Social & External
The Cherokee language is deeply tied to Cherokee identity; yet generations of assimilation efforts by the U.S. government and anti-Indigenous stigmas have forced the Tri-Council of Cherokee tribes to declare a State of Emergency for the language in 2019. While there are 430,000 Cherokee citizens in the three federally recognized tribes, fewer than an estimated 2,000 fluent speakers remain—the majority of whom are elderly. The covid pandemic has unfortunately hastened the course. Language activists, artists, and the youth must now lead the charge of urgent radical revitalization efforts to help save the language from the brink of extinction.
A vision from Limbo, where the canoeist of the eternal lake floats in his boat, between sleep and wakefulness. When he sleeps, he dreams of the everyday of a parallel time. when he wakes up, the same song haunts him again and again. his boat, “ara” (time, in guarani) travels through time like a shooting star.
With no Forest left to hunt and no land to cultivate, the Maby-Guarani depend on the sale of their handcraft to survive. Three young Guarani filmmakers accompany the daily life of two comunities united by the same history, since the first contact with the Europeans until the intense coexistence with today’s White people.
With exclusive access to the lives of 8 women, ranging in age from 10 to 98, explore powerful testimonials of loss and survival and gain insight into the experience of a modern Indigenous American living on a reservation. Gripping historical accounts and startling timely statistics guide viewers down the path that has led to these present day conditions.
The hunters are the Innu people and the bombers are the air forces of several NATO countries, which conduct low-level flights over the Innu's hunting terrain. The impact of the jets is hotly debated by peace groups, Indigenous people, environmentalists and the military. But what is often overlooked are the many complex changes underway in Innu society, as social and technological changes confront a traditional hunting culture.
Explorer Bruce Parry visits nomadic tribes in Borneo and the Amazon in hope to better understand humanity's changing relationship with the world around us.
Three children living in a displacement camp in northern Uganda compete in their country's national music and dance festival.
Legendary Canadian documentarian Alanis Obomsawin digs into the tangled history of Treaty 9 — the infamous 1905 agreement wherein First Nations communities relinquished sovereignty over their traditional territories — to reveal the deceptions and distortions which the document has been subjected to by successive governments seeking to deprive Canada’s First Peoples of their lands.
Combining archival photos with new and found footage, this short film presents a personal, impressionistic rendering of what it's like growing up Mi'kmaq in Newfoundland, while living in a culture of denial. Vistas is a series of 13 short films on nationhood from 13 Indigenous filmmakers from Halifax to Vancouver. It was a collaborative project between the NFB and APTN to bring Indigenous perspectives and stories to an international audience.
Filmed on location in Saskatchewan from the Qu'Appelle Valley to Hudson Bay, the documentary traces the filmmaker's quest for her Native foremothers in spite of the reluctance to speak about Native roots on the part of her relatives. The film articulates Métis women's experience with racism in both current and historical context, and examines the forces that pushed them into the shadows.
Documentary about Indigenous peoples' profound connection to nature and their struggle against deforestation, a grave threat to their way of life and the ecosystem they call home.
The last two surviving members of the Piripkura people, a nomadic tribe in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil, struggle to maintain their indigenous way of life amidst the region's massive deforestation. Living deep in the rainforest, Pakyî and Tamandua live off the land relying on a machete, an ax, and a torch lit in 1998.
In 1977, Prince Charles was inducted as honorary chief of the Blood Indians on their reserve in southwestern Alberta. The ceremony, conducted in the great Circle of the Sun Dance, commemorated the centennial anniversary of the original signing of Treaty 7 by Queen Victoria.
This documentary follows a Cree woman as she takes on the Indian Relay race season, as well as the Canadian authorities in her quest to give Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women a voice.
It is taking decades for Canada to come to terms with its history in the Arctic, and with its relationship to all its indigenous people. “Kikkik” is the story of government mistakes and neglect, of starvation, murder, freezing death, but, in the end, a kind of justice that helps restore our faith in human decency. In 1958, the Inuit woman Kikkik was charged with murder and criminal negligence leading to the death of her child. Her trial and our visit back to the place and to Kikkik’s children confront us with a legacy that’s still a challenge for Canada.
When the immigrants came to America, their cultures entered the "great melting pot." In Michigan's Upper Peninsula Finnish immigrants mixed their musical traditions with many other cultures, creating a sound that was unique to the "Copper Country."
