What does blood have to do with identity? Kendra Mylnechuk, an adult Native adoptee, born in 1980 at the cusp of the enactment of the Indian Child Welfare Act, is on a journey to reconnect with her birth family and discover her Lummi heritage.

The film follows Kendra Mylnechuk Potter, a Native woman adopted into a white family, as she reconnects with her Native identity. The film, both instigator and follower, documents Kendra on this odyssey as she finds her birth mother April, also a Native adoptee, and returns to her Native homelands. Relying upon verité scenes as the bulk of the film, the story is intense, emotional and personal.

The viewer learns, along with the women, of their inherited cultural trauma as well as some of the beauty of the Lummi ways neither knew while growing up. We watch both women navigate what it means to be Native, and to belong to a tribe from the outside looking in. DAUGHTER OF A LOST BIRD explores the gray areas of ethics surrounding transracial adoption, specifically Native American adoption, via a singular story as an entry point into a more complicated national issue.

Contains mature subject matter.

Stay tuned after the screening for a TeenPress Q&A with Director Brooke Pepion Swaney and the film's subject Kendra Mylnechuk Potter, moderated by Crater High School student Mal Sotelo.

(September 23 & 28-30)

Brooke Swaney (L), Director, with Kendra Mylnechuk Potter