Educational Programming Opportunities

The film ANCESTOR highlights social, cultural and racial issues that surround the accidental discovery of human skeletal remains and how the laws of the United States, specifically the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, (NAGPRA) have impacted the care and handling of such remains since 1990. ANCESTOR presents multiple perspectives on the NAGPRA laws from a scientific community seeking to retain control of the human remains for further study and a Native American Community seeking to return the human remains back to the earth undisturbed.

ANCESTOR is sure to spark many dialogues about how we would want our own cultural and family remains to be cared for long after we have passed on. The Producers of ANCESTOR will develop an informative companion documentary to attach to the feature film to augment discussions about the multiple perspectives about NAGPRA highlighted in ANCESTOR.The documentary will be included on DVD when ANCESTOR goes to the DVD window.

The companion DVD-Only documentary will include individual interviews and round-table discussions with experts from the Native American community.ANCESTOR Producers are currently seeking the advice and participation in the DVD-Only interviews from The National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (NATHPO) Washington, DC and the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), also in Washington, DC. Additional interviews from the resident and historic tribes of Kansas will also be solicited.

The ANCESTOR companion documentary is planned to be 30 to 60 minutes in length and will be produced so it can be a “stand-alone” documentary. This independent work will have the flexibility to be released to Public TV as its own project or available to schools as educational material. Recommendations for additional reading materials, discussion and classroom questions will also be included in the DVD-Only documentary.