America ReFramed

Where God Likes To Be (3x23)

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Where God Likes To Be focuses on three young protagonists full of hope and promise - Andrea Running Wolf, Edward Tailfeathers, and Douglas Fitzgerald - following them over the course of a summer that marks a turning point in all of their lives. Each grapples with whether to leave and pursue opportunities far from home, or stay behind with friends and family potentially struggling with limited opportunity and marginalization. Edward is looking for work but doesn't even get a call back from national stores and fast food chains. He wonders if this has anything to do with his last name, Tailfeathers, and if employers are not willing to work with Native Americans due to the stereotypes that are attached to them. He relieves his frustration by playing loud metal music with his band “Nothing Survives” in a friend’s garage. In the intimacy of his bedroom, time stands still as he strums his guitar and sings a love song. Andi, a young woman who graduated high school with honors, is on her way to the University of Montana in Missoula, taking with her lots of photos of family and friends as well as her favorite poster of Sitting Bull. This is her first time away from home and she anxiously sits on the train not knowing what to expect. Once at her University dorm she soon feels lonely and out of place. When she returns to the reservation again after her first months away she visits her grandfather’s grave and realizes how deep her connection to her home and her ancestry really is. Doug struggles to make a living on the reservation but vows never to leave his home. He is proud to be a true cowboy and an Indian. A young family man, living in a small house with his wife, his baby daughter and his siblings, mother and grandfather, he worries that families on the reservation today are not teaching their kids about their ancestors and connection to the land which nurtures their identity, as well as their native language and culture.