America’s first Native American superhero isn’t another comic-book creation. She is Sacajawea, and she is taking flight as Bird Woman.

The 12-time award-winning animated drama Bird Woman: Sacajawea reimagines her as a navigator, warrior, and shapeshifter. She is part woman and part eagle. Caught between two worlds, Bird Woman battles danger, confronts painful choices, and discovers her strength, her powers, and her destiny.

Her supernatural powers may be imagined. Her courage was not.

Long before Wonder Woman took flight, the real Sacajawea crossed thousands of miles of dangerous and unfamiliar territory while carrying her infant son and helping the Lewis and Clark Expedition reach the Pacific. The expedition would have failed without her. She was only 16, with knowledge well beyond her years.

Sacajawea was far more than the guide many history books briefly mention. She was a Lemhi Shoshone woman, interpreter, navigator, cultural bridge, diplomat, mother, and survivor. Her knowledge helped the expedition find food, obtain horses, communicate with Native nations, and navigate a landscape its members did not understand. Her presence with a baby also signaled that the group was traveling in peace rather than as a war party.

Yet most Americans know Sacajawea’s name without knowing the remarkable woman behind it.

In this episode of Women Road Warriors, Shelley Johnson and Kathy Tuccaro welcome award-winning filmmaker Lynn Rogoff to explore both sides of this extraordinary story: the real Sacagawea whose contributions were reduced to a historical footnote and the groundbreaking animated superhero series introducing her courage to a new generation.

Lynn reveals Sacajawea’s childhood abduction, her dramatic reunion with her Shoshone brother, the dangers she survived, and the conflicting accounts of what happened to her after the expedition. You’ll also discover how Sacajawea became a symbol of women’s leadership and independence during the suffrage movement and why so much of her remarkable story was left out of our history books.

In this episode, discover:

• Why Lynn believes the Lewis and Clark Expedition could not have succeeded without Sacajawea
• How Sacajawea’s knowledge, diplomacy, and fearless actions repeatedly protected the expedition
• The dramatic reunion with her Shoshone brother and the painful choice she faced
• The competing accounts of whether she died young or returned home and lived into old age
• How Bird Woman: Sacajawea transforms an overlooked historical figure into a powerful Indigenous heroine
• How AI-enhanced animation and interactive character technology are bringing history to a new generation
• Why animated stories centered on women still struggle to receive funding

About Lynn Rogoff

Lynn Rogoff is a Writers Guild of America-nominated writer, award-winning filmmaker, educator, and the creator of Bird Woman: Sacajawea. She is the filmmaker behind No Maps on My Taps, which received two Emmy Awards, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the New York Institute of Technology. Through Amerikids Productions, she creates innovative stories and educational experiences that bring overlooked people and moments in American history to life.

Learn more about Lynn Rogoff, Amerikids Productions, and Bird Woman: Sacajawea at Amerikids.com.

Follow Women Road Warriors on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an empowering conversation.

#Sacajawea #BirdWomanSacajawea #NativeAmericanSuperhero #NativeAmericanHistory #NativeAmericanWomen #LewisAndClark #WomenInHistory #WomenSuperheroes #AIAnimation #LynnRogoff #AmerikidsProductions #WomenRoadWarriors #ShelleyJohnson #KathyTuccaro

This is Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.

From the corporate office to the cab of a truck, they're here to inspire and empower women in all professions.

So gear down, sit back and enjoy.

Welcome.

We're an award winning show dedicated to empowering women in every profession through inspiring stories and expert insights.

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We power women on the road to success with expert and celebrity interviews and information you need.

I'm Shelley.

And I'm Kathy.

Long before Wonder Woman ever took flight to become a superhero, a teenage Native American woman traveled thousands of miles across an unfamiliar and often perilous landscape, carrying her infant son and helping one of the most famous expeditions in American history reach the Pacific.

Sacajawea was a lemhi Shawnee woman, an interpreter, a cultural bridge, and an essential member of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Her importance was not emphasized enough in history books.

Nearly a century later, American suffragists adopted her as a symbol of women's worth and independence.

Yet despite the monuments and even a dollar coin bearing her image, most Americans know her name, but very little of her remarkable story.

Now she's taking flight in an entirely new way.

The 12 time award winning animated drama Bird Sacachawea reimagines her as America's first Native American superhero.

