The Water Gap: Return to the Homeland

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.

The American Southwest holds a dark legacy as the place where nuclear weapons were invented and built. Navajo people have long held this place sacred, and continue to fight for a future that transcends historical trauma. This is their story.

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.

A look into the 19th century American-Indian Wars, Manifest Destiny, and the conflicts between Apache tribes and the African-American Buffalo soldier regiments.

African American soldiers throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries faced discrimination and segregation, yet many still chose to fight for their country.

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.

Shows representative samples of Northwest Indian art collected from six different museums, featuring the double-faced mechanical masks which were part of this culture.

The Tlingit and Haida people of Alaska were confused by the idea of America “buying” the land they lived on from the Russians. They would be among the first native people to make a successful claim on their homeland and rights.

In late 2021, Cleveland’s baseball team was reborn as the Guardians. This documentary, directed by Lance Edmands, chronicles the saga of that name change, which has its roots in a forgotten legend named Louis Sockalexis, and the tragedy that enveloped his story more than a century ago.

A short film highlighting the epidemic of missing indigenous men and women who have gone missing in Bighorn County, Montana. It features several victims' stories and interviews with their families and indigenous activists who are pushing for their cases to be re-examined and solved.

Somebody’s Daughter focuses on higher-profile MMIW cases, some of which were raised during the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in December 2018. With historical points of reference, the victims’ and their families’ stories are told through the lens of the legal jurisdictional maze and socio-economic bondage that constricts Indian Country.

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.

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.

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

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

This short documentary tells the story of the life and legacy of Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte, an Omaha woman who became the first Native American physician.

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.

The story of an American hero and the Cherokee Nation's first woman Principal Chief who humbly defied all odds to give a voice to the voiceless.

At the farthest edge of the Navajo Nation, the purpose and future of the most remote high school in the continental United States is in question while three Indigenous youth grapple with ambitious dreams, family responsibilities, and the isolated nature of their community.