October 5, 2019
Join us for the screening of WARRIOR WOMEN and video conversations with Director Elizabeth Castle and activist Marcella (Marcy) Gilbert.
“In the 1970s, with the swagger of unapologetic Indianness, organizers of the American Indian Movement (AIM) fought for Native liberation as a community of extended families.
WARRIOR WOMEN is the story of Madonna Thunder Hawk, one such AIM leader who shaped a kindred group of activists’ children – including her daughter Marcy – into the “We Will Remember” Survival School as a Native alternative to government-run education. Together, Madonna and Marcy fought for Native rights in an environment that made them more comrades than mother-daughter. Today, with Marcy now a mother herself, both women are still at the forefront of Native issues, fighting against the environmental devastation of the Dakota Access Pipeline and for indigenous cultural values.
Through their story, WARRIOR WOMEN explores what it means to balance a movement with motherhood and how activist legacies are passed down from generation to generation in the face of a government that has continually met Native resistance with mass violence” (Warrior Women, GOOD Docs, 2019).
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About the People
(Information from GOOD DOCs Press Packet)
Madonna Thunder Hawk, Native American Studies, Human Rights, Women’s Studies, Environmental Studies, Ethnic Studies, US History
Madonna Thunder Hawk, an Oohenumpa Lakota, is a veteran of every modern Native occupation from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee in 1973 and more recently, the NODAPL protest at Standing Rock. WARRIOR WOMEN is the story of Thunder Hawk’s lifelong career fighting for Native liberation, and the generations of activists she has shaped and inspired. Born and raised across the Oceti Sakowin homelands, she became a leader in the American Indian Movement in the 1960s and co-founded Women of All Red Nations and the Black Hills Alliance. In 1974, she established the We Will Remember Survival School as an act of cultural reclamation that provided a radical alternative to government-run boarding schools.
An eloquent voice for Native resistance and sovereignty, Thunder Hawk has spoken throughout the United States, Central America, Europe, and the Middle East and served as a delegate to the United Nations in Geneva. In the last three decades at home on Cheyenne River, she has been restoring self-determination to reservation life. She works as the tribal liaison for the Lakota People’s Law Project to fight the illegal removal of Native children from tribal nations into the state foster care system. She established the Wasagiya Najin “Grandmothers’ Group” on Cheyenne River Reservation to help rebuild kinship networks and support the Nation in its efforts to stop the removal of children from Native families. GOOD TALK proceeds support this work.
Marcella Gilbert, Community Health Educator and Activist
Marcella Gilbert, featured in WARRIOR WOMEN, is the daughter of Madonna Thunder Hawk and a Lakota and Dakota community organizer with a focus on health education, food sovereignty, and cultural revitalization. Gilbert graduated from the We Will Remember Survival Group and at seventeen was a delegate to the International Indian Treaty Council to Geneva in 1977. She earned a Master’s Degree in Nutrition and worked as a Community Development Field Specialist for South Dakota State University Extension on Cheyenne River reservation. She works to reintroduce sustainable traditional foods and organic farming to her reservation as an expression of the most fundamental form of survival and empowerment. Gilbert currently works with the non-profit Simply Smiles where she manages a garden project that includes wild food identification, harvest, and food processing. She is also working on launching the pilot project of her own survival school Waniyetu Iyawapi (Winter Count) Mobile Learning Experience. Areas of Focus: Indigenous nutrition, decolonized education, intergenerational activism and trauma, health and fitness for survival
Dr. Elizabeth Castle–Director, Scholar, Activist 
Dr. Castle brings almost 20 years of experience as a scholar, activist, and media-maker working in collaboration with Native Nations and underrepresented communities. WARRIOR WOMEN is based on research for her book Women were the Backbone, Men were the Jawbone: Native Women’s Activism in the Red Power Movement. Castle is a committed anti-racist ally and descends from the Pekowi band of the Shawnee in Ohio – both shape how she engages with communitybased scholarship, media-making and organizing. While completing her Ph.D. at Cambridge University, she worked as a policy associate for President Clinton’s Initiative on Race and in 2001 she served as a delegate for the Indigenous World Association at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. While working as an academic specialist for UC Berkeley’s Oral History Office, she received the University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Santa Cruz under the supervision of Professors Angela Davis and Bettina Aptheker. Dr. Castle was a professor in the Native Studies Department at the University of South Dakota and is the founder and Executive Director of The Warrior Women Oral History Project. Areas of focus: History & application of Indigenous women’s activism, decolonizing research and media methods, anti-racist/ally-based activism & Indigenous communities, cross-cultural/racial media production; community-based, oral history projects
Christina D. King, Director & Producer
An enrolled member of the Seminole Tribe of Oklahoma, Christina D. King’s work spans broadcast news, commercials, documentary, film, and television with a focus on human rights issues, civic engagement through storytelling, and democratizing filmmaking opportunities for marginalized voices. King most recently debuted the narrative feature film We The Animals at Sundance 2018 to critical success. The film was awarded the NEXT Innovator Award and was nominated for five Independent Spirit Awards. King’s other producing credits include This May Be The Last Time (Sundance 2014), which explores the origins of Native Mvskogee worship songs in Oklahoma, as well as the POV documentary Up Heartbreak Hill. King is based in unceded Lenape land in Brooklyn, New York. Areas of Focus: Decolonizing the filmmaking voice, ethical filmmaking, working with verité in Indigenous communities
Location and Time
Augsburg University
Sateren Auditorium, Music Hall, 715 22nd Ave South
Reception 6:15-6:45
Screening begins at 7:00
Discussion with participants follows
This event is free to the public
For parking directions visit: http://www.augsburg.edu/about/map/. You will be parking in Lot D or G off of 21st between Riverside and Butler Pl. You will need a parking permit. For parking permits contact M. Elise Marubbio at marubbio@augsburg.edu. Permits are limited in number.
Thank you to our sponsors: Augsburg University, American Indian, First Nations, and Indigenous Studies Department, American Indian Student Services, Augsburg Indigenous Student Association, Good Docs.