MOHAWK NATION: THEN, NOW AND THE FUTURE

Third World Newsreel
4 min readOct 13, 2022

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Part 1 and 2

Ganienkeh is the independent land of the Mohawk people in upstate New York, whose sovereignty was re-established in 1974. This fall, members of Ganienkeh, Paul Smith’s College and Third World Newsreel are proud to present two free, open to the public, in-person events that look into the histories and futures of indigenous people. Both events will focus on indigenous activism and current challenges to survival. This includes discussions of the process of cultural solidarity and creating innovative media practices.

PART 1: Screening and Panel on Thursday, October 13, 2022, 4 PM EST at Paul Smith’s College

MOHAWK NATION film (Allan Siegel with Third World Newsreel and the Ganienkeh, 1978)

YOU ARE ON INDIAN LAND clips(Michael Kanentakeron Mitchel, 1969)

OHERO: KON UNDER THE HUSK film (Katsitsionni Fox, 2016)

Speakers include Members of Ganienkeh, Professor Ulises Mejias (SUNY Oswego), Dr. Curt Stager (Paul Smith’s College), Katsitsionni Fox and Allan Siegel.

Location: Paul Smith’s College, 7777 New York-30, Pine Room, Student Center, Paul Smith, NY 12970

RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mohawk-nation-then-now-the-future-1-tickets-413147233497

Mohawk Nation

PART 2: Screening and Panel on Friday, November 4, 2022, 5 PM EST at The People’s Forum

MOHAWK NATION film(Allan Siegel with Third World Newsreel and the Ganienkeh, 1978),

YOU ARE ON INDIAN LAND clips (Michael Kanentakeron Mitchel, 1969)

WITHOUT A WHISPER film (Katsitsionni Fox, 2020)

Speakers include members of Ganienkeh, filmmakers Katsitsionni Fox and Allan Siegel, and Professor Annie Rochon of Paul Smith’s College.

Location: The People’s Forum, 320 West 37 Street, New York, NY 10018

RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/413156009747

MOHAWK NATION: THEN, NOW, THE FUTURE has been organized by Professor Annie Rochon (Kanehsatake) of Paul Smith’s College, Ku-Ling Yurman, Allan Siegel, and Third World Newsreel. This program has been made possible in part with an Action Grant from Humanities New York. Thanks to Jill Susice and Women Make Movies for their help.

Katsitsionni Fox has been making films since 2003 in the Mohawk Territory of Akwesasne, where she resides. Her film “Ohero:kon — Under the Husk,” following the journey of two Mohawk girls as they take part in their traditional passage rites to becoming Mohawk Women, received funding from Vision Maker Media and was broadcast on many PBS stations. Katsitsionni received the Jane Glassco Award for Emerging Filmmaker at the imagineNATIVE Film Festival in 2016 as well as the Achievement in Documentary Filmmaking Award at LA Skins Fest in 2016. She produced a series of twelve short segments for REMATRIATION, a Native American women’s online, multi-media magazine, that is focused on healing and empowerment of Native women through the sharing of their stories and successes. Her latest documentary, WITHOUT A WHISPER, is an untold story of how Native American women helped to inspire the struggle of American women’s suffrage movement in the United States.

Professor Ulises Mejias is the co-founder of the Non-Aligned Technologies Movement and the network Tierra Común, and serve on the Board of Directors of Humanities New York, a National Endowment for the Humanities affiliate. From 2021 to 2025, he will be a Fulbright Specialist fellow. His research interests include critical internet studies, network theory and science, philosophy of technology, sociology of communication, and political economy of digital media. Profesor Mejias authored The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating it for Capitalism with Nick Coultry and Off the Network: Disrupting the Digital World.

Dr. Curt Stager is an ecologist, paleoclimatologist, and science journalist with a Ph.D. in biology and geology from Duke University. He has published over three dozen peer-reviewed articles in major journals including Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and has written extensively for general audiences in periodicals such as National Geographic, The New York Times, Fast Company, and Adirondack Life. Since 1990, he has also co-hosted Natural Selections, a weekly science program on North Country Public Radio that is syndicated internationally, and has toured widely to offer presentations on his research to audiences ranging, as one colleague put it, “from middle-schoolers to formal scholars.” In 2013, he was named the New York State Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation.

Born in New York City, Allan Siegel is a filmmaker, visual media artist, writer and teacher. One of the founding members of the documentary film collective Newsreel, his films have been presented at major festivals in North America, Europe and Asia. He teaches at the Intermedia Department of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts and continues to create new work on a variety of visual media. His filmography includes Lifting the Fog, A Clean Well-lighted Place, Usti Opre, Mississippi Triangle, Percussion, Impressions and Reality, Chronicle of Hope and Mohawk Nation, among others.

Annie Rochon (Event Organizer) is an Assistant Professor of Classical and Modern Languages and Chair of The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council at Paul Smith’s College. She grew up speaking French in Montreal, Quebec, and, coming from a multicultural background, she is a strong advocate for diversity. She has a passion for language and for sharing it. She has a background in ethnolinguistics, translations, interpretation and terminology. She ardently believes that languages, travels, cultures and the beauty of cuisine will forever be intertwined.

Third World Newsreel (TWN) is a media arts organization that fosters the creation, appreciation, preservation and dissemination of independent film and video by and about people of color and social justice issues.

Paul Smith’s College is the only 4-year college inside the boundaries of the world-famous Adirondacks and provides hands-on education that combines proven career training with a meaningful exploration of self, society and the earth.

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Third World Newsreel

Third World Newsreel is a media arts organization that fosters independent, social justice BIPOC films.