The UCONN Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies Program proudly presents "Native film series with activist and community organizer Lakota Harden", a two day film screening event showcasing two films with special guest speaker Lakota Harden, a highly respected organizer, community leader, and elder who has been part of Native American struggles for the past four decades. Below are the dates, times, and room locations for each screening with a small synopsis of each.
Screening “Warrior Women” Monday March 2 in Gentry 131 from 5 to 7
In the 1970s, with the swagger of unapologetic Indianness, organizers of the American Indian Movement (AIM) fought for Native liberation and survival as a community of extended families.
Warrior Women is the story of Madonna Thunder Hawk, one such AIM leader who shaped a kindred group of activists' children - including her daughter Marcy - into the "We Will Remember" Survival School as a Native alternative to government-run education. Together, Madonna and Marcy fought for Native rights in an environment that made them more comrades than mother-daughter. Today, with Marcy now a mother herself, both are still at the forefront of Native issues, fighting against the environmental devastation of the Dakota Access Pipeline and for Indigenous cultural values.
Through a circular Indigenous style of storytelling, this film explores what it means to navigate a movement and motherhood and how activist legacies are passed down and transformed from generation to generation in the context of a colonizing government that meets Native resistance with violence.
Screening “Two Spirit Powwow” in the Rainbow Center Tuesday March 3 from 5 to 6:30
Filmmaker Rick Bacigalupi and BAAITS Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits board member Miko Thomas: “Two-Spirit Powwow” (2019), a new documentary that follows the evolution of the annual powwow from its modest inaugural event seven years ago to the huge powwows of recent years held at the Cow Palace and Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits, the sponsor of the powwow, is an organization committed to activism and service for Two-Spirit people and their allies in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Attending the powwow is a pioneering act of resistance for the many LGBTQ Native American and Two-Spirit people who still face prejudice and stigma in their communities. The film documents how the powwow’s organizers adapt and transform conservative powwow protocol to celebrate queer-positive identities. The film was produced in association with the GLBT Historical Society.
For more information, contact: Barbara Gurr at barbara.gurr@uconn.edu