Warrior Women is a story of two Lakota women activists, Madonna Thunder Hawk and her daughter Marcella Gilbert. It is a story of motherhood. It is also a story of the American Indian Movement, and of being “Indian” in “America.” These stories are nesting and intertwined. The film guides us through time in a circular way, poignantly illustrating a continuity of resilience and struggle through generations of a family, and of a people, sustained by women. Mothers and aunties are shown to be fierce defenders of culture, visionary thinkers, educators, nurturers, and performers of the carework that makes survival possible.Warrior Women begins and ends at Survival School, an Indigenous alternative to “government-run education,” through which Native youth are immersed in nature, culture, and activism. Class conversations filmed at the original “We Will Remember” Survival School of the 1970s mirror those held at Standing Rock some 50 years later. At We Will Remember, we glimpse Madonna engaging students in a discussion about the meaning of sovereignty. Marcella, herself a student at the school in the 1970s, says to the students of today: “Our school was based on what was going on then and what needed to happen. We kind of made up our own rules. That's what you guys are gonna do because this is yours. It's not ours; it's yours.”The importance of sovereignty, not only of nation but of self, is underscored throughout. Marcella explains: “People think Indians always knew that we were powerful, and we always acted that way. But we didn't! Everybody accepted the racism, but during that time, people were standing up and saying, ‘Hey, yeah, I am Indian! We want to be who we are, not who you are.’” Through acts of resistance both great and small—something so big as reclaiming Alcatraz Island for Indians of All Tribes and something so small as wearing moccasins—we witness an awakening. Another student of the original Survival School recalls: “That's how it started. Just reclaiming ‘this is who I am and this is what I stand for.’”We learn that forced assimilation through the boarding school system resulted in generations of Indigenous people who were not only disconnected from their cultures, but also hardened and incapable of vulnerability or affection. The film shows how Marcella has struggled with her mother's emotional unavailability and frequent physical absence during her childhood, due to her active role in the Movement. Nevertheless, as an adult, Marcella expresses understanding and admiration for her mother: “When you're a revolutionary, you have to make those sacrifices. . . . What she was doing rebuilt a nation.” Madonna also clearly admires and praises her daughter, now her comrade, who has broken a cycle and learned to be a loving parent to her own children while carrying on the work.Warrior Women features a trove of archival footage of day-to-day life in the American Indian Movement from the 1960s and 1970s. We see families laughing, playing, and learning together—scenes that contrast sharply with popular media reporting of the time, which cast organizers as violent, heavily armed terrorists. The filmmakers even include funny backstories, such as the context for the now iconic photograph taken during the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee of a smiling Robert Onco holding an AK-47 in the air. Likewise, through Warrior Women, the viewer witnesses Indian people living, loving, and organizing on the ground today.This film is appropriate for most audiences, though there is some reference to violent crime and occasional coarse language. Warrior Women is relevant to the field of folklore studies in that it shows everyday ways in which culture is preserved and transmitted—how heritage is living and always evolving. Given the colonial history and legacies of the field itself, especially in the American context, it may be particularly instructive for folklorists to witness empowered Indigenous people, possessing complex personhoods, literally through a Native lens. Co-director Christina D. King is an enrolled member of the Seminole Tribe of Oklahoma, and co-director Elizabeth A. Castle descends from the Pekowi Band of Shawnee. Their labor gives much-due recognition to these warrior women and others, whose dedication and sacrifice continue to make freedoms possible for Indigenous people everywhere, even as it helps usher in new generations of activists to continue the fight.The film's teaching utility is wide-ranging. It should prove useful for everyone from those working to support youth-run, youth-led programming to those interested in learning about American Indian life and the American Indian Movement, and from those seeking strategy for coalition-building to those trying to practice good self-care. Near the end of the film, we see an elderly Madonna Thunder Hawk exercising to maintain her physical ability to continue to do community work. She says, “The only thing I'm running against is myself. I don't run against time. I'm grateful for all the time I have.”In summation, Warrior Women is a compelling, layered film, reminding all who view it that, as Madonna Thunder Hawk says: “We as Indigneous have been here and we'll always be here. We belong here. We have inherent rights, and we know who we are.” American Indians are a force to be reckoned with. And so are mothers and aunties.