On Monday, October 12, 5:30 to 7 p.m., the Michigan Theater will screen Aanikoobijigan, a film by Adam and Zack Khalil about the repatriation work of Michigan tribes, as part of the Penny Stamps Speaker Series.
Aanikoobijigan directors Adam and Zack Khalil are members of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and co-directors and co-editors of the feature documentary INAATE/SE/ [it shines a certain way. to a certain place./ it flies. falls./] (2016) which premiered as the closing night film of the Museum of Modern Art’s Doc Fortnight Film Festival, and the experimental documentary short The Violence of a Civilization without Secrets (2017), which premiered at Sundance. The Khalils are core contributors to New Red Order, a public-secret society which calls attraction toward indigeneity into question, yet promotes this desire, and enjoins potential non-Indigenous accomplices to participate in the co-examination and expansion of Indigenous agency.
From the Sundance Film Festival review: "The film Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild] documents the emotional and vital work of MACPRA (Michigan Anishinaabek Cultural Preservation and Repatriation Alliance). This alliance, made up of repatriation specialists representing all Michigan tribes, fights to bring their Ancestors and funerary objects home from settler colonial institutions like museums, libraries, and archives. Adam and Zack Khalil’s monumental and formally daring film follows the pressing struggle to rebury Indigenous human remains that have been held in sterile storage, laying bare the history of Indigenous collections and the battle to recognize and enforce the laws intended to facilitate their repatriation to the communities they were originally stolen from. Using an essayistic approach alongside vérité portraits, the film celebrates the courageous individuals who carry out this hard and emotionally draining labor of return."
A reception and Q&A with the filmmakers follows the screening, 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Stamps Gallery (201 S. Division St).
In partnership with the U-M Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) Office; U-M Museum of Anthropological Archeology; U-M Matthaei Botanical Gardens & Nichols Arboretum; U-M Department of Film, Television, and Media; U-M Department of Native American Studies; the U-M Department of American Culture; the U-M Inclusive History Project; the U-M Department of Anthropology; U-M Museum Studies Program; and the U-M Stamps Gallery.
