INDIgenesis: GEN2
Friday, February 15–Saturday, March 9
Walker Art Center
“Film has become the Indigenous language of the First Nations people of Turtle Island and is our way of re-creating our history and truths.” —Missy Whiteman, guest curator
INDIgenesis: GEN2 returns to the Walker Cinema for a second year of Native/Indigenous films that speak to future generations, guest curated by filmmaker Missy Whiteman (Northern Arapaho and Kickapoo Nations). Through moving image, Native filmmakers look to the past, present, and the future to convey truths about our histories and reconnect to Indigenous languages, land, and ways of life.
The four-week series showcases area premieres of narrative and documentary features as well as an evening of shorts from the Sundance Native American and Indigenous Filmprograms, discussions and presentations by special guests, and a free youth-focused program. Other highlights of the series include the opening-weekend premiere of Falls Around Her, by writer-director Darlene Naponse (Anishinaabe Kwe) and starring Tantoo Cardinal (Métis); a conversation and look back honoring Smoke Signals director Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/Arapaho).
EVENTS
Recontextualized: The Covered Wagon
Directed by James Cruze
Live score by Michael Wilson (Ojibwe)
Friday, February 15, 7 pm
Walker Cinema
$10 ($8 Walker members, seniors, and students).
INDIgenesis: GEN2 opens with a presentation recontextualizing James Cruze’s 1923 silent feature The Covered Wagon. The epic Western cast hundreds of Native Americans as Hollywood’s stereotypical American Indians, including curator Missy Whiteman’s own family members from the Northern Arapaho Tribe. To engage with this fraught history, the film is presented with a contemporary live score composed and performed by Michael Wilson (Ojibwe), which incorporates recordings of Arapaho songs, along with cast members’ photographs and stories. A blessing precedes the screening and discussion follows. 1923, US, DCP, 98 min.
Older Than America
Directed by Georgina Lightning (Samson Cree)
Saturday, February 16, 1 pm
Walker Cinema
$10 ($8 Walker members, seniors, and students).
View Trailer
Read more on Older Than America
A woman’s haunting visions reveal a Catholic priest’s sinister plot to silence her mother from speaking the truth about atrocities that took place at her Native American boarding school. Director Georgina Lightning’s suspenseful drama delves into the lasting impact of the cultural genocide and loss of identity that occurred at these institutions across the United States and Canada. Locally produced by Christine Kunewa Walker and filmed in Cloquet, Minnesota, Older Than America features Tantoo Cardinal (Métis) as Auntie Apple. 2008, US, HDCAM, 102 minutes.
“Our goal in making this film was to shed light on a widely unknown issue that has had a lasting impact on the Native American community. The phrase Older Than America refers to who we were as a nation before mandatory assimilation transformed our identity. The film is dedicated to Georgina Lightning’s father, George De Jong, who after years of battling the demons of boarding school ultimately committed suicide.”
—Georgina Lightning and Christine Kunewa Walker
Area Premiere
Falls Around Her
Writer/Director in Person: Darlene Naponse (Anishinaabe Kwe)
Actor in Person: Tantoo Cardinal (Métis)
Saturday, February 16, 7 pm
Walker Cinema
$10 ($8 Walker members, seniors, and students)
Read Women and Hollywood on Darlene Naponse
Read more on Tantoo Cardinal
“Let us show you the love and the beauty of our community; let us share it through our own world view and through our own voices, our own languages.” —Tantoo Cardinal
Falls Around Her follows Mary Birchbark (Tantoo Cardinal), a legendary singer who returns to the vast wilderness of her reserve to reconnect with the land and her community. She soon begins to sense that someone might be watching her. Unsure of what is real or imagined, Birchbark embraces isolation as she explores the psychological impact of her past and present. 2018, Atikameksheng Anishnawbek/Canada, DCP, 98 minutes.
Production of Falls Around Her took place on the sacred land of Atikameksheng Anishnawbek, a First Nation in Northern Ontario, Canada, and home to writer and director Darlene Naponse and her ancestors. Its people are descendants of the Ojibway, Algonquin, and Odawa Nations.
