Frybread Face and Me is a 2023 American coming-of-age drama film written and directed by Billy Luther. It follows the story of a young boy named Benny who comes from San Diego to spend the summer with his Navajo “Dine” grandmother on her reservation in Arizona. There he meets and bonds with his cousin Frybread Face, and the film explores their family’s legacy and their personalities as they try to make sense of the world around them and the people that they may become. Angelina Hilton, Maureen Connell, and Casey Magaris join us on the podcast to discuss complex family relationships, gender, and culture to name a few themes.

Angelina Hilton is an enrolled member of the Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska, a devoted wife and mother, an emerging artist, and the visionary behind Native Made. At its core, Native Made exists to increase Indigenous visibility. Her initiative offers marketing and other services for Indigenous entrepreneurs. Angelina is on the Indigenous Advisory Sub Committee for Indigenous People’s Day Committee and a volunteer with the Indigenous Health Coalition with Common Ground. She values family involvement and balances work with passions like photography and writing. Angelina's journey embodies cultural ties, family commitment, and advocacy. As a wife, mother, artist, and activist, she inspires inclusivity and positive change. Discover more at nativemadehq.com and connect at nativemadehq@gmail.com.

Maureen Connell is Indigenous Mexican and Spanish and is part of the LGBTQIA+ community. She was born in Mexico City, Mexico and moved to Rochester, New York when she was 7 years old. Maureen earned a Master's Degree in clinical Psychology while living in Seattle, Washington where she practiced mental health therapy. She also practiced in Barrow, Alaska, and Lake Havasu, Arizona before returning to Rochester, NY in 2016 where she worked as a dual diagnosis therapist at Evelyn Brandon with a focus on women and trauma. However, after years of working for clinics that did not address Indigenous/ Native American healthcare in a holistic way, in 2017, Maureen stepped away from clinical work with a personal desire to help raise awareness of this inequity. In 2021, along with Casey Magaris, Maureen started the first Indigenous/ Native American Employee Resource Group at Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield. She is also a member of the steering committee of the Indigenous Health Coalition through Common Ground Health Initiative.

Casey Magaris has worked in the healthcare and insurance fields for over 20 years. Along with Maureen Connell, Casey created the Indigenous Employee Resource group with Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield. She is a member of the steering committee of the Indigenous Health Coalition through Common Ground Health Initiative, and a staunch advocate for health equity among the Haudenosaunee. Casey is an enrolled member of the Akwesasne Mohawk tribe and a proud descendent of residential school survivors. In her free time, Casey enjoys time with family, beadworking and crafting.

The Representation in Cinema podcast is hosted by Our Voices Project. We are a production company committed to embracing identity, celebrating resiliency, and promoting visibility through uplifting the voices and sharing the lived experiences of Black, Brown, and Indigenous Peoples through our films, Representation in Cinema podcast episodes, and live panel discussions.

You can learn more about Our Voices Project at www.ourvoicesproject.com. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Follow Representation in Cinema and listen to all of our podcast episodes anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts! Subscribe to mailing list to be the first to hear about new projects, upcoming events, and new podcast episodes!

Our voices project acknowledges and honors that the lands we live, love, grow, work, and learn on are the ancestral homelands of the people of the Onondaga or the Seneca, one of the six nations of the Haudenosaunee confederacy, along with the Cayuga who call themselves the Gayukono, the Onondaga who call themselves the Onondaga the Oneida who call themselves Oneirika, the mohawk who call themselves Geni Gahaga and the Tuscarora, who call themselves garure.

We acknowledge that our society was founded upon exclusions and erasures of many indigenous peoples through centuries of genocide and forced separation from family, culture, language, and from land, spirit and mind.

We acknowledge this violent history of seizure and displacement that allows us to be on this land not only as a recognition, but as a motivation for change.

As filmmakers, we are committed to working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism through truth telling.

We invite you to join us in enacting justice by taking such steps as committing to making a recurring monthly donation to a native led organization, such as to Ginandagon State Historic Site in Victor, New York, and or native maid in Rochester, New York.

Visit these organizations and find out how you can volunteer your time and help support native led initiatives.

Find out how indigenous peoples are represented in your local school districts curricula and advocate for the historical truth telling of ancestral land, dispossession and genocide, and the acknowledgement and celebration of indigenous contributions, past and present.

Learn about the murdered and missing indigenous women movement, created to advocate for the end of violence against native women and to bring awareness to the high rates of disappearances and murders of native people, particularly women and girls.

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Hello everyone, and welcome to representation in cinema.

Our Voices project is a production company committed to providing a safe space and platform for black, brown and indigenous peoples.

To share experiences while dismantling destructive stereotypes.

Perpetuated in the media through visual storytelling and truth telling.

In this podcast, we talk about the.

Many ways in which black, brown and indigenous peoples are portrayed in films.

We address the things that we love.

Seeing the tropes and stereotypes that Hollywood.

Continues to perpetuate on screen, and what representation we'd like to see moving forward.

Welcome to representation in cinema, where tonight we will be discussing fry bread, face and me.

We have with us tonight three guests.

The first is Angelina Hilton.

Welcome, Angelina.

Thank you.

Angelina is an enrolled member of the Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska.

A devoted wife and mother, an emerging artist, and the visionary behind native maid.

At its core, native maid exists to increase indigenous visibility.

Her initiative offers marketing and other services for indigenous entrepreneurs.

Angelina is on the Indigenous Advisory subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples Day committee and a volunteer with the Indigenous Health Coalition with common Ground.

She values family involvement and balances work with passions like photography and writing.

Angelina's journey embodies cultural ties, family commitment and advocacy.

As a wife, mother, artist and activist, she inspires inclusivity and positive change.

Discover more@nativemadehq.com and connect@nativemadehqmail.com dot we also have Maureen Connell.

Welcome Maureen hello.

Maureen is an indigenous Mexican and Spanish and is part of the LGBTQia community.

She was born in Mexico City, Mexico and moved to Rochester, New York when she was seven years old.

Maureen earned a master's degree in clinical psychology while living in Seattle, Washington, where she practiced mental health therapy.

She also practiced in Barrow, Alaska and Lake Havasu, Arizona before returning to Rochester, New York in 2016 where she worked as a dual diagnosis therapist at Evelyn Brandon with a focus on women in trauma.

However, after years of working for clinics that did not address indigenous native american healthcare in a holistic way, in 2017, Maureen stepped away from clinical work with a personal desire to help raise awareness of the inequities.

In 2021, along with Casey Magaris, Maureen started the first Indigenous native american employee resource group at Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield.

She is also a member of the steering committee of the Indigenous Health Coalition through Common Ground Health Initiative.