A shapeshifter who's part woman, part eagle.

She's a navigator and a warrior.

She battles blizzards, starvation, danger, and the wrenching choices of a woman caught between two worlds as she discovers her strength, her powers and her destiny.

The series combines Native American actors, musicians, historians and cultural advisors with AI enhanced animation to introduce this indigenous heroine to a new generation.

Its creator, Lynn Rogoff from Americids Productions, has over two decades working to bring Sacagawea's story to the screen.

Lynn is a Writers Guild of America nominated writer and the filmmaker behind no Maps on My Taps, which received two Emmy awards.

She's also an adjunct associate professor at the New York Institute of Technology.

Today we're going to talk about the woman behind the legend, the making of Bird Woman, and the first Native American superhero series.

Kathy and I are three to welcome Lynn Rogoff to our show.

Lynn, this is such a pleasure.

Welcome to our show.

I'm really pleased to be here and support women warriors all over the world.

Yes.

We're so excited to have this conversation.

We need more warriors.

No doubt about that.

Before we talk more about your incredible series, I was thinking maybe could you give us some background about Sacajawea?

I know people have Heard her name, but I'm not sure they know who she was and what she did.

She lived in the early turn of the century, 19th century.

And when she was 11 years old, she was stolen, kidnapped by another tribe and brought east.

And then another, they kept her in that tribe.

And then she was sold in a gambling game to a French Canadian trapper.

And he married her and impregnated her at 16.

And he was almost 40 years old and she was 16.

And so she was living in the what is now South Dakota and pregnant.

And Lewis and Clark, who were sent to discover what was in the Louisiana Purchase that Thomas Jefferson had just acquired from Napoleon, because Napoleon was losing his war in Europe and needed money.

So he sold America what became most of the new continent.

It went from the Mississippi river to almost to the Oregon.

And so they needed to figure out how to find a water passage all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

So when they wintered in North Dakota's Mandan tribe, the tribal elders told Louisa Clark, there is no water route and that you're going to have to take horses across the Rocky Mountains and it's going to take you at least 18 months.

And so they were quite shocked because they had expected it would only take six months.

They thought the Rockies were like the Appalachian Mountain Trail.

They had no idea how wide and steep and dangerous the Rocky Mountains were because nobody had ever crossed them completely all the way to the Pacific and back.

So they, the tribal elders recommended that they take Sacajawea because she knew the Rocky Mountains and she knew the path because she had been brought east from the Rockies to what is now North Dakota.

And so the Lewis and Clark met with her and they thought that this was a ridiculous idea to take a young pregnant woman who would give birth shortly and be travel with a newborn on a military expedition.

But they were convinced that she might be able to help them them find horses and survive the route, which they had no idea where exactly they were going.

So they decided to take her along after much consternation by the other members of the expedition.

And so she gave birth and they took her and her newborn on this expedition up the Missouri and then across the Rocky Mountains.

And lo and behold, they got stuck in a lizard in the Rockies and they almost died.

And because she was Native American and because she was traveling with an infant, the native tribes all along that route helped them.

So not only was she capable of helping them find her brother who had become the chief in the Rocky Mountain tribe, the Shoshone tribe, which she found.

And so even in the Lewis and Clark journals they say that only a dramatist could have made this up, that they would actually find her tribe and he would become the chief, her brother would become the chief.

So it was quite a dramatic moment.

And so she helped negotiate with her brother to give them horses.

And she was betwixt and between whether to stay with the tribe, because that's where she had hoped to return to and only to discover that her whole family, except for her brother, had been killed during one of the one of the many times that other tribe would attack the Shoshone tribe.

So she was persuaded to keep going by the women and in the tribe to keep going, that her child would not survive living in that conditions that they were living in because they couldn't.

They needed guns.

She got them guns from Lewis and Clark in exchange for the horses.

So she was not only did she help find the pathway and not only did she know from Native American experience where all the roots and berries and vegetables could be found along the pathway, and she was able to help negotiate for guns and horses.

And as they traveled across the Rockies, many other tribes helped them survive the winter because they were starving and they were sick.

And then as they went down the Columbia river, the tribes saw a woman and a baby and they knew that they were not coming as warriors.

So she convinced them to help them get to the Pacific.

And then, of course, they were hoping when they got there to the Pacific that President Jefferson would have sent a boat or ship to the Pacific to save them from having to go back across the Rocky Mountains.

