 My name is Rebecca. I am the Director of Programs at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. And I work with Elizabeth Sackler to provide additional support for the Center for Foreign Minister here at the Brooklyn Museum. And I'm absolutely thrilled today to welcome Erica Hinton and Mia Contaro, their families, and Sandy Zag, the producer of the film The World Elsevich, and Susan Lazarus. And I'm really excited to be able to see a pageant here in the Brooklyn Museum. I know we've wanted to have it screen since last spring. So it's a wonderful treat to have everyone here for a conversation and to see the film. The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art opened in 2007, and it's an exhibition and educational facility dedicated to the past, present, and future of feminist art. As the permanent home of the iconic work, The Dinner Party, by Lady Chicago, the Center strives to raise awareness of feminism's cultural contributions to educate new generations about the meaning of feminist art, to maintain a dynamic learning facility, and to present feminism in an approachable and relevant way. The Feminist Gallery, which currently is featuring Michele Iba-Hasse of Specters in 1960, is only one piece of the Center's program. At its core, it's a space for open and free discussion, discourse, and exchange of ideas. Elizabeth Sackler, unfortunately, can't be here today because of an immediate health issue. But I know that she considers it a pleasure and a privilege to have these remarkable, courageous women fly in from the Southwest in order to tell their stories at the Sackler Center through today's film. So I'm going to bring up Susan Lazarus, one of the producers of the film, to introduce the film and the speakers, Sackler. It's interesting that it was 2007 when this institution was formed, but that's when Sandy started making this film. She'll tell you the story of how she came upon the unit of firefighters and was totally inspired by them to tell their story. We have also here Aunt Dolly, who you'll see in the film, and Butch Gregg, who's a firefighter who's also working side by side with his wife, Erica Hinty. So afterwards, there'll be a Q&A, so if you have any questions, please stick around. And thanks for coming, and enjoy. Pat G. Couraging reports tonight from the Western Wildfire Zone. Firefighters say they are gaining ground on the giant show-o fire in Arizona thanks in part to a remarkable team of firefighters. A phone call in the middle of the night is routine for 51-year-old Cheryl Bones. Since 1976, Bones has been crew boss for Apache No. 8, and that means travel, often for weeks at a time. 21 days without a break, 90 hours a week on the line. They have a reputation for killing the toughest of fire. By reservation standards where jobs are scarce, the pay is good. We went out, and we left our families behind. I had three kids, and they left behind five, two, and one years old when I started. That was pretty tough. Chippery, NBC News, show-o Arizona. You never knew what you were going to face. You were with a bunch of women that could handle anything. My people respect me because I'm putting my life on the line to protect what is ours, the beauty of the reservation. When they first started, they were probably the only women's, all women's crew, firefighting crew that was out there. This all-male firefighting camp would be becoming organized, the camp setting up. Then all of a sudden, there's these ladies that come into camp, and everybody's wondering exactly what's going on here. All hits would turn. Susan was the producer of the documentary, A Future, Image Before My Eyes, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. As a post-production supervisor, she worked on films ranging from Mississippi Missala, Bob Roberts, The Boxer, to The Door on the Floor Prime, and Inside Man. Her associate producer credits include Phyllis and Harold, and Before You Go. Susan Lazarus, more recently supervised post-production on Jim John Rushes, The Limits of Control, and Sean Durkin's film Martha, Marcy, Mae Marley. She is an active member of the New York Women in Film and Television, served on the board as vice-president in charge of programming, and is on the steering committee of the Women's Film Preservation Fund. Sam Desai, the director and producer, who's also a film distributor. Her short film Central Park premiered at Sundance in 1994. She went on to direct a feature called The Girl, which is based on a short story by French writer Manny Wittig, who was at the Toronto and Berlin Film Festivals in 2001. She did a documentary called Soul Masters in 2008, and currently is developing a documentary on Manny Wittig. Come on up, Sandy. We have in the audience, let's start with Erica Hinton, who, Erica started with Pelopak, come on up, and you've heard about her throughout the film. So, please sit here. I want to introduce which Greg is he here? He took the children to the vet. He'll be back later. And some of the children who are here were also featured in the film. And Nita Quintero, seven years old. 17 years, I'm sorry, with the Apache 8 and his now crew boss. And it was out on the wall of fire this year. You might have seen some of the hell attack on the news this summer when that big