Stories I Didn’t Know

Rita Davern exposes an ugly reality at the heart of a family legend. Her family has always been proud to say that their great grandparents once owned Pike Island, a beautiful piece of land in Minnesota. But when Rita reveals what happened to the Indigenous people who lived there before, family members react with a mix of understanding, arguments, and anger. Rita researches this country’s complicated legacy of westward expansion. Along the way she meets Ramona, a Dakota educator. The experiences of Ramona’s ancestors put faces and names to US Government policy while Rita listens and learns. This restorative and deeply personal documentary is an example of facing the past to figure out the future.