The AssimiNation is a political pamphlet portraying the indigenous Sámi people fighting for their existence. The film follows the on going cultural genocide of the Sámi which the current Governmental politics allow. This film is a cry for help for the last indigenous people living in the EU.
The wild beauty of the Bella Coola Valley blends with vivid watercolor animation illuminating the role of the Nuxalk oral tradition and the intersection of story, place and culture.
This short documentary is the portrait of an 88-year-old woman who lives alone in a log cabin without running water or electricity in the Williams Lake area of British Columbia. The daughter of a Shuswap chief, Augusta lost her Indian status as the result of a marriage to a white man. She recalls past times, but lives very much in the present. Self-sufficient, dedicated to her people, she spreads warmth wherever she moves, with her songs and her harmonica.
In 1587, more than 100 English colonists settle on Roanoke Island and soon vanish, baffling historians for centuries; now, experts use the latest forensic archaeology to investigate the true story behind America's oldest and most controversial mystery.
This short documentary follows Frank Ladouceur, a man who lives alone for months at a time, trapping muskrat in the vast, desolate wilderness of northern Alberta. He receives no visitors, and rarely voyages to his family home in Fort Chipewyan. What some may consider an unthinkably lonely, isolated existence is the calling of this fiercely independent Métis man. Remarkably determined and self-sufficient, Frank makes his home in the wild bush.
Documents the conflicts and tensions that arise between highland migrants and Mosetenes, members of an indigenous community in the Bolivian Amazon. It focuses particularly on a system of debt peonage known locally as ‘habilito’. This system is used throughout the Bolivian lowlands, and much of the rest of the Amazon basin, to secure labor in remote areas.
In front of Jean Rouch's camera, Germaine Dieterlen recalls her ethnographic itinerary, at the Musée de l'Homme, in Mali and in the Paris of the 1930s.
Germaine Dierterlen talks about Dogon mythology at a conference on the Bandiagara cliffs. The Songo canopy is a sacred site in Bandiagara. Its walls are covered with paintings depicting the different phases of creation. A little further on, in a cave near the village of Bongo, symposium participants are discussing the Tellem, the people who lived in the houses built into the cliffs before the arrival of the Dogon. The archaeological remains and migratory movements of these two peoples are discussed.
In Sangha, through the window of her house, Germaine greets Djamgouno, her main informant. He then translates for her a conversation she has with a half-blind old man. She recounts her memories of a past party at which Amadigné worked with her as an informant. Later, in front of the cliff, Germaine, Djamgouno and Pangalé are sitting on rocks, and Germaine talks about the many caves that can be visited by climbing small spelunking ladders. Rouch intervenes during the interview, asking the protagonists about the settlement of the cliff by the Dogon, who learned from the Tellem how to climb the cliff. Rouch then asks about the Tellem's predecessors who lived there 2,400 years ago. Germaine admits the ignorance of researchers on the subject, and Rouch concludes by joking about the new task that now falls to Germaine Dieterlen.
An account of the journey that King Alfonso XIII of Spain made to the impoverished shire of Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in the region of Extremadura, in 1922.
In the same vein as Meri's other documentations, this one takes advantage of the glasnost policy to discuss the social and ecologic impact of the Russian oil industry on the natives and the lands they inhabit.
The natural sciences museum of La Plata, Argentina, had indigenous people held captive as study objects in the past, and their skeletons were on exhibit for many decades. The story of Krygi, served as a trigger to look back at the ideologies that defined us as individuals and as a people.
In the town of San Miguel Tzinacapan, in Puebla’s Nahua Mountain Range, a family lost its father. His absence transforms the lives of those who were so deeply connected to him. Tere, now in charge of the family, must make money by selling crafts. Jorge is about to finish school and will soon have to choose his own path. Chayo, 16, must make an important decision. A year has passed, and the members of the family have been able to redefine themselves, finding their own destiny while always venerating their father’s memory.
Nestled at the heart of Canada’s national capital, the Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health has been a haven for generations of Indigenous people from many cultures since its founding in 1998. A place of togetherness, thecentre celebrated a large expansion in 2013 designed by renowned First Nations architect Douglas Cardinal, which greatly increased its ability to serve Ottawa’s Indigenous population in one of the city’s poorest neighbourhoods. Under the determined leadership of Allison Fisher, Wabano has become far more than a health centre; through its focus on Indigenous pillars of healing and good health, Wabano has become a home for many.
An NFB crew filmed a group of three families, Cree hunters from Mistassini. Since times predating agriculture, this First Nations people have gone to the bush of the James Bay and Ungava Bay area to hunt. We see the building of the winter camp, the hunting and the rhythms of Cree family life.
Nedarma (Travelling) is one of several documentary features co-directed by Anastasia Lapsui and Markku Lehmuskallio that portray the daily lives of the Nenets, Lapsui’s tribe based in the northern tundra of Siberia. The film invokes Nenets cosmology as a way of leading into a filmic structure that portrays the arc of life from birth to death.
In Isère, in the mountainous region of Trièves, is the Tournesol farm, an experiential farm totally autonomous in energy, a veritable laboratory for renewable energies. Jean-Philippe and his family live there from sheep farming and organic market gardening. But in September 2017, a violent fire destroyed the farm and its facilities. While the family has lost everything, a surge of solidarity is taking place so that the Tournesol farm is reborn from its ashes.
Colebrook Blackwood Reconciliation Park is where the Colebrook Training Home once stood. It is now a permanent memorial for the Aboriginal children of the “Stolen Generation” and their families.
Ameríndia - Memória, Remorso e Compromisso no V Centenário
The Tŝilhqot’in Nation is represented by six communities in the stunningly beautiful interior of British Columbia. Surrounded by mountains and rivers, the Tŝilhqot’in People have cared for this territory for millennia. With increasing external pressures from natural-resource extraction companies, the communities mobilized in the early 21st century to assert their rightful title to their lands. Following a decision by the Supreme Court of British Columbia in 2007 that only partially acknowledged their claim, the Tŝilhqot’in Nation’s plight was heard in the Supreme Court of Canada. In a historic decision in 2014, the country’s highest court ruled what the Tŝilhqot’in have long asserted: that they alone have full title to their homelands.