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Mohawk Girls
Canada, 2005, 53 minutes, Color, DVD
Order No. W07908
In MOHAWK GIRLS, filmmaker Tracey Deer intimately captures the lives of three exuberant and insightful Mohawk teenagers as they face their future. Like Amy, Lauren and Felicia, Deer grew up on the Kahnawake Native Reserve, but she left to attend school. Now, she returns to document two critical years in the lives of these teens who are contending with the unwritten rules of their close-knit community. To move away from the reserve means risking the loss of credibility, or worse, rights as a Mohawk. But to stay is to give up the possibilities offered by the "outside world." With insight, humor and compassion, Deer takes us inside the lives of these three teenagers as they tackle the same issues of identity, culture and family she faced a decade earlier.
Interspersed with home videos from Deer's own adolescence, MOHAWK GIRLS is a deeply emotional yet unsentimental look into what it means to grow up Native at the beginning of the 21st century.
AWARDS, FESTIVALS, & SCREENINGS

- Peabody Essex Museum/MA
- New York Native American Film and Video Festival
- San Francisco American Indian Film Festival
- Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal
- Columbus Int’l Film and Video Festival
- Imagine Native Film & Media Arts Festival
- Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival
- Fargo Film Festival
- Festival de Cinéma des 3 Amériques
- Flicks: International Film Festival For Young People
- Freeze Frame International Children's Film Festival
- Herland Film and Video Festival
- Montréal First Peoples' Festival
- Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth
- ViewFinders: International Film Festival for Youth
- Winnipeg Aboriginal Film and Video Festival
- American Indian Film Festival
- Calgary International Film Festival
- New Mexico Center for Contemporary Arts
- Rapid City Native Voice Film Festival
- Go Girls! at Symphony Space
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QUOTES

“Refreshingly honest…viewers will empathize with the trials and tribulations of [these girls’] lives and the cultural challenges they face. Appropriate for social studies and multicultural curriculum.”
School Library Journal
"Fresh, spontaneous, and natural…Deer’s deft juxtaposition of the footage she shot of herself in high school allows her to infuse the film with a personal and sympathetic approach to her subject that...makes her film particularly unique in this subgenre of documentaries."
Mary Christel
Adlai E. Stevenson High School
“A valuable educational resource from the high school through graduate school levels. Students of sociology, psychology, counseling, education, and related fields will benefit from learning about these three Kahnawake girls through Deer’s lens.”
Amy Patraka Ginsberg
Chair, Dept. of Human Development & Leadership, L.I.U., Brooklyn Campus
“Beautifully written and directed… a must-watch for women of all ages.”
Diana J. Fitzgerald
Feminist Review
“Fresh, unique and compelling. Highly recommended, and is best suited for school libraries, media centers and academic libraries.”
Educational Media Reviews Online
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Mohawk Girls is included in the following Special Collections.
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RELATED LINKS

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