“Honor Thy Mother” is the untold story of 36 Aboriginal women from Canada and Native women from tribes in Washington and Alaska who migrated in the 1940s to Bainbridge Island, the traditional territory of the Suquamish people. As survivors of Indian Residential Schools, they came, some still in their teens, to pick berries for Japanese American farmers, fell in love and married Filipino immigrants. They settled on the Island to raise their mixed-heritage, (Indigenous mother and Filipino father) Indipino children. The voices of the Indipino children, now elders, are integral in the storytelling of their mother’s courage and resilience marrying Asian men and risking disenfranchisement from their 19 different tribes. Many Indipino children grew up in homes burdened with their father and mother’s traumatic, collective memory of the Island’s Japanese Americans forced removal after President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942. 

Director Biography - Lucy Ostrander

Lucy Ostrander grew up in a family who taught her from an early age the importance of social justice, which ultimately became an underlying theme in her filmmaking career. After completing graduate school in documentary film at Stanford, Lucy moved to Seattle to work on her Masters thesis film Witness to Revolution which chronicled the life of Seattle journalist Anna Louise Strong. The film won a Student Academy Award and received a national PBS broadcast which in turn launched her documentary film career. She went on to specialize in historical documentaries, focusing on the Pacific Northwest and Pacific Rim, several of which centered on the experience of Japanese Americans during WWII. In 2002, Lucy and her filmmaking partner Don Sellers, launched Stourwater Pictures which has focused on discovering and telling the stories of everyday people who have lived extraordinary and meaningful lives. With an emphasis on social justice, their award-winning films have screened in scores of festivals and universities and have been broadcast nationally on PBS as well as internationally.