Movies: First nations

The dead are coming back to life outside the isolated Mi'kmaq reserve of Red Crow, except for its Indigenous inhabitants who are strangely immune to the zombie plague....

Link and his brother flee their abusive father and embark on a journey where Link discovers his sexuality and rediscovers his Mi’kmaw heritage....

A white lawyer finds his values shaken when he is paired with an angry Indigenous activist who insists on kidnapping the head of a logging company to teach him the price of his destruction....

Follows the life of Native Canadian Saul Indian Horse as he survives residential school and life amongst the racism of the 1970s. A talented hockey player, Saul must find his own path as he battles stereotypes and alcoholism....

In July 1990, a dispute over a proposed golf course to be built on Kanien’kéhaka (Mohawk) lands in Oka, Quebec, sets the stage for a historic confrontation that would grab international headlines and sear itself into the Canadian consciousness....

A journey by canoe into the city creates a dynamic interconnection between natural and urban spaces, in this evocative short set to a hypnotizing soundtrack by Inuk artist Tanya Taqaq....

A First Nations boy in the Australian outback adopts an injured dingo. The two of them set off on a quest to find an emu....

A study of life at Christmastime in Moose Factory, an old settlement mainly composed of Cree families on the shore of James Bay, composed entirely of children's crayon drawings and narrated by children....

Cree matriarch Aline Spears survives a childhood in Canada’s residential school system to continue her family’s generational fight in the face of systemic starvation, racism, and sexual abuse. She uses her uncanny ability to understand and translate ...

The story of the Navajo, at work and play, in the Southwestern United States, and in particular, in scenic Monument Valley. The film focuses on a typical Indian family, its daily life, struggles, and folkways, as every aspect of living is governed by...

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 dis...

Gil Cardinal searches for his natural family and an understanding of the circumstances that led to his becoming a foster child. An important figure in the history of Canadian Indigenous filmmaking, Gil Cardinal was born to a Métis mother but raised b...

During a training exercise in an abandoned open-pit mine, a crew of Canadian astronauts are interrupted by an Atikamekw elder, who asks them to deliver an important message to the spirit of his community on the moon....

The big bad cats are the villains/Indians, and the little mice are the settlers going west in their little covered wagons, and the Indians are on a rampage about it. Things look dark indeed for the settlers when the likes of Buffalo Bill, General Cus...

This documentary focuses on the goose hunt, a ritual of central importance to the Cree people of the James Bay coastal areas. Not only a source of food, the hunt is also used to transfer Cree culture, skills, and ethics to future generations. Filmmak...

The story of a young Mi'kmaq girl whose name means "the light from the dawn."...

On the Kainai (Blood) First Nations Reserve, near Cardston, Alberta, a hopeful new development in Indigenous enterprise. Once rulers of the western plains, the Bloods live on a 1 300-square-kilometer reserve. Many have lacked gainful employment and n...

The story of a young boy forced to spend all five years of his short life in hospital while the federal and provincial governments argued over which was responsible for his care, as well as the long struggle of Indigenous activists to force the Canad...

Ten women in Canada talk about being lesbian in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s: discovering the pulp fiction of the day about women in love, their own first affairs, the pain of breaking up, frequenting gay bars, facing police raids, men's responses, an...

Legendary documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin provides a glimpse of what action-driven decolonization looks like in Norway House, one of Manitoba's largest First Nation communities....