Indigenous Film Festival: Tentsitewahkwe & Eagle Vision: Taking Native Business to New Heights
Wednesday, October 9th
Ricketson Theater
6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Free
No Reservations needed. Seating is based on a first come, first served basis.
Tentsitewahkwe, director Katsitsionni Fox (Mohawk). As a young girl, Jessica Shenandoah (Wolf Clan, Akwesasne Mohawk Nation) learned about harvesting medicine and food plants alongside her mother and grandmother. In this documentary she embarks on a journey across all four seasons and multiple native territories to connect with other knowledge keepers reviving the land-based knowledge of their ancestral grandmothers, returning to time-honored practices of pottery making, mat weaving, hide tanning, medicine making, food gathering, and more. (Nia Tero, 2024, 17 min.). Image courtesy of Nia Tero.
Eagle Vision: Taking Native Business to New Heights, director Bryan Tucker. Before Louie Gong (Nooksack) became known as the highly influential Coast Salish artist, activist and social entrepreneur he is today, with a knack for bringing people together, he was a young man with a dream. In this intimate account, Louie tells the story of how he launched the iconic lifestyle brand Eighth Generation, the first Native-owned company to produce wool blankets, triggering a movement that has diverted millions of dollars from non-Native corporations to a new generation of Native-owned businesses and artists. Louie rejected the notion of “Native Inspired” and created a company to showcase “Inspired Natives.” You’ll follow Louie as he raises seed money by conducting over 100 custom shoe workshops, and travels to culture-rich Metlakatla in rural Alaska to do one final custom shoe workshop and visit with Tsimsian artist David Robert Boxley, winner of Eighth Generation’s first Wool Blanket Design Contest. (2019, 13 min.).
With Louie Gong appearing in person for audience discussion/Q&A.
Louie will tell us about the next chapter of his story: after successfully disrupting a colonial system and then selling Eighth Generation to the Snoqualmie Tribe, he completed the blueprint for how to merge values and business, something he refers to as the “Native American Dream.”
Additional titles to be announced.