Honoring Tantoo Cardinal
“I got into acting through my political involvement, through a sense of justice. I wanted to see things change, to offset some of the lies that have been told about us throughout history.” —Tantoo Cardinal
Iconic Métis actress Tantoo Cardinal will be honored at the screening of her most recent film, Falls Around Her. One of the most celebrated Indigenous actors in the industry, Cardinal has appeared in more than 100 films since the 1970s. Gaining popular international recognition for her roles in Dances with Wolves (1990), Black Robe (1991), and Smoke Signals (1998), Cardinal continues to win acclaim for her performances in independent and commercial films as well as in television series.
Area premiere
Biidaaban: First Light
An Interactive Virtual Reality Installation
Directed by Lisa Jackson (Anishinaabe)
Thursday, February 21, 5–9 pm, Free
Star Tribune Foundation Art Lab
View Trailer
Read Filmmaker Magazine on Biidaaban: First Light
One of Canada’s most celebrated artists working in film and VR, Lisa Jackson creates a highly realistic vision of Indigenous futurism in which tomorrow’s city of Toronto is radically reclaimed by nature, Indigenous languages, culture, and knowledge. An Anishinaabemowin word that means “the first light before dawn,” Biidaaban also refers to the concept of nonlinear time where past and future collapse in on the present. The Walker’s Art Lab will have three VR stations for experiencing this seven-minute project throughout the evening. 2018, VR installation, Canada, 7 minutes.
Target Free Thursday Nights sponsored by 
Skins
Directed by Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/Arapaho)
Friday, February 22, 7 pm
Walker Cinema
$10 ($8 Walker members, seniors, and students)
View Trailer
Read The New York Times on Skins
Fed up with alcoholism and a profiteering liquor store, Lakota tribal police officer Rudy Yellow Lodge takes the law into his own hands. While investigating a murder, Rudy encounters Iktomi, the Lakota trickster spirit, who spurns him on a quest to seek justice for himself, his family, and his culture. Graham Greene (Oneida) plays Mogie, Rudy’s humorous yet tragically alcoholic brother in this dramatic story of revenge, forgiveness, and brotherhood.
Chris Eyre’s Skins, adapted from the 1995 novel by Adrian C. Louis (Lovelock Paiute), was filmed on location at the Pine Ridge Reservation in the oppressive shadow of Mount Rushmore, a mountain sacred to the Sioux. 2002, US, 35mm, 87 minutes.
“I think Skins is the most commercial Indian movie ever made. It has Lakota language in it, Lakota religion, and Lakota culture, and that doesn’t mean culture from 1890. It’s not about romanticizing who we were. It’s about looking at who we are, or some of who we are, and reclaiming the good with the bad, in order to move forward. I’m not leaving it to the American public or the white liberal to say who we are.”
—Chris Eyre, director
Presented in conjunction with Chris Eyre: Filmmaker in Conversation (March 9).
Area Premiere
Sgaawaay K’uuna (Edge of the Knife)
Directed by Gwaai Edenshaw (Haida) and Helen Haig-Brown (Tsilhqot’in)
Saturday, February 23, 2 pm
Walker Cinema
$10 ($8 Walker members, seniors, and students)
View Trailer
Read The Conversation on Sgaawaay K’uuna (Edge of the Knife)
This 19th-century mystery thriller is set before European contact on the Pacific Northwest islands of Haida Gwaii. There, two extended families on an annual fishing trip are torn apart by internal conflicts and a fateful storm. When an exiled nobleman descends into madness, he is transformed into Gaagixid—a mythical “wild man” caught between natural and supernatural worlds. As he struggles to survive, the families return to restore his humanity and heal their broken community. The first feature film about the Haida people, Sgaawaay K’uuna (Edge of the Knife) is a catalyst for the revitalization of the Haida language and culture. The film features a fully Haida cast (trained in the language by fluent speakers and elders) as well as sets, costumes, and props from traditional Haida craftspeople. In Haida with English subtitles. 2018, Haida Nation/Canada, DCP, 100 minutes.