fire was going on, and you saw them dropping the buckets of water. That's what they were doing. So Sandy will ask anyone who's got any questions. So thank you all for being here. Erica and Nita and their families came from the White Mountain Apache Reservation here. So as you saw on the map, the reservation is in Arizona. And so we're very happy to have them come to New York City. This is Nita's first time in New York City. And Erica was here in the film screen at the Native American Film Festival at the Smithsonian. So I'm happy to tell you some more about the movie, but perhaps there are some questions that you'd like to ask first. And we can all participate with any questions you might have. Yes? First, congratulations on making such a personal film. I just want to know, as a filmmaker, did you need a fixer or did you go in by yourself in terms of getting deep into the culture and then inside the span? Yeah, thank you. As a matter of fact, Michael uses a filmmaker and I distributed two of his films with the Mike Pritzler Company. I'm very happy that you came. I met some women firefighters when I was in the Phoenix Airport. And I walked through a group of women and they were all in those yellow jackets that you see in the film. And the energy around them, there were many, many women in their 30s and 40s and 50s and 20s. And I just walked by and I said, who are you guys? And they said, we're firefighters from Fort Apache. And the words just kind of spilled out of my mouth. I want to make a movie about you. So I got the telephone number of a crew boss and I called during the fire season to find out if I could go up and to see if I could make a movie. And so they told me to talk to Cheryl Bones because Cheryl had been interviewed by the press, I think a number of times. And so I called Cheryl and I said I'd like to come up and see if I could do a little scouting. So she dropped the phone down, she spoke to a supervisor and she said, you can come up. I said, right away? And she said, yeah, you can come up right away. So I grabbed two friends of mine from Tucson and they came up and we did a little trailer. And this little trailer we cut and we were introduced to Cheryl's sister, who's Pearl Harvey who you see in the movie. And Pearl was actually the person that opened up all the doors in the reservation for us. She told me how to operate. And I did make several mistakes. So the first mistake was that little trailer that I made, I had a meeting with the chairman, Ron and Lupi, who you see in the film. And so it was the moment when the iPhone came out and so I gave him my iPhone and he was watching this little trailer that we made and he was smiling and looking at it and finally when the movie was over he said, where did you make this? And I said, here. And he said, who gave you permission? I thought, oh no, I never asked for permission to film on the reservation. So he said, this is a sovereign nation and if you go to England you have to follow the rules of England. If you're on the reservation you have to follow the rules here. And so he said, ten years, how's the rest? And I kept spinning and talking and then he said, okay, five years. And then he just left and he said, no you have to do this correctly. So I had to go to the tribal council and then after that Pearl introduced me to the cultural council and I was very, very supported actually. So that was the beginning of the learning process. Someone had a question for sure. Thank you for coming. For Nita or Erica. Ask about what happened this summer. So Nita, where did you go to work on these summer wildfires that were so fierce? My first fire was at the, it's not on the reservation but it was one of the history fire again. It's called the wildfire which was about probably another four or five thousand plus acres that was burned. But it came close to the reservation but we were on our side of the reservation but the other side was pretty much burned. So I went to almost like, probably five, six fires this past summer. And I wanted to mention that some of the footage is shot with a little camera. It's called a helmet camera and Nita was the first person that I gave the helmet cam to. Erica and Nita were the first people I gave the helmet cam to. So some of those shots, they're actually, when I couldn't be with them, they took a helmet cam on and they shot the fire scenes. So actually they're cinematographers of the film as well as being featured firefighters. And they did an amazing job really. What's the situation with the drugs? Because it seems like that's causing a lot of family tension. It's things within your culture that you're doing. Is there institutions that are set up for some young people to get help? How are you dealing with that? Erica, you're welcome. I'm not really sure. I think there is like help out there. But I'm not really sure because like in the summertime I'm just like always working. I don't even have a life. I just work all the time. And then when I do get laid off, I just spend time with my family. And I know there is a lot of things going on the reservation, but I know there is help. But it's like really up to the kids, you know, if they want that help. And so I know it is bad, but I don't really like try to deal with that stuff. I