I just returned from the 9th annual Pocahontas Reframed film festival 2025 in Richmond, VA, which is held right before Thanksgiving each year. The festival reframes Native American life and experience through modern film.
In-depth info below from the homepage of Pocahontas Reframed details the festival’s mission.
The Festival aims to raise awareness about Native American language, cultures, and societies through films that share Native American perspectives. The Festival, which is the only one of its kind on the East Coast, brings together artists, authors, cineastes, and actors who share a passion for film and features experiential learning opportunities for the entire public. In the past, filmmakers have used demeaning stereotypes when incorporating Native characters or storylines, which lack nuance, accuracy, and complexity. The Pocahontas Reframed Film Festival offers new insight into previously under-told narratives.
Hollywood has not dealt Native American culture a kind hand in the past. Indians were typically portrayed as stagecoach-chasing savages, white scalps in hand. These movie scenes were not very nuanced and were without portrayals of fullcharacters in the many frames of life. Depicting the worst of Indians AND Whites is a war that has no winners.
The Native American film industry has grown — not only with actors but with film producers, directors, and cinematographers. From Native hearts and minds have come movies with more nuanced stories of American Indians. From films that detail American Indians’ modern-day life both on and off our reservations. Films that look at the challenges of being Native, tackling issues such as blood quantum or tracing one’s heritage back generations to find Indians in family genealogy. Are Blacks included as a part of American Indians if there was intermarriage between these two races? What has been the effect of boarding schools on previous generations, forced to leave their families and to live and study at schools where the motto was, “Kill the Indian, save the man.” How did the laws of Walter Plecker in Virginia cause great distress to Virginia Indians, as they had only two races that could be chosen on formal documents – White and Colored? And what of the more modern-day atrocities of Native women being murdered at ten times the national average? All of these topics and so many more are worth time and attention to explore the challenges American Indians have faced in this nation and the many ways we have overcome them. The Reframed festival gives a chance to delve into these issues in depth and with clarity and compassion.
The Indians living today are not Hollywood stereotypes. We are people who are proud of our history and culture. And we love the opportunity to share about our heritage so that non-Natives can know more about Native life, from the education of our school children, the rich heritage of American Indians, to showcasing pow wows and artwork, to music. We are proud of our contributions to American life from the past through the lives and contributions of great chiefs such as Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, to the Navajo (Diné) Code Talkers, to film greats such as Graham Greene, who recently passed away
Native life is intensely complex and beautiful. The beauty of music, dance, and storytelling is woven throughout our culture. When it is represented well in public, many benefit from the richness of our history and culture. And the Pocahontas Reframed Film Festival does a stunning job in revealing the beauty by making our stories come alive on film.
It’s Thanksgiving time. In Native Virginia Indian lands from 1607 onwards, the Indians of the Mattaponi and Pamunkey river areas in the Virginia Tidewater region have paid tribute taxes to the Virginia government through wild game and fish offerings. This ceremony continues to this day with a presentation every Thanksgiving at the governor’s executive mansion of deer and turkey. A tribute from the Powhatan and Pocahontas people. A reminder that we Natives like to say, “We are still here.”
Dawn Custalow is a Virginia Indian of the Mattaponi tribe. She lived on the Mattaponi reservation when she was young and still returns to visit her family, who live alongside the Mattaponi River. Dawn enjoys telling Native stories and discussing the many challenges that Native Americans have overcome as well as the stories of their great love for this land that they call home and now share with many others from different nations around the world. Dawn can be reached at [email protected] and is available for public speaking about Native life.
