Amá

Discover the story of Jean Whitehorse, a Navajo woman from New Mexico, as she reveals one of America’s darkest secrets: the officially sponsored destruction of Native American families, children removed from their homes, women sterilized without consent, and citizens ignored when they spoke up in protest. Travelling across some of the loneliest parts of the USA, director Lorna Tucker contextualizes these revelations by listening to victims, doctors, politicians, and whistleblowers. She sets the scandal into the context of the civil rights movement, including the Native American occupation of Alcatraz in 1969. Jean leads us through the events that led up to her being sterilized and the disastrous affect it had on her life, bringing the past and present together in a film that manages to be contemporary and timely. Amá sheds new light on the Native American story and sets up the context of the twenty-first century obsession with the "War on Poverty" and the radical and often unregulated medical practices employed against the Native female population. How could the voices of Native Americans have gone unheeded for so long? Tucker finds a story of misguided attempts to “improve,” to “save,” and to “civilize” Native Americans, an attitude that led to one of the most grotesque abuses of power in modern American history. (Santa Barbara International Film Festival)