“The mystery-thriller, directed by Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown, started as a collaboration with the University of British Columbia (UBC), the Inuit film production company Kingulliit, and the Council of the Haida Nation (CHN). We hope the film will be a catalyst for language revitalization as well as community economic development. In 2012, fewer than one per cent of the Haida were fluent in the Haida language and most of those were over the age of 70, so the language was regarded as in crisis.
Before the coasts took their form, before the glaciers disappeared, before trees grew, Haida ancestors lived among the SGaana (supernatural beings) in Haida Gwaii. Since then generations of kuuniisii (Haida ancestors) have memorized and recited a canon of oral histories called K’aygang.nga. These describe how supernaturals established themselves in the forms of plants, animals, reefs, rivers, and mountains. A nationwide effort strives to advance Haida language on all fronts: in public schools, with college education, through mentor/apprenticeship efforts, using Haida immersion programs, and much more. As individuals and as a nation, we are working hard to ensure our children speak the language of our ancestors. SGaawaay K’uuna is just a part of the inspirational legacy our elders and ancestors have entrusted to the current generation. Fluent elders carefully translated our script into three Haida dialects. Our fully-Haida cast trained rigorously with dedicated fluent speakers, who coached them in memorizing, pronouncing, and expressing their lines.
We worked with expert weavers and professional costume designers to provide audiences with an accurate view of our people as they appeared before Haayhiilas, the smallpox genocides of 1862. A team assembled a set of historically accurate tools and technology. Some are new creations and others are centuries-old objects our ancestors passed down to us. Many accomplished language champions, carvers, and weavers appear in the film wearing the clothes and using the items they created themselves. We hope our joint effort will allow audiences to peer into the lives of our ancestors, who lived among the beautiful objects that reflect their dignity and excellence.”
—Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown, directors
Selections from the Healing Voices Story Collection
Thursday, February 28, 7 pm Free
Walker Cinema
Filmmaker Missy Whiteman shares short works in which younger generations filmed elders telling stories through Indigenous youth media projects in Wyoming, Washington, and Alaska. The selections from the Healing Voices story collection highlight individual experiences of boarding school survivors and their journeys of healing, resiliency, and hope. This event is presented in partnership with Independent Indigenous Film and Media (IIFM) and the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. Program approx. 50 minutes, followed by a conversation.
| Target Free Thursday Nights sponsored by | |
Area Premiere
Warrior Women
Directors in person: Christina D. King (Seminole) and Elizabeth A. Castle
Film subjects in person: Madonna Thunder Hawk (Lakota) and Marcella Gilbert (Lakota)
Friday, March 1, 7 pm
Walker Cinema
$10 ($8 Walker members, seniors, and students)
View Trailer
Read Women and Hollywood on Warrior Women
“This is our time. You gotta be ready to drop everything and go if you feel it’s important enough.”—Madonna Thunder Hawk
Warrior Women is the story of mothers and daughters fighting for Native rights in the American Indian Movement (AIM). Beginning in 1970s, the film unveils a female perspective of major moments of AIM and their relationship to Indigenous teachings and examines the impact of their political struggles on the next generation. 2018, DCP, US, 64 minutes.
“As Native Americans and Native descendants, respectively, we are interested in pushing the visual boundaries of traditional documentary filmmaking to create a more atemporal experience that better conveys how we and our main characters actually see and engage with the world as Indigenous women. Known as the 4th World, this context creates space for us to be ourselves, rather than filter our stories through a European worldview of leadership, power, and identity. To achieve this lens-shift in the film, we made Warrior Women by trying to maximize the storytelling potential of art and design as it relates to intergenerational trauma, loss, settler colonialism, sexual violence, connection to land, reclaiming Native identity, and ultimately the decolonizing of our minds and spirits in an expression of “unapologetic Indian-ness.”
—Christina D. King and Elizabeth A. Castle, directors
Indigenous Youth Films
Saturday, March 2, 11 am–3 pm, Free
Bentson Mediatheque
Experience filmed and animated stories told by the youngest generation. The Walker’s 60-seat Bentson Mediatheque will screen short films made by Native youth for young audiences during Free First Saturday: Kids’ Film Fest.