Casey Magaris is also with us.

Welcome Casey.

Hi Courtney, thanks for having me.

Casey has worked in the healthcare and insurance fields for over 20 years.

Along with Maureen Connelly, Casey created the indigenous employee resource group with group with Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield.

She is a member of the steering committee of the Indigenous Health coalition through common Ground Health initiative and a staunch advocate for health equity among the Haudenosaunee.

Casey is an enrolled member of the Akwasasne Mohawk tribe and a proud descendant of residential school survivors.

In her free time, Casey enjoys time with family, beadworking and crafting.

So welcome all three of you.

I'm very happy to have you around the table tonight and really excited to discuss Fry breadface and me.

So to get us started, I wanted to give a brief synopsis of the film.

Fry Bread Face and me is a 2023 american coming of age drama film written and directed by Billy Luther.

It follows the story of a young boy named Benny who comes from San Diego to spend the summer with his Navajo, or Dene, grandmother on her reservation in Arizona.

There he meets in bonds with his cousin Fry breadface, and the film explores their family's legacy and their personalities as they try to make sense of the world around them and the people that they may become.

A fun fact about the film is that the entire cast is native.

And actually, the only person who isn't Danae is Martin Scentzmeyer, who plays Uncle Marvin, and he is, in fact, alaskan native.

And here's a quote by the director that I found very compelling.

That scene where they're all in the trailer together, bouncing off each other and teasing each other was an amazing thing for me to witness.

The camera people had set up the lighting, and then once I looked in the frame, I saw eight Native Americans while I was directing.

It really hit me in that moment that this is rare.

It was emotional because little did I know that one day I'd be filming eight natives in one room with a movie I was making.

Frybread Face and me had its world premiere at south by Southwest on March 11, 2023.

It's screened at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival in the Discovery section on September 11, 2023.

In November 2023, Ava DuVernay's production banner array acquired distribution rights to the film in the United States, United Kingdom in Ireland, on November 24, 2023.

The film received a limited theatrical release alongside a Netflix release.

And with that, I really wanted to open things up for us by saying another quote by the director.

He felt that this could be a story.

And it isn't just my story.

I've been on the festival circuit, and many indigenous and non natives have said, oh, my God.

It reminds me of home in my experience of being disconnected from a culture and community.

And I wanted to open our conversation by asking each of you how this film and the exploration of its many themes, which we will delve into, resonate with each of you.

Angelina, would you like to go first?

I can see your face, and I want to allow you the time to go ahead and tell us how you're feeling.

Well, I might need tissues already.

I've watched the movie three times.

I grew up off territory.

My reservation is in reserve, Kansas, 1300 miles away.

And it reminded me of going home because we moved up here in upstate New York when I was four, almost five, and we would travel back to reserve most twice a year to visit my grandmother, other family members.

And I watched it three times.

I watched it by myself, and I was glad I had that opportunity because it gave me an opportunity to reflect back on those times when I would go home and visit with family.

Then I watched it.

I wanted my husband to.

To watch with me.

My husband is white, and he.

His first experience with reservation was as an adult in traveling back with me.

And then I watched it with my mother.

And at the end of the show, I looked over and I saw my mother crying.

And she couldn't explain to me at that moment why she was crying, but I knew.

I knew, and she had shared with me that it reminded her of the times that she would spend with her grandmother and her grandfather and how much that she had wished that she had paid more attention, to be able to pass down the things that she was taught.

That's all for now.

Oh, thank you, Angelina.

Thank you.

Casey.

Did you want to comment?

Yeah.

Yeah, I'd love to.

So I had a very unique experience.

I grew up on reserve to start my life, but it wasn't my reserve.

So I am a member of the St.

Regis Mohawk.

My reserve is acquiescence.

Near Hogan'sburg, New York.

But I grew up on the Tuscarora reserve, which is still part of the Haudenosaunee.

And I had a lot of great experiences on reserve.

But then when I was in fourth grade, we moved to the city.

So I think that what really resonated me was Benny's journey and having that, like, oh, you can see Shamu anytime you want.

Like, there was a lot that he gained from living off territory, but so much more lost in that time with his family.

So I felt that deeply.

Thank you.

And, Maureen, I think what resonated with me was really just the feeling of not belonging to any certain place.

Because growing up in Mexico, I was adopted by a caucasian family.

So there was always a disconnect of, you know, you look like somebody else already.

And then when I was seven and moved to Rochester, it, like, happened all over again, but with the loss of culture, so, like, Angelina, I'm gonna need the tissues already.

So that's always resonated with me, just a sense of belonging.

And this movie captured it perfectly well.

If you start crying, I'm gonna start crying.

Please don't.

We're all crying, actually.

Thank you, all of you, for sharing such personal reflection.

It is a very personal, personally driven movie by the director, who, in several articles that I researched, was questioned several times if this was an autobiographical film.

And in several different articles, he did ways mention that, no, it's not autobiographical.

But finally, he does say, okay, yes, you know, there are many many parts of this film where I did explore, in summary, growing up queer and indigenous and also the impacts of his family dynamics.

And so as we start digging into how he chooses to bring forth all of those themes and we start thinking about the ways that he looks into the complexity of growing up indigenous and queer.

In an interview with the Queer Review, he stated that in navajo culture the male and female are balanced.

And in the past our gay people were thought of as holy people.

Then, of course, western ideas of religion changed that.

We don't hit directly on those things in the film.

We don't say, hey, this kid is gay, because at eleven you don't necessarily know yet.

So I didn't want to shape him into a gay or queer character, but it's there and I think people who watch it will see it as a piece of the puzzle.

And so I'm asking if any of you would like to speak to the balance of male and female in native culture and how this relates to the film and how it plays out in the film.

Maureen, go ahead.

Casey.

Oh, sorry.

Go ahead.

No, I was just gonna say I really enjoyed Benny as a character and I appreciate that he recognized that at eleven you don't really know.

Right.

But the factors that made Benny who he is as a person were so disturbing to his uncle Marvin.

And I feel like that really was relevant as far as colonization.

Right.

It really shows that how our old ways were really taken from us and that Benny was more aligned and in, I don't know, the name word, I don't remember the name word from watching it.

But in balance, in harmony.

Like Benny was more in that than a lot of his family.

Yeah, the hose ho was the word.

Yes.

I definitely see the parallels and I'm fairly new with my knowledge about two spirit and also how two spirit represents in mexican indigenous culture because it's also there.

And with colonization, both south american and north american indigenous people lost that piece of them.

And I think there's always that struggle with balancing indigenous ways with colonization ways and how the patriarchy just kind of overarches more in a colonization point of view.

