Kelly and Tammy Rundle of Fourth Wall Films, producers of the Emmy-nominated documentary Country School: One Room-One Nation and the award-winning Lost Nation: The Ioway 1, will hold a world premiere of their new documentaries Lost Nation: The Ioway 2 & 3 at the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History Saturday, Feb. 23.
The free event begins at 6:30 p.m. in Macbride Hall Auditorium. Following the screening, representatives of the Ioway Nations and other film participants will take part in a Q-and-A. The films contain mature themes and historical images that may be disturbing to young children.
The museum screened the first documentary in the series in November.
When the Ioway were forcibly removed from their ancestral homeland of Iowa in 1837 to a reservation on the border of Nebraska and Northeast Kansas, Ioway leader White Cloud (The Younger) believed his people must relocate to survive. But intermarriage, broken treaties, and the end of communal living led to a split in 1878 and the establishment of a second Ioway tribe in Oklahoma. Both tribes endured hardship and challenges to their traditions and culture to achieve successful land claims and self-determination in the 1970s. Lost Nation: The Ioway 2 & 3 brings the dramatic Ioway story full circle.
“I believe all the tribes had their trail of tears," says Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma Tribal Elder Joyce Big Soldier-Miller. “They all suffered—all those Indians who made those treks away from their former homelands.”
“It’s always good to look at the past and remember that it does affect the future,” says Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska tribal member Reuben Ironhorse-Kent. “The ancestors did the best they could with what they had.”
Ioway elders and tribal members join other Native scholars, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists to tell the dramatic and true story of the small tribe that once claimed the territory between the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers from Pipestone, Minnesota to St. Louis. The state of Iowa takes its name from the Ioway Tribe.
The documentaries will be screened throughout the United States and will be released on a single, full-featured DVD in April. An alternative soundtrack in the nearly extinct Ioway language will be offered on the DVD. Broadcasts on Midwestern PBS stations are slated as well.
Lost Nation: The Ioway 2 & 3 was partially funded by grants from Humanities Iowa and Silos and Smokestacks National Heritage Area, as well as humanities councils in Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and South Dakota, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
For more information about the premiere visit www.IowayMovie.com.
Fourth Wall Films is an award-winning film and video production company formerly based in Los Angeles, now located in Moline, Ill. The company will release the documentary Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg (a co-production with Emmy-nominated writer Garry McGee) in summer 2013. Two new documentaries River to River: Iowa’s Highway 6 and Hero Street are in production. The docudrama Sons & Daughters of Thunder begins production in fall 2013.