Virtual Film Screening: Daughter of a Lost Bird (2021)

Registration: https://www.chathamcountync.gov/Home/Components/Calendar/Event/35253/1445?curm=11&cury=2021

In recognition of Native American Heritage Month, Chatham Community Library will host a virtual film screening of Daughter of a Lost Bird (2021) beginning Thursday, November 11 –November 18.

“Lost birds” refers to a term for Native children adopted out of their tribal communities. Right after the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 became the law of the land, Kendra Mylnechuk Potter was adopted into a white family and raised with no knowledge of her Native parentage. This beautiful and intimate film follows Kendra on her journey to find her birth mother April, also a Native adoptee, and return to her Lummi homelands in Washington State. With a sensitive yet unflinching lens, director Brooke Swaney (Blackfeet/Salish) documents Kendra and April as they connect with relatives and navigate what it means to be Native, and to belong to a tribe from the outside looking in. Along the way, Kendra uncovers generations of emotional and spiritual beauty and pain and comes to the startling realization that she is a living legacy of U. S. assimilationist policy. By sharing a deeply personal experience of inherited cultural trauma, the film opens the door to broader and more complicated conversations about the erasure of Native culture and questions of identity surrounding adoption.

Access to the virtual screening will be available beginning Thursday, November 11, by clicking HERE .  A password is required at the time of viewing. Please contact social.library@chathamlibraries.org to request the password or for additional information.