Available for Screening: A Film Honoring Ohlone Continuity, Culture & Future
Main Page about the Film
Ohlone Film Page and resources: https://sites.google.com/kanyonkonsulting.com/ohlone-film
What the Film / Video Does
- The film offers a historical and contemporary portrait of the peoples historically referred to as the Ohlone, not as a vanished “past people,” but as living communities with ongoing traditions, struggles, and resilience.
- It shifts the narrative from mere “survivance” (survival) under colonization, to “thrivance” … emphasizing cultural resurgence, land stewardship, memory, identity, and ongoing Indigenous presence.
- Accompanied by an educational guide, the film is meant as a teaching and awareness-raising too, for educators, students, community members, institutions, and allies.
kanyonkonsulting.com
Who Makes and Voices It
- One of the leads is Gregg Castro (Salinan + Rumsien-Ramaytush Ohlone): longtime cultural preservation advocate, educator, archaeologist, and community leader.
- The other principal voice is Kanyon CoyoteWoman (Mutsun-Ohlone), Tribal Chairwoman of Indian Canyon Nation, founder of Kanyon Konsulting LLC, multimedia artist, educator, land-based activist, and cultural consultant, bringing lived experience, Indigenous pedagogy, and advocacy to the project.
- The production also involved collaborators (video production, other community participants), making it a community-rooted and multimedia-driven educational project.
- LFK Media (Lorenzo & Marisa): A documentary-style video team blending business strategy and theater training to create powerful, story-driven films. They’ve produced marketing and narrative work for organizations like FaultLine Theater, Z Space, CalShakes, Crowded Fire Theater, and Shotgun Players.
- Crowded Fire Theater: A San Francisco home for bold, diverse, and innovative new plays, supporting emerging voices through productions, workshops, commissions, and their Matchbox new-play development program.
Key Themes & Messages
- Continuity & Survival: The Ohlone are not just historical, they remain present, existing in diverse and evolving ways, keeping cultural memory, land ties, and Indigenous identity alive.
- Resilience & Revitalization: The film honours past trauma (colonization, displacement, erasure), while foregrounding ongoing efforts to reclaim language, land relationships, cultur, working toward “thrivance.”
- Land, Place & Responsibility: Emphasis on land stewardship, environmental responsibility, sacred sites, and the importance of recognizing Indigenous relationships to place; not just history, but present and future land-based obligations.
- Truth-Telling & Education: The film challenges colonial narratives, demands honesty about history (violence, dispossession, marginalization), and advocates for inclusion of accurate Indigenous histories in curricula, institutions, and public consciousness.
Educational / Community Uses
- As a teaching tool: ideal for classroom settings (schools, colleges), community groups, cultural institutions … giving students and allies a grounded, Indigenous-centered view of Ohlone history and living presence.
- As a conversation starter: helps open dialogue around colonization, land justice, Indigenous identity, cultural survival, useful for DEI work, environmental groups, land planning, public institutions.
- As resource material: the guide + video provide references, context, and direction for further learning, activism, community building, and allyship.
✨Why It Matters, Especially Now
- It offers a counter-narrative to the often-erased or romanticized “Native past,” reminding viewers that Indigenous communities continue … with evolving identities, knowledge, and responsibilities.
- It supports decolonization of education and memory, urging institutions, educators, and society to acknowledge truth, reckon with history, and support Indigenous futures.
- It connects cultural memory + environmental stewardship + justice … showing how Indigenous values, land relationships, and activism are deeply interwoven with ecological, social, and spiritual survival.
Request a Screening of this Film: OHLONE PEOPLE – SURVIVANCE TO THRIVANCE
https://forms.gle/Q8Hovfj6S3GGdreKA
To request access to the film and section clips, please fill out the following survey. Once you have completed the form, you will receive a link to an educational packet that contains the link to the film
