On Nov. 9, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that directly challenged the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. This month, during Native American Heritage Month, watch films that tell of the long-standing effects of U.S. policy and non-Native adoption, and what healing and cultural reconciliation mean to these communities.
In Their Element
IN THEIR ELEMENT spotlights Indigenous leaders rising up to meet the challenge of the climate crisis. The film features four communities across the United States, each working to protect a different natural resource: earth, air, fire, and water. For people whose existence is inseparable from their native land, climate change is not a tale of the future - it is the present.
Daughter of a Lost Bird
Kendra, a Native adoptee, grew up assimilated in a loving, white family with little connection to her heritage. Now, as an adult with a family of her own, Kendra embarks on a seven year journey to find her biological mother, April, and return to her Lummi homeland. Together, Kendra and April, also a Native adoptee, navigate what it means to be Native and to belong to a tribe from the outside.
Blood Memory
For Sandy White Hawk, the story of America’s Indian Adoption Era is not one of saving children but of destroying families and tribes. As an adoption survivor, Sandy sets out to reclaim the missing pieces of her stolen past only to discover that hers was not an isolated case. BLOOD MEMORY explores the communal healing that is sparked by the return of this stolen generation.
Returning Home Through Togetherness: Native American Heritage Month Film Collection
This November, WORLD Channel presents films rich with voices from the Indigenous community. With the leadership of our partner Vision Maker Media, we invite you to listen and learn from these Native storytellers.
Home can be a location, culture, community, family or a deep feeling of connection.
In our Native cultures, we have faced many atrocities since invasion, which began the loss of everything. Yet today in spirit, beliefs, practices and thoughts, we retain hope that the missing will return home.
Our Native culture, knowledge, gathering, spirit, ceremony, and wisdom helps carry us through the journey, the belief, and the hope of returning home. Our cultural connection to home helps us endure, hope, pray, practice ceremony and believe that the absent one will someday return home.
Returning home is not always easy, nor is a return home always met with fanfare. Nonetheless, our connection to home in our Native culture engages our spirit to practice our ceremony, which joins our humanity to the place of belonging that we call home.
In our programs for November, we share stories about warriors, boarding school children, loss and death. As warriors, the fight to safeguard and return home keeps us persevering. For the missing and departed, we pray for their return. Home is in our spirit and returning home through togetherness remains the hope. - Francene Blythe-Lewis, Executive Director of Vision Maker Media
Watch, share and join in the conversation #ReturningHome
RETURNING HOME THROUGH TOGETHERNESS: HEALING FROM HISTORICAL TRAUMA
Join WORLD Channel and Vision Maker Media for a panel commemorating Native American and Alaska Native Heritage Month by exploring the effects of historical trauma from boarding schools, adoption and repatriation. Journalist and media critic Jenni Monet (Laguna Pueblo) will moderate conversations between Sandy White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota), Anitra Warrior (Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma), and BLOOD MEMORY director Drew Nicholas. Watch the recording!
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