The Land is Ours

The impact of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, on the lives of the Mayan women who joined as rebels to seek justice within their own culture.

On a mission to rediscover trails in his Alaskan backyard, dyslexic filmmaker and painter Max Romey explores a historic trail, and its wild history. With a sketchbook and a pair of shoes, he makes the first likely attempt in decades to connect the once well-traveled trails of the Southern Trek of the Historic Iditarod route from Seward back home to Anchorage.

Lakota people from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota describe the ongoing struggle of their people.

A Good Wolf is a feature-length documentary film examining a 40-year conflict over a single tract of land adjacent to Denali National Park—a volatile struggle between state and federal authorities, fur trappers and wildlife advocates, and competing human interests on public lands. Armed with thorough data, biologists and activists bring a new proposal to state authorities, hoping to regain protections for wolves near the park boundary. But local trappers are adamantly opposed. Hanging in the balance are some of America’s most iconic landscapes and wildlife -- including the remarkable Wolf 1202.

The majestic Alaskan brown bear is the largest predator in southeastern Alaska, but everywhere, its ancient haunts are under siege. As the modern world closes in, the great bear’s world is shrinking and encounters between humans and bears are on the rise. Join researcher LaVern Beier as he uses cutting edge technology to protect this extraordinary species. To observe them on their turf, without risking life and limb, LaVern attempts to deploy National Geographic’s CRITTERCAM. Until now, CRITTERCAM has been used almost exclusively on marine animals. Vern and his colleagues are on the cusp of a revolution in terrestrial field science…the opportunity to vicariously walk with bears into the deepest corners of their habitats, where even great hunters barely dare venture.

Examines the violence and civil disobedience leading up to the hallmark decision in U.S. v. Washington, with particular reference to the Nisqually Indians of Frank's Landing in Washington.

The title of this video, taken from the texts of the architect Kengo Kuma, suggests a way of looking at everything as “interconnected and intertwined” - such as the historical and the present and the tool and the artifact. Images and representations of two structures in the Portland Metropolitan Area that have direct and complicated connections to the Chinookan people who inhabit(ed) the land are woven with audio tapes of one of the last speakers of chinuk wawa, the Chinookan creole. These localities of matter resist their reduction into objects, and call anew for space and time given to wandering as a deliberate act, and the empowerment of shared utility.

Sean and Adrian, a Two-Spirit couple, are determined to rewrite the rules of Native American culture through their participation in the “Sweetheart Dance.” This celebratory contest is held at powwows across the country, primarily for heterosexual couples … until now.

The story of an Eskimo father and son who train and groom a sled dog team. When the father is lost on an ice floe, the son takes the unproven team on the search, and succeeds in finding his father.

Alaska... Here, in this vast and spectacularly beautiful land teeming with abundant wildlife, discover the "Spirit of the Wild." Experience it in the explosive calving of glaciers, the celestial fires of the Aurora Borealis. Witness it in the thundering stampede of caribou, the beauty of the polar bear and the stealthful, deadly hunt of the wolf pack.

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.

The astonishing, heartbreaking, inspiring, and largely-untold story of Native Americans in the United States military. Why do they do it? Why would Indian men and women put their lives on the line for the very government that took their homelands?

For 50 years, controversial ethnographer John Peabody Harrington crisscrossed the United States, frantically searching and documenting dying Native American languages. Harrington amassed over a million pages of notes on over 150 different tribal languages. Some of these languages were considered dead until his notes were discovered. Today tribes are accessing the notes, reviving their once dormant languages, and bringing together a new generation of language learners in the hope of saving Native languages.

Three intrepid women battle for Indigenous women's treaty rights.

On May 16th, 2019, the State of Maine made history by passing LD 944 An Act to Ban Native American Mascots in All Public Schools, the first legislation of its kind in the country. For Maine's tribal nations, the landmark legislation marked an end to a decades long struggle to educate the public of the harms of Native American mascotry. Fighting Indians chronicles the last and most contentious holdout in that struggle, the homogeneously white Skowhegan High School, known for decades as "The Home of the Indians". This is the story of a small New England community forced to reckon with its identity, its sordid history, and future relationship with its indigenous neighbors. It is a story of a small town divided against the backdrop of a nation divided where the "mascot debate" exposes centuries old abuses while asking if reconciliation is possible.

A man shows the gentle and agressive side of Brown and Black Bears living with and around them. After "Grizzly Man" died in Alaska trying to do the same thing, it's truly amazing to watch this documentary.

An experimental look at the origin of the death myth of the Chinookan people in the Pacific Northwest, following two people as they navigate their own relationships to the spirit world and a place in between life and death.

In decades past, Native American artists who wanted to sell to mainstream collectors had little choice but to create predictable, Hollywood-style western scenes. Then came a generation of painters and sculptors led by Allan Houser (or Haozous), a Chiricahua Apache artist with no interest in stereotyped imagery and a belief that his own rich heritage was compatible with modernist ideas and techniques. Narrated by actor Val Kilmer and originally commissioned as part of an exhibit of Houser’s work at the Oklahoma History Center, this program depicts the artist’s tribal ancestry, his rise to regional and national acclaim, and the continuing success of his sons as they expand upon and depart from their father’s achievements. Key works are documented, as is Houser’s tenure at the Santa Fe–based Institute of American Indian Arts.

A paper-puppet stop-motion documentary about Two-Spirit people's gender experiences, contrasted with a white transgender experience, with magical-realism visuals.

A short documentary about Americans with Native American and Finnish heritage.