[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: According to the United Nations areas managed by Indigenous peoples are among the most biodiverse and well-conserved on the planet.

Thomas Belt: This world doesn't belong to us. Everything was here before we were even in our stories, we say that. An elder here told me, we know that we were the last ones here because we don't even have names. All the names had run out.

Melissa: You're listening here to Thomas Belt, an elder of Cherokee Nation, and he's narrating in a new documentary ᎤᏕᏲᏅ, which translates to What they've been Taught.

Thomas: We're here as guests, and we're here to be as careful and as responsible as we can be.

Melissa: ᎤᏕᏲᏅ is directed by Brit Hensel, citizen of Cherokee Nation, as part of The Reciprocity Project, a series of seven short films by Indigenous filmmakers reflecting on the climate crisis. The film is nominated for best short documentary at the prestigious IDA Documentary Awards. With me now as the film's director, Brit Hensel. Brit, thanks so much for joining us.

Brit Hensel: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you.

Melissa: Also with us is Kavita Pillay, producer of the Reciprocity Project. Kavita, thank you so much for being here.

Kavita Pillay: Hi, Melissa. Good to be here.

Melissa: All right, Brit, tell us about the film.

Brit: Oh, man. This film is so many things, but I think if I could boil it down to one thing, it would just be a celebration of my community. I got to work with a lot of Cherokee people on this film and help share a story that I felt that was really important and I'm so happy that people are interested in watching. It's been great.

Melissa: Brit, this moment of we don't own the land really spoke to me. I actually just gave a lecture yesterday when I was talking about some of my new research where I'm talking about Black land ownership, and I was waving my hands and being very dramatic about the critical importance of Black land ownership. Then as I was preparing for this, I said, "Oh, wait a minute. Maybe there's a whole piece that I'm missing in terms of understanding relationship to land, even as we're thinking about what would constitute social and ecological justice." Can you walk me through just a bit of that?

Brit: Yes. There's so many lessons from Indigenous communities that are really there for everyone, no matter where you come from or your walk of life. I think one of the lessons that is so important to me that no matter who I'm talking to or what the topic is, it comes back to one's responsibility to one another and the life forces around us. I'm really fortunate to come from people who had that forward thinking about how we coexist and how we relate to things around us. I think being raised with the idea that my actions affect the greater whole and trying to see ourselves amongst so much. Our stories tell us that there was so much here before we were, and we're just a part of the whole. I think that if we really take that thought into account really good things can happen.

Melissa: Put this film in the broader context of the Reciprocity Project. Tell us a bit about the seven films in the project.

Kavita: The seven films, these came about in the early days of the pandemic, and I should note that I am just one of the producers on this project, and there's four of us. There's really a whole network of people at Nia Tero and Upstander project who have been thinking about this in the midst of the pandemic, we're thinking about this other global existential crisis, the climate crisis. As you noted, 80% of the world's remaining biodiversity is on land held by Indigenous peoples. What does it mean to tell stories by Indigenous filmmakers set in Indigenous communities and centered on this theme of reciprocity? I am not myself Indigenous, so I see these as artful hopeful stories. You'll see reciprocity between humans and other animals and land and reciprocity between different generations.

You'll hear languages that are actually indigenous to the Western hemisphere. Let's face it, English is a very recent import. The first film in the series, the English translation of it is We will walk the Trail of our Ancestors. It's a five-minute film. It's entirely in the Gwich'in language. It's especially remarkable because the filmmakers Princess Daazhraii Johnson and Alicia Carlson, they are themselves learning the language as adults. Gwich'in is now spoken by just a few hundred people. It's an example of using film to capture and share a severely endangered indigenous language.

You'll also see stories a story of reciprocity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous folks. The fifth film in the series is called Weckuwapok. It's 12 minutes. It has an example of a non-Indigenous person, Yoyo Ma. He goes as a guest to the Wabanaki homelands. He's changed by the process of playing his music at dawn with Wabanaki musicians and by truly listening to what indigenous people have to say. That film just happened to capture this moment in time in the summer of 2021. These films are made against the background of a climate crisis, and I've really just found it life-changing to just be able to listen to my indigenous colleagues talk about animals and plants as our relatives.

That was such a profound reminder to me that whether you we're aware of it or not, we come from nature. We are not separate from it. We are part of it

Melissa: Brit, I want to play another piece from your film. Let's take a listen here.

Thomas: We have no word for art in our language. We have no word for it. [unintelligible 00:06:15], you are making it into or making it into a thing. Not making a thing, but making it into that. It's just little things like that in the language that make you understand that the way that we look at the world is different.

Melissa: Brit, tell us about reciprocity in your film.

Brit: I started when I got asked to make this film by Nia Tero. I was honestly a little nervous because I'm just one Cherokee person. I can't speak for all Cherokee people. I can't represent multiple communities. I have my one lived perspective. I made the decision to include all three parts of our tribe. Because of forced removal in the 1830s, we're a Cherokee diaspora. Two of our tribes are in Oklahoma, and then the other one remains in the East, in Western North Carolina. I decided to pool my resources with all my friends who happen to be independent artists from each of those communities. What you're watching is truly a well-rounded perspective of what reciprocity might mean to Cherokee people that I know, and who I love really dearly.

I did start with a speaker, a first language speaker, and an elder who I really respect and love, and his name is Thomas Belt, and he's who you hear narrating the film. I asked him, "What does Reciprocity mean to us? What does the language tell us that that is?" He told me, essentially, it's never giving more than you take.

I was coming to him with this idea of, "What is the word for it. What's the word?" He giggled at me and was like, "Of course there's no word, it's an action. Reciprocity is action. It's taking care of people around you when you're not asked. It's never giving more than you take, replacing what you do take, and just being responsible.

Melissa: Brit Hensel is director of ᎤᏕᏲᏅ and Kavita Pillay is producer for the Reciprocity Project. Brit and Kavita, thank you so much for your time today.

Kavita: Thank you, Melissa.

Brit: Thank you so much.

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