Inheritors of Silence and Secrets is an original screenplay based on true events.

After inheriting a family ring from her mother, a TV reporter from Chicago travels across the ocean to the home of her ancestors—the land of storytelling—and back in time to discover the saga of the ring and her family’s part in the tragic and life-altering events surrounding the Great Hunger in Ireland in the 1840s. Interwoven in their story is the plight of a group of Native Oneida people and of Joshua Glover, a runaway slave. His decision to stop running sets in motion tragic events, culminating in the loss of over 400 lives one stormy night with the sinking of the steamship, the Lady Elgin.

Background

The stories of the Irish, Native American and African American tribal history tells of the effect of cultural loss. To make a new life after that loss—language, culture, land, spiritual choice—the dispossessed must put the past behind them and leave one fight to begin another. Losing touch with their cultures, they lost touch with themselves, opening the way to addictions, abandonment and an enforced identity. The Irish over-achieved in order to put the painful past behind them, eventually transmuting denied feelings into the almost comical Irish pride and pugnaciousness, which covered the brutality of the real situation. Native Americans and African Americans were also left with the consequences of destroyed cultures, which impacted generations.

Inheritors of Silence and Secrets is not a story of retribution, but one of understanding. In the words of Bishop Desmond Tutu, “A wound must be cleaned out and examined before it will heal. It is the unexamined wound that festers and finally poisons.” It is in going back that we often find the way forward.