In this era of "reconciliation", Indigenous land is still being taken at gunpoint. INVASION is a new film about the Unist'ot'en Camp, Gidimt'en checkpoint, and the Wet'suwet'en Nation standing up to the Canadian government and corporations who continue colonial violence against indigenous people.
Italian horror fan and academic Calum Waddell speaks with some of the original makers of the controversial horror classic "Cannibal Holocaust" before venturing into the Amazon jungle and surrounding city port, Leticia, to uncover some of the local stories behind the making of the motion picture. What is uncovered, however, leads to a wider and unexpected "true crime" story.
An intimate and thrilling portrait of a young Siksika woman and the deep bonds between her father and family in the golden plains of Blackfoot Territory as she prepares for one of the most dangerous horse races in the world… bareback.
After losing their star player, a high school basketball team rooted in Native American culture must unite to keep their state championship dreams alive.
Shiva, a tribal vagabond lives with his mother in hamlet, stays away from the traditional Daivaradhane and Bhoota Kola legacy due to an unforgettable childhood incident. He is happy loafing around with his friends and doing petty jobs for his landlord. When Forest officer Murali enters the scene, it gives a fresh dimension to the man-vs-nature fight. Can Shiva save the forest from Murali? Or is Murali just a dummy bait cast by bigger fish?
A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.
God presides over a prehistoric tribe.
When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.
John Shepherd spent 30 years trying to contact extraterrestrials by broadcasting music millions of miles into space. After giving up the search, he makes a different connection here on earth.
After a plane crash, four indigenous children fight to survive in the Colombian Amazon using ancestral wisdom as an unprecedented rescue mission unfolds.
A young woman seeks vengeance and finds love when her parents are killed in the Amazon and she is taken prisoner by an indigenous tribe of headhunters.
The epic story of the first contact, encounter, approach, betrayal and, eventually, life-transcending friendship, between Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman, last survivor of his people, and two scientists that, over the course of 40 years, travel through the Amazon in search of a sacred plant that can heal them. Inspired by the journals of the first explorers of the Colombian Amazon, Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes.
A non-narrated documentary following the lovesome lives of four infants from birth to their first birthday. The babies featured are two from rural areas: Ponijao from Opuwo, Namibia, and Bayar from Bayanchandmani, Mongolia, as well as two from urban areas: Mari from Tokyo, Japan, and Hattie from San Francisco, USA.
Outlaws disguised as Indians commit crimes against settlers but Winnetou and Old Surehand are determined to unmask the bandits and keep the peace.
A documentary about how a dominant cultural and demographic institution both sustains their traditional activities and adapts to the digital revolution.
Following the surrender of Geronimo, Massai, the last Apache warrior is captured and scheduled for transportation to a Florida reservation. On the way he manages to escape and heads for his homeland to win back his girl and settle down to grow crops. His pursuers have other ideas though.
Forester, a ruthless oil baron, wants to create a war between the native American tribes and the white men. Old Shatterhand, Winnetou and their sidekick Castlepool try to prevent this.
Bomman and Bellie, a couple in south India, devote their lives to caring for an orphaned baby elephant named Raghu, forging a family like no other.
Rollins' gang wants to grab land by inciting the settlers in a war against the Indians but Winnetou and Old Shatterhand try to keep the peace, until Rollins frames Winnetou up for the murder of Jicarilla Chief's son.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
Capturing life on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a frontline in the European migrant crisis.
For ten years, engineer Bill Markham has searched tirelessly for his son Tommy who disappeared from the edge of the Brazilian rainforest. Miraculously, he finds the boy living among the reclusive Amazon tribe who adopted him. And that's when Bill's adventure truly begins. For his son is now a grown tribesman who moves skillfully through this beautiful-but-dangerous terrain, fearful only of those who would exploit it. And as Bill attempts to "rescue" him from the savagery of the untamed jungle, Tommy challenges Bill's idea of true civilization and his notions about who needs rescuing.
The Amazon rain forest, 1979. The crew of Fitzcarraldo (1982), a film directed by German director Werner Herzog, soon finds itself with problems related to casting, tribal struggles and accidents, among many other setbacks; but nothing compared to dragging a huge steamboat up a mountain, while Herzog embraces the path of a certain madness to make his vision come true.
