Friday night, just before the great blizzard of 2010 struck, my fiancé and I ventured to the Fearrington Barn for the Sustainable Cinema Series, sponsored by Chatham Arts.

We’ve viewed movies in this forum before. So what made this one special?

The film was Looking for Ms. Locklear.  It follows two lifelong friends who decide to search for their first-grade teacher, the person who introduced them back in the 1980s at Buies Creek Elementary (Harnett County). But, to make it interesting, they make a pact to not use telephones or the Internet to find her – relying solely on face-to-face contact for clues. Along the way, they meet a host of interesting people of the Lumbee tribe and learn about the tribe’s decades-long struggle to receive recognition from the federal government.

This 55-minute documentary, by “Internetainers” Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal of Lillington (Their hilarious online videos have been viewed more than 25 million times), is funny, heartwarming and educational.

And it particularly struck a chord with us because my fiancé, Patrick, who really likes to fly under the radar of this blog, is one-quarter Lumbee. He grew up near Lumberton, where it seems like everyone is named Locklear, Hunt, Oxendine or Lowry. When we met in 2006, I had never heard of Lumbees, not being a native of N.C. myself. Since then, I’ve done my share of reading and learned a lot more about the largest Native American tribe east of the Mississippi. But it’s nice to know that, while looking for their beloved first-grade teacher, who happens to be Lumbee, Rhett and Link created a film that educates viewers. They even went with a group of Lumbees to D.C. to a congressional hearing on gaining federal recognition (which still hasn’t happened, by the way).

Here’s a video I shot from Friday night of Rhett and Link singing a charming song they wrote for Lumbee Days, an annual homecoming celebration in Pembroke, hoping it would lead them to Ms. Locklear:

Rhett and Link from Andrea Griffith on Vimeo.