Following her sister's disappearance, Jax and her niece Roki must stick together. Desperate to keep what's left of their family intact, Jax and Roki defy the law and hit the road on a journey to the Grand Nation Powwow in Oklahoma City.
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.
In Southern Bahia, seven indigenous women invite to reflection, sharing their mythology, ancestry and paths to living well.
In an isolated community, a young indigenous woman fights for her freedom after enduring sexual assaults. Confronted with a life-altering decision, she stands at a crossroads between resisting or forging a path away from the shackles of violence.
A young Ojibwa girl from 1770 marries a Scottish fur trader and leaves home for the shores of Georgian Bay. Although the union is beneficial for her tribe, it results in hardship and isolation for Ikwe. Values and customs clash until, finally, the events of a dream Ikwe once had unfold with tragic clarity.
Ompung Putra Boru, a sixties indigenous Batak woman from Humbang Hasundutan, North Sumatra, retraces her life stories through photographs that interweave her past and present as a wife, mother, healer and indigenous land defender in two neighboring villages. Her multi-layered stories are juxtaposed with visual records of everyday life in the two villages, where people’s living space is still increasingly threatened by a giant pulp expansion.
This documentary follows two Mohawk girls on their journey to become Mohawk women. Friends since childhood, Kaienkwinehtha and Kasennakohe are members of the traditional community of Akwesasne on the U.S./Canada border. Together, they undertake a four-year rite of passage for adolescents, called Oheró:kon, or "under the husk." The ceremony had been nearly extinct, a casualty of colonialism and intergenerational trauma; revived in the past decade by two traditional leaders, it has since flourished. Filmmaker Katsitsionni Fox has served as a mentor, or "auntie," to many youth going through the passage rites.
Acclaimed Métis filmmaker Christine Welsh presents a compelling documentary that puts a human face on a national tragedy: the murders and disappearances of an estimated 500 Aboriginal women in Canada over the past 30 years. This is a journey into the dark heart of Native women's experience in Canada. From Vancouver's Skid Row to the Highway of Tears in northern British Columbia, to Saskatoon, this film honours those who have passed and uncovers reasons for hope. Finding Dawn illustrates the deep historical, social and economic factors that contribute to the epidemic of violence against Native women in this country.
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 wife of a Hudson's Bay Company clerk, is torn between loyalty to her husband and loyalty to her brother, a freetrader. Even more shattering, a change in company policy destroys Madeleine's happy and secure life, forcing her to re-evaluate her identity.
"Without a Whisper" is the untold story of how Indigenous women influenced the early suffragists in their fight for freedom and equality. Mohawk Clan Mother Louise Herne and Professor Sally Roesch Wagner shake the foundation of the established history of the women’s rights movement in the United States. They join forces on a journey to shed light on the hidden history of the influence of Haudenosaunee Women on the women’s rights movement, possibly changing this historical narrative forever.
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 invisible.
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.”
Maria, a young Spanish doctor, works in a maternity hospital in the Ecuadorian rain forest. She is shocked about the premature pregnancies and the violence women in Ecuador have to face. She meets Mishell, an adolescent abused by her father, and Yanina, a woman who decides to perform a clandestine abortion. Maria discovers that behind unintended pregnancies often hides sexual violence.
Xóchitl is an indigenous woman who must fight for her freedom before the birth of her baby, since she finds herself trapped in an abusive relationship. She will have to face a town full of prejudices and accomplices of her abuser. However, Xóchitl has the inner strength of her lineage, which will manifest itself in her favor.
This Peabody Award-winning documentary from New Mexico PBS looks at the European arrival in the Americas from the perspective of the Pueblo Peoples.
A young woman returns to her rural Mexican village after a few years away to find out if her first love can be revived.
Four close friends have entered a radio contest to determine who can stay at the most spooky haunted location overnight. The group of 4 take a sweet candy truck to their location to earn more points in the contest. The haunted location they've chosen is a First Nations Residential School with a violent history. A demonic nun is conjured up from her final resting place after one of the four is brutally murdered, a trickster from across the galaxy arrives and more death ensues.
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.
Amá is a feature length documentary which tells an important and untold story: the abuses committed against Native American women by the United States Government during the 1960’s and 70’s: removed from their families and sent to boarding schools, forced relocation away from their traditional lands and involuntary sterilization. The result of nine years painstaking and sensitive work by filmmaker Lorna Tucker, the film features the testimony of many Native Americans, including three remarkable women who tell their stories - Jean Whitehorse, Yvonne Swan and Charon Aseytoyer - as well as a revealing and rare interview with Dr. Reimart Ravenholt whose population control ideas were the framework for some of the government policies directed at Native American women.
