Kendra Mylnechuk Potter was adopted into a white family and raised with no knowledge of her Native American parentage.
This beautifully personal film documents her journey as she discovers her Native identity—finding her birth mother, April, also a Native adoptee, and returning to her Lummi homelands in Washington State. Kendra and April’s stories show the impact of intentional government actions to erase an entire culture, including the 1958 Indian Adoption Project, which removed Native children from their families and placed them in white homes in an effort to “kill the Indian and save the man.” This poignant story shows, as James Baldwin rightfully put it: "History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us.”
ScreenTalk with filmmaker Brooke Pepion Swaney, film participant Kendra Mylenchuk Potter, & Terry Cross, NICWA Founder. Moderated by Matika Wilbur & Adrienne Keene, hosts of podcast "All My Relations”.
US 2021 Dir Brooke Pepion Swaney 66 min
English subtitles and captions are available.
LC = Locally classified
This film contains a reference to drug taking, sex work and rape which viewers may find distressing.
Available to watch on the Human Rights Watch Film Festival streaming platform from Thu 17 Mar at 12:01am, to Fri 25 March at 11:59pm.
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