Nine Little Indians

In 2008, the nine Charbonneau daughters (now mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers in their own right) took legal action against the Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls and other Catholic entities, seeking restitution for the appalling physical, emotional, and sexual abuse that they had endured decades earlier at St. Paul’s Indian Mission School in Marty, South Dakota—one of many such American Indian residential schools that proliferated in the U.S. and Canada from the early 19th through mid-20th centuries with the explicit goal of assimilating Native American children to white Christian society and culture. Film at Lincoln Center is honored to present the world premiere of director Shannon Kring’s wrenching, vital documentary portrait of the sisters and their decades-long fight for acknowledgement, justice, and healing. Executive produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and Tony Robbins, the film alternates powerful testimony from the surviving Charbonneaus with urgent, galvanizing sequences documenting the efforts of Dr. Marsha Small, a Northern Cheyenne geophysical surveyor of Indian school cemeteries whose work involves locating the unmarked graves of missing children. The 6:30pm screening will open with a prayer song led by Lakota historian and ceremonialist Darrell Red Cloud, and will be followed by a panel discussion with Kring, producer George DiCaprio, Red Cloud, and film participants Yvonne “Pat” Charbonneau and Dr. Marsha Small.