Christine Quintasket

About me:

Amy Kreitzer, screenwriter, collaborating with Colville Confederated Tribes members for a film project about Mourning Dove.

Christine "Mourning Dove" Quintasket (1888-1936) was a Colville and Okanogan Indian, born in a canoe crossing the Kootenai River in Idaho and she grew up in Northeastern, Washington, something of a symbolic entrance for a writer whose work crosses a vast chasm of cultural differences to enlighten (and therefore connect) her readers.

Mourning Dove was the first woman on the Colville Confederated Tribes Business Council, and is perhaps most well known as one the first female Native Americans to publish a fiction novel. She was witness to the Allotment and Assimilation Era (1887-1943) and her work is a firsthand account of the enforced alteration of a vital culture. Her memory lives on in the minds and hearts of her fellow Tribes members and others whom have enjoyed her texts which lovingly describe her rich culture.

Though she did, after years of effort, establish an audience for her publications, why wasn't Mourning Dove a successful author during her lifetime? Her writing is accessible and timeless (unlike the passages where it was obviously her editor's insertion). Instead, Mourning Dove had to labor in available industries in her region, such as long days spent picking hops, just to make a living, yet she would still type away nightly for many hours when she should have had the opportunity to sleep. Mourning Dove died when she was only 52, admitted to a hospital near Spokane in an apparently exhausted, perhaps battered, condition. To date, no totally clear explanation has been offered about how or why her life ended so tragically.

The Mourning Dove Film Project will honestly, and lovingly, share Mourning Dove's life story. Over five Years ago, while learning about Mourning Dove and the Plateau's Interior Salish tribes, Amy Kreitzer fell in love with a culture where gender equality was, and is today, a reality, and where the people "pre-contact" lived in tune with nature, reaping the bounty that it offered, and happily thrived in the breathtakingly beautiful, though sometimes harsh and unforgiving, environment. Now, Amy plans to collaborate with the many Colville Tribes members interested in honoring Mourning Dove's memory, within a musical format, a refreshing way to share this important story.

After she wrote him about the concept for a film project, Ben-Alex Dupris invited Amy to join the online network he created for the Colville Tribes, One Heart for the People, in order to share her ideas about the Mourning Dove project and right away she met kindred souls eager to get together to learn as much as possible about Mourning Dove, and honor her memory in the creative telling of her story. Many musicians/bands are already on board for this exciting project. For each scene given, the musicians involved will craft an original song- and many of them will portray characters as well. Traditional and contemporary music will accompany this powerful story which no viewer will ever likely forget!


This is a new myspace for the project so, if your "friends" link disappeared, please add again- thanks!