My thoughts on “Kinaalda: Navajo Rite of Passage” stem primarily from the non-academic framing. The framing of “Kinaalda: Navajo Rite of Passage” is through the lens of the documentarian returning to her Navajo community after many years of separation and especially with this idea that she never got to experience the typical experience of a Navajo girl coming of age and therefore, not being authentically Navajo. For her, this journey, as she explicitly states, is about experiencing something “that should’ve been [her] and was not”. I didn’t entirely like this framing since it felt as though the experiences of her community were being co-opted by her to re-experience her youth and connection. However, I now see there are concepts that this framing…show more content… Another thing is that it provides an entry point for the viewer. Many people across America feel a disconnect from their heritage, but many more likely feel some sort of estrangement from their parents, a central idea of the documentarian’s perspective on whether she is authentically Navajo. Further, this does bring up an interesting point which is to what extent do the participants have a say in how the footage is used? There has to be some control considering that the most private part of the Kinaalda ceremony, the portion where Tanya goes into a private room with only the village ‘medicine man’, is left unfilmed despite almost all other portions being filmed. This is probably due to community input, but there are other possible reasons. In talking through the framework as a Navajo woman with little connection to her own coming of age, there is a considerable emphasis placed on the idea of what the ritual really means. For the documentarian, the ritual is emblematic of a parent’s connection with their growing child, which is certainly part of the
