Born as Thomas Dorsey, Tom Two Arrows (1920-1993) was an Onondagan-adopted Lenni-Lenape (Delaware) artist based in the Albany area. At age 21, he was commissioned to create a series of paintings depicting Iroquois games and dances. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, and first taught at Jacob’s Pillow in 1949 when this film was made. Rather than showing Iroquois dances as relics of the past, Dorsey argued that “the Iroquois, or as they call themselves, the Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse), are a powerful and sovereign political force in America today.” This film was shown as part of each presentation by Red Sky Performance in 2019, accompanied live by the Red Sky musicians who are heard here.
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