Category: Screenings
Screening BEYOND THE MESAS at Upper Moencopi
On Saturday September 18, 2010, I had a special opportunity to screen BEYOND THE MESAS and give a presentation to my family at the village of Upper Moencopi’s Community Center. The screening and presentation were part of the Sakiestewa/Honanie Annual Family Reunion. About 60 people attended the event.
I have screened BEYOND THE MESAS at several universities in the United States, and I have shown it at other locations on the Hopi Reservation, but this was the first time the documentary was screened at Upper Moencopi. The film was well received and it led into a discussion on the benefits and negative consequences of Hopi attendance at off-reservation Indian boarding schools.
After the screening I passed out student case files that I collected at the National Archives in Laguna Niguel, California (now located in Perris, California). The files belong to members of the Sakiestewa and Honanie families who attended Sherman Institute or the Phoenix Indian School from 1906 to the 1940s. Most of the files included school applications, report cards, and handwritten and typed letters.
As a Hopi professor at the University of Illinois I am thankful for the opportunities that I have to bring my research back to the Hopi community. This has always been a driving force behind my work.
Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert
Hopis and earthquakes
When I screen Beyond the Mesas I enjoy taking questions from the audience. Some people ask me to explain more about the Orayvi Split, Chief Tawaquaptewa, or the reasons why the film makers produced the film. At a screening in the School of Social Work at the University of Illinois, Adelaide Aime asked me if there was anything that was not in the film that I wish we had included. This is a great question. The film producers spent a week on the Hopi Reservation to conduct interviews. We had many hours of material to work with, but due to time and budget constraints, we only used 35 minutes of the interviews in the final cut. One of the stories that I wish we had included in the film spoke to a unique occurence that Hopis experienced at Sherman Institute. Of the five people we interviewed who went to Sherman, two of these individuals talked about what it was like for them to experience an earthquake. Although I have written about Hopis and earthquakes at Sherman in my forthcoming book, it would have been great if these stories were also part of the film.
Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert
Beyond the Mesas 