Note: all films are streaming unless indicated otherwise
1491: The Untold Story of the Americas Before Columbus
This 8 part series tells the story of Indigenous peoples of the Americas before the Spanish explorer Columbus arrived. All eight parts are linked in the catalogue record
Another word for learning
Aisha, an Indigenous girl living in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, navigates the pressures of conforming to a colonial education system by exploring alternative forms of learning which connect to her culture.
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open
This film centres on the chance encounter between two Indigenous women with drastically different lived experience while navigating the aftermath of domestic abuse.
Bones of Crows
From the website: Bones of Crows is a psychological drama told through the eyes of Cree Matriarch Aline Spears, as she survives Canada's residential school system to continue her family's generational fight in the face of systemic starvation, racism, and sexual abuse. Bones of Crows unfolds over one hundred years with a cumulative force that propels us into the future. The five part TV series is available on CBC gem.
Call me human
Innu writer Joséphine Bacon is part of a generation that has lived through significant changes in Indigenous traditions and colonialist displacement. Born in the Innu community of Pessamit, Bacon was sent to residential school at the age of five and spent fourteen years of her life there. Now, with charm, grace, and quiet tenacity, she is leading a movement to preserve her people’s language and culture.
This endearing film moves with Bacon across Canada — Montreal, Pessamit, and the tundra. In each place she visits, Bacon shares reflections and stories, back dropped by the film’s stunning cinematography. The contrasts between city and wilderness mirror Bacon’s upbringing, creating a poignant sense of the displacement she and her generation experienced. At the same time, the film offers a moving, inspirational meditation on the interconnectedness of language, earth, spirituality, and culture.
Highway of Tears
"Highway of Tears" is about the missing or murdered women along a 724 kilometer stretch of highway in northern British Columbia.
Hozho of Native Women
Presents excerpts from a conference on Native American women's health issues. Five Native American Women from diverse tribal backgrounds tell moving stories, from their lives and cultural memory that concern wellness.
Inuit Lands, the melting point (DVD)
After spending 1950-51 with an isolated group of Eskimos in northern Greenland, sharing their life at the very edge of survival, Jean Malaurie and his companions returned to Thule village to confront a U.S. Air Force base under construction. When he returned to the Arctic in 1972, the base had irreversibly transformed the Eskimo (Inuit) culture. The film continues in Malaurie's footsteps and exposes the changes affecting the small hunting and fishing communities of northern Greenland today, including globalization, market economy, exploitation of its natural resources and climate change.
In Jesus' name: shattering the silence of St. Anne's residential school
An all-Indigenous English and Cree-English collaborative documentary film that breaks long-held silences imposed upon children who were interned at the notoriously violent St. Anne's Residential School in Fort Albany First Nation, Ontario.
Lake Superior Our Helper: Stories from Batchewanaung Anishinabek Fisheries
Lake Superior Our Helper follows Chief Dean Sayers through a series of conversations with community members to reveal the cultural, political, and ecological relationships surrounding their fisheries. Inviting us on a journey of Lake Superior, the film shares the messages of Elders, youth, fishers, community leaders, and their visions for the future of Batchewana’s fisheries.
Lii Michif Niiyanaan: We Are Métis
The Métis are often referred to as Canada’s “invisible people” – the “ghosts of the land” – whose stories haunt the country’s collective unconscious. Lii Michif Niiyanaan: We Are Métis is a one-hour documentary that addresses this invisibility by shining a new light on the historical and contemporary experience of Métis people in Canada and providing a space for Métis people to share their diverse perspectives on what it means to be Métis today.
Mankiller (DVD)
Presents the story of Wilma Mankiller, who became the Cherokee Nation's first female Principal Chief in 1985. Mankiller overcame sexism and personal challenges to fight injustice and give a voice to the voiceless.
One day in the life of Noah Piugattuk
Noah Piugattuk's nomadic Inuit band live and hunt by dog team, just as his ancestors did. When the white man known as Boss arrives in camp, what appears as a chance meeting soon opens up the prospect of momentous change.
Sisters Rising
Sisters Rising is the story of six Native American women fighting to restore personal and tribal sovereignty in the face of ongoing sexual violence against Indigenous women in the United States.
Starblanket : a spirit journey
At the age of 24, Noel Starblanket was one of the youngest First Nations chiefs in North America. At the age of 29, he became Chief of all Canadian Indians when he was elected president of the National Indian Brotherhood [now The Assembly of First Nations]. Outspoken, rebellious, and sometimes outrageous, he was the subject of a NFBC production in 1973. Now, three and a half decades later, he shares his own healing journey as he finds peace in returning to the teachings of the Elders, a greater appreciation of life through loss, and renewed hope for the future with the emerging Seventh Generation.
Tzouhalem
Tzouhalem, Chief of the Cowichan First Nation during the mid-1800’s, is arguably one of the most fascinating and polarizing figures in Canadian history. His story is a matter of historic record yet is the subject of legend. This documentary, through interviews and creative re-enactments, examines the near-mythic figure of Cowichan Chief Tzouhalem, the account of his life from both historians and First Nations Elders, the folkloric tales concerning him, his impact on the modern relationship between the Crown and First Nations, and how his legend remains alive to this day, examining critically how his story has been told and passed down to us.
Utama
In the Bolivian highlands, an elderly Quechua couple has been living the same daily life for years. During an uncommonly long drought, Virginio and his wife (Sisa) must decide whether to stay and maintain their traditional way of life or admit defeat and move in with family members in the city.
What was ours
Like millions of indigenous people, many Native American tribes do not control their own material history and culture. For the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes living on the isolated Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, new contact with lost artifacts risks opening old wounds but also offers the possibility for healing. What Was Ours is the story of how a young journalist and a teenage powwow princess, both of the Arapaho tribe, traveled together with a Shoshone elder in search of missing artifacts in the vast archives of Chicago's Field Museum.
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