But no ship ever arrived and they had to go back across the Rocky Mountains again.

That really is amazing.

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Welcome back to Women Roadways warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.

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Sacagawea was a legend for a reason.

While she was still a teenager and carrying her infant son, she helped guide the Lewis and Clark expedition through thousands of miles of unfamiliar and very dangerous territory.

She was an interpreter, a cultural bridge, and an essential part of that historic journey.

Yet her contributions were too often reduced to a footnote.

Today we're discovering this remarkable woman behind the familiar name with our guest, Lynn Rogoff.

You know, Lynn, traveling with Lewis and Clark and navigating everything the way Sacagawea did was not an easy task.

They wouldn't have survived without her.

It was a long journey.

It was a two year expedition.

And so she got very close to the expeditioners and they got close to her and they ended up being very attached to her and her baby.

And Clark wanted to bring the baby up.

And she travels after the return to the Manda and she decides that she's going to allow Clark to bring the baby up.

The story continues from there.

So it's a big adventure story and it's a big story of a hero's journey.

And the hero's journey is one in which you start from being an oppressed person to discovering your strength, to suffering through trials and tribulations, only to end up becoming a leader and a great woman of valor.

And so that is what happened to her.

Because many of the men during that period said, well, women are just sitting at home.

What do they know about leadership or politics or danger or any kind of interaction other than in the home and with babies.

And they picked her as someone who was a leader.

So they made all these statues of her across the west.

And even with all of that, you know, she sort of faded into history, footnoted history until they started naming mountains after her and they made stamps of her.

They named hotels after her and lakes after her.

And then they made the golden coin.

And then lo and behold, what really put her on the map in recently was Night at the Museum trilogy, where she is one of the characters in the film, believe it or not, who comes alive at night in the museum.

And this put her on the map around the world.

So I have interns working with me who are from India and they know about her from the Night at the Museum trilogy.

Isn't that funny?

So she's continued for 220 years to be a legend.

And so when we decided to make a film about her and discovered that the word bird, Sacagawea means bird woman, I decided that in the modern era that we could take that shape shifting concept, animal spirit concept from the Native Americans and make her come alive as a superhero woman, young woman who could actually shapeshift into an eagle.

That's how it came to be that we made Bird Woman.

It's a long story.

It's a wonderful concept.

And when you think it is.

Yeah, I mean, when you think about Sacagawea, that whole expedition would not have happened without her.

She was so very young and she had tenacity and bravery and diplomacy.

She was able to accomplish things that if it hadn't been the weather that may have taken them out, if they tried to do this on their own, they probably would not have done so well with some of the natives.

Definitely.

And it said they were coming in peace and that was very important.

Yes, right.

Well, they wouldn't have had a woman with them and a child.

That makes sense.

Exactly.

So I mean, she served so many different purposes and she was so young.

What was she, about 16, 17 years of age?

I'm not sure.

A lot of 16.

Yeah, she was 16 when she gave birth.

But you know, in that time, 220 years ago, young women of 16 were giving birth, were getting married and having children at that age.

You know, if your lifespan was only 40 years old, then you were 16 was considered of age.

Sure.

But when you think about it, usually they had extended family and all of that that they could rely on.

She was out in the middle of the wilderness with people she didn't know.

That had to have been terrifying.

Yeah, she had a tremendous spirit about her that she could be the only young woman carrying a baby and being the only Native American on the trip and that she must have had something that kept her going.

My theory was that she really wanted to find her family, that she was looking for the mother and father that she had lost when she was kidnapped.

And she was hoping to reconnect with them, only to discover that her mother and father had been killed.

So she had to survive all of these traumas of kidnapping and abuse by her older husband, who beat her up.

And Lewis and Clark were very upset with him, and they took him along because he could communicate.

She was speaking in Shoshone and Mandan, and he knew Mandan, and therefore he could go from Mandan to French.

And then there was people on the expedition who spoke French and English.

And so it went through all these different languages in order to communicate.

So she started with the Shoshone and the Mandan, and then he brought it into French.

And then the expeditioners, who were partially French, spoke from the French to the English.

And that's how communication went down between the natives.

But her husband tried to take credit for a lot of it, didn't he?

Yeah, well, he was.

He was a character, even on his own.

He was well known as a nefarious schemer even before and after her.

And so he.

