#skoden
Writer/Director: Damien Eagle Bear
Every meme has its story, #skoden, tracks the story behind an iconic meme that some see as a rallying cry for Indigenous peoples’ empowerment but to others is a grim reminder of the realities Indigenous people face living in so-called Canada.

American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez
Writer/Director: David Alvarado
Writer: Peg Campbell
Luis Valdez elevates Chicano narratives to cinema through Zoot Suit and La Bamba, overcoming political and industry pushback to create landmark films that broaden and honor America’s cultural story.

ANOKI – More than a Photo, More than a Pow Wow
Director: Aurélie Debusschère
Writers: Larry Spotted Crow Mann, Aurélie Debusschère
Anoki, a young man from the Nipmuc Nation, grew up in the world of Pow Wows, singing alongside his brothers. Through this documentary, he shares his deep connection to tradition, family, and music, as well as the immense challenges involved in preserving them.

In a modern world filled with contradictions and often hostile to Indigenous peoples, Anoki seeks to find his place between two worlds. Guided by his father, elders, and the Ohketeau Cultural Center, he embarks on a new path at the heart of his ancestral lands.

He opens his heart like a sacred drum, so that everyone may hear the vibrant and urgent call of a story that must be told, transmitted, and shared — in order to restore justice and foster greater understanding between peoples.

BreakPoint: The Untold Story of the Constitution Express
Director: Leslie Korn, Max Montalban
Writer: Samuel Stoker
In 1980, as Canada moved to erase Indigenous rights from its new constitution, thousands of First Nations people boarded trains and traveled nearly 5000 kilometers to Ottawa. Told through the firsthand accounts of three participants in the movement and narrated by Peter Coyote, BreakPoint: The Untold Story of the Constitution Express uncovers the historic grassroots uprising whose legacy continues to shape the fight for Indigenous sovereignty today.

Synopsis: BreakPoint: The Untold Story of the Constitution Express reveals one of the most significant yet little-known Indigenous rights movements in modern Canadian history. In 1980, as the Canadian government moved to patriate its constitution and extinguish Indigenous rights, First Nations communities across the country mobilized in an unprecedented act of resistance.

From elders to children, thousands boarded trains bound for Ottawa, transforming a constitutional crisis into a nationwide movement for justice.

The film is rooted in Indigenous long-form storytelling traditions and is carried by Elders who once stood inside the story as young people. Forty-five years later, they speak across time. The narrative circles, as past and present form an intergenerational conversation, and lived experience stands as witness and wisdom.

Led by Grand Chief George Manuel, and sustained through the efforts of Chiefs, activists, and families from west to east, with strategic and legal support from Rudolph “Rudy” Ryser and Louise Mandell, the movement brought Indigenous resistance onto the global stage and forced the state to confront its colonial foundations.

BreakPoint also explores the shared mission and connection between George Manuel and Rudy Ryser, revealing how their distinct journeys, marked by both hardship and conviction, fueled a unified vision for sovereignty and shaped the movement’s strategic direction.

Narrated by Peter Coyote, BreakPoint traces how this extraordinary mobilization became a turning point in the centuries-long struggle for Indigenous self-determination, and why its legacy continues to shape the fight for sovereignty today.

Dear Alaska
Writer/Director: Moriah Hayes
Sharks are tuned in to the natural rhythms of the world, sensing emotions, events, and energies from thousands of miles away. They are the messengers of the vast oceans that connect us all. The director’s family are sharks and they carry that medicine with them. But, what happens to a family when a shark is captured for its fins? When a Japanese father is kidnapped and shipped to internment camp after internment camp? All his kids stolen and trapped in boarding schools designed to strip them of their roots? A Tlingit mother left with an empty, broken home?

The director, Moriah, and their family are Wooshkeetaan, Eagle-wolf moiety of Tóos Hít, Shark House, and despite these intense fractures, their keen sensibility as sharks brought them back together in the 5th generation, the director’s generation. Colonial violence and U.S. militarism attempted to wipe out their family, their community, and their cultures. Colonizers tried to render Tlingit people extinct, boasting about Moriah’s language being endangered like a forgotten fish, but sharks bite back.

