Indigenize the Plate Premiere Tour Wrap Up

Indigenize the Plate is a documentary that explores the connection of food and Indigenous ways of life. It makes the case that rescuing that way of life begins with rescuing the food. The two are linked and they define and shape each other. Natalie Benally, the co-founder of Tse'Nato' serves as host for the film as she takes us to her home in Dinétah (Navajo Nation) and shares her family's history of subsistence farming and how and why it's disappeared. She then journeys to connect with a kindred community in the Andes who are taking steps to preserve and protect their way life by starting with their endemic ingredients, traditional preparation, and the ceremonies surrounding that food.

Thanks to the support of Vision Maker Media, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Creative Startups, and American Public Television, Indigenize the Plate is now broadcasting across the country and available to stream on PBS Passport.

Behind the scenes making Indigenize the Plate

Concurrently with this four-year distribution, Indigenize the Plate had several premieres ahead of what we aim to become a larger tour through 2027. Here are some highlights from the premiere tour as well as an idea of what's to come.

The Guild Cinema, Albuquerque, New Mexico // August 27th, 2024
Albuquerque has been Tse'Nato's home since its beginning and we were so pleased that the first premiere was there. We worked with the folks at, locally famous indie theater, The Guild Cinema. Even through the pandemic, the theater managed to retain its community of moviegoers. It remains the best place in the city to catch the latest indies, foreign, classic, and cult films. It's also home to several local and touring film festivals. The turn out was wonderful with a 2/3's full house. The screening was also accompanied by the premiere of our short dance film Adziil. The latter of which was about to embark on the film festival circuit. More on that soon :).

A The Guild Cinema

The Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico // September 18th, 2023
Thanks to our hosts, the School for Advanced Research (SAR). Indigenize the Plate was screened to a completely sold out theater at the CCA. SAR is an institute based in Santa Fe that specializes in various disciplines and supports the work of Indigenous scholars, artists, and researchers. The film itself received a lot of positive feedback from the audience and sparked a thoughtful post-screening discussion. The whole talk is available here:

Oxford University, Oxford, UK // May 7th 2024
Much to our amazement, Indigenize the Plate reached all the over to the UK. Thanks to an interview Natalie did for the Toasted Sister Podcast. A student from Oxford University reached out to us after listening to the episode and we were able to work together to organize a screening on campus. We've talked about the idea for a subsequent screening as part of a larger UK tour in the future.

Eco Centro, San Antonio, TX // May 14th, 2024
Thanks to the organizing support of a few local friends Indigenze the Plate found a host with Eco Centro for an intimate screening, which gathered representatives from numerous local food, grassroots food-access, and endemic food advocacy organizations from the local area. One of the most marvelous outcomes from this screening was the fact that many of these local organizations had not connected before and found they were doing very similar work. There was even the beginning conversations of potential collaborations among them. In many ways this screening exemplified what would be hoped to achieve with a larger film tour for the documentary. These screenings would need not to necessarily have massive turn outs, a red carpet, and talk-back discussions with the filmmakers but rather serve as the center piece to gather local change agents and connect them with their community. More on that in the "What's Next" section.

At Eco Centro

Wildflower Playhouse, Taos, New Mexico // September 10th, 2024
Continuing the trend from Eco Centro, Indigenize the Plate's screening acted as a community-centered event at Wildflower Playhouse. It brought in members who work locally in agriculture, local culinary artists, and featured an opening presentation from another New Mexico-based film company - Chile Line Media. They came to talk about their recently grant-funded narrative drama film The Way We Carry Water - a story about Northern New Mexico's acequia culture. For farmers from this region, acequia's are akin to aqueducts and remain among the most essential parts of cultivation. They are also as sacred as the water that flows through them. As of the writing of this article, production has already begun on the project and you can learn more about it here.

From The Way We Carry Water

From The Way We Carry Water

From The Way We Carry Water

At Wildflower Playhouse

What's Next
When documentaries are done right, they have a way of leaving the audience feeling energized to get involved and be a part of the change. But without a clear next step to take, that energy tends to dissipate until the next documentary with the next issue rolls along. So what if we turned a film tour into a change campaign? This is a film that's not just about food sovereignty. It's about food access, education, and a recognition that it takes all of us to save our food and ourselves. A society that puts forward clean, organic, and bio-dynamic food for all, can't exist alongside a hyper-industrialized and over-processed food system. There are grass roots organizations, local growers, mutual aids, entrepreneurs, and host of others who are working hard to bring that better food system forward. Those are the folks we want up on stage after the movie's done. We want to call out to the audience and say "if you're feeling fired up and wanna do something, stay in your seats! Hear from people in your own community who are doing this work." As movie attendance declines at huge multiplexes we have found that people will still turn up for the indie films and the one-off, unique experiences like this. Especially if the message resonates. We want to make that model the center piece for change that can go further than inspiration. Let's learn something with the screening and do something with the orgs in your local area.

We are currently in the middle of outreach for this tour and if you want to bring this to your town or city, please reach out to us. Whether it's a university, local theater, art gallery, or a community center - any place with a screen can be the next destination for the film and a chance to shine light on someone or someones doing that important work.