The Indigenous Resilience Center (IRes) will co-sponsor a screening of Return of Navajo Boy, an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival and PBS, with the Southwest Center, the School of Theater, Film, and Television, and the American Indian Studies Department. This 25th-anniversary screening will take place on Sunday, February 15th at 1 pm, with lunch and a panel featuring folks from the film.
The panel discussion will feature the filmmaker Jeff Spitz and Navajo elders who appeared in this landmark documentary about the effects of uranium mining, the film industry, off-reservation adoption, and the legacy of nuclear colonialism on the Navajo Nation.
The Return of Navajo Boy is an intimate Navajo-centered story focused on one family’s incredible history in pictures. Pictures voiced suddenly by the photo subjects break stereotypes and reveal a hidden history of abandoned uranium mines, radioactive contamination, and the haunting mystery of a long-lost child taken by missionaries in the 1950s.
The event is co-sponsored by the Southwest Center, the Indigenous Resilience Center, the School of Theater, Film, and Television, and the American Indian Studies Department at the University of Arizona.
