PEABODY NOMINEE | BEST DOCUMENTARY - California's American Indian & Indigenous Film Festival | BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE - American Indian Film Festival | HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - Educational Media Reviews Online | "Inspiring" - Booklist
Native American Studies • Women's Studies • Sociology • Ethnic Studies • Environmental Studies • American Studies • U.S. History • Human RightsDate of Completion: 2018 | Run Time: 64 minutes | Language: English | Captions: Yes | Includes: Transcript & Discussion Guide | Directors: Christina D. King & Elizabeth A. Castle | Producer: Anna Marie Pitman
In the 1970s, with the swagger of unapologetic Indianness, organizers of the American Indian Movement (AIM) fought for Native liberation 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 women are still at the forefront of Native issues, fighting against the environmental devastation of the Dakota Access Pipeline and for indigenous cultural values.
Through their story, WARRIOR WOMEN explores what it means to balance a movement with motherhood and how activist legacies are passed down from generation to generation in the face of a government that has continually met Native resistance with mass violence.
Alyosha Goldstein, Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico
"A powerful and visually stunning film, Warrior Women tells the story of the Red Power era and the American Indian Movement as they have never been told before on screen. Interconnecting past and present, from the 1969-1971 occupation of Alcatraz Island to the 1973 Wounded Knee stand-off to the 1980 Black Hills Survival Gathering to the water protectors at Standing Rock in 2016, this film is an indispensable lesson on the violence of United States colonialism and the central role of women in the making of Indigenous liberation. Warrior Women is an intimate portrait of Madonna Thunder Hawk and her daughter Marcella Gilbert and a vital historical document that brings to life the intergenerational work of collective freedom. Meticulously researched with extraordinary archival footage, Warrior Women is a uniquely compelling and inspiring film for teaching about the contemporary struggle for Indigenous liberation."
Nick Estes, Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico Kul Wicasa, author of Our History is the Future
"Warrior Women profoundly changes our understanding of the Red Power movement. From Alcatraz to Standing Rock, the film charts a familiar yet wonderfully unfamiliar course by telling the story of Indigenous women’s activism. While a compelling story of a mother and a daughter, it is also a story of a movement’s impact on generations of Native people. Clearly indispensable, without Indigenous women’s leadership there would have been no Indigenous movement yesterday, today, or tomorrow. It could not have come at a better time. Moving, inspiring, and hilarious, Warrior Women is a film that stirs us to action in an era when so much is at stake. The urgency and relevance is masterfully told through the full range of the Indigenous experience, a truly human experience—history, humor, violence, and the desire for freedom. An instant classic."
Dina Gilio Whitaker, Colville Confederated Tribes, Lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos
"For at least a generation, the story of the Red Power Movement has been told through a lens that gave us a limited view about the Indian activism of that period. What was missing until now were the voices of the women. Through the story of Madonna Thunder Hawk we are given a glimpse into the ways Native women shaped the movement, branched off into their own organizations, and leaned on each other to create a better world for all Indian people. With rarely seen footage and tons of humor, Warrior Women has earned its place in the canon of Red Power literature and film."
Booklist | Candace Smith
"This inspiring program is a reminder that Civil Rights battles were fought on many fronts and often by grassroots activists. [...] Good resource for Civil Rights' studies."
Educational Media Reviews Online (EMRO) | Reviewed by LaRoi Lawton, Library & Learning Resources Department, Bronx Community College
Highly Recommended
"This film depicts the life of Lakota activist and community organizer Madonna Thunder Hawk, and her daughter, Marcy Gilbert, fighting for Indigenous and women's rights now covering over 50 years. Madonna Thunder Hawke and several other Native American women give an enlightening perspective of the perceived “Indian problem” during the heyday of the 1960’s and 1970’s ‘Native American’ civil rights struggle. The film follows their fight to challenge the South Dakota political and economic machines of the day to grab Native American land. At the same time, they are also teaching and re-educating their Native American children and peers on the real racial discord Native Americans have experienced at the hands of the political, economic, and social machines that initiated a legislated genocide of the Native American in South Dakota.
They are mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives. But above all else, these women are deeply rooted in their communities. All across time, and all around the globe, they are brandishing words of unique wisdom, and practical beliefs; they have fought battles in our U.S. Court system and faced off with large corporations attempting to take their lands to drill for oil, looking for precious metals and drilling pipe lines for the expansion of gas deliveries across the country. These awe-inspiring female fighters have each made an indelible mark on Native American history. The “Red Power Movement”, like the Civil Rights Movement will change our understanding of what it means to be a Native American in American society then and now. This film illustrates the real truth around the so-called “Indian problem “and what a group of people did to bring that truth into the light."
Kansas History | Reviewed by Tai S. Edwards, Johnson County Community College
"A must-watch for anyone interested in Indigenous people's history and social justice organizing ... This film does excellent work expanding the social representations of Indigenous people in U.S. society to include twenty-first-century women activists. It also illustrates the long, difficult battle that Indigenous people and nations face to this day in dismantling entrenched, systemic colonialism and protecting their sovereignty."
Point of View Magazine | Chelsea Phillips-Carr
"It is undeniable that Warrior Women is a necessary film. When we look at issues today like the Standing Rock protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline, it is obvious that there is so much more to be done. Learning about the history of Indigenous activism is a benefit to audiences who can better understand the background of North American settler colonialism and its enduring impact. But with the approach of championing the women of these movements, and how their labour and connections have gone beyond the activism in order to sustain cultures amidst struggle, the film offers a celebration of the mothers and daughters who continue to fight, together, for a better future."
