“An early visitor to a Niger Igbo town said that he felt he was in a free land, among free people. Another visitor, a Frenchman, said true liberty existed in Igboland, though its name was not inscribed in any monument.”

This makes me think of the way we often substitute virtue signaling for the true embodiment and practice of our principles. This is one reason I’ve become bored of political slogans over the past several years.

In the book The Healing Wisdom of Africa by Patrice Malidoma Somé, he talks about the limitation of words in creating meaning. True meaning is communicated instantaneously through intuition. (My paraphrasing, here. I highly recommend Somé’s book.)

Big congratulations to RTBC Contributing Editor Michaela Haas! Her story about the Hopi and sustainable crop growth has won the Solutions Journalism category in the LA Press Club's Journalism Awards.

Indigenous knowledge is valuable! #IndigenousWisdom #Sustainability

The Siletz Tribe has dedicated two decades to this reintroduction project.

As Michaela noted, a scientist stated that bringing otters back has “cascading effects” on the ecosystem.

This holds true culturally as well: multiple tribes will work together to renew their relationship with the sea otter once it returns.

[Short film] #Ákhuin

Radio-JusSunná / Sunná Nousuniemi (#Sámi) & Guhtur Niillas Rita Duomis / Tuomas Kumpulainen with Ááná Jyyrki Sáárá-Máárjá / Saara-Maria Salonen

"With the singular Sámi oral storytelling tradition of joik at its center, ÁHKUIN is a visual and musical call-and-response between a grandmother and her descendants. Archival interviews and the joik of Maarit-áhkku (dir. Sunná Máret Nousuniemi’s grandmother) unspool as a connective thread across time, inviting the viewer through a portal into this corner of Sápmi. Here, the rhythms of time are set by the daily tasks that assured the survival of those who came before; seemingly mundane chores — carrying water from the river, setting up the sauna, boiling reindeer bone marrow — offer up gifts of memory, music, and Indigenous knowledge.

"As in Indigenous communities the world over, colonization has profoundly shaped recent Sámi history through stories of loss. Drawing aesthetic inspiration from sources as diverse as duodji (Sámi handicrafts and land-based knowledge systems), the work of David Lynch, Pauliina Peodoroff’s Matriarkaatti (Matriarchy), and the environmentally focused, community-based art of Niillas Holmberg, Jenni Laiti and Outi Pieski, ÁHKUIN presents a melancholy yet playful Sámi story with lessons for a new era defined by giving and receiving."

Watch:
https://www.reciprocity.org/films/ahkuin

#Sápmi #joik #DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #OceansAreLife #ReciprocityProject #Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers #IndigenousWisdom #ProtectTheSacred #IndigenousKnowledge #Reciprocity #duodji #colonization #Maaritáhkku #Matriarkaatti #Matriarchy #CulturalSurvival

[Short film]: ARMEA

Letila Mitchell (#Rotuman) with Rotuman Women’s Weaving Collective & Iane Tavo (Rotuman)

“If you listen to nature, it will lead the way…” Elder Gagaj Taimanav

"Steeped in symbolism and no larger than a child’s hand, the diminutive bird known as the Armea is found in only one place on Earth: the Pacific island of Rotuma.

"After scores of performances around the world and years away from Rotuma, ARMEA opens as the dedicated dancers and musicians of Rako Pasefika make their long awaited return home to the island. Arriving by air yet received just as their seafaring predecessors were, the Rako team engages with creative elders in the hopes of revitalizing ancient stories that are in danger of being forgotten. As Rako prepares to perform a new production inspired by the totemic Armea, their relationships with elders, knowledge keepers, healers, artisans and cultural custodians reveal deep and reciprocal connections to this ancient land and to the immense ocean from which it rises. Both an offering to those who have guided the way — such as the hån lep he rua sacred women — and a promise to sustain sacred artforms for generations to come, ARMEA is an ode to all that is small yet sacred."

