Special Episode with Gwendolen Cates

Rue Atateken

Today we welcome Gwendolen Cates Gwendolen Cates is an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker, photographer and author. Originally a photographer whose portraits of luminaries from Rosa Parks to George Clooney have been featured in national and international magazines, including PARADE, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Life, and People, her critically acclaimed book Indian Country (Grove Press 2001) inspired Oprah to begin a series on Native Americans. Her first award-winning documentary film WATER FLOWING TOGETHER (2007) about Navajo-Puerto Rican New York City Ballet star Jock Soto premiered nationally on PBS Independent Lens in 2008. Recent productions include WE ARE UNARMED (2020), a fresh look at the peaceful resistance to the DAPL pipeline at Standing Rock through the eyes of three Indigenous women who played central roles; THE GOOD MIND (2016), which follows Onondaga Nation leaders as they fight for environmental sovereignty of ancestral lands stolen by New York State in violation of a 1794 treaty with George Washington; and the short film GUSWENTA (2013) about the 400th anniversary commemoration of the first treaty between Indigenous people and early settlers on this land. Gwendolen’s latest feature documentary film THE DOCTRINE is about the Doctrine of Discovery, 15th century papal bulls that continue to impact Indigenous peoples and the planet today, was filmed in the U.S., Rome, Italy, Guatemala, New Caledonia, and New Zealand, and is currently in post-production. Another film about the Yazidis and Mandaeans, original peoples of Iraq, titled MOURNING IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN is also in post-production. A native New Yorker, and the daughter of a linguist who was fluent in Diné Bizaad (the Navajo language), Gwendolen studied cultural anthropology at the University of Chicago. The Doctrine film teaser: https://vimeo.com/275964493