“This is a conversation that needs to happen now and I believe Sisters Rising is a powerful contributing voice.”
– Sarah Deer, Muscogee Creek Lawyer, Advocate and Professor
Willow O’Feral and Brad Heck’s SISTERS RISING, a film about Native American survivors of sexual assault fighting to restore personal and tribal sovereignty, will screen as the closing night film at The Americas Film Festival of New York on June 28.
SISTERS RISING is an urgent call to action, a gorgeous portrait of women acting in solidarity, and a demand for tribal sovereignty and self-determination as the necessary step towards ending violence against Indigenous women in the United States.
“The abhorrent violence that is a constant in the lives of Indigenous peoples impacts Indigenous women first,” says Co-producer Jaida Grey Eagle (Ogala Lakota), “We are on the frontlines of an ongoing legacy of violent colonization, and it is vitally important that the world see and hear us.”
Native American women are 2.5 times more likely to experience sexual assault than all other American women. 1 in 3 Native women report having been raped during her lifetime and 86% of the offenses are committed by non-Native men. These perpetrators exploit gaps in tribal jurisdictional authority and target Native women as ‘safe victims’. SISTERS RISING follows six women who refuse to let this pattern of violence continue in the shadows: a tribal cop in the midst of the North Dakota oil boom, an attorney fighting to overturn restrictions on tribal sovereignty, a teacher of Indigenous women’s self-defense, grassroots advocates working to influence legislative change, and the authour of the first anti-sex trafficking code to be introduced to a reservation’s tribal court. Their stories shine an unflinching light on righting injustice on both an individual and systemic level.
”In a portrait of six brave participants who refuse to let a pattern of violence against Native women continue on in the shadows, this film shines an unflinching and ultimately uplifting light onto righting injustice on both an individual and systemic level.”
– Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
Honorable Mention Big Sky Award, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
TAFFNY Virtual Cinema Screening:
June 28, 2020
Available from 4:00 – 6:30 PM
Followed by a live-streamed Q&A with producer Jaida Grey Eagle
and directors Willow O’Feral and Brad Heck at 5:30PM
The Americas Film Festival of New York (TAFFNY) is a project of
the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Center for Worker Education of City College of New York, in collaboration with the Cervantes Institute of NY and
the National Museum of the American Indian.
Learn more about SISTERS RISING or Order for Your Collection