And I think that took away a lot of the richness of the indigenous culture because of it.

So as far as the balance between men and women in indigenous culture.

We.

Didn'T really have many male presence.

I mean, I had my older brother who played a significant part in my life, and I have a younger brother, but my biological father is full italian.

And a lot of the words and attitudes, what Uncle Marvin had towards me, a lot of those scenes were playing out.

I could feel like the little girl inside of me get very uncomfortable, scared, anxious, just super uncomfortable.

But then I recognize it because of western culture.

When I look at indigenous women, specifically, the women in my life are incredibly strong and powerful and compassionate and loving and accepting, accepting of everybody.

And as I'm on my journey learning and being exposed and building relationships with other individuals from different nations, and I'm learning about different cultures, like, specifically up here in the Haudenosaunee women and how it was the women who decided who the chiefs are and that there was just this balance of responsibility and this mutual level of respect.

But also, like, these men who honor their women so much, it just is just a complete shift of perspective for me as an adult, and I didn't have any of that growing up.

So this is like, you, Marine.

A lot of this stuff is new to me, too, like two spirit and whatnot.

But I grew up with women who just were accepting and loving of everybody.

And we do see that.

Go ahead.

I just wanted to add on for that.

Like, you made some really great points, Angelina.

And I.

I struggle, like, as a haudenosaunee woman, and I'm the oldest daughter.

I'm the matriarch of my family because my mom's gone.

And that gender role has followed me to the point where it's.

It's hard to have relationships outside of my culture that understand that.

Right.

That understands that as a woman, as a matriarch, I have responsibility, but I'm also to be revered and loved in a certain way.

So that's led to some challenges in my life, and I think that that's.

You just made some great points.

Sorry.

I just don't bring in.

I go off script.

Don't mind me.

No, that's.

That's a great thing.

Casey, do you.

Do you actually want to say more about that?

The floor is yours.

Oh, sure.

I mean, about.

So I also married a caucasian man, and that just didn't work out because he had a very colonial mindset, and he didn't understand my responsibilities to my family.

And it got to the point where those cultural differences just didn't allow us to be compatible.

But I recognize that, and I understand that my responsibility to my family and my siblings and the next generation is just far more important than anything else to me as a woman in my culture, in my family.

I think I can bounce off that, too.

When I look at the history of my family, it's like, my grandma helped raise me.

My great grandma helped raise my mother.

And so it is, I once was told that I had an unhealthy relationship with my mother.

But in a way, because it's like when you in dominant culture, you move out of your house, you graduate high school, you go off to college, you meet your significant other, you get married, you move in together, you have children, and that's that.

And then you don't go back home.

But that isn't how, I mean, I was raised with that mentality, but that wasn't what I saw in our history, especially going back home.

And then as a young child growing up and the influence that my grandmother had on me and then the influence that my grandparents had on my mother.

And now I'm seeing the influence that my mom is having on my children.

And yes, my mother is helping me.

So is my older sister to help raise my children.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And in this film, too, this is a perfect lead in to start talking about Benny's aunts and uncles in particular.

We see Aunt Lucy and we see Uncle Marvin.

And I wanted to kind of throw out there what you think that represents to Benny.

What do they represent to Benny?

And on the broader scale, too, they're sort of these archetype characters almost.

So what are your thoughts?

We started talking about Uncle Marvin.

What do you think about Uncle Marvin?

I really like him.

I think they tried to have Uncle Marvin not be, I think, a likable person at first, but then you get to know him and you get to know his history and how much he really loved his family and how he stayed with his grandma and didn't leave.

We don't really know what happened to Uncle Marvin at the end, but I think of the day that when he lost Reebok, I think him and Benny really bonded together.

And I think Benny was able to see the vulnerability of Marvin because he fought so hard to keep that vulnerability away.

And Lucy, I really like Lucy's character.

She's just so free and just loved her culture and was really kind of wanting to stay connected to her family, but also was struggling with wanting to be in the urban and in the city.

And I think it just kind of brought Benny both of those sides, you know, like, you have the ability to be both of these things and still stay connected with your family but also be able to explore, too.

Yeah, those are good points.

And I'm going to actually up the ante a little bit because both of their characters, before I continue to ask you guys to speak on this, but the film does explore these complex and contemporary indigenous thematic structures and tropes.

Right.

So if we're going to talk about Lucy and Marvin, I feel like maybe this question goes hand in hand.

So what happens to indigenous people who choose to leave the res, or those that stay, for that matter?

So is happiness possible in either situation?

And what does that happiness look like?

Why is an uncle like Marvin so angry on the rez?

And how does an aunt like Lucy decide to return to the big city?

Right.

So those are some of the other thoughts about what they represent on a larger scale, not just to Benny, but to their mother, to each other, to the reservation, to the culture.

Well, you were mentioning earlier.

Oh, go ahead, Casey.

Oh, no, I was.

I was.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Uncle Marvin was a really great character for me.

Like, I.

I understood him a bit because he took his responsibility to his family very seriously.

And he respected Benny's mom so much because of how much she helped out being the oldest daughter.

Right.

Like.

Like, I feel like Uncle Marvin is my brother and he loves his aunt, but he doesn't.

Or loves his sister, but he doesn't know how to express that from generational trauma.

Like, he doesn't know how to show Benny that he loves Benny without being mean or cold.

I guess in his mind, I feel like he's trying to help Benny become a man, and not a healthy way, but I feel like that's what his true intent was, because he loves his sister, so he wants his nephew to be a socially acceptable man.

Yeah.

And perhaps that was the way his older brother taught him, because there's a reference in the film that his older brother was also a bull rider, and he was compared to his older brother when he was bull riding.

And, of course, later on, we learned that his older brother is the one that's in prison.

Oh, that scene when uncle Marvin blew up, like, I felt him, like he's.

Like he disgraced our family.

And that.

That got me choked up when he got so upset.

Yeah.

Like he was somebody that he looked up to and.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry.

Go ahead, Angelina.

You were mentioning earlier about the director stating, like, he had eight indigenous people all in one room and they were bouncing off each other.

And, I mean, you had more aunts and uncles in there.

And just, that just.

That just reminded me of going home and just sitting around with everybody.

My brother, my sister, my grandma, even my great aunt.

It just.

And Casey is right.

I think that there is a lot of trauma.

And he just.

He showed his love the way that he knew how and he did stay, so it's not like he got exposed.

So you can feel like there's a lot of heartache, a lot of resentment, but also, you know, there is love.

Aunt Lucy reminds me a lot of myself back and forth, you know, looking out after, you know, being the one to show up to pick up the kids.

