In December 2021, Jerod Pushetonequa and Oogie Push reached out to Ryan Stopera about filming a music video. The pandemic had halted powwows and performances across the country. Native American communities were reeling from the loss of culture and connection. They wanted to keep sharing online, however they could.

That first shoot revealed a story too deep for a short video. So, the team kept going. They followed their relationships to the Rosebud Reservation, the Meskwaki Settlement in Iowa, Honolulu, and Mataxhi, Mexico. They had no resources, hundreds of hours of footage, and people who believed in what they were making.

Nobody was paid. Not the crew. Not the director. Not the knowledge keepers, dancers, and elders who appeared on camera and shared their culture, their ceremony, and their stories. Every person who contributed gave their labor as a gift.

Four years after that first phone call, the film was finished.

Now that it is traveling to MSPIFF, the Zeitgeist Film Festival, and many more to come. Why We Dance is a documentary directed by Oogie Push, that documents Indigenous dancers, elders, and knowledge keepers sharing living cultural practices as teachers. Indigenous dance is a curriculum that transmits survival knowledge, relational memory, and the technology of collective resilience- the same knowledge federal policy tried to criminalize in 1923. What Why We Dance captures is what survived that suppression.

This film is for the communities that gifted us Why We Dance. It is for those witnessing what is happening in Minneapolis, across the United States, and around the world, and searching for something that holds. It is for those who need to be witnessed, to learn, to find comfort, to be inspired, to heal- The gathering is the medicine, and the dance is the teaching.

The Participant Impact Fund is how we begin to honor what everyone gave and to carry this film to the people who need it most.

(Jeevi Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. All donations are fully tax-deductible)

Why We Dance - Participant Impact Fund