DAUGHTER OF A LOST BIRD | WOMEN MAKE MOVIES | TRAILER HD

A film by Brooke Pepion Swaney 2021, 66 minutes, Color SYNOPSIS “Lost birds” – a term for Native children adopted out of their tribal communities. Right after the Indian 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 the ethics of transracial adoption. SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS Human Rights Watch Film Festival, NY 2021 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival 2021 Woodstock Film Festival 2021 AFI Film Festival, 2021 Maoriland Film Festival 2021 Gimli Film Festival 2021 Ashland Independent Film Festival 2021 Vancouver Film Festival 2021 Heartland Film Festival 2021 For more information or to order the film visit: https://www.wmm.com/catalog/film/daughter-of-a-lost-bird/