Bounty

“We are citizens of the Penobscot Nation. Together we bring our families to Boston to read our ancestors’ death warrant”

Synopsis

Bounty, part of our Dawnland film series, reveals the hidden story of the Phips Proclamation, one of many scalp-bounty proclamations used to exterminate Native people in order to take their land in what is now New England. In the film, Penobscot parents and children resist erasure and commemorate survival by reading and reacting to the government-issued Phips Proclamation’s call for colonial settlers to hunt, scalp, and murder Penobscot people.

Film Details

Bounty Trailer

How can I watch Bounty? 

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“It may be buried history. But the atrocity of colonists’ bounty proclamations against Native American people also occupies the present. In the potent new documentary Bounty, members of the Penobscot Nation read one such death warrant to their family members, including their children, in order to share the truth.”
— WBUR, Boston’s NPR station
“The film takes place in the same ornate room where Lt. Gov. Spencer Phips signed the death warrant, and cuts between three groups of present-day Penobscot families as parents read his proclamation and try to explain it to their children. When you see the young people’s reaction, you realize that this is not a story in a book but a real event involving real people that still affects us today.”
— Portland Press Herald

Bountyfilm.org

Find even more photos, supplemental videos, e-timeline, and resources around Bounty at bountyfilm.org.

Meet the bounty filmmaking team

  • Penobscot Families: Dawn Neptune Adams, Carmella Bear, Layla Bear, Maulian Bryant, Shiwa Noh, Charlie Shay, Tim Shay, Kaden Neptune Adams

  • Filmmakers: Dawn Neptune Adams (Penobscot), Maulian Bryant (Penobscot), Adam Mazo, Ben Pender-Cudlip, Tracy Rector

  • Producers: Adam Mazo, Tracy Rector, Ben Pender-Cudlip

  • Learning Director: Mishy Lesser, Ed.D.

  • Historical Consultant: Rebecca Sockbeson, Ph.D. (Penobscot)

Reflect more deeply on bounty

The Bounty Teacher’s Guide and accompanying learning resources confront the systemic nature of scalp bounty proclamations and the inextricable relationship between taking scalps and taking land. The materials cover the topics below, and much more.

  • Drafting of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide

  • The role of land dispossession in settler-colonial societies

  • The spread of scalping from New England to other parts of the North American continent