A month before COVID ran rampant in the United States, fans of Native film had reason to celebrate. What now seems like years ago, Maori filmmaker Taika Waitiki took the stage on February 9
th, 2020, at the Academy Awards ceremony to accept the Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Set in Nazi Germany in the waning days of WWII, the winning film,
Jojo Rabbit, was justly lauded for conveying a cathartic message of hope and humor during a time of unspeakable horror. Yet it’s the message Waitiki spoke from that elite podium that resonates loudest. The first Indigenous person to be nominated and to win the award, Waitiki stated before an international audience of television viewers, “I dedicate this to all the Indigenous kids that live in the world who want to dance and write stories. We are the original storytellers and we can make it here as well.” Native filmmakers are telling stories that run the gamut of emotions, employing both new technology and ancient wisdom to create cine
A month before COVID ran rampant in the United States, fans of Native film had reason to celebrate. What now seems like years ago, Maori filmmaker Taika Waitiki took the stage on February 9
th, 2020, at the Academy Awards ceremony to accept the Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Set in Nazi Germany in the waning days of WWII, the winning film,
Jojo Rabbit, was justly lauded for conveying a cathartic message of hope and humor during a time of unspeakable horror. Yet it’s the message Waitiki spoke from that elite podium that resonates loudest. The first Indigenous person to be nominated and to win the award, Waitiki stated before an international audience of television viewers, “I dedicate this to all the Indigenous kids that live in the world who want to dance and write stories. We are the original storytellers and we can make it here as well.” Native filmmakers are telling stories that run the gamut of emotions, employing both new technology and ancient wisdom to create cine
How will we remember 2020? It was a year unlike any other in our lifetime one where the burdens and the blessings seemed to resonate more than we expected. While I don’t have the words to comfort all of the hardships we each faced, I know the value of escaping into a book. This year was a watershed year for Native publishing, with more wonderful texts coming to market than I can list in this column. Yet, what follows are the books I feel fortunate to have discovered, and ones I am certain you will come to treasure.
When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through is the most important book published this decade. Edited by Joy Harjo (Muscogee), LeAnne Howe (Choctaw), Jennifer Elise Foerster (Muscogee), and others, this enthralling anthology collects 161 Native poets who speak to the resilience of Indigenous voices through the generations. It’s divided into geographic regions, with poets listed chronologically according to their birth. The stanzas run the gamut of e