Warrior Women

2018 / 1 hour / USA 

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.

Screening Friday, March 27 3:15 pm

CHRISTINA D. KING  |  Director & Producer

An enrolled member of the Seminole Tribe of Oklahoma, Christina D. King’s work spans broadcast news, commercials, documentary, film, and television with a focus on human rights issues, civic engagement through storytelling, and democratizing filmmaking opportunities for marginalized voices.

King most recently debuted the narrative feature film We The Animals at Sundance 2018 to critical success. The film was awarded the NEXT Innovator Award and is nominated for five Independent Spirit Awards. King’s directorial debut about the mothers and daughters of the American Indian Movement, Warrior Women (ITVS), debuted at HotDocs and and was awarded the SkinsFest award for Achievement in Documentary Filmmaking.

King’s other producing credits include This May Be The Last Time (Sundance 2014), which explores the origins of Native Mvskogee worship songs in Oklahoma, as well as the POV documentary Up Heartbreak Hill.

A former Time Warner Native Producing Fellow through the Sundance Institute, King’s producing and directing work has gone on to receive support through the Institute’s Documentary Fund, Edit & Story Lab, and Producing Fellowship. King’s projects have also garnered supported through fellowships with the female film fund, Chicken & Egg Pictures and Stanley Nelson’s Firelight Films.

King is based in un-ceded Lenape land in Brooklyn, New York.

ELIZABETH A. CASTLE  |  Director & Producer

Dr. Castle brings almost 20 years of experience as a scholar, activist, and media maker working in collaboration with Native Nations and underrepresented communities. Warrior Women is based on the research done for 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 and 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.

Dr. Castle was a professor in the Native Studies Department at the University of South Dakota and is the founder and Executive Director of The Warrior Women Oral History Project. Castle has numerous publications including “The Original Gangster: The Life and Times of Red Power Activist Madonna Thunder Hawk.” 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. Warrior Women is Castle’s directorial debut.