Shamanic Visions: Forgotten Territories

Exploration of the way of life of the Q’eros Indians of Peru, who have lived in the Andes for more than 3,000 years.

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.

Matimekush is landlocked in the former mining town of Schefferville, 700 km north of Sept-Îles. It was founded in the 1950s, when the Canadian government and Iron Or forced the Innu to settle down. In Canada’s Far North, there is a dire labour shortage. At Kanatamat School, the heart of the community, most of the high school teachers are from Africa.

When an academic unearths a forgotten history, residents of the small township of Pukekohe, including kaumātua who have never told their personal stories before, confront its deep and dark racist past.

In 1974 a group of Mohawk Indians occupied a defunct girls camp in New York's Adirondack mountains and established a community they called Ganienkeh. Aiming to practice a more traditional lifestyle, and asserting aboriginal title to the land, they stayed for three years, having occasional violent clashes with the local residents. In 1977 they negotiated a (somewhat complicated) land swap with the State, and agreed to move to a permanent home near Plattsburgh, New York, where they remain today. Ganienkeh is one of the only examples of an indigenous people successfully reclaiming land from the United States, but it may not be the last.

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.

Women have always sought ways to terminate unwanted pregnancies, despite powerful patriarchal structures and systems working against them. This film provides a historical overview of how church, state and the medical establishment have determined policies concerning abortion. From this cross-cultural survey--filmed in Ireland, Japan, Thailand, Peru, Colombia, and Canada--emerges one reality: only a small percentage of the world's women has access to safe, legal operations.

Colorful widescreen travelogue along the Amazon River jungle of Peru, featuring an indigenous village carnival and a snake dance.

When the Nuxalk trace the vanished ooligan to a land claim filed the very day smallpox arrived, their radio station becomes courtroom, confessional and conjuring ground; an older law insists: the fish return when the people do.

Documentary about the life of three families living in the city of Boa Vista, north of Brazil. Some of them look for a more intense daily life going to parties, work and dealing with family trouble, others want to get back to the tribe. Personal crises and the search for their own identity are aspects that reveal great relevance.

In 1971, graduate student Gloria Orenstein received a call from Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington that sparked a lifelong journey into art, ecofeminism and shamanism. This short film uses art, animation and storytelling to celebrate this wild adventure. Now more than 40 years later, award-winning Dr. Gloria Feman Orenstein is a feminist art critic and pioneer scholar of women in Surrealism and ecofeminism in the arts. Her delightful tale brings alive an often unseen history of women in the arts.

Keeping Country Strong is a new documentary by Country Needs People From the heart of the desert to the islands and estuaries of Sea Country, Indigenous Protected Areas span over 110 million hectares of land and sea and now cover over 54% of Australia’s reserves on land. Indigenous Rangers are on the frontline. Working in some of the most remote corners of the planet they are safeguarding endangered species, fighting wildfires and invasive species, and practising culture in the face of a changing climate. FEATURING Indigenous Rangers and Traditional Owners from Budj Bim IPA, Gaagal Wajaarr Proposed Sea Country IPA, Ngururrpa IPA, Tiwi Islands Proposed IPA, Anangu Tjutaku IPA, Lungtalanana IPA, Mayala IPA & SE Arnhem Land IPA.

Back from war in Afghanistan, a young British soldier struggling with depression and PTSD finds a second chance in the Amazon rainforest when he meets an American scientist, and together they foster an orphaned baby ocelot.

This short documentary depicts the formation in 1959 of the first successful co-operative in an Inuit community in Northern Québec. The film describes how, with other Inuit of the George River community, the Annanacks formed a joint venture that included a sawmill, a fish-freezing plant and a small boat-building industry.

PaaPaa Chipskwenewh Sibii

ᐊᕐᕕᑕᕐᓃᑦ

Western culture treats mental disorders primarily through biomedical psychiatry, but filmmakers Phil Borges and Kevin Tomlinson reveal a growing movement of professionals and survivors who are forging alternative treatments that focus on recovery and turning mental “illness” into a positive transformative experience.

Profile of the Crow Indian Mission in Lodge Grass, Montana.

Two Lawalapiti young men from Alto Xingu learn to build a canoe from the bark of the jatobá tree, a quick and simple technique that leaves the tree still rooted and alive, and that has ceased to be used and is only known by the oldest Lawalapiti men.

A lyrical film ode to the odehimin or heart berry. A two-spirit Anishnaabe person finds themself in a dark place with their body. They undertake a healing journey, stating aloud their intentions and reconnecting with the land and the water for strength. As they get more in touch with their body and the beings around them, we begin to see them heal.