film synopsis
Kendra Mylnechuk Potter was adopted and raised by a loving white family, with no knowledge of her Native parentage. She is one of many Native children removed from their families under the Indian Adoption Project, a government sponsored program likened to “cultural genocide.” In this moving and intimate film, Kendra searches for and reconnects with her birth mother, April, who was herself adopted and has survived a tragic life of addiction and homelessness. Brooke Pepion Swaney’s film, seven years in the making, raises knotty questions about identity as a conflicted Kendra, a new mother happily married to a white husband, journeys to her Lummi homeland in Washington state and struggles to reconcile a life of white privilege with her newly aroused Native anger. Where does she belong in the Lummi world, where she’s welcomed as family but feels like a tourist? Swaney’s empathetic camera follows Kendra on a complex journey both painful and beautiful.