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 colonizing government that meets Native resistance with violence.
L to R: Activist organizer Madonna Thunder Hawk co-director Elizabeth A. Castle producer Anna Marie Pitman co-director Christina D. King and activist and organizer Marcella Gilbert.
Elizabeth "Beth" Castleis a scholar/activist/filmmaker who began interviewing women of the Red Power Movement almost 20 years ago for a dissertation. She wrote the book, Women were the Backbone, Men were the Jawbone: Native Women's Activism in the Red Power Movement on the subject which was based on The Warrior Women Oral History Project collection. Castle is a committed anti-racist ally and descended from the Pekowi band of the Shawnee in Ohio - both shape how she engages with community-based scholarship and organizing.
Christina D. Kingis a producer and filmmaker whose work spans broadcast news, commercials, documentary, film, and television with a focus on human rights issues, civic engagement through storytelling, and democratizing filmmaker opportunities for marginalized voices. Her most recent film We the Animals debuted at Sundance 2018 to critical acclaim. She is from Oklahoma and of the Seminole, Creek and Sac & Fox Nations
and is currently living in the unceded Lenape Nation in New York.
Anna Pitman is a producer working in a crosssection of formats and genres; documentaries, commercials, and narrative films. Moved to action by the frustration of witnessing similar indigenous struggles in her home country of Australia, Anna is committed to documentary storytelling through socially-conscious, community-based projects that have taken her all around the world.
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