The Remaining Native Team on the Sundance Institute Labs, Community and More

By Paige Bethmann

Before my grandmother passed away in 2019, I went to visit her in the hospital where she'd been for a few weeks. When I arrived, the nurses smiled and said, We really should be charging admission for all the visitors she has. A renowned Mohawk storyteller - relatives, friends, and staff came by on their lunch breaks to listen to my grandmother recall her experiences as an educator, about her family, and her predictions for Wheel of Fortune. However, in this rare visitor window, it was just her and I.

As I sat in the chair beside her, I asked her to retell me a traditional story: How the Birds Got Their Songs. It was one that I knew by heart as a little girl sitting at her feet years ago, when I fell in love with the colorful pictures she painted with her words. The story brings together all of the birds in the forest for a competition - a race to the Skyworld, and whoever could make it there first would receive the most beautiful song. As I eagerly awaited for her to begin, she yawned, smiled, and said, No, you tell it to me.

To be given space and trust as a storyteller is a rare generosity and, as I sit here in 2025, I feel that this memory of my grandmother entrusting me is mirrored in my experience as a Sundance Institute-supported artist through the Documentary Film Program (Edit and Story Lab), with my first feature film, Remaining Native, a coming-of-age documentary told from the perspective of Ku Stevens, a 17-year-old Native American runner, struggling to navigate his dream of becoming a collegiate athlete as the memory of his great grandfather's escape from an Indian boarding school begins to connect past, present, and future.

LINK:	https://www.sundance.org/blogs/the-remaining-native-team-on-the-sundan...
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