Forty Films, Forty Films, Forty Weeks: The Oneida Speak

In the 1930s, a group of elders from the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin participated in FDR’s Works Progress Administration Writers Project and shared stories of their life on the farm. In numerous journals written in Oneida, the elders recall historical personal accounts of detrimental land-grabbing policies, and the devastating impact of small pox and boarding schools.

This week’s Emmy-nominated Vision Maker Media film uses these first-person accounts to blend traditional Oneida storytelling with modern media, providing a window to a world that no longer exists.

Watch “The Oneida Speak” on the American Archive of Public Broadcasting website.

Check back here every Tuesday, or follow us at @amarchivepub on Twitter to keep up with featured streaming films over the 40 weeks of the celebration. You can find the complete schedule here.

About Vision Maker Media

Vision Maker Media is the premier source for quality American Indian and Alaska Native educational and home videos. All aspects of Vision Maker Media programs encourage the involvement of young people to learn more about careers in the media – to be the next generation of storytellers. Vision Maker Media envisions a world changed and healed by understanding Native stories and the public conversations they generate.

With funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Vision Maker Media’s Public Media Content Fund awards support to projects with a Native American theme and significant Native involvement that ultimately benefits the entire public media community. Vision Maker Media, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) empowers and engages Native People to tell stories. For more information, www.visionmakermedia.org

Each week for the next forty weeks, a different film featuring Native voices from Native producers will be available to stream free online, in celebration of Vision Maker Media’s 40 years supporting American Indian and Alaska Native film projects.

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