BRATTLEBORO — The Brattleboro Rotary Club is once again raising money to help upgrade the radio station KILI, a nonprofit station broadcasting to the Lakota people on the Pine Ridge, Cheyenne River, and Rosebud Indian Reservations, part of the Great Sioux Nation in South Dakota.
On Sunday, March 1, from 4 to 8 p.m., at the New England Youth Theatre, the Brattleboro Rotary Club presents its sixth annual International Film & Food Festival, with proceeds benefiting KILI, which serves 30,000 people on the three reservations and seeks to preserve Native American culture and instill pride in their unique heritage.
KILI (90.1 FM) started broadcasting in 1983 as the first American Indian-owned radio station in the United States.
According to Brattleboro Rotary Club past president Martin Cohn, the inaugural Brattleboro Rotary Club International Film & Food Festival (IF&FF) raised money for Rotary International's Polio Plus, a project to help eradicate polio in the world. The second and third IF&FFs raised funds to build two adobe brick homes for poor families in San Miguel de Allende through the organization Casita Linda.
But after learning about the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota through an investigative report on ABC's news program, 20/20, Cohn said the club decided that its attention was going to be directed to helping improve the lives of the residents in Pine Ridge.
“So far, we have sent sewing machines, money for an informative calendar, and over 100 refurbished laptop computers,” Cohn said. “With proceeds from the last two film and food festivals, we were able to buy requested equipment to upgrade KILI Radio, a vital communications channel on the reservation. This year we hope to buy a new soundboard for the station.”
In addition to screening a critically acclaimed documentary, Bridge the Gap to Pine Ridge, and an award-winning feature length film, Shouting Secrets, the event will feature a Native American-themed dinner prepared by local chef Tristan Toleno.
In Bridge the Gap to Pine Ridge, host and global explorer Chris Bashinelli travels the world to experience life outside of his hometown Brooklyn, N.Y. In this program, he visits the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to explore a culture all but expunged from the history books, that of the Oglala Lakota Native Americans.
While there, he embarks on a life-changing buffalo harvest, gets “schooled” by the women's college basketball team, visits with a 14-year-old suicide prevention activist, and finds himself shoulder deep up a cow's backside while trying to better understand employment issues on the reservation. With humor and pathos, he uncovers stories of hope and learns how culture has prevailed in the face of adversity.
Shouting Secrets tells the story of Wesley, a Native American writer who, after nine years, is faced with seeing his family after his mother suffers a stroke. Old wounds are opened as Wesley and his family deal with the events unfolding before them while trying to stick together through their mother's illness.
The film won Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Supporting Actor awards at the 2011 Native American Film Festival. This will be the premiere showing of the film in the Northeast.
The menu includes New Native Fry Bread, Summer Squash Bread, Grandma Connie's Buffalo Feast, Buffalo Stew, Three Sisters Vegetables, Blueberry Wojapi, Sioux Indian Pudding, Ice Cream, Red Sassafras Tea, and Coffee.