Free First Saturday is sponsored by
Sponsor |
Program support |
Free First Saturday and Sensory Friendly Sunday are made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Edge of America
Directed by Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/Arapaho)
Saturday, March 2, 7 pm, Free
Walker Cinema
View Trailer
Read Variety on Edge of America
Based on a true story about sports and race, Edge of America follows a black English teacher who takes a job teaching high school English at the Three Nations Reservation in Utah. Soon, he’s persuaded into coaching the girls high school basketball team in this inspiring and uncompromising dramatic feature. 2003, digital video, 105 minutes.
Presented in conjunction with Chris Eyre: Filmmaker in Conversation (March 9).
Sundance Institute Native Shorts Screening
Presented by Hud Oberly (Comanche, Osage, Caddo), Sundance Institute
and guest curator Missy Whiteman (Northern Arapaho and Kickapoo Nations), Sundance NativeLab Fellow
Thursday, March 7, 7 pm, Free
Walker Cinema
For 25 years, the Sundance Institute has maintained an investment and commitment to Native American filmmakers and their stories. This year’s touring shorts program includes six recent works by Shaandiin Tome (Diné); Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr. (Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians); Michelle Latimer (Métis/Algonquin); Adam Khalil and Zach Khalil (Ojibway)/Jackson Polys (Tlingit); Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk/Pechanga); and Billy Luther (Navajo, Hopi, and Laguna Pueblo). A conversation about our region’s Indigenous filmmaking talent and resources follows the screening. 2016–2018, DCP, 67 minutes.
Featured shorts:
Mud (Hashtł’ishnii)
Shaandiin Tome
Shinaab
Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.
Nucca
Michelle Latimer
The Violence of a Civilization without Secrets
Adam Khalil / Zach Khalil / Jackson Polys
Jáaji Approx.
Sky Hopinka
alter-Native
Billy Luther
| Target Free Thursday Nights sponsored by | |
Empty Metal
Directors in Person: Adam Khalil (Ojibway) and Bayley Sweitzer
Friday, March 8, 7 pm
Walker Cinema
$10 ($8 Walker members, seniors, and students)
View Trailer
Read Frieze on Empty Metal
“Expresses a kind of irrevocable reckoning that has been centuries in the making” —Filmmaker Magazine
A punk band is coerced into a dangerous assassination plot by a family of militant Native Americans, aided by a Rastafarian computer hacker. Empty Metal reveals a political fantasy—an alternative reality in which a group of radical misfits teeters on the edge of contemporary American politics, refusing to fall right or left. Instead, they lash out from the soul and under the radar, in an attempt to achieve what their mainstream predecessors have yet to accomplish. 2018, US, 83 minutes.
Filmmaker in Conversation
Chris Eyre: Smoke Signals
Post-screening discussion with Director Chris Eyre and Guest Curator Missy Whiteman
Saturday, March 9, 7 pm
Walker Cinema
$10 ($8 Walker members, seniors, and students)
View Trailer
Read Variety on Smoke Signals
“Storytellers and filmmakers tell us where to look and get information. It’s important to remember we have a voice, especially Native people, to talk about what’s going on.” —Chris Eyre
Join celebrated director Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/Arapaho) for a screening of his 1998 breakthrough Smoke Signals. A landmark of Native filmmaking, it was the first feature produced, written, directed, and acted by Native talents. Eyre was also the first Native American director to win the Audience Award and the Filmmaker’s Trophy at Sundance and to receive a national release. After the film, Eyre will discuss the impact of Smoke Signals 20 years later, his ongoing body of work, and independent Indigenous filmmaking past, present, and future. Hosted by guest curator Missy Whiteman.
Developed at the Sundance labs, Smoke Signals is based on the story “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” by Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d’Alene). Eyre’s lyrical debut features follows humorous young storyteller Thomas and his buddy Victor on an epic road trip from Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation to bring back the ashes of Victor’s estranged father—found dead in a trailer park in Phoenix. 1998, 35mm, 89 minutes.