You know, I remember taking my auntie on a Greyhound bus back to reserve, you know, and we had that quality time together.

Granted, she was much, much older, and at the time, she was struggling with some mental health issues, but it just.

It felt like home.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Can I totally tangent, too, but I'd like to talk about a little bit the duality between Uncle Marvin and Aunt Lucy.

Right.

Like, I feel like it reflects a lot of the birthing order in their.

Of family.

Like, I would guarantee that aunt Lucy is a baby.

Like, before they even went through, who is.

Because the older siblings, Benny's mom, the oldest daughter, uncle Marvin, the one in jail.

Like, they, in my opinion, in my experience, anyways, I guess, sheltered her from a lot of that generational trauma.

So she was able to be more free and more Dene and more who she wanted to be as opposed to who she could have been, should she have been exposed to as much generational trauma and that I could just be protecting my own family.

And because my sister is way freer than all of us.

Like, that's.

She was a very celebratory figure for the kids, and she was grounded in her culture.

We see her when she's home and.

And she's definitely participating with the family and engaged and, you know, reminding dawn frybreadface that she is beautiful.

And she does the beaded jewelry, she sells the jewelry.

And even when she starts talking about what it would mean to move, like, if I moved to the city and opened my salon, she.

She has the word for beauty in Danae, and she's like, maybe that'll be the name of my salon.

Right?

So she does have a.

It appears in the film, she has a good sense of groundedness between knowing who she is as a Danae woman, but still having these dreams of pursuing a life outside of that.

Like, I think at one point, she was.

It.

Was it her that mentioned how Marvin would be the last one to tend to the sheep?

Like, that would be it.

There would be no one else.

So there's.

That is interesting, Casey, that you would bring that up compared to her siblings, you know, but then we have Sharon, too.

So Sharon shows up with the baby and her husband, and she seems completely almost sort of like, yeah, I'll come back.

And this is who I am and these are my people.

But, like, at the same time, I got my other stuff, I got my other life going on and almost sort of removed from the family in a way.

So all the siblings seem to have sort of reacted in a, in a different way.

We didn't learn much about frybread faces mother, other than she just dropped her off and went out.

And so she's, you know, there's also in it.

And so when you, like, think about all the family dynamics, they're like, coming and going and just everybody seems a little lost and.

Yeah, well, she's not the sibling.

Right.

She would be like the in law.

Right.

Because the dad's in jail.

Even.

So they do make comment about, commentary about the mother doing this often.

So there is a lot.

There's, there's a lot.

The complex dynamics.

I mean, even in the beginning of the film, they talk about the dysfunctional family, right.

And then they kind of go into, go into it from there and show us the dysfunction or the so called dysfunction, which might actually be a little universal when we think about it.

Yeah.

And that's so producer Chris over here, when you were talking about the oldest, middle, younger, too, how that it can tie to all those responsibilities.

And, you know, I grew up the oldest, and my youngest brother was the free one.

He, he never felt the same responsibility, you know, to the family, to the other things.

You know, you feel that differently when you're younger, too.

You can, you feel that so viscerally and you feel jealous of that.

You feel all those things.

But, you know, we had a small family business, and that responsibility of family was so paramount to us.

And I know I, that always struck me, too, that oldest, middle, youngest, the middle is the connector.

The younger is the free one.

The oldest feels that weight on them and going back.

We should know better, right?

We're the oldest.

We should know better.

I've heard that a million times.

Right.

And oldest ones are like, quote unquote, like the most messed up because parents don't know what they're doing.

They practice on us.

Yeah.

And it's, yeah, there's something about that, that when you're talking about that coming home, you know, that coming home and feeling together but separate.

And that struck me, and that's how I feel often.

Going home is I feel together, but I'm separate.

I live such a different life than I grew up in, and I don't have the cultural separation, you know, the disconnection from my.

From my heritage.

But that still strikes me so hard that when you go home, you can't be the same.

Cause you are away.

You are different.

And it just kind of struck me.

I just appreciate everybody sharing about that.

It means.

Yeah, it means a lot, you know?

Thanks, Chris.

So, yeah, I think.

Yeah, I think on that.

I think we'll take a quick break and we'll come back for the second half of our discussion, and we'll be right back.

Welcome back to our discussion on fry bread, face and me.

So now we are going to turn our discussion to language and culture.

As of 2019, there were 170,000 navajo speakers, making it the most spoken native american language in the US.

Danate language is central to the film.

Grandmother talks to Benny in Navajo exclusively and to accentuate how little he understands what she's saying.

The movie doesn't provide subtitles when grandmother speaks to him.

So I just wanted to ask, what are your thoughts around indigenous language revitalization and preservation?

This is a great question, Courtney.

I actually had an opposite experience of Benny.

My grandfather went to Mohawk Day school, and his father went to Thomas Indian residential.

So he approached us with a very different.

I think this is why uncle Marvin really touched base with me in the last set of questions is when I asked my grandfather at eight years old to teach me Mohawk because he didn't learn English until first grade when he went to school.

So I asked him, grandpa, I want to learn Mohawk.

I don't want to learn Pescarora.

I want to learn Mohawk.

And he told me verbatim, you will not get anywhere in the white man's world speaking your language.

I'm not teaching you.

If you want to learn anything, go by a square missile teaching Mohr test.

And that was like, a core memory for me, right.

So now, as an adult, I'm actively learning Mohawk and trying to work it out.

But I wanted to know from my grandfather.

Yeah.

Like, he's the one I wanted to learn from.

So I strongly feel that language preservation is important.

I don't want to learn Mohawk just for language preservation.

I want to learn Mohawk so I can express myself in my.

My language, my ancestors, like, I hear him speak, and it's just the most beautiful thing to my ears.

It makes me feel comforted and at home, and I want to learn it for me.

Thank you, Casey.

That's beautiful.

So my grandmother went to Haskell residential school.

She was sent there.

This is what I learned from my mother.

And I just.

I didn't even know about residential schools.

I mean, I visited Haskell, but I just thought it was another.

It was like, now it's Haskell University, and it is native focused and about preservation, where.

Whereas before it was about assimilation.

And that's when my grandmother went.

But she went after my great grandfather married her caucasian stepmother.

And at that time, I think that that was when the two got married.

And I'm not 100% sure, but it's been told to me that she was shipped out there.

But as people would call the survivors, I think my mother, when she shares, she would call my grandma a thriver, where it was like her saving grace, like her place to get away from a potentially abusive home.

She could learn new things.

But the strange thing is that my great grandfather helped raise my mother and had my mother go do powwows and husk corn and roll the corn and dry out the corn and try to pass things down to her.

Whereas my grandmother.

My mom would call her a free spirit.

