Upstander Project

Following the flow of the seasons, Jessica Shenandoah revives the land-based traditions of our Mohawk ancestors that colonizers nearly erased from our memories.

This film explores expressions of reciprocity in the Cherokee world, brought to life through a story told by an elder and first language speaker.

Bounty reveals the hidden story of the Phips Proclamation, one of many scalp-bounty proclamations used to exterminate Native people in order to take their land in what is now New England. In the film, Penobscot parents and children resist erasure and commemorate survival by reading and reacting to the government-issued Phips Proclamation’s call for colonial settlers to hunt, scalp, and murder Penobscot people.