WMI Plus At Home - Pura Fé with Gwendolen Cates

WMI PLUS At Home experiences bring music from around the world into the comfort of your home. Renowned artists share their lives, instruments, and stories from their personal environments, bringing an intimacy and uniqueness to each event. These talks are led by fellow musicians, journalists, and ethnomusicologists. Live captioning will be provided during the event.

We are thrilled to provide these events for FREE. If you are able to make a donation of any amount while registering for this event, it will help us to keep the music playing. THANK YOU!

Monday, April 15, 2024 – 6 PM EST

WMI PLUS At Home Experiences are free of charge, but you must register to reserve your space. You will receive an order confirmation once your registration is complete that includes the link to the event. Only registered participants will receive email instructions on how to join the event via Zoom online. Bring your questions! The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session with attendees posting their questions electronically for live answers.

Pura Fé (Tuscarora/Taino) is an Indigenous activist, singer-songwriter, and storyteller known for her distinct, soulful vocals and for breathing life into several musical genres. As the founding member of the internationally renowned Native Women’s a cappella trio Ulali, Pura Fé helped to create a movement throughout Indian Country, which not only empowered Native Women’s hand drum and harmony but also built a bridge for Native music to the mainstream music scene.

More recently, deep cultural roots have brought her to the world of Native Blues, where she is known for her lap-steel slide guitar recordings. Her body of work is extensive, including six solo albums, one of which won her a Grand Prix du Disque from L’Académie Charls Cros (French Grammy) for Best World Album in 2006 for Tuscarora Nation Blues, and a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist for Follow Your Heart’s Desire.

Pura Fé’s music has been featured on many movie soundtracks, documentaries, and television commercials including the award-winning 2017 documentary, RUMBLE: The Indians that Rocked the World. She supports many social injustice gatherings as a presenter and musician.

Gwendolen Cates is an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker, photographer, and author. Her films have been screened at film festivals, on PBS, at colleges and universities, museums, and the United Nations. Originally a photographer whose portraits of luminaries from Rosa Parks to George Clooney have been featured in national and international magazines, including Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Life, Parade, and People, her critically acclaimed book Indian Country (Grove Press 2001) inspired Oprah to begin a series on Native Americans.

Her first award-winning documentary film WATER FLOWING TOGETHER (2007) about Navajo/Puerto Rican New York City Ballet star Jock Soto premiered nationally on PBS Independent Lens in 2008. Recent productions include WE ARE UNARMED (2020), a fresh look at the peaceful resistance to the DAPL pipeline at Standing Rock through the eyes of three Indigenous women; THE GOOD MIND (2016), which follows Onondaga Nation leaders as they fight for environmental sovereignty of ancestral lands stolen by New York State in violation of a 1794 treaty with George Washington; and the short film GUSWENTA (2013) about the 400^th anniversary commemoration of the first treaty between Indigenous people and early settlers on Turtle Island. Gwendolen’s latest feature documentary film THE DOCTRINE, currently in post-production, is about the Doctrine of Discovery, 15th-century laws issued by the Vatican that continue to devastate Indigenous peoples and the planet today. A native New Yorker, and the daughter of a linguist who was fluent in Diné Bizaad (the Navajo language), Gwendolen studied cultural anthropology at the University of Chicago. She lives in Manhattan.

WMI Plus At Home experiences are supported by a grant from Con Edison.