She wanted to get out there.

She wanted to travel.

She wanted to do all these things.

So my mother, she also said that she didn't.

She didn't like going to power.

She was like, I was young.

I had to wear these buckskin dresses.

It was in the middle of August.

I was forced to do this.

I didn't want to do this.

And so that's why she cut it off.

Whereas my grandmother, you know, if she was sent to a residential school where they were teaching, you know, sewing and cooking and English, you know, that's what she was excited about.

And so everything got cut off.

And I remember seeing my great grandmother.

She's not wrong.

That buckskin in August is no joke.

And, I mean, her dresses are now in, like, a little case in a tiny, itty bitty museum about the size of this room out in reserve.

Oh, yeah, it's beautiful.

But it does not breathe.

Yeah, but.

So nothing was passed down to me.

And when we would go back to the reservation, you know, I didn't think anything of it.

I was just visiting family.

I didn't.

And it's not like we.

I'd never been to a powwow up until last year.

And it just.

I'm mad.

I am sad.

Oh, girl, we gotta get together.

We'll go powwow.

Good time.

Well, you know.

You know, and my mom would tell me when I was younger, too, she's like, if you wanna.

If you want to still be indian, you gotta marry an indian man and have indian babies.

Like, to keep passing, or else your kids won't be.

And so my children are not on a roll, but yet they have sac and fox, Otoe and Iowa blood running through their veins.

So about, like, cultural preservation and language.

Again, nothing was passed down.

I didn't seek it out when I was younger.

Nobody really pushed it on me either.

And now our second fox, our particular band, is about 400 members, and they are scattered throughout the states.

You know, I went back to a tribal council vote this past summer, and you had to have 40 people present in order for votes to be accepted.

I was number 41, and they were, like, nobody.

Only two other people came from, like, California, but a lot of the residents weren't even there to participate, and so it's.

I'm not really sure what to think about it.

I'm hungry for it.

I want to learn our language, but I've also been told that we've lost our language.

We don't have any drums.

We don't have any regalia.

We don't have any ceremonies.

We don't have any powwows.

It just seems like we're partial white folks holding down a fort right now just trying just to survive.

And so that's a very stark reality for me, being last in my bloodline as an enrolled member for the SaC and Fox and knowing that my children right now will not be on a roll and are not considered indigenous, even though they are.

So it's.

I feel like I'm on my own.

I'm on my journey of self discovery.

I want to go back.

I want to learn.

I want to dig.

I want to get connected.

And by spending some quality time with.

I believe she was a member of the Oneida Nation.

I was in a kitchen with just this other woman, and she was like, if you have three bands and one band still has their language and is much bigger, you know, you need to get connected with them to get started, because it'll be like a similar dialect, and that's how you can get started, but you need to go home.

So I'm on.

I'm on a journey to figure it out.

Can I just say, Angelina, you teach your babies your language, too.

That blood quantum net is a colonizer mindset, and you should be proud of your journey, because I love you already.

Well, let me tell you something.

We just went to the Ganondagon Winter games, and my son, he is very much.

He identifies as indigenous.

He is.

And he is hungry, too.

And we are very involved locally with different nations locally, doing various things.

So we figure if we can't go home and do this stuff right now, then what can we do while we're here?

And so getting involved in the Indigenous People's day committee, getting involved with indigenous health coalition, going to the Ginan Dagon, you know, all it took was just a redirection to be able to see the visibility of indigenous people.

And it is.

It is significant here.

It really is.

And my son, he is the student, but he's also the teacher.

He was at the Ginanagon this past weekend, and he was sitting behind the table and he was engaging with other children, talking about the beaver's fur and the pomp drill and how to make wampum.

And it was like he was teaching me, he taught my husband, and then he was engaging with other young children who were feeling comfortable to be able to approach him and learn from him.

And he is just.

He's excited.

And he's been going back to the res, actually, since he was three months old because we continued that journey.

You know, we have to go back once a year for medical reasons, because that's how we can get prescriptions and stuff like that, but also to visit family.

Then my grandma, she passed away in 2019, my brother passed away in 2020, and then in 2021, when we didn't go back, it was like, oh, my God, this is this okay?

We have work to do.

Thank you for letting me share.

Oh, thank you for sharing.

So connection of language and culture, I think it's just so powerful, and it's probably the first thing people go to when they think about erasing history, right, or culture's histories.

You take away their.

Their language, their ability to speak to each other.

And I can only speak from, you know, the indigenous mexican perspective and just how Spanish is just overwhelming language there.

And it's really just.

It's really something to look down on.

If you are indigenous, I think there's a lot of people that are Mexican that just don't identify or maybe don't even know that they're actually indigenous people because there's just that disconnect.

You know, when the conquistadors came over and just wiped out all the culture there, they took away all the indigenous languages.

And there's so many indigenous languages.

It just wasn't the Mayans and Aztecs.

You know, there was a ton of tribes.

And I think I've started to see the reemergence also happening with mexican indigenous people to get reconnected and learn about their culture and find our culture.

And seeing it up here has been just really amazing because I lived on the west coast for a while, and just coming back to Rochester.

When I was a kid growing up, you didn't hear about Native Americans, really.

And if you did, it was like history.

It wasn't as something as they were actually here still.

And to be back and see this reemergence and this beautiful culture come back and the relearning of the language has just been.

Has been a gift, and I think it needs to continue to happen.

Thank you.

Thank you to all of you.

I think shifting the conversation over to Benny's grandmother at this point would be nice, would be a nice, cohesive fit here.

So if we wanted to talk about Florence, I'm really enjoying pulling in quotes from the director, because I just.

I feel like he really had a really focused vision when he got through the writing of the script and then pulling the cast together, you know, pulling in his co producers and then being able to talk, really, from the heart about the film.

He says that the grandmother is living in Hozo, which is balance and harmony, and that is navajo culture balancing that, male and female, it's equal.

And so, to me, in the movie, it seems like Florence is living in hoso while everyone around her is just trying to achieve this kind of harmony.

And I was wondering what your thoughts are on this.

We kind of touched on this earlier in our discussion, but even when Dawn Fried breadface.

See, she mentions in the movie how she doesn't like to be called Friedbreadface, and so it's hard for me to call her that.

That's why I keep saying Don.

Right?

When she comments about living in Hozho or not living in Hozho, you know, I feel like that's.

By the end of the film, I feel like that's the theme.

That's the overarching theme.

There are so many themes, but to me, that was, like, the theme.

And how do we achieve that kind of balance and harmony?

When we talk about things like losing culture, losing language, or losing traditions or leaving the res or staying on the res, or we watch the grandmother doing things like washing hair and not cutting hair and don't use the white man's shampoo and, you know, learning those things, what are your thoughts about the grandmother sort of representing that concept and watching everyone else around her sort of looking lost?

