Below, please find an excerpt of the inspirational Q&A.
Speakers: Anna Deavere Smith, Professor, Art & Public Policy | Razelle Benally (MFA Candidate, Grad Film) | Matthew Galkin ‘95 (BFA, Kanbar Institute) | Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, Professor, Graduate Film | Carol Dysinger, Professor, Graduate Film
Anna Deavere Smith: Well, two resounding things [I heard]— “The girls have a target on their back.” And the resounding “Why?...Why me? Why us? Why my daughter?..."
Razelle Benally: Because women are life givers. We’re the culture bearers, we’re the backbones of our community. And if you kill the women, you're gonna kill the people.
Anna Deavere Smith: [Something] that I enjoyed in the series is the emphasis on culture as survival. We're always trying to say, “Well, what are the arts for? What's the importance of art? I was always very interested in how culture is seen as a form of remembering, resurrecting, and survival.
Razelle Benally: We had ceremonies within our tribe where when a young girl experiences her first menstrual cycle, she is now becoming a woman. During the ceremonies, a period of 4 days or so, the women of the community, traditionally, would take this girl aside and teach her what her roles and responsibilities are, becoming a woman, becoming a person of the community, and growing up. [Those ceremonies] gave us purpose, they gave us an understanding of who we were, and how we [would] contribute to our communities, and in our societies. When you have a purpose, you don't turn to violence, you don't turn to abuse …
Audience Member: I’m curious to know how you took care of each other but also created an environment for the people you were interviewing and doing your research alongside that was respectful of the trauma, didn't re-traumatize, and allowed for a supportive development of this story…
Razelle Benally: I have a very strong, traditional spiritual grounding within my community. Because the Crow and Northern Cheyenne people are Plains Tribes, like my tribe. I was able to easily connect with the community members; we have a lot of similar customs. When we started approaching families, we had to be very clear, intentional, and transparent [about] what we wanted to do.
I tried my best to encourage our team, along with our producers, because they're from the Blackfeet Tribe. We felt it was appropriate to approach these families through traditional customs and ask if they would like to be part of this story. We had to figure out what our trauma-informed approach would be amongst the team. If a family member did not want to answer a question while we were interviewing them, they had the option to not answer. [If] they didn't want to say a name, they didn't have to say a name. That was purely for [their] safety, making sure that we weren't going in and re-opening wounds.
