Sky Woman is a role model, a guide for how to not only deal with the unknown but move through fear and uncertainty toward gratitude and creativity. The undamming of this indigenous river of knowledge allows the wisdom to flow freely, teaching us how to interact with the natural world.

About the Film

The “Sky Woman Women” project holds space for eighteen women storytellers from Mohawk, Seneca and Tuscarora tribal affiliations (enrolled, unenrolled, and not enrolled), telling and retelling the story of Sky Woman to each other. 

The Sky Woman creation story is about a pregnant woman falling through a hole in the sky, who, with courage and gratitude, creates a whole world from a handful of dirt. The story acts as a guide from a woman’s perspective in dealing with the natural world and maintaining balance within it, by acknowledging our kinship, inter-dependence and co-creation with the plants and animals that sustain us.

The telling of this Haudenosaunee creation story is an oral tradition primarily told by men. One aspect that is unique to this project is that our filmed conversation holds space for a multi-generational collective of women between the ages of 8 and 80.

Throughout the course of the film, we become aware that learning and change at an individual and societal level begins with people coming together and talking, as happens in an oral tradition.

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With assistance from 2024 Anonymous Was A Woman Environmental Art Grant in partnership with New York Foundation for the Arts