I think that alone.

I mean, I'm sorry, I'm gonna just jump right in.

But I think that alone showed that she wasn't necessarily as balanced as you would think.

Right.

Like, as a matriarch, her role was to ensure that the next generations retain and are set up for success.

And.

And I think that's what she was really trying to do.

So I'm not sure that she was necessarily in balance or felt that at peace.

I think that she was concerned about her kids and her kids kids and.

And trying to get them to the point where they retain and they're ready for the next generation.

Interesting.

She reminds me of a pillar.

I know that I always have a place home when I go and see my mom.

And I know my kids will feel the same way.

And my mother is very.

She reminds me a lot of the grandmother.

My grandma, not so much.

I'd go visit her, and sometimes she'd kick me out.

She'd be like, you gotta go back to New York.

I need my peace.

You're disrupting it.

No, but she has taken me in several times when I've had no place to go seeking refuge.

And she was there taking care of my brother and my brother's kids and my mom.

And now my mom's helping to take care of my kids.

So it just reminds me a lot of the women in my family.

And as far as living in peace and balance, it reminded me a lot of the Haudenosaunee culture of being in a good mind.

I mean, life is just hard.

Everything is hard.

And our past is very, very hard.

And so I think it just.

It really relates to just being grateful and having a good mind and being.

Just being thankful.

She did embody that.

I mean, we see that when the kids are just getting dropped off.

Right.

Benny comes, and then a couple days later, dawn has just dropped off with a garbage bag.

And she's just like, you know, come on.

You know, we'll just.

Come on, baby.

We'll just.

We're just gonna work it out.

You'll have a nice summer here.

Yep.

And so in that way.

So I hear your perspective, Casey.

So in that way.

Yeah.

But then in the other way, Angelina.

Like.

She sort of embodied that.

That place home, like, in and of it herself.

Like, you can always come home to me.

And she even explained that, in a way, to frybride when she was saying that, benny, he might not have been here, but his family, he's your cousin, and he's gonna be here with us.

Your family, his home too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think the grandma, for me, was very pivotal in the role.

She was very strong, but you also felt safe.

You know, there's a very huge sense of safety when you're watching her in the movie.

And she was so subtle sometimes in her ways of teaching.

And I think it was having Benny and dawn in her home just kind of was a way for her to pass down, you know, all of her teachings, all of their history, and have them, you know, kind of make sense of it and build it into their own life.

And even though, you know, they may not live on the reservation for their whole life, like, Benny takes off at the end, he's always going to hold on to those teachings that he learned from her and carry it on.

So it was just beautiful.

Yeah.

And she.

She's an exciting character, too, from a filmmaking perspective and from a directing perspective, because we see this role of the grandmother passing down traditions, right?

The weaving, not cutting the hair, washing the hair, the foods.

We have the whole mutton head on the table, and Benny's like, nah, this isn't going down right.

The first laugh celebration.

Right?

So the grandmother is who made Benny laugh for the first time, too.

Of course, I had to do a little digging on the actress who.

This was actually the first movie she's ever filmed, and I do again, I promise this will be the last.

It's not actually the last quote that I'm going to read from the director, but second to last quote, because I thought this was just beautiful from a director's point of view.

He says that was his relationship with his grandmother.

He had no direct verbal communication with her.

It was always through my mother, my aunts or uncles, but I think that's what made our relationship really special.

I would come to the res with a buzz cut, and my aunts and uncles would talk about it, but it was never a judgment with my grandmother.

She'd be like, that's what we believe in.

Sarah Natani, who plays the grandmother, really conveyed that so beautifully.

That is her first film.

So my background as a documentary filmmaker for the past 15 years really helped me to tell her story.

I told my camera crew, I don't care about her hitting the mark.

I just want the camera to follow her.

I wanted it to be this organic space that we were all in that allowed her to tell her story.

I asked her to talk about the importance of weaving, and she did.

A lot of times, I didn't even know what she was saying because I don't speak fluent Navajo.

But I just let her talk, and we captured it.

And when I got it translated, I was like, oh, my God, this is so perfect.

She was saying so many great things about navajo culture, navajo life, and family that we could have included in the film.

But we really needed to tie what she was saying into what Benny and fry were going through.

So unfortunately, we couldn't use everything, but it was a big part of the film's storytelling.

And how brilliant is that, right, that you're actually getting?

Not only we see, like, the director's home movies in the film, and we know that he's pulling from his own autobiographical information, but we actually get documented this history in the film itself.

But it made me wonder in what ways do all of you celebrate your family's traditions and how are they passed down and who taught you?

And we did touch on some of those points, but in thinking about who those core people are or the core ways, like, if I turn to you, Maureen, and you're on a very interesting journey of self discovery, you know, how would you reflect on that question?

What would you say?

Well, it's been kind of complicated.

So the first seven years, I grew up in Mexico City, so I had, you know, my culture was there.

And even though I had a caucasian mom, I spent most of my time living the mexican part of myself.

And I didn't really get to celebrate my mom's irish part until I moved here.

So for the first seven years, I had this great, rich mexican culture.

And then, you know, from seven till, like, I don't even know, 30 something, I was caucasian and living the irish kind of family system, which was really interesting.

And so when my mom passed away in 2008, I started doing some DNA testing, and that's when I really found out that I was indigenous, mexican, and spanish.

And so these past, I don't know, 15 years or so, I've been doing a lot of reconnecting with my indigenous mexican side and trying to find out as much information and traveling back to Mexico after, like, not being there for 30 something years and trying to get reconnected.

So I am very grateful for all the different sides of my history that I have, you know, irish, and, you know, my stepdad is italian, so, you know, I have all these, like, great cultures.

And so I think I pick up a lot from my mom along the way and then just kind of making my own history now, I think just finding out and incorporating it back into my life.

Thank you.

Can you repeat the question?

The question was just any commentary on how you actually celebrate your family's traditions, how they're passed down, who taught you?

And I think, Angelina, you, you already sort of touched on this, even with the story about your son.

I mean, you were sort of throwing out there how you didn't get taught and how are we going to pass these things down?

And then almost in the same breath.

You're telling us how your son is already teaching other kids, and I'm like, you are teaching your son, Angelina.

You are doing the work, right?

So in a lot of ways, you've already answered this question, but if you wanted to offer any comments on how you celebrate your family's traditions, how they're passed down, how you're going to keep passing them down, well, as far as.

Indigenous traditions, we don't have any that I know of except for hair.

And that's only, like, a realization.