As one of the first Tlingit produced feature documentaries, this story captures this sacred bite in the form of juxtaposed homecoming journeys, guided by this shark medicine. Shark siblings discover old family secrets (00:33:14) and create trails for their elders to follow. Elders learn the language (00:37:37) that was stolen as they swim alongside the younger fish. This sacred bite, a preservation of culture, is a two-way current, running from elder to youth and youth to elder. 01:19:20 is the concluding animation in the film that amplifies and celebrates this reclamation of culture. Dear Alaska, is a love letter to Moriah’s family, their people, their culture, and their land.

Discover History With The Freedmen of SE Oklahoma
Writer/Director: Doris Burris – Williamson
“Discover History With The Choctaw Freedmen of SE Oklahoma” is a historical documentary which amplifies the lived experiences, migration stories, and cultural legacy of Choctaw Freedmen descendants—African Americans who were once enslaved by Choctaw Indians and journeyed from Lowndes, Mississippi along the “Trail of Tears” in the 1830s. These Freedmen and the Native Choctaw Tribe later established new towns and communities in Southeast Oklahoma. The documentary storytellers in the film are the Descendants of the Choctaw Freedmen whose ancestors spoke the Choctaw language, cohabitated and lived with the Choctaw Indians for over 200 years in SE Oklahoma.

Many of these Freedmen families during 1810s were owned by two (2) famous Choctaw Principal Chiefs. First chief was Samuel Garland and the second was Chief Peter P. Pitchlynn of the Choctaw Nation, along with the other family members John Pitchlynn (Peter’s Father), Sophia Pitchlynn and Betsy Pitchlynn-Harris who was Chief Pitchlynn’s Mother and Sister who also kept these Freedmen as part of their community and tribe. Many of these Choctaw Freedmen were of Mixed-blood and were related to Pitchlynn and Garland Family.

Very few documentary films give life story accounts have been made about this complex relationship between the Native American Tribes and the Freedmen. I hope to fill the void since there still remains a notable lack of cinematic representation on the subject.

Emily: I Am Kam
Writer/Director: Danielle MacLean
Celebrating the legacy of Australia’s most significant female artist – Emily Kam Kngwarray. We travel with her descendants as they revive awely ceremonies and collaborate on a major retrospective exhibition, reaffirming her connection to Country.

Gego Mawikak
Director: Ervin Chartrand
The first residential school opened in 1831, and more than 150,000 children were forced to attend schools across Canada during the operation, according to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.

In 1907, chief medical inspector Dr. P.H. Bryce from the Department of Indian Affairs wrote a report detailing the poor health conditions in residential schools. He went on to call them a national crime. But by 1920, the Indian Act had made attendance mandatory for children between seven and 15 years old. In 1958, Indian Affairs inspectors, again, took a critical view of residential schools, recommending they be abolished. They were not.

Residential School Survivors were subject to social isolation and cultural assimilation. This was part of the federal government’s policy to “kill the Indian in the child.” For more than 150 years, about 180,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were removed from their homes and sent to federally-funded schools managed by Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian and United churches.

Pine Creek Residential School opened in 1890, closed in 1892 and reopened in a larger building in 1894. A still newer and larger building was constructed in 1899. The school and the surrounding farmland covered approximately 632 acres. As with many schools, frustration, homesickness, and conflicts over discipline led students to run away or to engage in acts of arson. For example, in 1928, eight boys ran away from the school at once. Two years later, a boy was caught trying to set the school on fire. The school closed in 1969.

The film imparts its harrowing tale through intensely personal testimonies. The Residential School Survivors recall the horrors they experienced when they first arrived at the school. The survivors speak of cousins, friends and classmates, who they suspect was beaten, sexually assaulted, or just went missing. The survivors presumed that some died and were buried among other children thought to have perished on school grounds. Survivors share stories of how they were kidnapped from their homes as youngsters. The school and church are haunted houses for these victims and others like them.

The last of these schools closed in the late 90s, but their hideous imprint remains. A survivor’s grief never ends, nor does the guilt of those who found themselves unwitting accomplices to these horrors. So in the truest sense, ‘We Were Not Allowed To Cry’ is a horror film. But by shining light on a history long-shrouded by time, it achieves a measure of catharsis for all involved.