He didn't like that she was getting all this attention, and he didn't like that she was not under his thumb, especially when she discovered that she had a capacity to, you know, she jumped in the water to save their.

During squall, she jumps in the river and gets their notebooks and their sex tints and their compasses.

And she was fearless.

And he was fearful.

He couldn't swim.

And so he didn't like the fact that she was becoming more popular than he.

And he was very abusive because of that.

And he liked young Native women.

He had several Native American wives who were all very young.

So she was not very pleased with that fact that he had other women and children with other women.

So in the Native American history, they believe that she left him and that she came back to the Rocky Mountains and lived to be an old lady and helped negotiate treaties.

They sent out Congress, sent out a historian to discover what happened to her.

And so the Shoshone said that she came back.

And so there's two different histories.

One is the American history says, oh, she died at 22 years old because Sobonneau, her husband, was on a ferry and had a woman with her.

Him on the ferry.

And the woman died on the ferry.

And they said, oh, that was Sacagawea.

And she was 22 years old.

And so it was never really clarified whether that was actually Sacantaria or not.

So I decided to tell the story from the elder woman's point of view and take the Native American point of view that she actually lived to be an old lady and reconvened with her son when he was a grown man.

So that's how come it's an epic series because we have a lot of story to tell.

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Welcome back to Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.

We're back with Lynn Rogoff, creator of the award winning animated drama Bird Sacagawea.

The series transforms a woman many of us barely met in our history books into a powerful navigator, warrior and shapeshifter.

Part woman and part eagle, her very name means bird woman.

It's a story filled with danger, courage, and the painful choices of a young woman caught between two worlds.

Let's hear more about how Lynn brought this extraordinary vision and legend to life.

Lynn, you have an extraordinary story that you put together in this animated series and you've gotten 12 international awards for this.

And it's been described as stunning and visually innovative.

It's streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Red Nation tv.

But what a marvelous program.

And you've been working on this for a while.

This has been your brainchild for quite some time.

Some time before you've actually been able to create it.

We tried to.

In the late 90s, I wrote this original screenplay and before there was AI and we tried to raise money and interest and to do a period piece like this, you have to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to recreate the Rocky Mountains lizards of the 18.

And the big journey that is taken by the expedition is a fortune to tell.

And so at that time, they weren't really interested in telling the stories of women protagonists, young women protagonists, and even mature women protagonists and Native Americans.

So I just put the whole thing away.

And then I had all worked with all these actors.

And then when AI came of age and available in 23, we decided that we would make a video based on the audio that we had.

So we did it the opposite way.

We had the audio recordings and then we made the video to match the audio.

And now AI has really matured to the point where we can make the whole story using AI and we don't really need to so much matching.

We can actually take the audio, fresh audio from AI Now.

So it's become an exercise in investigating AI, which is the future, and investigating a story from 220 years ago, which is the past.

So it's an interesting mixture of both going way into the past and then going way into the future at the same time.

It is.

You're using future technology into the past and to preserve the past.

And I like the fact you're using Native American actors and musicians and historians and cultural advisors.

So people are actually getting the actual history and getting a feel for the culture, which.

Right.

Exactly.

When you're sitting in history class, you don't necessarily get that.

And that's where something like this can bring it all to life.

Yeah, well, you know, it took a long time to discover how Native Americans saw themselves and how they spoke among themselves and how they saw the Sacagawea and how they saw the Lewis Clark expedition.

And she's a hero in the Native American culture as much as she's a hero in the white culture.

She's heroic in both cultures, which I thought was really interesting.

So that here was a young woman from 220 years ago that managed to keep a life going on her story.

It's amazing that her story still resides with so many people of so many different cultures.

And so that was really interesting to a lot of people and to our whole team.

They kept wanting to work on it because it was so novel.

Nobody had told it from that point of view.

I remember the mention of her, and it was in elementary school, but I can't say that they spent a lot of time on her.

You know, they're.

Curriculum is curriculum in the.

All the boards of education.

You've got to tell Lewis and Clark story.

You have to tell a little about Native American culture.

But it's not considered a big, necessary, big topic for young people to learn to go into depth about.

So they, they.

They.

It's become a footnote in history and is what we call it.

Yes.

And it should not be.

It sounds to me if she hadn't been on that expedition, it would not have succeeded.

Definitely not.

And even they said it themselves.

