Free Growth (1970)

Description: Black and White UCLA Student Film, Preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. A cross-cultural documentary film from filmmaker Alan Gorg exploring the United States education system through an alternative lens. The film features a Hopi man who was taken from the Hopi Reservation and sent to the Sherman Institute in Riverside, a compulsory boarding school that forced cultural assimilation of Native American children to Anglo-American culture. He speaks to his experience reviving his relationship to traditional land and cultural practices. An African-American teenager speaks about the poor conditions inside California public schools. Several white and African American "hippie" children and their teachers explore alternative ways of schooling at the Los Angeles Free School. Film dedicated to the Hopi Independent Nation, Committee for Traditional Indian Land and Life, Los Angeles Free School.