This Land Carries Us

Logline

Guided by her grandmother reciting her late brother’s words in Tewa, a filmmaker honors family and intergenerational memory across Tewa homelands in Northern New Mexico.

Synopsis

This Land Carries Us is a short experimental doc that centers Tewa stories and memory across Tewa homelands in Northern New Mexico. Guided by the voice of the filmmaker’s grandmother, who recites a story written by the filmmaker’s late younger brother in the Tewa language, the film unfolds as a sensory meditation on family and intergenerational connection.

Created for the Tewa Nangeh / Tewa Country exhibition at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, the film responds directly to the absence of Tewa people in landscapes historically celebrated in Georgia O'Keeffe's work, re-centering Tewa presence.

Drawing from the filmmaker’s upbringing between San Ildefonso Pueblo and Santa Fe, This Land Carries Us is an offering to family, language, and the land that carries us.

The film affirms a truth: the relationship between Tewa people and ancestral lands is ongoing, embodied, and unbroken.

DIRECTOR STATEMENT

I'm from San Ildefonso Pueblo (PoWohGeh Owingeh / Where the Water Cuts Through). The land where I was raised, between San Ildefonso Pueblo and Santa Fe (OgaPogeh Owingeh / White Shell Water Place), is one of the most special places in the world. This Land Carries Us is an offering back to our Tewa lands, and more specifically, to our Tewa people.

Created for the Tewa Nangeh / Tewa Country exhibition at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, this short experimental documentary responds to the absence of Tewa people in landscapes historically celebrated in O'Keeffe's work. Drawing from my own upbringing, I chose to center Tewa presence, voice, and memory across our ancestral homelands. The film reaffirms what has always been true: you cannot speak of Tewa land without also speaking of Tewa people. Before it was called O'Keeffe Country, it was, and will always be, Tewa Country.

Guided by my grandmother's voice reciting my late little brother Tyler's words in Tewa, the film unfolds as a sensory meditation on land and intergenerational connection. I adapted a story Tyler wrote when he was in high school and asked my grandmother, Barbara Gonzales, to translate it into our Tewa language shortly after his passing.

Through site-specific footage, family narratives, archival Hi-8 material, present-day portraits, stop-motion, astrophotography, and Polaroids, the film brings together generations of Tewa people and memory. These portraits of our people, in both traditional and modern clothing, are acts of visibility and love. Our connection to this place is not just of the past, but also of the present and future.

I come from six generations of Pueblo pottery artists. When my family works with clay, we think good thoughts so our pottery reflects that same "goodness". I approach filmmaking the same way. I respect the spirit of the story and create with love for my people. This Land Carries Us celebrates being Tewa and reminds visitors that we are still here, living and thriving on the lands that have always carried us.

Charine Pilar Gonzales (Ku’yan Povi)

Tewa Filmmaker | San Ildefonso Pueblo | Povi Studios

Charine Pilar Gonzales

Charine Pilar Gonzales is a Tewa filmmaker from San Ildefonso Pueblo (PoWohGeh Owingeh) and Santa Fe (OgaPogeh Owingeh), New Mexico.

Her most recent film, This Land Carries Us (2025), won Best Documentary Short award at the 2026 deadCenter Film Festival and was featured in the Tewa Nangeh / Tewa Country exhibition at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Her other works include PoWohGeh Speaks (2025), the first feature film entirely in Tewa, created in partnership with San Ildefonso Pueblo; and River Bank (Pō-Kehgeh) (2023), a short film that marked the return of narrative fiction filmmaking to San Ildefonso Pueblo for the first time since the 1980s.

Charine co-produced Winding Path (Sundance 2024) and associate-produced People of the West (2026). She earned an MFA in Creative Writing - Screenwriting from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in May 2026.

She is a 2026 Forge Project Fellow, 2026 imagineNATIVE Screenwriting Shorts Lab Fellow, 2025 Stowe Story Labs New Voices - New Mexico Fellow, and 2024 Sundance Institute Native Lab Fellow. She lives in Santa Fe with her family and chunky orange tabby, Cheddar.