The film threads together four stories, taking us into the life of a stressed-out Mohawk stockbroker in Manhattan; a young Inupiat girl sent to live with her grandmother in Barrow, Alaska; a Navajo gang member who must find his core values in his reservation on the mesas of New Mexico; and a Quechua healer in Peru, attempting to save a sick child. Each story explores what it means to belong to a specific community. A Thousand Roads is a fictional work, produced by National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) to explore the human context of the NMAI’s collections. The film is striking visually, and presents through its beauty and its stories an imaginative entry into knowing about Native people living in the vast indigenous geography that comprises the Americas. Rather than presenting a conventional historical perspective, the film is composed of short contemporary fictions about individuals, grounding them in emotional truths to which an audience can easily relate.
A Papago Indian returns to his reservation after a prison term and searches for his brother's killer.
The dead are coming back to life outside the isolated Mi'kmaq reserve of Red Crow, except for its Indigenous inhabitants who are strangely immune to the zombie plague.
An elderly rodeo rider becomes mentor to a young man attempting to make his own name in the business.
Joe Enders is a gung-ho Marine assigned to protect a "windtalker" - one of several Navajo Indians who were used to relay messages during World War II because their spoken language was indecipherable to Japanese code breakers.
A young Native American man on his way to visit his uncle learns about his Navajo heritage by attending tribal gatherings, traditional ceremonies and listening to old folktales.
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.
Young Native American man Thomas is a nerd in his reservation, wearing oversize glasses and telling everyone stories no-one wants to hear. His parents died in a fire in 1976, and Thomas was saved by Arnold. Arnold soon left his family, and Victor hasn't seen his father for 10 years. When Victor hears Arnold has died, Thomas offers him funding for the trip to get Arnold's remains.
A reformed hunter becomes involved in a deadly game of cat and mouse when he and the local sheriff set out to track a vicious killer who may have kidnapped his daughter years ago.
In 1934 on the serene Navajo reservation, Mary Jane spends her time daydreaming and tending to her family's flock of sheep. When her older sister returns from boarding school with a world geography book, she reveals new worlds that are "just over the mountain." Conflicted by her obedient nature and her curious imagination, Mary Jane must privately decide to either maintain her lifestyle or depart into the exotic unknown.
While confronting the disapproving father of his girlfriend Lola, Native American man Willie Boy kills the man in self-defense, triggering a massive manhunt, led by Deputy Sheriff Christopher Cooper.
A kickboxing cop abandons the violent life after he accidentally kills his opponent during a match. After quitting, he heads for the Arizona desert to live alone and occasionally work tracking drug runners for the area sheriff. One particularly wily Mexican drug lord, Santos, has been a real thorn in tracker Joe Highhawk's side, so when he encounters the beautiful Claudia and her simpleton brother Anthony running for their lives because she, an accountant, embezzled $20 million from Santos, he decides to help them. This actioner follows what happens next. Along the way, they encounter all sorts of danger, and double cross until the exciting final standoff between the kickboxer and the villain.
On a desolate Navajo reservation in New Mexico, three young people – a college-bound, devout Christian; a rebellious and angry father-to-be; and a promiscuous but gorgeous Nádleehi (trans person)- search for love and acceptance.
Ray Eddy, an upstate New York trailer mom, is lured into the world of illegal immigrant smuggling. Broke after her husband takes off with the down payment for their new doublewide, Ray reluctantly teams up with Lila, a smuggler, and the two begin making runs across the frozen St. Lawrence River carrying illegal Chinese and Pakistani immigrants in the trunk of Ray's Dodge Spirit.
A young half-Navajo convict dying of cancer forces a yuppie doctor to drive him to a magic healing lake.
Shayla Stonefeather, a Native American attorney prosecuting a Lakota teen in a controversial murder trial, returns to the reservation to say goodbye to her dying father. After the teen is killed, she hears ghostly voices and sees strange visions that cause her to re-examine beliefs she thought she left behind.
Killer bats plague an Indian reservation in Arizona.
A Native American Veteran, burdened by survivor's guilt after a disastrous military tour, is forced to search for his missing grandfather after his ancestral land is mysteriously taken over by an unknown federal organization.
A coming age film of a Navajo girl.
Once a rising star of the rodeo circuit, and a gifted horse trainer, young cowboy Brady is warned that his riding days are over after a horse crushed his skull at a rodeo. In an attempt to regain control of his own fate, Brady undertakes a search for a new identity and what it means to be a man in the heartland of the United States.