Sky Hopinka
b. 1984
"I've always known who I was. It’s always been a part of my life,” says Sky Hopinka, a Ho-Chunk artist and filmmaker. A descendent of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Native Americans, Hopinka, who was born in Ferndale, Washington, completed his undergraduate studies at Portland State University (PSU), where he first became interested in documentary cinema. His early films, operating in a more traditional vérité style, exhibit an abiding interest in Indigenous language revitalization and a commitment to cultural heritage. These initial forays into filmmaking, he says, were reactions of a sort to issues of the cinematic representation of Native Americans—projects undertaken to “feel like we had control over what we were doing and the films we were making.” After a few years teaching Indigenous languages at PSU—with a focus on the Pacific Northwest–derived Chinuk Wawa tongue—Hopinka relocated in 2013 to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, homeland of the Ho-Chunk Nation, where he enrolled in a graduate program for experimental film at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His first brush with experimental cinema was a revelation. Realizing he could more uniquely express the nuances of endangered l…
Films