IMAGINING THE INDIAN: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting will make its world premiere at California’s American Indian & Indigenous Film Festival. The festival highlights the best of current films from American Indian filmmakers, producers, directors, and actors working through Indian Country. Imagining the Indian will close out the Festival on Sunday, April 3, 2022 with a screening, Q&A, and post-screening reception.
The film is produced by the Ciesla Foundation, Co-Directed and Co-Produced by Aviva Kempner and Ben West (Cheyenne), and Co-Produced by Kevin Blackistone, Yancey Burns, and Sam Bardley. Interviewees include Activist Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne/ Hodulgee Muscogee), Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo), Olympic Gold-Medalist Billy Mills (Oglala Lakota), Founding Director of the National Museum of the American Indian W. Richard West Jr. (Southern Cheyenne), Washington Football Team legend Charles Mann, Congressman Jamie Raskin, Broadcaster Bob Costas, and NAACP President Derrick Johnson, among many others.
