensions, they all must learn the importance of their relationships and keeping their traditions alive as modern society continues to threaten their culture, heritage and way of life. This is the third feature from Laha Mebow, Taiwan’s first female Indigenous director.
Sweet As Narrative feature. Australia. Jub Clerc (Nyul Nyul, Yawaru). Visually spectacular and rooted in Indigenous Australian understanding of Country, the film follows 16-year-old Murra (Shantae Barnes-Cowan) who is one step away from entering the child protection system when she is sent on a photography safari into remote Western Australia. Through her camera, Murra begins a deep cultural healing. The film won the Crystal Bear award at the Berlin International Film Festival.
TALKING ABOUT
Artist Talk, Podcast
Seneca Art & Culture Center
“WAMPUM/OTGOÄ Artist Talk
Sat, Aug 12, 1:00 pm. In person at Ganondagan State Historic Site, Victor, NY
Skawennati (Mohawk, Turtle Clan) makes art that addresses history, the future, and change from her perspective as an urban Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) woman and as a cyberpunk avatar. Her early adoption of cyberspace as both a location and a medium for her practice has produced groundbreaking projects such as CyberPowWow and TimeTraveller™. She is best known for her machinimas—movies made in virtual environments—but also produces still images, textiles and sculpture. She is the Co-Director for Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace and Skins Workshops in Aboriginal Storytelling in Digital Media, as well as the Partnership Coordinator for the Initiative for Indigenous Futures.
5 Plain Questions
5 Plain Questions is a podcast that proposes 5 general questions to Native American and Indigenous artists, creators, musicians, writers, movers and shakers, and culture bearers. Since 2005, Joe Williams (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate) has been following various artists, elders, and creative folks capturing their journey. Some of the participants include filmmaker Princess Daazhraii Johnson, Chef Candace Stock and artists Anita Fields, Jonathan Thunder, and Jeffrey Gibson. 5 Plain Questions is a project of Eleven Warrior Arts and the Plains Art Museum in Fargo.
Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s
In this podcast series investigative journalist Connie Walker unearths how her family’s story fits into one of Canada’s darkest chapters: the residential school system. Shecame upon a story about her late father she’d never heard before. One night back in the late 1970s while he was working as an officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, he pulled over a suspected drunk driver. He walked up to the vehicle and came face-to-face with a ghost from his past—a residential school priest. What happened on the road that night set in motion an investigation that would send Connie deep into her own past, trying to uncover the secrets of her family and the legacy of trauma passed down through the generations.
EXHIBITIONS
Jeffrey Gibson is to be the first Indigenous artist to represent the US solo at the 2024 Venice Biennale
CLOSING SOON
Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City
“Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map”
April 19-Aug 13. Tickets. In-person in New York City
This exhibition is the first New York retrospective of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940, citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), an overdue but timely look at the work of a groundbreaking artist. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map brings together nearly five decades of Smith’s drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures in the largest and most comprehensive showing of her career to date.
Available at the exhibition’s website are excerpts from the catalog esponding to Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s work. by Lou Cornum,Larry McNeil Xhe Dhé Tee Harbor Jackson, and Patricia Marroquin Norby (Purépecha) republished from the exhibition catalogue Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map, as well as. an excerpt from the curator Laura Phipps catalog essay “My Roots Extend.”
READING ABOUT
Native Arts and Culture, A Composer, Keepers of the Earth, Mezcal and the Environment
Native Arts and Culture (US): Resilience, Reclamation, Relevance
Executive Summary of the Gathering in 2020 presented by Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, US National Endowment for the Arts, US National Endowment for the Humanities
In February 2020, a first-of-its-kind gathering took place in Washington, D.C., co-hosted by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF), bringing together more than 225 attendees including members from more than 40 tribal nations, representatives from over a dozen US federal/state/regional entities, many Native artists and students, and non-profit professionals and funders who support Native peoples. The programming of the gathering was designed collaboratively by a Native Advisory Council formed by NACF and a Federal Planning Committee formed by the NEA and facilitated by Lillian Sparks Robinson (Rosebud Sioux), CEO of Wopila Consulting and former Commissioner of the Administration for Native Americans.
“The Forever Sound: Pulitzer Prize-Winning Composer Raven Chacon” by Peter Aaron in Chronogram, Aug 1, 2023
“…As he navigates the craziness of attention that’s followed the (Pulitzer Prize in Music) award, Chacon is working on a piece for an eight-voice choir and eight hyperdirectional speakers to be premiered at the new Perelman Arts Center in New York, a collaboration with poet Natalie Diaz, and other projects…”
“Meet Our 2023 Keepers of the Earth Fund Grant Partners Working to Transmit Indigenous Knowledge” in Cultural Survival Online, Aug 1, 2023
The Keepers of the Earth Fun has announced that in 2023 it awarded over half a million dollars in small grants to support 68 Indigenous projects on issues related to community empowerment for land defense and autonomy, the transmission of Indigenous Knowledge, traditional medicine and Indigenous spirituality, food sovereignty and Indigenous economies, and the various forms of resistance to mining for energy transition.
“Revitalising Indigenous Ecosystems” in A Growing Culture Online
Because of consumer trends, mezcal production in Mexico has increased by over 700% in the past decade, with Oaxaca standing as the leading producer, responsible for over 85% of state-certified mezcal. But beneath the potent flavors, earthy undertones, and delicate sweetness of this cherished Mexican spirit are two stories that often go untold. The first is a story of the harmful impacts of industrial mezcal production on Indigenous communities and the ecosystems they nurture. The second is a story of Proyecto Rosenda and the remarkable grassroots resistance in the face of an industry determined to commodify local practices and cultures. These stories start in Oaxaca.
