Three Songs

Directed by Raven Chacon

In this series of three videos, American Indian women sing the history of a landscape, including its present, past, and future, where a conflict, displacement or massacre of their tribe took place. The songs reference the Navajo Long Walk, the Trail of Tears and resulting drownings in the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers, and the removal of the Seminole people from their homelands. Chacon describes: “These songs of resistance, with only a snare drum as accompaniment, become a sonic testimony, an acknowledgement of shared survival, and a healing call in their mother tongues.”