Columbus Didn't Discover Us

A few decades after the destruction of the Inca Empire, a Spanish expedition led by the infamous Aguirre leaves the mountains of Peru and goes down the Amazon River in search of the lost city of El Dorado. When great difficulties arise, Aguirre’s men start to wonder whether their quest will lead them to prosperity or certain death.

An orphaned indigenous girl is taken away to an all white school so that the school can get grant money.

1492: Conquest of Paradise depicts Christopher Columbus’ discovery of The New World and his effect on the indigenous people.

A poignant all-Indigenous English and Cree-English collaborative documentary that breaks long-held silences imposed upon indigenous children who were interned at the notoriously violent St. Anne’s Residential School in Fort Albany First Nation, Ontario. Use of a homemade electric chair at St. Anne's and the incorporation of testimony about student-on-student abuse makes this documentary stand apart from other films about Canadian residential school experiences. This film will serve as an Indigenous historical document wholly authored by Indigenous bodies and voices, those of the Survivors themselves.

For consumers, bananas are a delicious and nutritious start to the day, a healthy snack and a fixture in our fruit bowls. For millions of residents in the banana lands, the production of bananas means social upheaval, violence and pesticide poisoning. Banana Land explores the origins of these disparate realities, and opens the conversation on how workers, producers and consumers can address this disconnect.

A rebellious young man nicknamed Tano and a shy Mapuche boy named Cheo bond together by facing the violence and prejudice they carry during their complicated adolescence.

During summer 1979, Ester moves to Alta in Northern Norway to begin teaching at an elementary school. Like many Sámi at the time, she is ashamed of her heritage and conceals her ethnicity. Ester goes to great lengths to fit in, even joining in with the derogatory jokes. When her cousin Mikkhal takes her to a camp by the Alta River, where people are demonstrating against the building of a dam, Ester learns how the fight for the river is also a revolt against the years of brutal racism and discrimination against her people. After a major confrontation with the police, Mikkhal and some other Sámi decide to go to Oslo to hunger strike in front of the Parliament. Knowing what is at stake, Ester realises it is time to make a stand…

Funeral Bororo

In the town of San Miguel Tzinacapan, in Puebla’s Nahua Mountain Range, a family lost its father. His absence transforms the lives of those who were so deeply connected to him. Tere, now in charge of the family, must make money by selling crafts. Jorge is about to finish school and will soon have to choose his own path. Chayo, 16, must make an important decision. A year has passed, and the members of the family have been able to redefine themselves, finding their own destiny while always venerating their father’s memory.

In the same vein as Meri's other documentations, this one takes advantage of the glasnost policy to discuss the social and ecologic impact of the Russian oil industry on the natives and the lands they inhabit.

The wild and wanton Francisca, known as "The Tigress," is the eldest of three sisters, who are bosses of a farm in Ecuador. A medicine man tells Francisca and Juliana that their youngest sister Sara must remain a virgin to protect their land. A travelling salesman, engaged to Sara, tells the police that she is being kept locked up by her older sisters.

Beginning just after the bloody Sioux victory over General Custer at Little Big Horn, the story is told through two unique perspectives: Charles Eastman, a young, white-educated Sioux doctor held up as living proof of the alleged success of assimilation, and Sitting Bull the proud Lakota chief whose tribe won the American Indians’ last major victory at Little Big Horn.

Documents the conflicts and tensions that arise between highland migrants and Mosetenes, members of an indigenous community in the Bolivian Amazon. It focuses particularly on a system of debt peonage known locally as ‘habilito’. This system is used throughout the Bolivian lowlands, and much of the rest of the Amazon basin, to secure labor in remote areas.

Christopher Columbus believes he can find an alternative route to the far East and persuades the King and Queen of Spain to finance his expedition...

A conversation between two Ecuadorian friends in the city of Panama.

A documentary film about Comanche activist LaDonna Harris, who led an extensive life of Native political and social activism, and is now passing on her traditional cultural and leadership values to a new generation of emerging Indigenous leaders.

In the '60s, the Mushuau Innu had to abandon their 6,000-year nomadic culture and settle in Davis Inlet. Their relocation resulted in cultural collapse and widespread despair.

No Longer Vanishing

For hundreds of years, Taiwan has been under different colonial rules. From the Dutch, the Spanish, the Japanese, and nowadays Republic of China, each regime left their footprints on this island. Only the indigenous people of this island experienced of the process. They were given different names during different periods of colonisation and their cultures have been changed. Through the life of a Truku elder, we see the history of aboriginal recertification movement.

The natural sciences museum of La Plata, Argentina, had indigenous people held captive as study objects in the past, and their skeletons were on exhibit for many decades. The story of Krygi, served as a trigger to look back at the ideologies that defined us as individuals and as a people.