Ice, Stone, Spirit: Uncovering the Stories of Yellowstone’s First People
Director: David Rohm, Melissa Rohm, Shane Doyle
Writer: David Rohm
For over 11,000 years, Native people lived in, traveled through, and carefully stewarded the land we now call Yellowstone National Park.For over 11,000 years, Native people lived in, traveled through, and carefully stewarded the land we now call Yellowstone National Park. Yet most visitors — and most Americans — know virtually nothing of their presence, their contributions, or their enduring connection to this extraordinary place. ICE, STONE, SPIRIT: Uncovering the Stories of Yellowstone’s First People retraces those ancient footsteps, capturing a historic and long-overdue reckoning — a growing movement within the National Park Service to restore Indigenous voices, visibility, and recognition at Yellowstone.

Through intimate conversations with members of the Crow, Shoshone, and Cheyenne nations, alongside leading archaeologists and Yellowstone officials, the film reveals a Yellowstone deeper, richer, and more complex than most have ever encountered. More than a history lesson, ICE, STONE, SPIRIT is an invitation — to see this iconic landscape through new eyes, and to understand that honoring its first people enriches the experience for everyone.

In Search of the Rabbit Indian
Writer/Directors: Annie Canavaggio, María Neyla Santamaría
“In Search of the Rabbit Indian” is a documentary that explores an enigmatic indigenous legend from Panama. It tells the story of a supposed small, warrior-like, and elusive tribe living in the mountains of Chiriquí/Bocas del Toro, linking it to the cultural resistance of the Naso people in the face of modernity.

They are described as small beings (approx. 1.50 m) with long ears, sharp teeth, and body hair who live in underground caves.

In the documentary, the “Rabbit Indian” represents cultural resistance, memory, and the struggle of the last 4,000 Naso against the loss of their lands, especially in the face of hydroelectric dam construction.

Illustrated Legacies: Graveyard of the Pacific
Writer/Director: Tanner Zurkoski
Illustrated Legacies: Graveyard of the Pacific reclaims coastal Indigenous history, tracing a continuum from ancient whaling practices to the upheaval of colonial conflict. Relying on oral traditions, and combining documentary form with animation, the film challenges mainstream eurocentric narratives centering instead the vibrant lives and cultures of the original stewards of the lands and ocean. Through this lens a complicated history is reframed by the voices of the Indigenous Peoples of Canada’s west coast.

Ireland and the First Nations (Éire agus na Chéad Náisiúin).
Director: Ronan McCloskey
The incredible and untold story of how Irish people interacted with the First Nations of North America with contributions from some of Ireland’s leading historians along with a new wave of First Nations academics and commentators.

Namesake təm kʷaθ nan
Director: Evan ƛɛsla Adams, Eileen t̓agəm Francis
təm kʷaθ nan Namesake documents an ongoing conversation between the Tla’amin Nation and the city commonly known as Powell River. The city’s name honours Israel Wood Powell, a government official whose policies helped establish residential schools, criminalize cultural practices, and remove Tla’amin from its home at tiskʷət. The Tla’amin Nation asks the city to consider changing its name, not to erase history but to build a new future together. This request sparks public meetings, emotional testimony, resistance and outrage, allyship, and reflection across the region. Elders share naming traditions that connect people with history, land and responsibility. Archaeological evidence reveals over 12,000 years of continuous Tla’amin presence. Current residents grapple with family history, belonging, and fears of losing identity. The outcome remains uncertain. The conversation itself becomes the story. Following the Tla’amin seasonal cycle, the film observes how communities change slowly through listening, disagreement, repair, and time.

Nitassinan
Director: Joséphine Bacon, Kim O’Bomsawin, Sarah Fortin
Writers: Joséphine Bacon, Carlos Ferrand, Émilie Porry, Catherine Proulx
Feature documentary Nitassinan stands as both a love letter and a testimony of an Innu history that is still unfolding. Nitassinan means “our land” in Innu-aimun, a word that has also taken on growing political weight, as the territory faced mounting pressure from industrial resource development. This latest film by award-winning Innu poet and filmmaker Josephine Bacon evokes what life on the land was before colonialism, and what it remains: not only the place we come from, but a living part of who we are. It has nourished language, shaped thought, and guided footsteps. Nitassinan captures the distinct bond and relationship of belonging to the land that has guided countless generations of Innu past, and the fight to protect it for generations to come.