Watch: https://www.reciprocity.org/films/armea

#WomenCenteredFilms #AsianPacificIslanders DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #OceansAreLife #ReciprocityProject #Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers #IndigenousWisdom #ProtectTheSacred #IndigenousKnowledge #Reciprocity #RakoPasefika #Rako #PacificOcean #WomensWeavingCollective

[Short film] #Enchukunoto (The Return)

Laissa Malih with John Ole Tingoi (#Maasai)

"As the first female Maasai filmmaker, Laissa Malih initially set out to document the land-based practices of her forefathers and ways in which climate change is reshaping Maasai communities. In returning to the IL-Laikipiak Maasai village that her parents left when she was a child, Malih experiences an epiphany: her own life is a reflection of the myriad challenges between Maasai youth and elders, women and men, ancestral ways of passing down essential knowledge and modern methods of education.

"In ENCHUKUNOTO (The Return), Malih’s singular perspective also challenges ways in which the Maasai peoples have long been seen and documented by tourists and other outsiders. 'Many tourists come to our Maa lands to film the lions, the gazelles,' she observes. 'The camera takes and takes. I wonder what my camera can give my people in return?'

"Interweaving verite with Malih’s insights, Malih offers a heretofore unseen perspective as an insider and an outsider, a woman among men, a filmmaker carrying on sacred Maasai traditions of storytelling in an era defined by uncertainty."

https://www.reciprocity.org/films/enchukunoto

#IndigenousAfricans #MassaiPeople #WomenDirectedFilms #DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #LandDefenders #ReciprocityProject #Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers #IndigenousWisdom #IndigenousKnowledge #Reciprocity #FilmVerite

[Short film] #Tahnaanooku'

Justin Deegan (Arikara, Oglala, and Hunkpapa) with Jennifer Martel (Cheyenne)

"A grandmother. A source of existence. A portal to other worlds. For thousands of years, the Indigenous Peoples of what is now known as North and South Dakota co-existed reciprocally with the Missouri River, its waters offering life while also inspiring legends and languages. In Tahnaanooku’, filmmaker Justin Deegan takes an experimental approach to the severing of this relationship between his community — the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara — and the river, the result of over 80 years of US government efforts to control the Missouri, including via the Garrison Dam.

"Seen through the eyes of Deegan’s mother, Darline, Tahnaanooku’ intertwines past, present, and future, land and language, dreams and reality. The staunching of the Missouri contrasts with a fluid streak of horses, the diminished river currents interweave with the light of the aurora borealis. In dreams, Darline — a designer, activist, mother, and grandmother — receives messages from the original Mother, Earth itself. Meanwhile, the stark visual backdrop of the Garrison Dam offers an immovable reminder of the ruinous history of the Pick-Sloan Plan, deemed by legendary historian Vine Deloria Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux) to be 'the single most destructive act ever perpetrated on any tribe by the United States.'

"Glimpsed in ceremony, Darline (one of the last speakers of the critically endangered ancient Arikara language) offers care to a fellow grandmother and shares hope for the generations to come."

Watch: https://www.reciprocity.org/films/tahnaanooku

#Arikara #StandingRockSioux #Mandan #Hidatsa #Arikara #MotherEarth #MissouriRiver #GarrisonDam #DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #LandDefenders #ReciprocityProject #Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers #IndigenousWisdom #IndigenousKnowledge #Reciprocity

[Short film] #Tayal #Forest Club

"Ancestors! We’ve gotten stuck here. Can you help us find the way home?” pleads Yukan, an Atayal teenager lost in the forests of his forefathers.

"Bullied at school and weighed down at home by his dad’s drinking, Yukan is eager to escape it all. When his best friend, Watan, invites him on a hike, a physically and emotionally bruised Yukan grabs his machete and the two boys head into the woods. But this isn’t just any hike, or just any woods — as Yukan and Watan’s youthful overconfidence runs them up against the realities of nightfall in the dense and mountainous Atayal homelands, other forces begin to reveal themselves. Before they can find a way home, these two young Tayal men must first humble themselves enough to learn the lessons that the land itself has to offer.

"In TAYAL FOREST CLUB, Taiwan’s first Indigenous female film director, Laha Mebow, shares a coming-of-age tale that interweaves Tayal characters, settings, and symbols with the complexities arising from her community’s interactions with contemporary society."

