Daughter of a Lost Bird Trailer from Daughter of a Lost Bird on Vimeo.
POLSON – It’s a big leap, going from producing a 15-minute short film to making a feature-length one.
Daughter of a Lost Bird
What does blood have to do with identity?
Kendra Mylnechuk, an adult Native adoptee, born in 1980 at the cusp of
the enactment of the Indian Child Welfare Act, is on a journey to
reconnect with her birth family and discover her Lummi heritage.
The film
pays particular attention with regard to our diverse heritage as a
nation founded on a multitude of Native nations, and specifically delves
into the traditions and culture of the Lummi people. It also examines
the current conditions of Lummi and American Indian people today and the
Diaspora formed by the adopted community. Most significantly, the film
aims to bring about cross-cultural awareness for those families that
adopt across cultural lines, to become more tolerant and understanding
of the potential problems that arise from cultural assimilation.
More about the Film: Missoulian News Article
POLSON – It’s a big leap, going from producing a 15-minute short film to making a feature-length one.
But a woman who spent her childhood
on the Flathead Indian Reservation started on a path last week that could help
her make the jump.
Brooke Swaney is in New Mexico over
Memorial Day weekend for the first of a two-stage development program sponsored
by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. She’s one of four fellows and projects
chosen for Sundance’s 2012 NativeLab Fellowship, which provides continuous and
direct support to Native American, Native Hawaiian and Alaskan Native
filmmakers.
She took her script, with the
working title “Circle,” with her.
It’s a major expansion on the 15-minute
short she made for her thesis as a graduate student at New York University’s
Film School, called “OK Breathe Auralee.”
“Circle” is about the same young
Native American woman “who was adopted away from her community,” Swaney told
“On Native Ground,” “and her wanting to reconnect with her roots – kind of
through a roundabout way of really wanting to have a baby.”
Swaney wrote the feature-length
script at the home of her mother, Ellen, who lives near Polson on Flathead
Lake. Ellen says it weaves the four directions and four elements – air, earth,
water and fire – so important in Native traditions into the story.
“Originally I wanted four different
characters in four different parts of the United States,” Swaney says, “but
after making the ‘Auralee’ short I realized her story is so big, I have to just
tell her story.”
It’s an adoption story that
eventually leads Auralee from her home in New York City back to the place – a
Montana Indian reservation – where she was born, but never knew.
Getting such a project by an
aspiring young filmmaker off the ground, that’s the challenge.
The Sundance fellowship is a big
step.
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