REMAINING NATIVE

A very close family friend recently told me that being Indigenous today carries with it a responsibility to both maintain a historical legacy of culture and tradition and to educate all people about that legacy and how it exists today in 2023. More than anything, my affiliation as an Indigenous person is to this responsibility.

I grew up immersed in my cultural identity. I am Haudenosaunee (people of the longhouse). As a young girl, I would spend time helping my paternal grandmother sell jewelry at powwows and listen to my maternal grandfather’s ideas of politics as an Oneida council member. I worked at a New York State Historic Site that was a 17th Century Onondawa’ga:’ (Seneca) village as an interpreter of history. At Ithaca College, I worked hard to form a Native student group and advocate for better, more equitable representation on campus.  In New York City, for the last 10 years I’ve fought hard to pitch mainstream stories of Indigenous America to various media companies, some resulting in powerful projects but sadly most unacknowledged or deemed “too niche.”

Now, I’ve been working on my first documentary Remaining Native which, through my identity, has enabled me to reflect and honor my family’s story and the legacies, the responsibilities we carry as Indigenous people as we navigate the United States reckoning with boarding school history for the first time ever. As a storyteller, making a film was the best artistic expression to share the lives of those in this story with the same nuance and complexity as I’ve experienced as an Indigenous person today.  Too often, Indigenous peoples are represented as relics of the past, through a lens that focuses solely on moments of struggle and deficit. This film intentionally finds beauty in every scene. As the sprawling desert landscape meets the soles of Ku’s running shoes, or a ceremonial fire illuminates the textures of the tobacco pouch, the audience is guided towards understanding both running and community as medicine.