Chinook Nation Begins to Buy Tansy Point Land

So excited this is happening! You can continue donating to the Chinook Indian Nation as they purchase more of the surrounding Tansy Point land and save up for important restoration work.

From the Daily Astorian: 

“The Chinook plan a cultural center similar to the Cathlapotle Plankhouse built in the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge at the site of a former Chinookan village once visited by the Corps of Discovery.

“We are putting in grants for building structures out there, like a plankhouse and a utility structure,” said Rachel Cushman, secretary and treasurer for the tribe. “Hopefully, we can do some environmental restoration work out there as well (and) not just have it be another building site, but stream restoration and habitat restoration.”

How that restoration looks is yet to be determined, Johnson said. The Chinook continue fundraising through a GoFundMe page titled, “Preserve Tansy Point Treaty Grounds.”

The Chinook will also reach out to Warrenton and the Port of Astoria about expanding access to local plants such as basketgrass and other natural resources, Johnson said.”

Continue to support the Chinook here:

https://www.gofundme.com/preserve-tansy-point-treaty-grounds

University of Washington Press and the Film

From the Desk of the Director of University of Washington Press:

"The Western Reads common book selection is just one example of how communities and readers engage with the work we publish. Another is Promised Land, a new documentary about the Duwamish and Chinook fight for treaty recognition. Several UW Press books “formed the academic framework of the film’s narrative,” as filmmaker Sarah Samudre Salcedo puts it, including Coll Thrush’s Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place, Robert T. Boyd, Kenneth Ames, and Tony Johnson’s Chinookan Peoples of the Lower Columbia, and Jon Daehnke’s forthcoming Chinook Resilience: Heritage and Cultural Revitalization on the Lower Columbia River. The Seattle Theatre Group will present Promised Land on July 6, 2017, at the Neptune Theatre. The screening is free and open to the public and will include a preshow discussion with representatives from the tribes. We hope you can join us."

Read more on University of Washington Press's website.

PROMISED LAND Featured on Television

King 5, Seattle's NBC affiliate, featured Promised Land on their program, King 5 Evening, on Tuesday, January 17, 2017.

Our producer and co-director Sarah was out with the flu, and couldn't join them, but co-director/editor Vasant and Duwamish tribal council member Ken Workman did a fantastic job, as did the Evening team who wrote and edited the piece. 

Check it out here: http://www.king5.com/mb/entertainment/television/programs/evening/local-tribes-fight-for-recognition-now-a-movie/386896894

Review from Indian Country Media Today Network

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We're thrilled to share this review from Indian Country Media Today Network:

"Documentary on Federal Recognition ‘Promised Land’ Will Make You Mad" by Frank Hopper

"At the September 27 Seattle opening of the documentary “Promised Land,” the writer/director team of Vasant and Sarah Samudre Salcedo recalled their first meeting with Cecile Hansen, Chair of the Duwamish Tribe. They told her about the film they wanted to make of the Duwamish and Chinook fight for federal recognition.

“She said, ‘Is it going to make people mad?’” Sarah Salcedo told the near capacity audience at Seattle’s SIFF Uptown Theatre. “I said, ‘Well, it makes us mad.’ Cecile slammed her hand down on the table and said, ‘Good!’ Then she got up and left and that was the end of our first meeting.”

Now, three and a half years later, the Salcedos have created a film that follows through on that promise. It will make you mad. But it doesn’t happen all at once, it kind of creeps up on you.

The film tells the story of two Pacific Northwest tribes, the Duwamish and the Chinook, and their decades long fight to gain federal recognition. It lets the Native citizens of these two nations tell the story. There is no other narration, just Chinook and Duwamish tribal leaders as well as a few Native and non-Native leaders from other organizations and tribes talking about the effect federal recognition has on Native people."

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/10/26/documentary-federal-recognition-promised-land-will-make-you-mad-166204

The film goes to California...

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The film has been selected to be part of the 41st Annual American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco. We're also excited to come down to California with another fantastic Pacific Northwest film, Maiden of Deception Pass. Both will play the afternoon of November 7 at AIFF.

The film was also selected to be part of the 10th Annual LA Skins Fest. The film will play at the historic TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday, November 20 at 1 p.m. The film was also nominated for an "Achievement in Documentary Filmmaking" award at the festival.

Both the Duwamish and Chinook tribal councils will be represented at these events and speak on the panels afterwards to raise awareness for their causes.

