THE FILM Dear Georgina...
A Passamaquoddy elder journeys into an unclear past to better understand herself and her cultural heritage.
About the film
At age two Georgina Sappier-Richardson was removed from her home and Passamaquoddy community in downeast Maine by child protection services. She would never see her parents again. Terror and abuse followed over 16 years in four different foster homes.
Dear Georgina follows this Passamaquoddy elder from Motahkomikuk as she tries to fill in the blurry outlines of her identity. Now a grandmother Georgina is still attempting to re-integrate herself into the community she barely knew.
She remembers, “When I was 30 years old and I went back to the reservation this Indian lady told me, ‘You look exactly like your mother as a young person.’ So that made me feel special, made me feel real.” This propels Georgina’s lifelong mission to find herself.
But despite her gregarious personality and infectious laugh, she is stuck straddling two different worlds. At the end, Georgina travels to her foster community in northern Maine. Determined to reclaim some fragment of her lost childhood she makes an incredible discovery, but will it help heal decades old wounds?
Dear Georgina is a follow-up to the Emmy® award-winning Dawnland(2018), in which Georgina told a portion of her harrowing story of surviving foster care. Georgina is just one of many thousands of Indigenous children with similar stories.
[Sundance supports indigenous film cycles, allowing indigenous people to be captured in their creative state and bring art back into their native land. This supports indigenous people and allows for others to see things from a different perspective and gain education on indigenous people’s lives.]
As said by Maine-Wabanaki, Gkisedtanamoogk, a prior professor at USM and Ted Talk speaker bringing light to indigenous people’s stories, “One common thread that bound us together was a deep abyss of love and gratitude.” More importantly, though, he does not just mean connecting indigenous people, but he means the connection that all human beings have to one another. “The life between sky and earth, everything is connected, everything, even people.”
I spoke with Georgina many times about her past when she was my Bible student. The lost part of her past really bothered her, so I hope she found what she needed. I do miss talking with her.
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