KATAH-DIN
2014, 16mm, 34 min, color & b&w, sound
The people who, for centuries, have lived in what is now Maine are called the Wabanaki, an Eastern Algonquin
word meaning people of the dawn. Called this because they live where the sun first strikes the continent at the peak
of Katahdin. This place was home to a Wabanaki woman born into the Penobscot tribe named Molly Spotted Elk.
Molly was a doorway between worlds; she was the first Wabanaki person to formally record the creation history
of her people in her book, Katah-din: Wigwam Tales of the Wabanaki Tribe; while simultaneously performing the
American Indian stereotype at nightclubs in New York, Paris; and most notably starred as Neewaa in H.P. Carver’s
1930 film The Silent Enemy. The history and memory retained in the Katahdin landscape is revealed through Molly’s
archive, amateur film, found sound, and contemporary observation. The figure of Molly is used as a lens to examine
the process of erasure, restoring to American history something that has been lost but hidden in plain sight.