just kind of hear about it. It may not be as widespread as... Yeah, but, you know, it is there and it's really bad. You know, there's a lot of young kids. It seems like there's like a lot of alcohol too because, you know, you go to the store and there's like all these young kids that are just wasted and, you know, trying to ask for money and it is really sad. And that's to do with employment. Yeah. Opportunities for life thereof. Yeah, but like I said, I'm just like always working and if I'm not working with my family, because the time I lose for them in the summer, I try to spend as much time as I can when I'm not working with them. Thank you. Jess? I guess this is a silly question, but I'm just wondering how long a fire typically burns and you said you worked on six fires in the summer. So I was just wondering, like, how long do you usually burn four and how big they get? Or is it usually one big one? Yeah, once you get called up for an assignment to one of these fires and then it's like, it usually takes about two weeks to stay at that fire, to control that fire. And if it's a real huge fire, you can like stay two weeks or you can stay another week, which is like 21 days. But especially like a huge fire like this and take like forever to get it out. Yeah, it could take like a month, maybe, like even two months. It depends like the weather, you know, if it's really dry and then what's out there to burn. If there's a lot of timber, then you could just take that out. And then once the grass comes back, usually you can kind of get a hang of the fire but it depends what ahead of you. So it could be like weeks, it could be two weeks, it could be, I mean, it just, you can't stay. But you can't, you have a shift that has, because of the smoke inhalation, do they limit the shift? It depends on the fire behavior. If it's like really rapid, then you know, there's really nothing you can do. I mean, you can put water on there if it's just like spitting on it. So then, we saw like how Nailita dropped the water, but for those of you on foot, how do you fight fire physically? We have crews on the fire there. And then like for Erica said, she's on the Halitah crew. She has about maybe two or three people out there working with her. So you have like your handheld radio, and then there's some kind of flagging that they use out there. So for her part, her warriors, or she works, she's using like a small fire, she's using like a two to five acre fires. So that means she can, in her sport, they can just take it out then like, then yourself. But you guys, since they're water-riding, or? Like they're using on the show that we use, the tools that we use out there that they gave us. So then for her part, she can use the water, she can call the helicopter. Two ways. Yeah, and then like, once you get out there, you just build a line like all day, and it's like hard. This way of the line is something they know. Like, you know, like the tools you see, you could build a line like a trail site, or it could be like this size of the room you build. It's like a thing. Yeah, it just basically, you just clear everything up in front of you. You have the tools, you have the saws, and it depends on the line, but it could be this small, it could be this, and then like the size of the room. And when I went with the hotshots, that was hard. That was really hard. Because of like the water I have to carry, and then the food, and you have to be like self-sufficient for 24 hours. And it's just hot, and you know, it's dusty, and because when we got out there, we worked on the station fire. I don't know if you guys heard about that in California. Well, it was like one of the biggest fires, and they were already out there, and we caught up with them like a week later. And that whole time, they didn't really do anything. They just kind of stood by because of the fire behavior. So once we got there, the first day we were out in line, and we built a line that I think was like a dozer size, and it was hard because you just work. You work all day. And I remember thinking the first day I got there, I was like, what am I doing here? I should have just stayed home because you know, we're trying to get shade, and you just have to build your own shade. You're sitting there, you're just dirty, you're sweaty, and you're just working hard. And then the hiking too, it's really hard because it's like up and down, and it's real steep. And with the hotshots, you know, the guys, me and another girl, and they don't stop. You know, once you start, you just keep going until you get to the area where you need to be. And I'm proud to say that, you know, I kept up with them, and there's a couple of guys that stopped, but you know, we just kept going. We kept going, and we get on the line like at eight o'clock, and we work till nighttime. And then we have to hike out, and it's like three, four hours, and actually three, seven miles to get back to the coup cap. And, you know, there's days where you don't shower, you know, like six, five, seven days, you know, you're out there, you get dropped off at the helicopter, and there's like no service, no nothing, you know, you have what you have to eat. There's days where we just go with MREs, you know, just, that's the only thing we