Louisa Clark.

And that's why we want to celebrate Women like this because we're all warriors in our own right and we contributed so much.

And I love how you're doing this.

I mean, Kathy, you watched some of the episodes.

What were you most impressed with?

Everything.

It's a whole package deal.

It's like you fall into what you're looking at.

Because even after a long day here at work, when I was watching it, it's as if time stopped and I was just so mesmerized by what I was looking at.

It's breathtaking.

It's almost hypnotic.

Would be a good way.

It's in a.

In a good way to say it.

Hypnotic that it keeps you almost in a trance like state that all you want to see is more and more and more and more.

Like it's a wow.

You know, that whole sense of wow.

No wonder you.

You know, there's so many positive accolades for.

For this.

It's.

It's remarkable.

We did was we wanted to make these people look like 21st century people because when we look back in history, we see the old portraits of Lewis and Clark and they look very stiff and they don't look like modern people.

And there is no picture of Sacagaweo.

Nobody really knows what she looked like.

So painters in the 19th century, in the 20th century, would try to paint moments from the Lewis and Clark expedition.

And, you know, they all have this very stiff feeling about them.

So we decided we really wanted to make it feel modern and photorealistic so that you really feel like you're seeing these people.

You're not.

It's not an animation.

It's what we call super hyper realism, video generation.

It's not animation in the traditional sense of animation because you almost feel like these people are real people.

They're not animated characters.

So you can get immersed in the whole story, right?

Oh, you do.

You get pulled right in.

It's fabulous.

So not only did we do that, but we did what we call chatbots.

So I teach at the university here in New York City, and they gave me a grant for developing AI in education.

And I said, you know, we have these great characters.

Let's make chatbots that you can ask the characters any question you want after watching the movie.

So you could actually go on our website and ask Sacagawea a question and she will answer you.

Or you could ask Charbonneau, a nefarious husband, a question, or ask Lewis or Clark or her brother, Chief Kamawai, a question and they will all answer you.

So we've connected with a company in Israel called did and they had this technology that they could allow us to make these characters talk and answer and interact with you.

So they gave us their technology and they supported our project.

And so you can ask people.

These people, any question you want.

So we've brought the people back to life.

That's amazing.

What a wonderful tool for school.

Yeah.

Or for audience audiences or for museums or.

So if you're.

You're very.

Like you said, she got very involved in the story, and you're curious to know, well, what happened to her afterwards or what.

How did she feel about something?

You could go and ask her.

That's neat.

That's so cool.

That is the technology of the future.

Yeah.

So, you know, we're trying to bring out female voices and elevate them so that they have a place in storytelling.

Because, as you know, there's Batman and Superman and Spider man and Iron man and Birdman.

We've had what.

We've had Wonder Woman, and we've had Batgirl, and we even had the Bionic Woman, didn't we?

There aren't that many women superheroes.

No, women have been kind of overlooked when it comes to superheroes.

There's Xena.

That one's popular.

She's popular.

But yeah.

Oh, you know, the game character.

Mm.

So this is.

You're starting a trend, and you are elevating the Native American so people can learn about the culture.

And this is a good way to do it.

It's entertaining, it's immersive.

It's better than reading a history book.

And to have a superhero, everybody wants.

One of those, you know, Definitely.

Everybody wants to see themselves as getting through their problems and surviving the problems and flourishing, so that it's more than just surviving.

It's flourishing.

It's having a voice.

We all want to have a voice and be remembered as contributing to society rather than just being the mother or just being the wife or that you are.

Have made your mark in history and you've made your mark on culture.

Right.

Leaving a legacy.

Well, I think that's.

That's why superheroes are looked up to when you're children, you know, you want to be that person.

It's so cool.

Right.

You know, when I saw flying superheroes, I thought I could fly.

That was not a good thing.

But I tried jumping off of something really high.

But, yeah, I really got into some of that.

I mean, these were things that.

It appeals to a child's imagination.

Imagination.

And they can aspire to something much larger than themselves as adults.

Right, right.

And Also, women can feel that they are respected and they're not just sitting in the background, that they are doers.

And, you know, I've been working in the entertainment business for decades, and a lot of the marketing analysis says, oh, young boys will only watch films about boys.

They won't watch films about girls, or they won't play games about girls.

And so many of the films that come out are driven by male protagonists and the games are male protagonists.

