American Native

The Shaman's Apprentice

2001 · ★ 8

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

Homeland

2000 · ★ 7.5

Following four Lakota families over three years, Homeland explores what it takes for the Lakota community to build a better future in the face of tribal and government corruption, scarce housing, unemployment, and alcoholism. Intimate interviews with a spiritual leader, a grandmother, an artist, and a community activist from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation reveal how each survives through family ties, cultural tradition, humor, and a palpable yearning for self-reliance and personal freedom.

Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting

2021 · ★ 8

Examining the movement that is ending the use of Native American names, logos, and mascots in the world of sports and beyond.

Tribal Justice

2017

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.

Foundational Black American

Uncover the hidden history of Foundational Black Americans and Black Indians-present before Columbus and vital to building the U.S.-in this powerful documentary that reclaims a buried legacy.

The Lost Spirits

2009

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.

NUKED

2023 · ★ 7.5

The US detonated 67 nuclear weapons over the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands during the Cold War, the consequences of which still reverberate down four generations to today. "NUKED," is a timely new feature documentary focussing on the human victims of the nuclear arms race, tracing the displaced Bikinian's ongoing struggle for justice and survival even as climate change poses a new existential threat. Using carefully restored archival footage to resurrect contemporaneous islanders’ voices and juxtaposing these with the full, awesome fury of the nuclear detonations, NUKED starkly contrasts the official record with the lived experience of the Bikinians themselves, serving as an important counterpoint to this summer’s Oppenheimer.

Incident at Oglala

1992 · ★ 7.1

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.

LaDonna Harris: Indian 101

2014 · ★ 1

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.

Trudell

2005 · ★ 5.7

A chronicle of legendary Native American poet/activist John Trudell's travels, spoken word performances, and politics.

La grande prairie, le pacte du bison

2025 · ★ 8

No synopsis available.

Anti-Objects, or Space Without Path or Boundary

2017 · ★ 7

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.