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creative team

Jennifer Morison Hendrix

Jennifer received her MFA in playwriting from the University of Washington School of Drama.  In addition to writing for the stage, she teaches creative writing and works as a freelance writer and editor.

Sam Morison

Sam serves as an appellate defense attorney at the U.S. Department of Defense. He has been recognized for his legal research and writing and has published and lectured extensively on the consequences of Jackson's actions.

Where did the idea for the film come from?

Origin

Sam Morison and his colleagues were serving as appellate defense counsel for convicted Guantanamo Bay detainees when they were led to the story of Andrew Jackson’s invasion of Spanish Florida and discovered the role played by Milly Francis. Sam brought the story to his sister, Jennifer Hendrix, to develop the screenplay. She is also writing the script for a stage version.

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As Representative Henry Clay had predicted in 1819, Jackson's unlawful executions of Arbuthnot and Ambrister during the First Seminole War would have repercussions far into the future. 

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In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration set up military commissions at Guantanamo Bay to try accused foreign terrorists. The legal foundation for this hybrid military and civilian court system was flimsy at best.

 

None of the detainees were American citizens, nor were they citizens of a country with which America was officially at war. They were denied the civil rights granted to anyone tried in the American federal system; they were also denied the rights granted by international law to prisoners of war.

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In an effort to find a legal precedent, government prosecutors went all the way back to 1819, when Congress failed to censure Andrew Jackson for trying and executing two British civilians accused of “aiding an enemy of the United States" on foreign soil.

 

Both the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) and the Seminole Tribe lodged official protests, noting that the government had effectively equated the Native Americans in Florida with al Qaeda terrorists. Nonetheless, Jackson’s acquittal for what legal scholars would later describe as “murder” was used to legitimize the military tribunals.

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Read more here:

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Relevance

Why is Milly's story relevant now?

Every day in America, thousands of ATMs spit out millions of images of Andrew Jackson, the slave-owning general who prevailed in the First Seminole War and acquired Florida for the United States. During that conflict, however, the real hero was a Native American woman that few people remember: Milly Francis. This film is about Milly, her dramatic collision with General Jackson, and the moral clarity that sets her apart from everyone else in the story.

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Current discussions of racism in America are inspiring painful soul-searching, impassioned debates about reparations, and a backlash of white supremacist ideology. Milly’s story is a vehicle for a nuanced exploration of American’s complex racist past.

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In this story Andrew Jackson and other bigots are guilty of brazen racist cruelties; however, they are not the only guilty parties.

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Robert Ambrister’s appointment of himself to lead the Black Seminoles to freedom and Alexander Arbuthnot’s bland paternalism toward the Creek and Seminole people are also racist.

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Duncan McKrimmon and Colonel Hitchcock’s admiration for the “Creek Pocahontas” reduces Milly to a romanticized object in the white mythology of America.

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Even more principled white politicians, such as John Quincy Adams (who personally abhorred slavery) and Henry Clay (who voted against the Indian Removal Act), resisted efforts to declare universal emancipation, fearing it would tear the nation apart--which happened anyway a few decades later.

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Despite clear provocation, even Prophet Francis’ blanket hatred for all whites might fairly be judged as racist. Milly is the only character who sees past the prejudices of her time and maintains her moral integrity.

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The politics of Jackson’s day also hold up a mirror to contemporary politics. Not only did his actions in Florida provide a legal justification for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, but Jackson's no-holds-barred populist campaign also forever changed the way U.S. presidents run for (and behave in) office.

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