The Grand Illusion

Only $5! Chelsea Hendrickson, a member of the Northern Arapaho Nation from the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, will introduce this screening. This film is being shown for Native American Heritage Month at the suggestion of Johnny Arnoux, a member of the Blackfoot confederacy from the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana.

U.S. Fish & Wildlife agent Cory Lambert discovers the body of a Native American teenager in the rugged wilderness of the Wind River Indian Reservation. Sent to investigate the murder, a rookie FBI is unprepared for the oppressive weather and isolation of the Wyoming winter. When she employs Cory as a tracker, the two venture deep into a world ravaged by violence and the elements.

Director Taylor Sheridan wrote Wind River to raise awareness of the human-rights crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW). In the U.S. and Canada, thousands of cases of missing Indigenous women have been ignored due to police bias and other forms of systemic racism. The film also points out how the extraction of natural resources by private companies on Indian land is also to blame for the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

What can you do for Native American Heritage Month?

• Learn and acknowledge who came before you.
• Support the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish Tribe, and demand the government recognize them.
• Help the most vulnerable Native Americans in King County.
• Buy from local, native artists at the United Indians Art Market and the Duwamish Native Art Market.