Recently, my mom always had long hair, and she got cancer in 2013, and she said, I've always had long hair, but I don't know why I've always had long hair.

I just always had long hair.

And she cut her hair.

I cut my hair.

But growing up, my grandma always told me, don't dye your hair.

Take care of your hair.

And she also was in, like, cosmetology, too.

And I now work part time in a beauty section of a retail shop.

So I'm starting to learn about, like, self care, hair care, all that stuff.

But it didn't.

It didn't dawn on me until I started learning, like, braiding sweetgrass was kind of like the introduction to that, and then spending quality time with other women in different nations and even men.

It just.

It was taught, but it wasn't like, this is native, and this is why you do it.

No, it was like, you just, baby girl, don't dye your hair anymore.

Don't cut your hair anymore.

Your hair is sacred.

Your hair is beautiful.

Take care of it.

And that was that.

But no, like, why behind it?

But now it's like, there's a lot of whys that are starting to come up, which is creating a lot more questions that I just wish that my grandma was here, and I wish that my mom's like, I don't know anything by this point, you know a lot more than I do, and now I'm learning from you, but I'm.

It's, like, piqued my curiosity.

I want to go back.

Like I said, she watched the movie with me, and then that, like, made her cry, and so it just.

So you have these value systems that were passed down to you and these things that are sort of held sacred, but you just don't understand completely the why behind it.

Yeah, I didn't know it, and I just.

I didn't have a grasp on it, but now I'm starting to learn.

I was going to add on from Courtney's question.

She was talking about passing it on and I was kind of struck when you mentioned earlier your son hanging out with everybody there, and the joy sounds like he's got real joy in his participation.

And while you might not have all of the immediate history to pass on, that joy is the thing that's going to make him want to pass that on, regardless of roles, regardless of anything else than that joy of participation, the joy of being a part of something.

He.

I'll tell you a quick story.

Our first indigenous people's day, when we celebrated it here in 2022, he was there when the flag was raised, and then he ended up getting 100 on his spelling test.

And they put congrats with a Columbus Day sticker on it.

And that had taken a really long time, like about a week or so for me to digest.

How do I reach out to them?

How do I approach his teacher?

What do I say?

Because it's a predominantly white school, and I also don't want him to get targeted, treated differently.

But I go and I pick him up from the after school program, and his teachers and what they're telling me that he is sharing the things that he is learning.

He's like, no, I saw the flag raised.

It's indigenous people's day.

I saw the Haudenosaunee flag.

It's not Columbus day.

So he's like, he's excited.

He's sharing it, and he's not afraid.

Whereas when I was in his school at his age, I mean, I was told that I was an indian princess because I come from a long line of cheese.

And, you know, when you're five, six, seven years old, you hang on to that.

You know, you go and share.

You get excited.

But then people started calling me Pocahontas, squatting, bull, wapaho, you know, and it was.

I shut down, and I didn't want to be native anymore.

And I had that all throughout, all the way up into college.

And then I even questioned, like, am I native enough to say that I am, but I know that I am.

And I just love the fact that, you know, he can carry that now in a positive way.

And it's.

The struggles are never.

It's never fully in vain.

And you get to see.

See that next side of it, and it's heartening to see the next.

See the next generation.

Want to be.

Want to be involved and grow and learn from, you know, some of the separation that might have been there.

Thank you.

And I really want to ask you this question, Casey, as the matriarch and your family, so what ways are you celebrating your family's traditions and how are they being passed down and what is your role in that?

Well, Angelina, we have to do lunch sometimes.

We have very similar experiences.

Only when they told me, like, my babies wouldn't be enrolled, they wouldn't be indian.

I just didn't have babies then I'm like, alright, fine.

Like, my babies won't be indian because the blood quantum.

So my babies are my brother and sister, my nieces and nephews, and I ensure that we go to powwows and that it's a fun thing.

I don't make them wear the buckskin because that's hot and uncomfortable for babies.

But we enjoy drum circles and we spend time with our family.

Like, that's where we get the most, is going back up to the reservation.

Like, it really struck me, Courtney, when you said that he had her just talk.

And that's the thing, like, spending time with my aunties.

You never know what they're gonna say, but there's always wisdom in it, right?

Like, even if they're being smart and they're being jerks, because my family kind of.

We got smart mouths on us.

But no matter what, there's always wisdom and there's always love at the root of what they're saying.

So spending that time with family is so important.

And just making sure that my sister and her kids, like, get up to the reservation and get to see.

See our cousins.

And I remember growing up because my grandma passed away when I was really young, not really young, young enough.

And her just saying, I remember saying, that's your cousin, that's your cousin, that's your cousin.

So making sure that they get that same experience and that they know that they have cousins and that they have ancestors and they have a rich history, no matter who tries to take that from them.

Thank you.

So I do have one last question, of course, accompanied by a quote from the director.

But after all, this is representation in cinema, right?

So a question being.

This question was actually posed to the director, but I do want to pose it to all of you.

The director, in a recent article featured in GLAAD, was asked, what would it have been like for you to see a film like fry breadface in me when you were younger?

And he says, that's kind of one of the reasons why I wanted to be a filmmaker.

I just never saw myself on screen.

I think that would have shifted my perspective and outlook as a native kid.

The images that I saw of native people were the ones with the big nose, the ones on Tom and Jerry.

Or the Redskins.

It was very barbaric and savage.

The younger generation deserves to see themselves.

I think I'd have to agree with that.

I don't think, number one, I don't think I would have paid as much attention to smoke signals came out, I think, in the nineties, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that was like, so my brother is ten years, or was ten years older than I am, and my sister's 13 years older than I am, and my, my younger brother's just one year younger.

And I think I watched that movie with my older brother, but I, like, it just didn't.

Just didn't hit me.

I mean, the car, the rescar looked very familiar, and that reminded me a lot of, like, the junkies that my.

That my brother would be fixing up.

But I just don't think that it would have struck me the way that it did.

And I don't think I would have paid attention.

I don't think I would have even wanted to, because, again, I was ashamed when I was younger, as a child.

And, yeah, we went back and forth to the res, but it wasn't like I was sharing that with anybody.

Yeah, I'm going home.

I'm going home.

Going to Kansas City.

That's where I'm going.

But it just did.

Angelina, do you think, though, part of that was because of the lack of representation in the media?

Probably.

I mean, I think it was media.

I think it also is around me.

I grew up in a predominantly white suburb, and the only indigenous people that were there were my family.

And I didn't even.

I didn't even know about Haudenosaunee.

I mean, yeah, they told us that.

I remember seeing, like, Seneca cigarettes and, like, ads on, in, on our reserve at our trading post, but none of it really clicked.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Casey, do you.

