‘Unknown history’
‘Warrior Women’ tells story of founders of American Indian Movement
Elizabeth Castle has made it her life’s work to transform the narrative.
For the past 20 years, Castle has worked as a scholar activist and media maker in collaboration with Native nations and underrepresented communities to share unknown or erased histories to disrupt the master narrative.
Her latest film, “Warrior Women,” will air at 10 p.m. Monday, July 6, on New Mexico PBS. It will air again at 1 a.m. Wednesday,
July 8, and 10 p.m. July 12 on Channel 9.1.
“Unknown history is pretty important,” Castle says. “There’s so much to be talking about, and there’s always the hope things can change. That’s why I became a filmmaker.”
“Warrior Women” tells the story of the organizers of the American Indian Movement, who fought for Native liberation and survival as a community of extended families, beginning in the 1970s.
It tells the story of Madonna Thunder Hawk, one such AIM leader who shaped a kindred group of activists’ children — including her daughter, Marcella Gilbert — into the We Will Remember Survival School as a Native alternative to government-run education.
Together, Thunder Hawk and Gilbert fought for Native rights in an environment that made them more comrades than mother and daughter.
Today, with Gilbert now a mother herself, both are still at the forefront of Native issues, fighting against the environmental devastation of the Dakota Access Pipeline and for Indigenous cultural values.
Castle says the film explores what it means to navigate a movement and motherhood and how activist legacies are passed down and transformed from generation to generation in the context of colonizing government that meets Native resistance with violence.
“We were able to make something that was inspirational but didn’t have to be that ‘typical’ Native film,” she says. “It doesn’t end with superficial hope, someone looking off into the distance. This film is about genocide, and it’s about resilience and survival. These women are still fighting for a change decades later. There is also a Native movement that has been going on for decades.”
Castle wanted to weave the film around the stories of the women and their fight.
“I wanted to show that despite their pain, they can still enjoy life,” she says. “When they talk to friends and family, they can still just be themselves. It’s an important aspect.”