PORT ANGELES — A 15-minute documentary “Dear Georgina” will be screened at 12:35 p.m. Thursday.
A discussion with Mishy Lesser of the Upstander Project will follow in the Little Theater on the Port Angeles Peninsula College campus at 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
The free film and discussion also can be seen on Zoom at https://pencol-edu.zoom.us/j/89779530051. The meeting ID is 897 7953 0051.
“Dear Georgina” tells the story of Georgina Sappier-Richardson, who was removed from her home and Passamaquoddy community in Maine by Child Protective Services.
She would never see her parents again. Terror and abuse followed over 16 years in four different foster homes.
“Dear Georgina” follows this Passamaquoddy elder from Motahkomikuk as she tries to fill in the blurry outlines of her identity.
Georgina is just one of many thousands of Indigenous children with similar stories, organizers said.
Lesser is the learning director for the film and for Upstander Project. An Emmy award-winning researcher, Lesser has authored Upstander Project’s learning and viewer guides and is a Strasser Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies Affiliate. Lesser was a Fulbright Scholar in Ecuador and spent 12 years learning and working in the Andes. She is a descendant of Ashkenazi Jews whose ancestral language is Yiddish and lives with her husband in the territory of the Massachusett Tribe.
The event is co-sponsored by Peninsula College’s Magic of Cinema, Studium Generale, and House of Learning, Peninsula College Longhouse. For more information, contact longhouse@pencol.edu.