And women have had a very hard time getting funded for stories, getting funded for projects that have female protagonists.

And raising money for these projects has been very difficult because women's projects don't get funded.

They found that only a very small amount of projects are fundamental, led by women and funded by women and get produced so that most of the stories that are being produced these days are about men and about male protagonists who are either solving crimes or they're FBI or they're zombies or they're science fiction heroes.

So, you know, we really wanted to make a mark and say that's not the only story that is worthy of being told.

Stay tuned for more of Women Road warriors.

Coming up.

Industry movement Trucking Moves America Forward is telling the story of the industry.

Our safety champions, the women of trucking, independent contractors, the next generation of truckers, and more help us promote the best of our industry.

Share your story and what you love about trucking.

Share images of a moment you're proud of and join us on social media.

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Welcome welcome back to Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.

Lynn Rogoff spent more than two decades working to bring Sacagawea's story to the screen with the animated film Bird Sacagawea.

And she did it with the help of native American actors, musicians, historians and cultural advisors, along with AI enhanced animation.

The result introduces an indigenous heroine to an entirely new generation while giving her the strength and dimension history often denied her.

Kathy and I are talking with Lynn about the making of Bird Woman and the woman behind the legend.

In our last segment, we were talking about the fact that females aren't typically the ones who are funded for animation projects or games or that sort of thing, that it's usually a male protagonist that supposedly is preferred by people.

Lynn, who are they surveying when they come up with these stats?

Because have they actually created a female superhero and put the that character in front of little boys and have they said, gee, the boys prefer the boys?

I mean, I understand if maybe they can identify more with the boys, maybe, but what about the girls?

There are more girls than boys.

Why don't we have.

You know, they have found that.

And this.

The market research says that girls are more willing to watch movies and play games with boys than boys are willing to watch movies and play games about girls.

Really?

So, yeah, I mean, my company produced a game series in the 90s, and we had a whole series of games about young people in history or social causes.

And McGraw Hill Home Interactive was launching a new division and acquired the license to 12 of our games.

And so Sacagawea was actually going to be a game.

And when we did the market analysis, this is what came up, that.

That boys were more interested in doing games about boys.

So I decided that the first title would be about young boys.

We did a game about Pony Express riders who deliver the mail during the Civil War.

And so then we discovered actually foiling the nefarious schemes of the Knights of the Golden Circle, which was a Confederate militia group.

So I had done a deep dive into the history of the Civil War at that time.

And so we did that game and I wanted to do Sacagawea as the second one.

But I was even persuaded to not do Sacagawea first because the market research was showing that boys were more interested in games about boys.

So, you know, it even affects the creators, the research, market research.

So do you think that some of the resistance on that is because boys are taught that they're supposed to only look at stuff about boys?

Yeah, that's a good question.

It's that whole, how are boys being brought up and how are they being trained to be boys?

Right.

And what is it to be a boy?

And I think that girls are more empathetic and being bored.

And they've found this research that girls are more apt to be emotional and be empathetic to different issues.

And boys maybe not.

So I remember as a kid thinking, why don't we have more female characters, protagonists in the cartoons and various other things?

I would imagine myself as that character, even though it was obviously a male character.

I just.

I dismissed.

I dismissed that.

I thought there's no reason why you can't be that.

But that was me, you know, so.

Well, that's.

That's perfect example of the bias.

But it's interesting that it's still going on.

And what you're doing is really revolutionary.

You're not only introducing a female superhero, but a Native American superhero.

So this is really excellent.

And AI's made this possible.

I don't know if you Wanted to take maybe a minute to talk about AI that's really fascinating on how this was possible and what it would have taken without it.

I don't think it would have gotten made if it wasn't for A.I.

I mean, we could have made.

We did make a version with just the paintings, but it really wasn't exciting or engaging material.

And so in order to raise that kind of money to, like I said, to reproduce this whole epic series, because it is, you know, right now there's a movie coming, came out called the Odyssey, which is another hero's journey.

And that was.

The Odyssey is sort of the story of a man that has to come back from.

From a long journey and what he has to do to get back.

And it became the definition of the hero's journey from thousands of years ago.

And so he was able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to make the Odyssey.

But nobody's going to give us hundreds of millions of dollars to make Bird Woman.

So far, we have not been able to raise that money.