have. But it was really steep when I went down there because we worked out, you know, it was just like steep. So when you would sit down, you would kind of have to dig like a trench just, you know, in order to sit, and we were like hiking up, we were hiking down. And it was really hard, but I'm glad to say that I did it, and it is a hard, you know, it's a hard job. You know, I like doing it. Moving line, you just kept the tree in the direction that the fire is going, so that it won't continue to spread. Isn't it like a big trench? Yeah. A line is like a big hole, but it's all in a long way so that the fire can't jump over it. Yeah. It basically looks like a trail, you know, like a walking trail, but sometimes, like I said, it depends, like it could be really big. It could be like a mile, two miles away from the fire. And so, you know, you have to clear that out, or sometimes they use a dozer. It's there, you know, it's out, but you also have the helicopters dropping. So, you know, it's always about safety too, because you have a lot of people with you. When we have these shots in the film of the helicopter, your helicopter shots, and you saw that big, it's called a bambino, is that right? It's a bambino, it's like a big basket that drops into the water. We actually put one of those little handicams on a helicopter when we were in OMAC, and so you got this shot from the helicopter of the bucket dropping into the water and coming up and moving over the land. It's one of my favorite shots that he got, because it would be impossible to actually get that shot any other way. So, we also went, when we went out to OMAC, that was the first time that we actually followed the firefighters. There was a fire call, and as a matter of fact, there were several fires, and they didn't know where they were going. They knew that they were going west, so I said, please give me a call, let me know when you find out if you're going to California or Washington. So we just waited until they called, and then we actually flew while they were driving, and Erica were driving there, and so we met them at OMAC where there was a fire, and it was actually, you know, so easy to get permission to go out on a fire. But most of the people who were actually in charge of the guests, say, the press, or other people coming out of the fire were women, and so when we told them about the film, they were particularly helpful in letting us get out there to follow them. We had news crews that were very interested in following of the Apache 8 crew members in the Wallow Fire, which just happened recently, but they couldn't get out to find them. They were so deep into the fire that the crews that were interested in following them in DC couldn't actually reach them, because they were really, really far out into the fire zone. So any other questions? I wanted to introduce Ann Dolly. Ann Dolly? Would you stand up and say hello to everybody? Are you convinced that you need to come to Washington? How did you? I came here for the first time with Nita. I was sitting in the chair with the microphone. I was saying that on the first trip I went with Nita to Washington DC about coming out of death. So when she was talking about, I didn't know what was going to go. I was still working. I've been an LPN nurse at the work for 40 years in the hospital. I retired from there so I could do what I want. But then there was a great trip that I had. There's Bill Hess that's my final marriage to my niece. And he did a great job as portrayal. We went to all the things that you see in DC. This is the second time I'm in it so I was telling my niece Nita, where is the third one you're going to take me? But I'm so happy to be with her any time because I lost my sister her mom and the young mom and I'm always thinking about her and when she's away on the fire I kind of get scared and I just pray about it and I told Nita, I just pray as long as you're working on that fire now, don't forget about the Lord. Think about him. He won't help you. So I'm so happy to be with her on the second trip so I was asking where is our third trip now? Where are we going to go? So I'm happy when that when I started making the film I didn't have any idea of who the people in the film were going to be I just knew that there was this all women crew and so at the time I thought it would be a movie about a patchy aid crew but when I met Nita and Erika and Kate and Cheryl and became familiar with their personal stories I interviewed about 30 people maybe more about 30 firefighters and their stories were the ones that came came to the surface and the fact that Nita's sunrise ceremony was in National Geographic was a total surprise and the fact that Erika within the timing of the film became the first woman to patchy hotshot was also just an incredible success story and that Nita became the crew boss after training for for years to become a crew boss and the fact that Cheryl has a statue to herself in her image in Boise, Idaho so none of these things did I know as long as though I said I heard a great story about a great woman that I want to feature so I feel that the film was actually very was blessed we did a ceremony with the medicine woman before the beginning of the film and the doors were really open because