Hayu masi and ck'wálidxw to the American Indian Film Institute and LA Skins Fest for these amazing honors and for giving the film the space to share its message.

• San Francisco: http://www.aifisf.com/film-schedule
• Los Angeles: http://laskinsfest.com/event/promised-land

New Trailer and Screening Dates for the Film!

We're so excited to show you the film's first official trailer (the one that's been up online for the last few years was just created for grant purposes while the film was in-production.) 

We finished the film this spring and we can't wait to show it to you this fall. We're so pleased to announced that it's been accepted to the 19th Annual Local Sightings Film Festival, Joshua Tree International Film Festival, the 12th Annual Ellensburg Film Festival, on top of many exciting regional shows we have planned. 

We will have dates and ticket information up on the site by the end of the week, but until then, I hope you enjoy the trailer and start thinking of ways to write your representatives (Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell spring to mind) to advocate for these tribes in the Pacific Northwest.

The Film Is Finished!

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We have fantastic news: Promised Land is officially finished. While it is still awaiting its official Pacific Northwest debut, it's already been seen by several North American festivals and won small awards. 

We are currently in the process of planning the film's festival and university tour. Though the film begins in a specific region, the story it tells is one that countless tribes are going through not only throughout North America, but throughout the world as well. The film ends by expanding its focus to issues such as aboriginal identity, blood quantum, and the struggle of indigenous communities for self-determination. We also just won a grant from 4Culture that will enable us to develop interactive educational materials that will help engage audiences and our educational partners with the history and current events discussed in the film, sharing an even greater depth of information than we had time to provide.

We hope to partner with aboriginal communities around world wherever our film is screened to help draw attention to all issues of self-determination that all bands and tribes face in every country.  This film is presented without a narrator, so that only the voices of the tribal members themselves, along with their allies, are the ones presenting the story. We hope that all our showings will be avenues for indigenous voices to meet with the community and have their voices heard. We don't want to be the ones doing the speaking; that's never been a goal of the film, to promote ourselves as artists. The goal of this film is to raise awareness of the complex and unjust struggle that the Duwamish, Chinook, and countless tribes like them go through concerning recognition, enrollment issues, blood quantum, and the like. 

We will be updating the site in the next month with preliminary dates for showings, a new trailer, and more exciting news about partnerships for the film's outreach journey. The poster above (which was designed by the filmmakers and the bear illustration was created by Port Gamble S'Kallam artist, Jeffrey Veregge, who does a lot of work for Marvel and Nike and graciously added his graphic stylings to elements in the film) and the news about 4Culture is just the first of many updates we'll be posting about in the coming months. We look forward to sharing these things and of course, the film itself, with you all this summer.

Once again, federal recognition remains a lightning rod for a host of other issues targeting Indian Country. This panelist, invited by Republican Subcommittee Chairman Don Young to a hearing on whether the BIA has the right to recognize tribes, had these inflammatory things to say:

"In his written testimony, Mitchell cited without censure Andrew Jackson’s sweeping policy of ethnic cleansing that was part of the 1830 Indian Removal Act, the Allotment Act, which destroyed reservations, and the termination policy, which aimed at erasing Indian identity through assimilation into mainstream American society. He also advocated for the use of 'blood quantum' – a Euro-American strategy of genocide – to determine Indian identity."

Read more at: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/05/13/baseless-and-fictitious-anti-indian-rhetoric-rogue-congressional-hearing-fed-recognition

Off the road again...

Last Tuesday, while on a road trip up and down the coast filming, we celebrated our one year anniversary working on our documentary, Promised Land. We’ve met so many great people along the way and while we wrap production in July, we know we’ve made lifelong friends up and down the coast.

We can’t wait to share this story of the Duwamish and Chinook nations fight for sovereignty with the world. Their fight for federal recognition is an important story not just for the Pacific Northwest, but for the country at large as we, as a country, consider how we honor our promises, our past and how we move forward into our future together. When we look at one small story of these regional tribes; one still lead by the descendants of Chief Seattle, the other led by the descendants of those who fed and sheltered Lewis and Clark and controlled trade up and down the coast as the West was settled; we find we’re looking through a key hole at a larger story that connects us all: the immigrants and indigenous alike. 

Consider contributing (tax-deductible donation!) to the film here. We’ll thank you in the film credits and you can be an important part of this filmmaking endeavor: http://www.sffs.org/filmmaker360/project-development/promised-land#.U3v64lhdXIX