Bounty
A filmic testimony of Penobscot resistance and survival, confronting colonial bounty proclamations in the room where they were signed.
In Bounty , Penobscot parents and children resist erasure and commemorate survival by reading and reacting to one of the dozens of government-issued bounty proclamations that motivated colonial settlers to hunt, capture, kill, and scalp Indigenous people. Many of these laws were signed in the room where this film was made, the council chamber of the Old State House.
Scalping people for cash rewards and land is a devastating idea and shocking practice, essential to how the United States became a nation, built on top of hundreds of Indigenous nations who thrived here for millennia before Europeans invaded these shores. Bounty is a filmic testimony of the immeasurable resistance and survivance of Indigenous Peoples.
The film is the cornerstone of this media ecosystem which invites us all to face stories of the incalculable loss, suffering, and unacknowledged trauma inflicted upon Indigenous People by settlers, past and present.