Where's My Movie?: Sacagawea

It's Where's My Movie? Monday! Each month, For Nerdy Girls features an inspirational individual who has changed the world but, for some reason, does not have her own biopic. These women are amazing human beings who should be commemorated as historical game changers in textbooks and statues and monuments. For now, we will discuss them on this internet blog.

(For comparison, Steve Jobs has been portrayed in 11 documentaries, four feature films, and one theatrical production. He created a company that sells phones.)

Name: Sacagawea

What she did: Sacagawea served both as a tour guide and a Shoshone and Hidatsa interpreter for the Lewis and Clark expedition. She also functioned as a native ambassador for the party's 33 white men, who were scared of the native inhabitants they would encounter as they traipsed through those inhabitants' sacred lands.

[the most accurate video representation of Sacagawea's story that I could find]

Why she needs a movie: She doesn't have film about her, but Lewis and Clark do, in which Shoshone woman Sacagawea was played by white American woman Donna Reed. All of that sentence needs to be rectified. Not only because Sacagawea lead the overrated duo and their band of merry men across the country, but because she did so at the age of 16, two months after giving birth to her son, who was conceived by the 30-something-year-old man who had purchased Sacagawea as his slave/wife. Sacagawea then spent the rest of her postpartum recovery negotiating horse trades, saving emergency supplies from a sinking boat capsized in a storm, and walking to the Pacific Ocean through the Rocky Mountains, all while carrying a two-month-old baby on her back.

For his service, Sacagawea's slavemaster/husband received $500.33 and 320 acres.

For her service--without which Lewis and Clark would be two anonymous guys from the 1800s, instead of two of the most famous trespassers in American history--Sacagawea received nothing...

...until the year 2000, almost 200 years after her death, when her image was minted on the U.S. $1 coin. Yes, one dollar. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, and Andrew Jackson murdered countless human beings (and owned slaves, too!), yet their faces are on higher denominations of U.S. currency.

Coming soon to a theater near you: 16 and Pregnant and Leading a Bunch of Grown White Men Into the Woods, Including the French-Canadian Pedophile who Bought Her and Raped Her, Ain't That Some Bull-- The Sacagawea Story



If you would like to nominate a notable lady for Where's My Movie?, please let us know in the comments, or email us at ForNerdyGirls [at] gmail [dot] com.