The Brattleboro Rotary Club is raising money to help upgrade the radio station KILI, a non-profit radio station broadcasting to the Lakota people on the Pine Ridge, Cheyenne River, and Rosebud Indian Reservations, part of the Great Sioux Nation in South Dakota.
On Sunday, March 1, 2015, from 4-8PM at the New England Youth Theatre, the Brattleboro Rotary Club will be sponsoring the sixth annual “International Film & Food Festival,” with proceeds benefiting KILI which serves 30,000 people on the three reservations and seeks to preserve Native American culture and instill pride in the peoples’ unique heritage.
KILI (90.1 FM) started broadcasting in 1983 as the first American Indian-owned radio station in the United States.
According to Brattleboro Rotary Club past president Martin Cohn, the inaugural Brattleboro Rotary Club International Film & Food Festival (IF&FF) raised monies for Rotary International’s Polio Plus, a project to help eradicate polio in the world. The 2nd and 3rd IF&FFs raised monies to build two adobe brick homes for poor families in San Miguel de Allende through a wonderful organization, Casita Linda.
Cohn said, “After learning about the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota through an investigative report on ABC’s 20/20 TV show, we decided that our attention was going to be directed to helping improve the lives of the residents in Pine Ridge.”
“So far, we have sent sewing machines, money for an informative calendar and over 100 refurbished laptop computers. With proceeds from the last two film and food festivals, we were able to buy requested equipment to upgrade KILI Radio, a vital communications channel on the reservation. This year we hope to buy a new soundboard for the station,” Cohn explained. “
In addition to screening a critically acclaimed documentary, “Bridge the Gap to Pine Ridge”, and an award winning feature length film, “Shouting Secrets”, the event will feature a Native American-themed dinner prepared by local chef Tristen Toleno.
In Bridge the Gap to Pine Ridge, host and global explorer Chris Bashinelli travels the world to experience life outside of his hometown Brooklyn, New York. In this program, he visits the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to explore a culture all but expunged from the history books, that of the Oglala Lakota Native Americans. While there, he embarks on a life-changing buffalo harvest, gets “schooled” by the women’s college basketball team, visits with a 14-year-old suicide prevention activist, and finds himself shoulder deep up a cow’s backside while trying to better understand employment issues on the reservation. With humor and pathos, he uncovers stories of hope and learns how culture has prevailed in the face of adversity.
“Shouting Secrets” tells the story of Wesley, a Native American writer who, after nine years, is faced with seeing his family after his mother suffers a stroke. Old wounds are opened as Wesley and his family deal with the events unfolding before them while trying to stick together through their mother’s illness. The film won Best Picture, Director, Actor and Supporting Actor awards at the 2011 Native American Film Festival. This will be the premiere showing of the film in the northeast.
The menu includes: New Native Fry Bread, Summer Squash Bread, Grandma Connie’s Buffalo Feast, Buffalo
Stew, Three Sisters Vegetables, Blueberry Wojapi, Sioux Indian Pudding, Ice Cream, Red Sassafras Tea and Coffee.
Tickets to the Brattleboro Rotary Club’s International Film & Food Festival, which can be purchased at
Vermont Artisan Designs & Gallery 2 (106 Main Street, Brattleboro), cost $25 each.
Rotary International is a 105-year old organization of business and professional leaders united worldwide
to provide humanitarian service and help build goodwill and peace in the world. There are approximately 1.2 million Rotarians who are members of some 31,000 Rotary clubs in more than 165 countries. For more information visit www.rotary.org.
The Brattleboro Rotary Club, founded in 1950, is an active community service club of 80 members who
engage in community and human service projects locally and internationally.
If you are interested in learning more about the Brattleboro Rotary Club or the sixth annual International Film & Food Festival, visit the Brattleboro Rotary Web site at brattlebororotaryclub.org
