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Development
2020

Holder of the Sky

IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund Grantee

  • Tsanavi Spoonhunter, Director/Producer

About the Project

Synopsis

Holder of the Sky is a documentary film that tells the story of one tribe’s pursuit to take back their treaty territory in the face of longstanding racism and a lingering lust for their land -- a story of colonization’s continuum in modern-day America.

Headshot of a young woman with long brown hair, smiling at the camera, wearing a gray blazer, patterned blouse, and feather earringsTsanavi Spoonhunter, Director/Producer

Tsanavi Spoonhunter (she/her/hers) was born and raised in Payahuunadü— "the land of flowing water," homelands of her Paiute people in California and a citizen of the Northern Arapaho Tribe of the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Her ancestry and upbringing in Indian Country have strongly informed her storytelling and artistic vision. She earned her bachelor’s from the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno; and her master’s at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work has been published in national outlets and her short documentary films have won her various awards, including best documentary short at the American Indian Film Festival. She is currently an SFFFILM Filmhouse Resident and a 2021 NDN Changemaker. As an American Indian reporter and filmmaker, she hopes to bring solution-based storytelling to the media and nonfiction film industries.