Watch:
https://www.reciprocity.org/films/tayal-forest-club

#Atayal #IndigenousTaiwanese #Taiwan #DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #LandDefenders #ReciprocityProject #Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers #WomenDirectedFilms
#IndigenousWisdom #IndigenousKnowledge #Reciprocity

[Short film] #Tentsítewahkwe

Katsitsionni Fox (#Mohawk) with Xochitl Fox (#Mexica / #Azteca)

"As a young girl, Jessica Shenandoah (Wolf Clan from the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation) learned about harvesting medicine and food plants alongside her mother and grandmother. Contemporary Native People are often separated many generations from their traditional knowledge due to the effects of colonial realities such as boarding school, forced religion, and land theft.

"In the latest Native women-centered film by Mohawk filmmaker Katsitsionni Fox (Ohero:kon - Under the Husk, Without a Whisper - Konnon:kwe), Shenandoah goes on a journey across four seasons and multiple Native territories to connect with other knowledge keepers reviving the land-based knowledge of their ancestral grandmothers in order to return to time-honored practices of pottery making, mat weaving, hide tanning, medicine making, food gathering, and more. Jessica embodies the Mohawk concept of Tentsítewahkwe as she picks up knowledge of the old ways, these slow methods of creating and connecting in reciprocity with the Earth.

"This film is at once a thank you to the Native women who imbued their descendents with blood memory of these practices and a promise to future generations of Native people that these practices will stay alive for generations to come."

Watch:
https://www.reciprocity.org/films/tentsitewahkwe

#DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #LandDefenders #ReciprocityProject #Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers
#IndigenousWisdom #IndigenousKnowledge #IndigenousReclamation #Reciprocity #MotherEarth #Akwesasne #MohawkNation #TraditionalMedicine #LandBasedKnowledge #WomenCenteredFilms

[Short film] Ma ŋaye ka Masaala a se ka Wɔmɛti
(From God To Man)

Lansana Mansaray with Ibrahim Sorious Samura, and Samuel Kargbo (#Limba)

"On the day that Lansana Mansaray was born, a tree was planted in his name in his father’s Limba village. Now an Emmy and Peabody nominated filmmaker, Mansaray returns to the same village to better understand the essential relationship that Limbas share with the trees that define every aspect of community life.

"As the smooth highways of Freetown give way to vermillion dirt roads, the car becomes just one means of transport; there’s the scent of chuk chuk plums, a memory of the Matorma sound (a singular rhythm associated with sacred Limba rituals), as well as jokes and poignant moments of connection arising from Mansaray’s diligent efforts to speak Limba. For a 'city Limba man' like Mansaray, returning to his deceased father’s homeland becomes a journey of Indigenous reclamation.

Amidst celebratory, humorous, and quotidian moments of village life, Mansaray interweaves reflections from a community that has endured more than its share of hardship — colonization, a civil war, and growing threats to the forests that the Limbas treasure. As with pouring out a little palm wine for the ancestors, Ma ŋaye ka Masaala a se ka Wɔmɛti is an offering to those who came before and to those who are still here. But as Mansaray playfully lets the viewer know, some things should not be shared with the rest of the world."

https://www.reciprocity.org/films/ma-%C5%8Baye-ka-masaala-a-se-ka-w%C9%94m%C9%9Bti

#SierraLeone #IndigenousPeoples #Africa #IndigenousPeoplesOfAfrica #DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #LandDefenders #ReciprocityProject #Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers
#IndigenousWisdom #IndigenousKnowledge #IndigenousReclamation #Colonization #Colonialism

[Short film]: Pili Ka Moʻo

Justyn Ah Chong with Malia Akutagawa (#KanakaMaoli)

"The #Fukumitsu ʻOhana (family) of #Hakipuu are #NativeHawaiian #TaroFarmers and keepers of this generational practice. While much of #Oahu has become urbanized, Hakipuʻu remains a kīpuka (oasis) of traditional knowledge where great chiefs once resided and their bones still remain. The Fukumitsus are tossed into a world of complex real estate and judicial proceedings when nearby Kualoa Ranch, a large settler-owned corporation, destroys their familial burials to make way for continued development plans."

Watch:
https://www.reciprocity.org/films/pili-ka-mo%CA%BBo

#DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #ReciprocityProject
#Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers #IndigenousWisdom
#RealEstate #KualoaRanch #CorporateColonialism #SettlerColonialism #NativeHawaiians #Hawaii #KingdomOfHawaii #Development #CulturalGenocide #FukumitsuOhana #ʻOhana

[Short film]: Ma’s House
Jeremy Dennis (#Shinnecock)

"Ma’s House was once the heart of a community, for the Shinnecock peoples, who have remained in their same homelands for over 10,000 years. As Ma’s grandson, artist and photographer Jeremy Dennis is on a quest to restore the family home to its central role as a community gathering place for a new generation of diverse artists. Through personal mementos, intimate narratives, and a touch of celebrity gossip, Dennis and his family reveal generations of history and hope contained within the walls of their home.