Do you want to comment?

Oh, yeah.

This was a tough question to think about because similar to.

I mean, I wasn't allowed to watch smoke signals because the.

I don't know, there's content or whatever.

I was a little sheltered as a kid, a little bit, but, like, the most representation that I had was Tiger Lily and Peter Pan, and that's the most racist, indigenous, like, representation I could possibly imagine right now.

Makes me sick.

I'd never let my nieces watch that, but that's what I had.

Like, so being, and that's where I said, angelina, like, we have very similar journeys.

I went through a huge phase of not wanting to be native and not just wanting to fit in.

Right.

Like, I think as kids, we just want to fit in.

And moving from a res school to a predominantly white school and having.

I talked funny, and then I get taken out of class because Niagara Falls did this thing, which is a really nice thing.

Like, I say this now, and I feel like I'm going to be complaining about it, but the intent was good, but they pulled all the native kids out for an hour a week to teach them culture.

Great in theory, but the only person they had to teach was teaching Cayuga, and none of us were cayuga.

I had Tuscarora teaching, like, I was pretty fluent until I moved to the city.

So that's why I had an accent.

And then when I moved to the city, it was just.

I talked funny and I didn't.

And my aunt and uncle came in to talk about native culture when we went through that, like, fourth grade.

And then.

That's weird.

Like, I was just.

It was weird, right?

I was weird because I was native.

I was different.

So I went through a phase where I didn't want to be different.

I wanted to be the same.

And that's around the same time when my grandpa said that to me, it's just a whole lot of childhood, right?

And I think it would have made a huge difference to see actual representation and actual, like, that living room scene that's anytime I get together with my aunties, we're all just bouncing off each other.

And that's seeing, that would have been so much more powerful, some positive representation.

And now I'm getting emotional.

Yes, it was my turn.

Thank you, Casey.

Yeah.

Yep.

I think I can identify with both Angelina and Casey and how I never really identified as mexican when I got to the United States because, you know, I got off a plane and I had to stop speaking my language and had to, you know, try to blend in as best I could with a caucasian mom and, you know, this little brown kid running around.

So I think I spent a lot of my time not wanting to be mexican or indigenous, and it wasn't until fairly recently that I became proud of it.

But I think it would have felt just wonderful to have that representation or to just have, you know, people around me that look like me because I spent so long, you know, growing up in east iranquite, which is mostly very caucasian.

So, yeah, I think it would have made a big difference.

Can we talk just a moment about Jeff Bridges?

I love Jeff Bridges.

Me too.

I love Jeff Bridges.

Yes.

This is the.

This is the weirdest pivot ever.

Or no?

Jeff Bridges is a character in the movie.

Okay, good.

We talk about representation, but this is like when we talk about children and representation.

If we had seen the movie, but also, I think if we had seen dolls or toys.

So they.

So fry Bradface's mother made a doll, tried to make a brown doll, and had a cabbage patch head put on it.

And the only movie that they watched, I forget the name of the movie star man.

Okay.

Had Jeff Bridges, and also, that was the name of the dolly.

Awesome.

But just this past weekend, my daughter, she's six, and I'm looking around, I'm looking at her barbies, and they've got dark hair, darker skin, dark eyes.

And I'm like.

And I look at my sister, she looks.

She's also.

She's swedish, too, so she got the blonde hair and the light eyes, but we're just as much indigenous as so.

And I looked at her, and I was like, I do not remember seeing barbies like this or wanting a Barbie like this.

I remember wanting to be blonde hair or light hair, light eyes, just like the dollies and not having anything.

But now it is.

It's very different.

Isn't that funny, though?

Because I remember the same thing.

Like, I wanted blonde hair and blue eyes and not my beautiful long brown hair and brown eyes.

Like, and now, like, I'm in a season where I love who I am and my brown eyes are beautiful.

Like, why did I ever want blue or green?

Like, I don't understand.

Because that's what I was shown, right?

That's what we saw.

Well, even those of us with green eyes wanted blue eyes, too, so it was quite the epidemic at one point, right?

But I think so wonderful to hear all of you touching on some very vulnerable points in your life and pieces that you hold onto.

And then to hear all of you say that you're.

I know those of us in the podcast world can't see Maureen and Angelina nodding in agreement with Casey, talking about how she loves where she is in her life and happy with who she is and proud of her, you know, her culture and heritage.

But that is what is happening in this room around me.

So it's a beautiful way to sort of close out this podcast and reflect on everything that we've learned.

Thank you so much for sharing your gifts.

And does anyone want to give any final comments about the film or the representation that was served by the entirely indigenous caste of brilliance?

I am so grateful that you, first of all, you asked to talk about it and that you're making a podcast.

So this came out in November, and I immediately, I watched it like the next day and then three times.

But I haven't had an opportunity to talk about it with anybody or anybody bringing it up to me or wanting to.

And when you look at comments and stuff, I started going through the comments on social media just so I could feel, feel connected to other people, other indigenous people and how they were feeling when they saw it, because it was like, I can't.

It definitely was different.

Talking about, oh, my gosh, what is the movie that just came out in Apple?

Oh, killers of the flower, moon versus frybread face and me.

There was definitely a lot more chatter and people out there to talk about this.

And I really, really wanted someone who to also wasn't as indigenous or indigenous at all to speak with me about it.

So I'm just super grateful that you asked.

Yeah, well, thank you.

We're very grateful to hear from all of you as well.

Casey.

I've been putting off watching it, so this made me watch it.

I really appreciate that because I was a city skin, right?

Like, I lived on the city and I'd go back to visit my grandma in the summer, and I was Benny.

And so I saw it and I'm like, oh, that looks good.

Like, maybe I'll watch it.

And I'm like, I don't know, maybe it'll be too much.

But it was good.

It was a good experience to watch.

And I appreciate you having me, Courtney.

I really do.

Good.

Glad.

I'm glad to hear that feedback, Casey.

And I hope that others will listen to the podcast and be encouraged to watch the film too, because it did have a lot of positive, positive feedback in all of the reviews.

And I'm sure it will continue.

It's just a great film.

So thank you all for being here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right, and last plugs.

So, native maid, how can people find the market when it pops up?

So, native maid, our mission is to increase indigenous visibility.

And we do this through marketing and collaboration services.

And each year we have a market on small business Saturday and Saturday.

So right now you can go to the website nativemadehq.com, or you could visit our Linktree nativemade hq and get all the information there.

But it'll be on November 30, location TBD.

Awesome.

Well, thanks so much for listening to this episode of representation in cinema.

And now the outro.

This has been a presentation of the Lunchadore podcast network.

Go watch the movie.

Go watch it.