And—action!
Last weekend kicked off the first-ever Northern Plains Indigenous Film Festival.
For two days, over two dozen films graced the big screen of the century-old Fargo Theatre in North Dakota: “two days of stories that belong on the land they came from,” the festival site says. There were documentaries and shorts; experimental works and narrative features.
After a Native American film festival dissolved years back, storyboard artist Joe Williams saw a hole for Indigenous-made works on the screen. Williams, who runs Fargo nonprofit Indigenous Art House, realized he could help fill it. Enter the Northern Plains Indigenous Film Festival.
“Indigenous stories are essential, not supplementary, to understanding who we are as a region,” the festival says. “Film is the natural evolution of our ancestral storytelling (from winter counts and ledger art to the big screen).” Between January and March, over 70 submissions came flying in. The fest organized screenings, of course—but also filmmaking workshops, producer circles, and Q&A sessions.
Stories to Hold
“I love good stories,” says Williams, an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate. “I think it’s really important that we share those stories, we get exposure out there, for filmmakers and their stories to a public that may not readily be aware of who these folks are.”
These folks are creatives like Jerod Pushetonequa and Oogie Push with the featured documentary Why We Dance. The celebratory film follows the Meskwaki people resisting U.S. government bans on powwows, marked by dancing—and how Indigenous communities across the country dance for connection and reclamation.
“Dancing is what connects us,” says Push, the film’s director. “It doesn’t matter where we come from. We still have this inherent desire to dance, to connect with the land and our ancestors.”
To Push, the documentary is about representation, education, and joy.
“Our histories have been told by other people and there have been inaccurate depictions of who we are just because they don’t have the insider knowledge. And so it’s just such an honor and to be able to show the audience who we are,” Push says.
Over the past five years, Pushetonequa produced Why We Dance and served as director of culture and history. That history—from colonialism and boarding schools to passing on Indigenous tradition—cannot be forgotten, he says, nodding to scenes in the film.
JOE WILLIAMS, NORTHERN PLAINS INDIGENOUS FILM FESTIVAL“Native films, Native stories are part of the mainstream. We’re not an asterisk on categories. These stories are worthy of being on the big screen downtown of your city . . . There is a place for all of us. And it’s part of our identity as Fargoans or Midwesterners or Americans.”
“We simply just wanted to archive these stories,” Pushetonequa says. “A lot of the history that people learn from history books, from class, it doesn’t go into the communities. That history was written by somebody who’s never lived this life.”
Pushetonequa says this archive serves his Meskwaki people—and cultures across the region and country.
Folks can catch the film Why We Dance next in Duluth, Minnesota, on April 26. And Fargo’s Northern Plains Film Festival is already planning to return for year two—stay tuned next spring!