The Water Gap: Return to the Homeland

For more than 120 years, Mohawk ironworkers have raised America’s modern cityscapes. They are called 'sky walkers' because they walk fearlessly atop steel beams just a foot wide, high above the city. In this nuanced portrait of modern Native Americans' double lives, Jerry McDonald Thundercloud and his colleague Sky shuttle between the hard-drinking Brooklyn lodging houses they call home during the week and their rural reservation, a grueling drive six hours north, where a family weekend awaits. While the men are away working, their wives often struggle to keep their children away from the illegal temptations of an economically deprived area.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

Dolores

The documentary adresses the meaning of music and the musical diversity present in Umbanda (a Brazilian religion with afroindigenous roots). With interviews with four umbandistas from Fortaleza - Ceará, Crossroads of the Sound pays reverence to the enchanted dimension where the sounds cross each other to make the spirits dance.

A documentary account by award-winning filmmaker John Ferry of the events that led up to the 1969 Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island as told by principal organizer, Adam Fortunate Eagle. The story unfolds through Fortunate Eagle's remembrances, archival newsreel footage and photographs.

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.

Red Fever is a witty and entertaining feature documentary about the profound -- yet hidden -- Indigenous influence on Western culture and identity. The film follows Cree co-director Neil Diamond as he asks, “Why do they love us so much?!” and sets out on a journey to find out why the world is so fascinated with the stereotypical imagery of Native people that is all over pop culture. Why have Indigenous cultures been revered, romanticized, and appropriated for so long, and to this day? Red Fever uncovers the surprising truths behind the imagery -- so buried in history that even most Native people don't know about them.

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.

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.

On May 16th, 2019, the State of Maine made history by passing LD 944 An Act to Ban Native American Mascots in All Public Schools, the first legislation of its kind in the country. For Maine's tribal nations, the landmark legislation marked an end to a decades long struggle to educate the public of the harms of Native American mascotry. Fighting Indians chronicles the last and most contentious holdout in that struggle, the homogeneously white Skowhegan High School, known for decades as "The Home of the Indians". This is the story of a small New England community forced to reckon with its identity, its sordid history, and future relationship with its indigenous neighbors. It is a story of a small town divided against the backdrop of a nation divided where the "mascot debate" exposes centuries old abuses while asking if reconciliation is possible.

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

Denver’s iconic and Grammy Award-winning musicians reveal the secrets of their success and longevity in the music business while warning the young lions to whom they pass the torch to stay relevant in a marketplace both treacherous and brutal. The majestic Rocky Mountains tower over a bustling metropolis filled with steamy and romantic nightclubs where jazz flourishes on stage. JazzTown features never seen before live concert footage on historic stages that have now crumbled due to economic stresses of the Covid Pandemic. ~ Dianne Reeves, 5-time Grammy Award winner for Best Jazz Vocalist ~ US Senator John Hickenlooper (former jazz club owner) ~ Ron Miles (Colorado Music Hall of Fame, Joshua Redman, Bill Frisell, Ginger Baker) ~ Charlie Hunter (Snarky Puppy, Christian McBride, Stanton Moore) ~ Art Lande (Mark Isham, Gary Peacock) ~ Ayo Awosika (Session Singer on Soundtracks to: Wakanda Forever, Nope, Dune, The Lion King ... tours with Miley Cyrus,) and many more.

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.

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

In this evocative meditation, a disturbing link is made between the resource extraction industries’ exploitation of the land and violence inflicted on Indigenous women and girls. Or, as one young woman testifies, “Just as the land is being used, these women are being used.”

Native Americans, ranchers, government officials, and environmental activists battle over the yearly slaughter of America's last wild bison, based on fear that migrating animals will transmit the disease brucellosis to cattle. Join a 500-mile spiritual march across Montana led by Lakota elder Rosalie Little Thunder expressing her people's cultural connection to bison, an environmental group engaging in civil disobedience and video activism, and a ranching family caught in the crossfire.