As part of First Nations’ overall GATHER project — with generous support of The Indigenous Peoples Fund at Tides Foundation and The 11th Hour Project of The Schmidt Family Foundation, along with additional organizational funders and individual donors — GATHER is an intimate portrait tracing the intentional destruction of Native American foodways and the renaissance and resilience, the inherit right, to reclaim it. The GATHER film is available on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Vimeo, and iTunes.
The result of a three-year collaboration between First Nations and award-winning director Sanjay Rawal, and executive produced by Jason Momoa, production partner Brian Mendoza, and Sterlin Harjo, GATHER builds international awareness, understanding, and appreciation of the Native American food movement, which will ultimately bolster support in improving policy and the regulatory environment for long-term sustainability.
The film features the work of First Nations’ grantees and partners, and supports tribes and Native communities as they build sustainable foodways that improve health, strengthen food security and increase control over Native agriculture and food systems.
Highlighted in the film are:
- Chef Nephi Craig, a citizen of the White Mountain Apache and Navajo Nations, who opens an Indigenous foods café on the White Mountain Reservation.
- Sammy Gensaw, a Yurok youth leader of the Ancestral Guard nonprofit who grew up on the Klamath River as its salmon were fished to near extinction.
- Twila Cassadore, a San Carlos Apache woman who helps in the return to the diets of Apaches before people were forced onto reservations.
- Elsie DuBray, a young Lakota woman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe whose father, Fred, started the Intertribal Buffalo Coalition with the aim of revitalizing buffalo as a source of spiritual and physical nourishment.
More information on the film can be found at www.nativefoodsystems.org.