Black Girl Nerds | Sezin Koehler
"For those unfamiliar with the trajectory of Indigenous rights and resistance in America, Warrior Women is a great foundation for further study. It highlights the major events that shaped the movement to where we found it in the NODAPL Protests and hints at other events in between that intersect with the variety of civil rights movements developing in America since the 1960s. History is a spiral, and watching the legacies of a hundred years build through just an hour on screen is remarkable indeed. Warrior Women should be required viewing in history classes, and especially at high-school and college ages."
AWARDS
George Foster Peabody Nominee
Knowledge Award | Films-for-Future-Festival
Best Feature Documentary | Black Hills Film Festival
Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature | Cine Las Americas International Film Festival
Best Documentary Short | The Roxbury International Film Festival
Best Documentary | 14th Vancouver International Women in Film Festival
Audience Award | BLACKSTAR Film Festival
Cultural Currents Award | Victoria Film Festival, Canada
Best Documentary | Los Angeles SKINS Film Festival
Best Documentary Feature | San Francisco American Indian Film Festival
Best Documentary | California’s American Indian & Indigenous Film Festival
FESTIVALS
Hot Docs International Film Festival
Seattle International Film Festival
1st Lumbee Film Festival
Traverse City Film Festival
San Francisco Green Film Festival
Calgary International Film Festival
Free State Film Festival, Lawrence, KS
Margaret Mead Film Festival
Alexander Valley Film Festival
AIM West International Film Festival
Milwaukee International Film Festival
California American Indian & Indigenous Film Festival
Cucalorus Film Festival
All Available Light Film Festival, Yukon
Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
Athena Film Festival, NYC
Skabmagovat Film Festival
Bellingham Human Rights Film Festival
Twin Cities Film Fest
VisionMaker Film Festival Presents Indigenous Women's Films, Lincoln, NE
8th Annual Pontchatrain Film Festival
Pocahontas Reframed Film Festival
Flagstaff Red Screen Film Festival
Bushwick Film Festival
Tulum International Film Festival
Film Loft Cinema Film Festival
Tulsa American Film Festival
Indianer Inuit Film Festival
Portland Film Festival
Missoula Urban Indian Health Center Indigenous Film Festival
Seminole Native Reel Cinema Festival
Oohenumpa Lakota matriarch Dr. Madonna Thunder Hawk is one of Indian Country’s most formidable movers and shakers. With over five decades of experience in activism, Madonna is a veteran of every contemporary Native occupation from Alcatraz, to Wounded Knee in 1973, and more recently the NoDAPL protest at Standing Rock in 2016. She is a self-described old “AIMster-gangster,” in reference to her leadership in the American Indian Movement (AIM), and co-founded key Native resistance groups Women of All Red Nations and the Black Hills Alliance. Most recently, she started the Wasagiya Najin "Grandmothers' Group" on her homeland of Cheyenne River Reservation to assist in rebuilding kinship networks and advocate for Indigenous child welfare. Thunder Hawk has spoken around the world, served as a delegate to the United Nations in Geneva, and in 2019, received an honorary doctorate from Simmons University in Boston for her lifelong work to promote cultural survival for Native Nations. As a Warrior Women Project matriarch, Madonna is a principle organizer and voice in the Project’s efforts to collect, archive, and advocate for transformative Indigenous history and its makers.
Dr. Elizabeth “Beth” Castle works at the intersection of media, scholarship, and activism as a anti-racist educator with Shawnee heritage committed to liberating and sharing unknown histories of resistance. She started the Warrior Women Project (WWP) to preserve the oral histories of Indigenous activists and disrupt the dominant historical narrative through her book Women were the Backbone, Men were the Jawbone: Native Women’s Activism in the Red Power Movement. While completing her Ph.D. at Cambridge University, she worked as a policy associate for President Clinton’s Initiative on Race. In 2001 she served as a delegate for the Indigenous World Association at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. While working as an Academic Specialist for UC Berkeley’s Oral History Office, she received the University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Santa Cruz under the supervision of Professors Angela Davis and Bettina Aptheker. She co-directed the Peabody Award Nominated film, WARRIOR WOMEN (2018) that premiered on PBS in 2019. She continues the collective work of the WWP through developing decolonizing curricula, activist archiving, and community media work with funding support from Firelight Media Impact Campaign Grant, the Mellon Community Archiving Grant, Nia Tero, Resist Foundation, and the NDN Collective.
Marcella Gilbert is a Lakota and Dakota community organizer with a focus on food sovereignty and cultural revitalization. As the daughter of Madonna Thunder Hawk, Marcella grew up inside the movement for Indigenous self-determination and was a student at the We Will Remember Survival School. At 17, she served as a delegate to the International Indian Treaty Council at the United Nations in Geneva. Now, as a mother and grandmother, she continues to pass down that legacy of activism for future generations. In addition to being a leader on the Warrior Women Project’s Matriarchs Council, Marcella works for Simply Smiles, Inc., a non-profit organization operating on the Cheyenne River reservation in South Dakota. She manages the garden project that includes wild food identification, harvest, and food processing. She holds a Masters Degree in Nutrition from South Dakota State University. In 2014, Gilbert was recognized for her work by the Bush Foundation's Native Nations Rebuilders Program.