Reel Indigenous Women’s Lives: Female Protagonists in Films by Indigenous Women

This essay examines two films by Indigenous feature-film women directors: Kissed by Lightning (2009) by Shelley Niro (Mohawk) and Older than America (2008) by Georgina Lightning (Cree). My essay contextualizes these two films in terms of both Hollywood westerns and more recent feature films by Native American men, including Smoke Signals (1998) and others, before it analyzes how the two films use familiar genre trappings to engage non-Native viewers while simultaneously layering in tribally and historically specific material.