it is not so evident to be an outsider and to come to a place and to be welcomed and to be for people to open their heart which they have done and giving their total support to the film and so I just want to say again how grateful I am to you both and to Antali for being in the film and to Nita and for all of your families and their stories and all of the reservation that was very supportive there was a moment when the chairman had never seen the film so we delivered the film by hand to the chairman and so he took the film and he just you know went in the house and then a couple of days later called the person who had delivered the film and said I really like it and I really can't hardly tell you what a relief it was that the chairman supported the film so I heard we should keep the lord with you I've heard about the medicine man and medicine woman how do you keep a balance between let's say your own traditional ways and learning about Christianity and how does that work within the culture does that pass down to your kids like that does it ever become complicated one more back home on the reservation there's like a Christian way and a traditional way so usually a lot of kids there are more traditional ways also when they go to church they know the lord and pray to the god and stuff and once they get into the traditional way they really want to learn more in the traditional way because there's a lot of singing they do a lot of sacred stuff when they do the sunrise dances so mostly like the kids now they want a tradition so they really put the church stuff on the side I know there is some people out there that some of the churches the holy world they say that like our tradition but I know that it's not because we pray to one god and we know that there's only one but there's some people they say no you can't do that but that's our tradition and I'm sure they were raised in that way because my mom she's really traditional when I was young I had her dance to like and I want that for my daughter and we should be proud of where we came from and I know when people talk against it like I said there is only one god and I don't know why they want to try to push that away and that's who we are that's our tradition and we shouldn't let that go I'm proud to say that in a way that was a couchy what I know this thing about traditional dancing it's come from a long way way back even myself my mom taught me what to do she had planned to make a dance for me and I didn't know what was going on just a girl that's the time it would start the way they believe is in the old days the way they believe if you have a dance it's supposed to make you a strong woman live a long life that's the real main thing do what you have to do for a family as a mom if you have a family start having children and work and once a man has to go to work that's the way it was way back but things have changed in the years that I noticed myself a lot of things have changed we used to a very traditional dance would be it's a sacred thing for us a bunch of people and I believed that myself because I had mine and I what my mom told me I think she was doing the right thing in talking the right thing but that's what I did for myself I'm still living here and I'm very proud of it I do have a family I have girls but I never had a dance for them because my girls they are not full blooded a passion or have hope their dad was a hopey but I lost him so I'm kind of alone bringing up my own children but they're all on their own now my children are all on their own and they kind of left me at the house by myself but I do okay so I'm very proud of what my mom talked about this traditional dance I think I'm a strong woman myself I would say was your question back was it anything else you'd like to say yeah I'm very honored to be here and I really like this film myself too people were talking back home about it but I'm glad to be here glad to be here I'm honored for Sandy and Susan I was so surprised when I saw Susan out there when I first met her she was from she was New York and I said wow what are you doing out here in Arizona you better watch out for his wall of patches out here and she was wow since you were with me that this could happen with you so I'll take care of you that's how I met Susan she's a good friend of mine also and I'm glad to be out here and honored myself I mean you know I'm honored to be here and to be a part of the Apache 8 and I'm glad to have met Sandy and Susan sorry you know that I hope you guys enjoyed it ladies out there that can do a man's job but I am honored to be here too I remember meeting when I first met Erica the Apache 8 crew for 14 days before it went co-ed and I was like 14 days is that enough yes so if there are no other questions thank you so much for coming really wonderful to be here and I thank Elizabeth Sackler for her supportive film and we're we're just very honored to be a part of it and to be here thank you so much I've got one thing for Jess I really want to thank you for this place here thank you Jess it was wonderful it was wonderful to hear your stories through the film if people are interested the film is being distributed by Native American public telecommunications and it's also being distributed by women being movies