Whose stories get told, and how? Anpa’o Locke, an Afro-Indigenous filmmaker and writer, has been asking herself this question her whole life. Growing up, Anpa’o longed to see families like her own represented in popular culture. She rarely encountered positive representations of Indigenous people, and, in real life, found herself struggling to navigate anti-Blackness from within the community she strove to elevate.
So she took matters into her own hands.
Anpa’o is now a filmmaker whose work focuses on the Native diaspora experience, uplifting Black Native stories, and producing a critical analysis of Indigenous activism — or, in other words, she’s a creative community organizer.