So when AI Came about that we could, as an independent company, reduce this using the technology that's at hand.

And even though it's problematic in that we could only make 15 seconds at a time, that's how the production is.

If we get a good 15 seconds, we're happy every time we use the technology, because it's still pioneering work.

It's still the bleeding edge of technology.

So you ask the software to make the scene where, for example, we have a scene where the horses are falling off the cliffs in the Rocky Mountains because it's icy and it's steep and it's dangerous.

Sure.

And then you're asking it to do something that it hasn't really been trained to do.

So we had to teach the software how to make that scene.

So it's very time consuming.

You have to have a lot of patience.

I was going to say patience with all those iterations and, oh, my goodness.

To do constant iterating until you get a good 15 seconds of video that is usable.

So you're a pioneer.

That's a lot.

Oh, my goodness.

You've got patience.

Yeah.

Well, you learn it, you know you don't really have it.

But in order to get anywhere with the software, you have to keep at it.

That's true perseverance.

Well, that patience has gotten you 12 international awards.

And you're now on Amazon Prime Video, where people can watch it as well as Red Nation tv.

That is Amazon and herflix.

Herflix is a channel where films by and for women is.

Right now she's launching a new streaming channel, so it'll be up shortly on herflix.

Neat.

Where do people find you?

Obviously Amazon Prime Video, Red Nation tv.

And you said Her Flix.

This is really cool.

We have it up on YouTube right now on Dared Woman.

Yeah, right now you can actually watch it on Bird Woman has her own bird woman.

AI has her own YouTube channel.

Okay.

So people can actually catch the entire series there.

Yeah, you can.

How do people find out more about you and your company?

So we have a website, Americids A M E R I k I d s.com and you can learn all about Bird Woman there and about our other projects and communicate with us through americids.com and we have a contact sheet there and you can communicate with us through that and sign up, get newsletters from us.

I imagine you're getting a lot of positive feedback.

Yes, we are.

You know, there's been a lot of interest in both the story as Native American and the fact that we're doing it in AI has brought a lot of interest to the project.

So we are getting interest from people living in Wyoming because it's a story of Wyoming.

Plus we're getting people from, like I said, in India who are familiar with her from India.

And then we're getting edtech people who are interested in the edtech solutions that we're offering through the chatbots.

And so.

And then there's.

The traditional filmmaking community has been interested in seeing what can we produce with AI.

And so it's been quite controversial.

Needless to say, there's people that are worried they're going to lose their jobs or there's.

They're going to, you know, take over.

And so we've been really pushing this concept that it's a combination of human creativity and AI tools.

It's not AI made.

This is made by human beings with AI tools.

So you have to have a technological aptitude to do this AI.

You can't just say, oh, I'm going to write a little story and AI suddenly makes it.

That's not the way it happens.

You have to be a technologist as well as an artist.

Exactly.

Exactly.

That's what I'm saying.

And I've had a long history of doing stories about women and stories about people in American history and American culture.

So I've been at this for a while.

You've been in the trenches.

You know what to expect, and then that's exactly what's needed.

If people want to maybe reach out to you, they can go to aiamericids Productions.

It's a justamericids A M E R I K I D s dot com and you can communicate with me through that website.

And if you want to see our films on YouTube, we have a bird woman AI YouTube website.

Excellent.

Well, I wish you luck.

I know Kathy does, too.

Oh, my God.

Yes.

You got to always be raising money and you got to always be putting together teams, so it's a lot of work.

Sure.

Yeah.

Well, hopefully some people who want to throw a few dollars your way will show up, too.

Yeah, that would be great.

We're looking for partnerships.

We're looking for spons.

We looking for collaborators.

We're always interested in working with people that are interested in animation or interested in special effects.

Really, you're doing a fabulous job.

We really appreciate you being on the show.

Lynn, what is your website again?

Just in case people didn't catch it?

Okay.

AmeriCIDS a m e r I k I d s americids dot com.

Excellent.

Love what you're doing.

Love what you're doing.

You gals are really great.

I think the Women Warrior Road Warrior concept is a great concept.

Thank you.

Yes, we want to.

Thank you.

We want to power women on the road to success,.

And you're definitely part of that.

That's right.

And I want to encourage women to be more powerful and be a warrior, because that's what you have to be these days.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you, Lynn.

It's been a pleasure having you on the show.

You're welcome.

My pleasure.

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