Foundational Black American

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.

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

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

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.

Two formidable Native American women, both chief judges in their tribe's courts, strive to reduce incarceration rates and heal their people by restoring rather than punishing offenders, modeling restorative justice in action.

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.

Documents the race riot of 1921 and the destruction of the African-American community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. With testimony by eyewitnesses and background accounts by historians.

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.

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.

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.

Dolores

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?

Three intrepid women battle for Indigenous women's treaty rights.

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.

Filmed during the 2016 Standing Rock protests in South Dakota, Sky Hopinka's Dislocation Blues offers a portrait of the movement and its water protectors, refuting grand narratives and myth-making in favour of individual testimonials.

An experimental look at the origin of the death myth of the Chinookan people in the Pacific Northwest, following two people as they navigate their own relationships to the spirit world and a place in between life and death.

A fearless horse bonds two men to each other and to the traditions that define their community.

Documents the cultural and ecological impacts of coal stripmining, uranium mining, and oil shale development in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona – homeland of the Hopi and Navajo.

Professional, native and antiquarian researchers combine to investigate the archaeological history and modern legacy of Eastern Native civilization near Turners Falls, Massachusetts. They uncover possible evidence of a vast astronomical construct that covered a large area of what is now the northeastern United States.

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.