"In Ma’s House, viewers are introduced to the history and culture of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, in what is today known as the Town of Southampton on Long Island, New York. Ma’s House accomplishes this through the story of photographer and filmmaker Jeremy Dennis’s family home, an important site for the transmission of Shinnecock culture since the 1960’s. Vacant for years, Jeremy’s grandmother’s house is now being renovated and converted into a museum and art space for Black and Indigenous people of color (BIPOC), with the goal of establishing a residential program where they can share space and co-create community. Ultimately, the purpose is the perpetuation of Shinnecock culture and Black culture through 'art events, history lessons, and workshops.'"

Watch: https://www.reciprocity.org/films/mas-house

#DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #ReciprocityProject
#Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers #IndigenousWisdom #ShinnecockIndianNation #TownOfSouthampton #LongIslandNewYork

[Short film] #Weckuwapok
(The Approaching Dawn)

"On these traditional homelands, #Waponahkik (the people of the dawn land) bring gratitude to the sun where it first looks our way. Song and stories invite us to accept the new day and put behind us any harm done the day before. These are relational lessons shared from ancestors since time immemorial.

"Featuring in collaboration Passamaquoddy citizens #ChristopherNewell, #RogerPaul, and #LaurenStevens; and #YoYoMa."

Watch:
https://www.reciprocity.org/films/weckuwapok

#WabanakiConfederacy #WabanakiPeople #DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #ReciprocityProject
#Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers #IndigenousWisdom #Peskotomuhkati #Dawnland #PeopleOfTheDawn

[Short film] Weckuwapasihtit (Those Yet to Come)

#GeoNeptune and #BriannaSmith (#Passamaquoddy)

“Our film is about where we fit in within our communities and regaining everything that was taken from us, including our language, our culture, our ceremonies, and our identities as Passamaquoddy people. We’ve had to do a lot of retracing of our ancestors’ steps. It’s okay to be Passamaquoddy, and it’s okay to not know what it means to be Passamaquoddy, but we can do the work to figure it out together. I’m making this film with my good friend Geo, because it’s usually other people telling our stories for us or telling us what to share and what not to share. This time, we are telling our story in our own way. It’s especially important for us to do this for the young in our community." - Brianna Smith.

"On the Eastern reaches of the occupied territory now referred to as North America, the children of Koluskap call upon ancestral teachings to guide them. Revitalizing cultural practices kept from their elders, Peskotomuhkati young people lead an intergenerational process of healing through the reclamation of athasikuwi-pisun, 'tattoo medicine.'"

Watch:
https://www.reciprocity.org/films/weckuwapasihtit

#WabanakiConfederacy #WabanakiPeople #DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #ReciprocityProject
#Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers #IndigenousWisdom #AthasikuwiPisun #TattooMedicine #Tattoos #Peskotomuhkati #Dawnland #PeopleOfTheDawn

[Short film]: SŪKŪJULA TEI (Stories of My Mother)

"During a visit to her sister Amaliata, Rosa, a wise #Wayuu woman, teaches her grandchildren the importance of reciprocity within their culture."

"The Wayuu people are Indigenous to La Guajira peninsula in the northern regions of today’s Colombia and Venezuela.

"Like all Indigenous communities whose lives are shaped by five centuries of colonialism in the Americas, Wayuu people continue to experience severe cultural disruption due to the domination of state structures, policies, and an international border. These disruptions are simultaneously created and exacerbated by extreme poverty and education disparities, and help to explain a high rate of child mortality. At the same time, the intensification of climate change has resulted in increasing difficulty for Wayuu communities to maintain themselves in ways they are accustomed to. This includes the values of sharing and caring for each other even over great distances, as this film demonstrates."

https://www.reciprocity.org/films/sukujula-tei

#LaGuajira #Colombia #Venezuela #Colonialism #DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #ReciprocityProject
#Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers #IndigenousWisdom #Gratitude #SouthAmerica