Native American Film Series: Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild]

Every second Monday evening of each month, Vision Maker Media and The Ross Media Arts Center present free in-person public screenings that feature Native American films by and about Native Americans and Alaska Natives. The Native American Film Series showcases stories about cultural heritage, art, history, music, civic leadership, youth, and more. Q&A sessions enhance each screening. Please check The Ross website to confirm screening time.
Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild]
In the sterile archives of museums our ancestor’s remains struggle to find their way home. The film follows the eleven indigenous repatriation specialists that make up MACPRA (Michigan Anishinaabek Cultural Preservation & Repatriation Alliance). Through an essayistic approach the film takes a critical look at the reasoning that justified unearthing and collecting them in the first place, and presents vérité portraits of the courageous individuals doing the hard and emotionally draining work of fighting for their return.
The June 8 screening will be followed by a discussion with Zack Khalil (Director/Producer/Cinematographer), Jacque Clark (Producer/Additional Cinematographer/Sound Recordist), and Samuli Haavisto (Cinematographer). Moderated by Shirley Sneve (ICT Newscast Senior Producer).
Shirley Sneve is the senior producer for the ICT Newscast, a program of IndiJ Public Media. The weekly half-hour magazine show airs on 80 percent of PBS stations, Australia, Canada and several on-line streaming platforms, including Free Speech TV. A member of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, Sneve is also affiliated with the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. She directed Vision Maker Media from 2004-2019, which is the largest US funder of Indigenous documentary film projects for public broadcasting. She lives in Lincoln, Nebraska and serves on the boards of the Near South Neighborhood Association, The Circle (Minneapolis, MN) The Center for Rural Strategies (Whitesburg, KY) and Arts Extension Institute (Amherst, MA).
Zack Khalil, a member of the Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, is a filmmaker and artist whose work centers Indigenous narratives in the present—and looks towards the future—through the use of innovative nonfiction forms. Khalil is a core contributor to New Red Order, a public-secret society which calls attraction toward indigeneity into question, yet promotes this desire, and enjoins potential non-Indigenous accomplices to participate in the co-examination and expansion of Indigenous agency. Khalil is the co-director and co-editor of the feature documentary INAATE/SE/it shines a certain way. to a certain place/ it flies/falls/ which premiered as the closing night film of the Museum of Modern Art’s Doc Fortnight Film Festival, and the experimental documentary short The Violence of a Civilization without Secrets (2017) which premiered at Sundance. Khalil also works professionally as a video editor, most recently co-editing Alison O’Daniels feature film The Tuba Thieves (2023), which premiered at Sundance. Khalil’s own work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Sundance Film Festival, New York Film Festival, CPH: DOX, HKW, Walker Arts Center, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Creative Time, Toronto Biennial 2019, Whitney Biennial 2019, 59th Venice Biennale, Sharjah Biennial 15, Counterpublic Triennial 2023, among other institutions. Khalil is the recipient of various fellowships and grants, including a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, Sundance Art of Nonfiction, and Gates Millennium Scholarship.