2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

Lakota community organizer Madonna Thunder Hawk and scholar/activist Elizabeth Castle have been working in collaboration in support of indigenous liberation for nearly 20 years. Most recently, Castle provided media and fundraising support for Thunder Hawk who has organized much of the ground support for Standing Rock since August of 2016. This has become the new ending to the documentary Warrior Women directed by Castle about women's activism in the Red Power Movement. This session will be a roundtable discussion and screening of film clips from the work in progress. We will discuss what is currently happening with Standing Rock and how it has inspired cross-national collaboration between indigenous peoples. Additionally, we will explore the historical continuity of women's activism from Red Power to Standing Rock and the ways media coverage has changed over time.

Thunder Hawk has been involved in every major indigenous action since the occupation of Alcatraz to her current leadership in the Standing Rock Resistance Movement. Though part of the global movement, she has also anchored much of her organizing at the community level establishing a survival school. She co-founded Women of All Red Nations (WARN) in 1978 and the Black Hills Alliance in 1979 which together blocked Union Carbide from mining uranium in the sacred Black Hills of the Oceti Sakowin. WARN raised awareness of the illegal sterilization of Native women in the Indian Health Service and discovered that the reproductive health problems were caused by the radioactivity of the water on the Pine Ridge reservation.