Short Film Screening: Flying Bird’s Diary (2024)

“Flying Bird’s Diary” is a multi-award winning short 2024 film written by Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel (Mohegan) and directed by Madeline Sayet (Mohegan), based on the life of Fidelia Fielding, AKA Flying Bird (1827-1908), last speaker of the Mohegan language and a member of the CT Women’s Hall of Fame. This film chronicles the tragedy, perseverance, humor, and hope of Native American language and culture through generations, showing an Indigenous Connecticut woman’s struggles to maintain her worldview and lifeways in 19th century New England, and how the decolonizing repatriation efforts of one Ivy League university archive helped to fulfill Flying Bird’s goals a century after her passing.