American Interior

Gutiérrez: Una deuda pendiente

The “Prophecy of the 7th Fire” says a “black snake” will bring destruction to the earth. For Winona LaDuke, the “black snake” is oil trains and pipelines. When she learns that Canadian-owned Enbridge plans to route a new pipeline through her tribe’s 1855 Treaty land, she and her community spring into action to save the sacred wild rice lakes and preserve their traditional indigenous way of life. Launching an annual spiritual horse ride along the proposed pipeline route, speaking at community meetings and regulatory hearings. Winona testifies that the pipeline route follows one of historical and present-day trauma. The tribe participates in the pipeline permitting process, asserting their treaty rights to protect their natural resources. LaDuke joins with her tribe and others to demand that the pipelines’ impact on tribal people’s resources be considered in the permitting process.

On June 26, 1975, during a period of high tensions on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, two FBI agents were killed in a shootout with a group of Indians. Although several men were charged with killing the agents, only one, Leonard Peltier, was found guilty. This film describes the events surrounding the shootout and suggests that Peltier was unjustly convicted.

First hand interviews and on the ground footage give a stirring account of The Standing Rock Sioux Nation's and water protectors' opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline

Examining the movement that is ending the use of Native American names, logos, and mascots in the world of sports and beyond.

Documentary about the Red Lake school shooting and its perpetrator, Jeff Weise.

Channel 4 Equinox documentary about the mystery of crop circles, broadcast shortly before Dave Chorley and Doug Bower revealed themselves to have started the craze.

Documentary about the role of Native Americans in popular music history, a little-known story built around the incredible lives and careers of the some of the greatest music legends.

Scientist Mark Plotkin races against time to save the ancient healing knowledge of Indian tribes from extinction.

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 collaboration between the Tanacross and Northway, Alaska communities and trained linguistic specialists from the Alaska Native Language Center to keep their native language from disappearing. And the continuation of the tangential community effort of preserving their language and culture by teaching and using them at home and in schools and in their lives.

For decades, migrant workers have worked the fields of Immokalee, harvesting tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, oranges and other produce that is then shipped across the United States of America. Many of the workers are undocumented, and attempting to keep their jobs even as federal migration crackdowns hover over the town. The Fields of Immokalee film follows the daily lives of tomato workers, from the 5:00am trips to the parking lot in hopes of finding day labor, to work sessions in the scorching mid-day heat, to child detention centers for migrant youth that have been separated from their families. Via these vignettes, the film offers insight into the most volatile political issue of our time.

A portrait of the Hopi tribe who live in northeastern Arizona.

Overview of the Navajo people and the relationship to their land in Northern Arizona.

Short about the daily life of the Apaches, including their ceremonies.

Following four Lakota families over three years, Homeland explores what it takes for the Lakota community to build a better future in the face of tribal and government corruption, scarce housing, unemployment, and alcoholism. Intimate interviews with a spiritual leader, a grandmother, an artist, and a community activist from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation reveal how each survives through family ties, cultural tradition, humor, and a palpable yearning for self-reliance and personal freedom.

The last surviving Native Americans on Long Island are the focus of The Lost Spirits. The film chronicles their struggles as an indigenous people to maintain their identity amidst relentless modernization and a heartless bureaucracy.

In 1970 a storm uncovers an ancient whaling village called Ozette which had been buried some 500 years ago by a massive mudslide. The resulting excavation brings new knowledge of the past important to both the Makah Indians, living on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington and for the historical record of Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest.

An intimate exploration of the circumstances surrounding the incarceration of Native American activist Leonard Peltier, convicted of murder in 1977, with commentary from those involved, including Peltier himself.

This Peabody Award-winning documentary from New Mexico PBS looks at the European arrival in the Americas from the perspective of the Pueblo Peoples.