(Above) Marcella Gilbert. (Below) Madonna Thunder Hawk.
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Learn. Dream. Grow.
A scene in Warrior Women follows Madonna Thunder Hawk, well into her 70s, sprinting up aluminum bleachers at a sunny outdoor stadium in Eagle Butte. “I do this mainly for myself,” says Thunder Hawk, catching her breath but always in motion. “If you’re not physically able to do community work – hey, get on the couch, grab the remote. Then complain and whine about politics and stuff. That’s why I do it. The only thing I’m running against is myself.” It’s a scene to which film festival audiences, from California to New York, universally respond, says the film’s co-director and producer, Elizabeth Castle. “Every once in a while, you need to feel this scorching effect of Madonna Thunder Hawk being herself,” says Castle. “But that scene has so many things you can take from it.” Thunder Hawk, an Oohenumpa Lakota enrolled in the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, has been scorching, or fighting for what she believes, since early days. As a young boarding school student, she barricaded herself in a dorm room in solidarity with her sister, Mabel Ann Eagle Hunter, who had taken ill. Thunder Hawk refused to unlock the door unless school officials informed their mother that Mabel was sick. Since that initial sororal sit-in, Thunder Hawk has been organizing her tiospaye (extended family) to advance self-determination and reclaim community for American Indians throughout her lifetime. She was a central organizer at occupations most emblematic of the American Indian Movement (AIM), including the takeover of Alcatraz Island in 1969, Mount Rushmore in the early 1970s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs D.C. headquarters in 1972, and Wounded Knee in 1973.
