Club Native

Tracey Deer’s documentary, Club Native, displays a beautiful montage of strong, confident, and talented Mohawk women who have all had to make complicated decisions in their lives based on what being Native means to them.

Living in a Kahnawake community with two powerful, yet unspoken rules—1) Do not marry a white person, and 2) Do not have a child with a white person—the women struggle to reconcile their culture with their hearts. Strongly believing that any partner they choose who respects Mohawk culture should be admitted into the tribe, these women face an uphill battle against tradition. As Deer shows through a series of striking interviews, blood “purity” is still a deeply ingrained value, with many in the tribe believing that membership is to be held exclusively by those who measure up to the blood quantum criteria.