My Cry Gets Up to My Throat: Dysplacement, Indigenous Storywork, and Visual Sovereignty in the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation

Abstract:The repatriation of sacred objects from the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History to the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation in North Dakota established the foundation for a long-term research partnership that resulted in an oral history project and documentary about the life and times of a missionary to the reservation in the past, and it provided a means for elders to historicize the present and communicate to the next generation their concerns about contemporary times. Through a collaborative filmmaking process that highlighted visual sovereignty and engaged in Indigenous storywork, the resulting video represented the past in the community members’ own terms, sparked dialogue in community vetting sessions about the oil boom, and became a teaching resource for the tribal college.