Beacon City Council Member Paloma Wake has a personal passion for land justice, and is using her platform to promote the screening of Lakota Nation vs The United States. The screening is at The Yard, 4 Hanna Lane. It is co-presented by Paloma Wake and Story Screen. The Yard is providing the space. All proceeds go to First People’s Fund. First Peoples Fund is a Native-led non-profit that provides direct funding, resources, and professional development to Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native artists, culture bearers, and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI).

Paloma submitted an explication for the screening which ALBB has published below:

“I am writing as a Councilmember and Beacon citizen. This Sunday at 5pm, I am co-hosting a screening of a documentary - Lakota Nation vs. United States - in collaboration with Story Screen and the Yard. Below is my reasoning on why this consideration of Mount Rushmore is relevant to the Highlands regionally.

“This month is Native American Heritage Month. As a federal designation, it encourages us to observe an Indigenous past, but rarely does that understanding extend to the present moment and acknowledge the ongoing lives, communities, and foundational sovereignty of Indigenous people and tribes.

“Lakota Nation vs. the United States, screening at 5pm on Nov 12, with StoryScreen, at The Yard, is the contemporary story of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota people and their struggle to reclaim the Black Hills of South Dakota, or what is commonly known as the location of ‘Mount Rushmore,’ contextualizing the violent formation of this so-called American monument. My experience of seeing this film for the first time was one of both profound sorrow and a profound opening toward collective liberation through a structural understanding of the present.

“In our small city, formed in 1913 and experiencing our own waves of change and displacement through gentrification, it is easy to feel starkly removed from a time when our river [the Hudson River] was known as Mahicannituck, the river that flows both ways. Hopefully this screening will support an ongoing community conversation about Indigeneity with the necessary context around the apparatus of settler colonialism, connecting an Indigenous past to our local Indigenous present and the possibilities the present holds for a beautiful future.”