Movies: Indigenous

On Canada's Pacific coast this film finds a young Haida artist, Robert Davidson, shaping miniature totems from argillite, a jet-like stone. The film follows the artist to the island where he finds the stone, and then shows how he carves it in the man...

In a dark, ambiguous environment, minuscule particles drift slowly before the lens. The image focuses to reveal spruce trees and tall pines, while Innu voices tell us the story of this territory, this flooded forest. Muffled percussive sounds gradual...

1645. Guadeloupe. Ibátali, a Kalinago native and wife of a French colonist, leads Olaudah, an escaped African captive, on a journey where he may lose his freedom and his life. She is ready to sacrifice him to save her own skin. But their wounds bring...

Through the lens of sport, AFL legend Michael O'Loughlin shines a light on the history and experience of the Indigenous Australian people. Current AFL players, Michael Walters and Tarryn Thomas, join O'Loughlin to unpack racism, discrimination and th...

An Indigenous teenage boy fights through distorting realities as a family secret unravels....

In this layered short film, filmmaker Janine Windolph takes her young sons fishing with their kokum (grandmother), a residential school survivor who retains a deep knowledge and memory of the land. The act of reconnecting with their homeland is a cul...

In 2019, the Brazilian government coordinates the largest and riskiest expedition of the last decades into the Amazon rainforest to search for a group of isolated indigenous people in vulnerability and promote their first contact with non-indigenous....

Dancing Around the Table: Part One provides a fascinating look at the crucial role Indigenous people played in shaping the Canadian Constitution. The 1984 Federal Provincial Conference of First Ministers on Aboriginal Constitutional Matters was a tum...

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 cou...

This short documentary follows three Indigenous women as they practice ancestral forms of worship: drumming, singing, and using sweetgrass. These ancient spiritual traditions may at first seem at odds with urban life, but to Indigenous people in Cana...

Part of the Daughters of the Country series, this film, set in the 1850s, unfolds against the backdrop of the Hudson's Bay Company's monopoly of the fur trade. In protest, some Métis engage in trade with the Americans. Madeleine, the Métis common-law...

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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."...

A young Polynesian woman trapped in the throes of an abusive relationship gets revenge by burning down her boyfriend's home. Fearing retaliation, she flees into the mountains of Kauai, Hawaii, where she discovers a mythical creature that guides her b...

For almost a century, the Coast Salish knitters of southern Vancouver Island have produced Cowichan sweaters from handspun wool. These distinctive sweaters are known and loved around the world, but the Indigenous women who make them remain largely in...

In 2032 an eight-year old boy, displaced by global warming, fends for himself as an environmental refugee in a hostile northern metropolis. Haunted by memories of flooding that left him homeless and orphaned, the boy forms an unexpected friendship wi...

'Falas da Terra' sheds light on the plurality and the struggle of the indigenous people for the right to exist, in a historical rescue of valuing their cultures....

A portrait of an albino Aboriginal teenager, her feelings of alienation while at a convent boarding school, and her dreams of escape....

Released in 1968 and often referred to as Canada’s first music video, The Ballad of Crowfoot was directed by Willie Dunn, a Mi’kmaq/Scottish folk singer and activist who was part of the historic Indian Film Crew, the first all-Indigenous production u...

Far from home and struggling to reconcile their Native identities with non-Native culture, Ray and Jolene negotiate a growing attraction as they're drawn together, in this reflective exploration of urban Aboriginal identity....