“Can’t Drink Salt Water” was written by Kendra Mylenchuk Potter, a Missoula actor-playwright and member of the Lummi Nation, a Pacific Northwest tribe.
Human Rights Watch had the honor of screening the beautifully personal documentary, Daughter of a Lost Bird, at our New York and London film festivals, which shares the story of Kendra Mylnechuk Potter, who was adopted into a white family and raised with no knowledge of her Native American parentage.
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Brooke Pepion Swaney, a Blackfeet and Salish filmmaker, directed a film that is airing on Wednesday at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York.
Pepion Swaney, 40, grew up on the Flathead Indian Reservation and in Helena; she now lives in Polson. Her film, Daughter of a Lost Bird,
follows Kendra Mylenchuk Potter in her quest to understand her Indigenous identity.
Mylenchuk Potter was adopted at birth by a white family. In the film, she reconnects with her birth mother, April, who is a member of the Lummi Nation, a tribe headquartered in northwest Washington. As Mylenchuk Potter grapples with her Indigenous identity, she learns that her birth mother was also adopted by a white family.