On April 20, 2021 at 3:00 PM, viewers were invited to join Madonna Thunder Hawk, Beth Castle, and Dawna Riding In Hare for a special live, online panel discussion and Q&A moderated by OSU History Graduate Student Amanda Johnson. The panel discussed the film Warrior Women, and explored subjects including Indigenous activism, Native identity, the complexities of mother/daughter relationships, legacy, intergenerational trauma, and strategies of resistance among Native people.

Warrior Women is the story of Madonna Thunder Hawk, an American Indian Movement leader who cultivated a rag-tag gang of activist children - including her daughter Marcy - into the "We Will Remember" Survival Group as a Native alternative to government-run boarding schools. Together, Madonna and Marcy fought for Native rights in an environment that made them more comrades than mother-daughter. Today, with Marcy now a mother herself, both women are still at the forefront of Native issues, fighting against the environmental devastation of the Dakota Access Pipeline and for Indigenous cultural values. Through their story, the film explores what it means to balance a movement with motherhood and how activist legacies are passed down from generation to generation in the face of a government that has continually met Native resistance with mass violence.

To learn more, visit the Warrior Women film website: https://www.warriorwomenfilm.com/

This event was sponsored by the Oklahoma State University American Studies Program, the Department of History, the Center for Oklahoma Studies, the Center for Sovereign Nations, the Native American Student Association, and Edmon Low Library.