Pre-Event Questions

Pre-Event Questions  Tonight, you will be typing your additional questions into the chat box – check to see if  your question has already been asked below.

Anton Treuer

  1. The “Indian Schools” are a prime example of lifelong generational trauma, for so many who went there and came out alive, and their descendants.  Canada, which had similar institutions, established the “Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement” in 2007, formally apologizing to former students and paying reparations to survivors. Is there any chance that the US, or individual states, could do the same?
    Could you talk to us about reparations?
  2. Is this a place to talk about this phenomenon:

1 – Oppressor oppresses the oppressed. Inflicts trauma and damage.

2 – After a time, oppressor steps back and oppressed continues work of oppressor, cycles of trauma and damage perpetuate more trauma and damage (poverty, chemical dependency, poor health habits, oppressed-on-oppressed crime).

3 – Oppressor claims innocence – points to oppressed-inflicted trauma and damage – claims it is entirely caused to oppressed by oppressed

Have also heard it referred to this way:  “the oppressor’s work is done when the oppressed take on the work”

Peggy Flanagan
I know you are exhausted from explaining to the ruling elite why you oppressed and victims of historical trauma but more well meaning people can actually hear you now. Could you identify a practical action each of us could take right now? This week?

It must have been a sweet moment this week when the Washington Redskins became no more.  How can we build on this success?

Kimberly Whitewater
About the same time I viewed Dodging Bullets, I also read “Seeds for Seven Generations” by Diane Wilson, about engaging indigenous youth in planting and raising corn and other foods from seeds saved by tribes before the monoculture farming of today. In the interest of saving the planet for future generations, can you comment on what impact it would have or has had on the historical trauma of indigenous people, if large numbers were to adopt native farming methods?

Do you happen to know (and for sure) what indigenous tribe would have been located in the Northeast Minneapolis area?  A lot of events now are starting with indigenous land acknowledgements.

Kathy Broere 
Bordertowns to reservations seem more racist than other communities in the same region. Why?

Follow-up – Is there “settler historic trauma”? Did their ancestors pass down DNA altered at the moment violence was done onto our ancestors and does this inform their current denial that racism exists?

Bob Trench
The music lays a powerful emotional foundation for the heaviness of the subject matter, but is also very calming, reassuring and hopeful.  How did you go about selecting the music for the film?  Which Native artists contributed to the soundtrack?  And what do you think the role of music is in the social / cultural justice movements taking place today around the country?  Also – can you speak on the collaborations across race, age, gender, and background that music inspires?