No Greater Act: Pueblo Resistance
Director: David Aubrey
Writer: Maura Dhu Studi
Pueblo Resistance is a timely exploration of the birth of resistance in North America, considered the “First American Revolution” by some historians. This groundbreaking documentary by Silver Bullet Productions tells the fascinating story of Indigenous resistance to Spanish colonization of New Mexico. The foundation for methods of resistance today, this is not a history of Pueblos, nor the Pueblo Revolt, but an account of early resistance. Beginning in 1540 and spanning two centuries, this film reveals the many unsung acts of resilience and resistance by Pueblo People to foreign domination that led up to the Pueblo Revolt. Omitted or obscured in history books, these facts and oral histories are told by scholars and Tribal Historians, and narrated by Academy Award honoree Wes Studi.

Reservation Redemption
Director: Brenda Fisher, Blake Pickens
Writer: Brenda Fisher
One juror away from the death penalty at 17, Chief Marchand Rice, a Colville tribal member, is sentenced to life without parole for murder. Everything changes when respected Kalispel spiritual leader Francis Cullooyah asks him one life-altering question: “Who do you want to be when you grow up?” That simple question began a 40 year journey of accountability, healing, and cultural reconnection, transforming Chief into a respected mentor who helps other incarcerated men find purpose through Indigenous traditions. Told through deep personal perspectives. Redemption is an intimate documentary that challenges conventional ideas of justice and reveals the transformative power of culture, resilience, and redemption.

Sámi vs. Sámi
Director: Ellen – Astri Lundby
Over a century ago, the Swedish state forcibly relocated Northern Sámi families into Southern Sámi territory, resulting in a long-running conflict over land, reindeer herding and, ultimately, the right to be Sámi. Since then, the state has remained silent.

Across generations, state decisions deepened the divide, leaving third-generation descendants Erik (Southern Sámi) and Inger Ann (Northern Sámi) facing each other in three emotionally charged court proceedings – a rare courtroom battle between Indigenous groups, documented on film for the first time.

Beneath the legal arguments lie two families shaped by different injustices. Is there ever a real winner when both sides are victims of the same history? How do you resolve an unresolvable conflict?

Director Ellen-Astri Lundby is a Sea Sámi descendant from Norway. This positions her outside the conflict, enabling her to explore it with a sense of belonging and perspective.

She Cried That Day
Director: Amanda Erickson
SHE CRIED THAT DAY exposes a crisis hiding in plain sight through the eyes of those on the frontlines. Christine Means and her family have spent years questioning the circumstances surrounding her sister’s death. In 2019, a renewed sense of hope for justice places Christine at the center of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives movement in New Mexico. As she becomes a voice for her sister, we get an inside look into how this deadly crisis takes a toll on a family, a community and a state. SHE CRIED THAT DAY is a story of love, spirit and the unwavering power of Indigenous Women who refuse to let their loved ones remain invisible in the eyes of the justice system.

Teko Porã, A Contemporary Portrait of Everyday Life in the Guarani Rio Silveira Village
Director: Luciana Alves
Teko Porã is a sensitive immersion into the way of being and living of an Indigenous community on the coast of São Paulo, where tradition and contemporaneity coexist in a delicate balance.

Through songs, rituals, care for the land, and the simple gestures of everyday life, the film follows different generations striving to preserve their ancestral knowledge amid the transformations of the surrounding world. Young people navigating between two worlds, leaders reflecting on the future of their people, and women who sustain community life reveal a living territory shaped by affection, challenges, and quiet resilience.

Developed in close dialogue with the community — who participate in the creative process, narrative construction, and some of the image-making — the film also incorporates internal perspectives shaped by language, listening, and lived experience.

More than a portrait of a specific community, the documentary Teko Porã, A Contemporary Portrait of Everyday Life in the Guarani Rio Silveira Village offers a universal reflection on belonging, identity, and the search for balance between humanity and nature, and between tradition and modernity.

The Cover Up
Director: Jeremy Torrie
Writers: Tanya Brunel, Martin Himel
Exposing Priests & nuns who are still alive in Canada but have yet to see justice served against them from survivors.

The Good Canadian
Writer/Director: Leena Minifie, David Paperny
The world knows the image of the good Canadian. But what if there was a dark secret behind a national identity? THE GOOD CANADIAN exposes the truth behind the idea of a True North strong and free. In this unflinching and eye-opening documentary, directors Leena Minifie and David Paperny move us through the corridors of systemic inequity, from the Indian Act to residential schools, to modern day family separation. Fusing shocking footage with detailed interviews with experts, advocates, whistleblowers and politicians. THE GOOD CANADIAN challenges national myth-making, while offering Canadians the chance to forge a new identity from the truth.

The Last Wintercount
Director: Sheldon P Wolfchild
Writers: Tom Smith, Mark Diedrich
A lineal descendant of Dakota chiefs tells a “Wintercount” of true Mdewakanton Sioux history, including the true cause of the U.S.-Dakota war, deceit and corruption in Minnesota and the little known story of a Reservation the U.S. government tried to hide from its benefactors for over 100 years.

The Oteros
Director: Yoann Le Gruiec, Benoit Pergent
JJ Otero, 48, lives in the family mobile home, on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico. A musician and a jewelry maker, he went back to live on his native land to take care of his parents, but also to connect with this land, its people, its history.

His mother Elsa, his father Chester, and his daughter Kiley share, in their everyday life, an existence that is also a resistance.

The Plains
Director: Thierry ROBERT
Writers: Thierry ROBERT, Nicolas CENNAC
The Native Americans of North America want to rescue the most threatened ecosystem on the planet – the Great Plains.

They are Lakota, Assiniboine, Sioux. These tribes, from Montana to the Dakotas, have signed a treaty to restore the once spectacular biodiversity of these lands: the Buffalo Treaty. It’s an effort that unites scientists, environmental activists and even ranchers dedicated to witnessing this wild and legendary landscape thrive again. When the Conquest of the American West began two hundred years ago, these grasslands supported millions of animals, including some of the largest herds that Earth has ever seen… But as white settlers colonized the West, their practices would not only threaten the wildlife and habitat to near-extinction but also the Native American people, whose culture and livelihoods had relied on this ecosystem for millennia. But today, despite numerous obstacles, the descendants of these first nations are determined to rewild the Great Plains.

By focusing their conservation efforts on the return of an iconic species, the bison, they hope to recreate an exceptional ecosystem, considered even more important than the Amazon in the fight against global warming. Through their voices and actions, our film will recount, for the first time, the important, dramatic and moving environmental story of the Great Plains.

The River Remembers
Director: Jordan Riber
Writer: Noelani Auguston
The River Remembers follows the intertwined struggles of the Indigenous people of the Elwha and Klamath Rivers as they lead the two largest dam removals in U.S. history. These rivers have always been lifelines, and their decline has mirrored the erasure of Native ways of life.

The film braids together intimate family stories and sweeping historical battles: parents teaching their children to fish, catastrophic salmon kills that galvanized action, and generations who refused to give up a century-long fight.

From the joy of witnessing water flow free on the Elwha to the hard-fought victory of the Undam the Klamath campaign, The River Remembers reveals a movement where ecological restoration and cultural survival are inseparable. More than a story of loss, it is a vision of resilience, healing, and the possibility of renewal for future generations.

The River Remembers follows the intertwined struggles of the Indigenous people of the Elwha and Klamath Rivers as they lead the two largest dam removals in U.S. history. These rivers have always been lifelines, and their decline has mirrored the erasure of Native ways of life.

The film braids together intimate family stories and sweeping historical battles: parents teaching their children to fish, catastrophic salmon kills that galvanized action, and generations who refused to give up a century-long fight.

From the joy of witnessing water flow free on the Elwha to the hard-fought victory of the Undam the Klamath campaign, The River Remembers reveals a movement where ecological restoration and cultural survival are inseparable. More than a story of loss, it is a vision of resilience, healing, and the possibility of renewal for future generations.

To rebuild ties
Director: Léa Pascal
Writers: Léa Pascal, Josée Bourgeois
Indigenous people from different generations strive to reconnect with their roots — rediscovering family, language, and culture. Through dance, music, and the passing down of knowledge, each seeks healing and dares to dream of the future.

Tzinquaw Opera
Writer/Directors: Harold Joe, Leslie Bland
Through the traditional story, music, and dance of today’s Tzinquaw Dance Group, we investigate the breaking of bounds of the Indian Act’s cultural oppression through the Tzinquaw Opera’s widespread acclaim in the 1940s-50’s, leading to the present-day revitalization of Cowichan culture.