Comedians and activists Gitz Crazyboy and Tito Ybarra pose as an Indigenous energy company sharing plans to reroute Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline through the wealthy white suburbs of Duluth, MN, to more fairly share the risks oil pipelines bring to Indigenous lands—with shocking and hilarious results.

Some fought for gold. The Indians fought for their lives. In 1850, the California sex slave industry was thriving in the mining towns that began popping up along the American River. Young native girls were being kidnapped from their families and tribes. Tintah is a young man whose mother was a slave and he was a product of her servitude. He now is a free man living on the river as a carver and master woodworker. When his love interest is captured by slavers, he sets out to free her. In the end, by serendipity, he must fight the men that captured his own mother and eventually kill his natural father to rescue the woman he loves.

The film explores the intergenerational effects of the residential school system. Following the discovery of the first 215 children’s graves found in Kamloops, BC in June of this year, students from WFI were inspired to document the impact of the residential schools on Indigenous people and their communities. The film has been made to educate the world through these untold stories and the history from the perspective of the people it affected.

Long Line of Ladies tells the story of a girl and her community as they prepare for her Ihuk, the once-dormant coming of age ceremony of the Karuk tribe of Northern California.

Ruminating on the shared colonial historical narratives of North American Indigenous communities in what are now Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, First Landings reflects on the initial influx of European Colonization of the New World and its effects on First Nations Peoples through a nuanced approach to non-western cinema.

“Saging” has gone mainstream. This viral trend is now common in movies, TV shows, social media, and cleansing rituals—people burning sage bundles in the hope of purifying space and clearing bad energy. Instead of healing, the appropriated use of saging in popular culture is having a devastating impact.

Diane Wilson (Dakota Nation) will present a reading from her recent novel The Seed Keeper, the winner of the 2022 Minnesota Book Award in fiction. The author will also discuss her work as the former executive director of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to create sovereign food systems for Native people.

A sweeping history of Indigenous traditions of gender, sexuality, and resistance that reveals how, despite centuries of colonialism, Two-Spirit people are reclaiming their place in Native nations. Reclaiming Two-Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America.

Gregory D. Smithers is professor of American history and Eminent Scholar at Virginia Commonwealth University and a British Academy Global Professor at the University of Hull in England. His research focuses on Cherokee and Southeastern Indigenous history, as well as gender, sexuality, racial and environmental history. His books include Native Southerners: Indigenous History from Origins to Removal and The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity.

Raven Heavy Runner is a Blackfeet and lives in Seattle. He is one of the many Two-Spirit voices reclaiming a tradition that European colonization had nearly extinguished among Native Americans. Raven is an ambassador across cultures, he is active in the revival of Two-Spirit awareness nationwide and he helps to restore indigenous values that emphatically do not include homophobia. He is currently a social worker with the Muckleshoot Tribe in Washington.

On the surface, Wildhood opens at the point of no return for Link, the teenage son of Arvin, his white father, and Sarah, his late Indigenous mother. His childhood, rough and troubled. The pressures of youth have created mounting frustration and anger that he aims inwards and outwards. When he discovers a collection of birthday cards from his mother that his father has hidden from him, he realizes his mother might still be alive. He knows nothing about her or her Mi’kmaw people. For him, this unknown is a path he hasn’t walked, and he senses that it might be the key to finding his place. Burning all the bridges behind him, he and his young half-brother, Travis, head out. On this level, Wildhood is a road trip film, a buddy film, a coming-of-age film, and a coming out film.

Atlantic Film Festival 2021 Winner Best Feature
Canadian Screen Awards, CA 2022 Winner
Cinéfest Sudbury 2021 Winner Best Feature Film
Cleveland International Film Festival 2022 Nominee Best Feature Film
Palm Springs International Film Festival 2022 Winner
Seattle International Film Festival 2022 Nominee Grand Jury Prize Best Feature Film

Join us for pow wow drumming and dancing by the Adamstown Singers from the Upper Mattaponi, Saponi and Tuscarora tribes and dancers from the Upper Mattaponi, Mattaponi, Chickahominy and Nansemond tribes. Meet our filmmakers and several Native actors in this relaxed and fun environment.

Heavy Hors d’oeuvres and libations will be served.

NOMINEE 2022 News & Documentary Emmy® Award
Outstanding Social Issue Documentary

WINNER 2022 Hollywood Critics Association Award
Best Broadcast Network or Cable Documentary Television Movie

RUNNER-UP 2022 Sandford St Martin Award (UK)
Journalism

NOMINEE 2022 Humanitas Prize for Screenwriting
Documentary — Shannon Kring

WINNER 2021 Clio Visualizing History Prize for the Advancement of Women in Film
Shannon Kring

Bring Her Home follows three Indigenous women – an artist, an activist, and a politician – as they fight to vindicate and honor their missing and murdered relatives who have fallen victim to a growing epidemic across Indian country. Despite the lasting effects from historical trauma, each woman must search for healing while navigating racist systems that brought about this very crisis.

A film by Juan Javier Pérez. Through his dreams, José received a gift given by the gods. A gift that brings consequences. Now that he is at a mature age in life, José would like to rest, but he is not allowed. Vaychiletik explores this fierce yet beautiful reality, forged from the dreams of the Mayan people of Mexico.

INDIGINEITY BEYOND THE SOUTHERN BORDER | A FILMMAKERS FORUM CURATED BY FEDERICO CUATLACUATL, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

Elena, a Tzotzil woman from San Andrés Larraínzar, Chiapas, is challenged by the uses and customs of her people when an almost entirely male community assembly appoints her as a municipal trustee. As an authority, she introduces us to the complexity of the system of socio-political organization in San Andrés. During her term of office, the traditional practice of masculinity begins to be questioned.

INDIGINEITY BEYOND THE SOUTHERN BORDER | A FILMMAKERS FORUM CURATED BY FEDERICO CUATLACUATL, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

Tolchikaualistli: to exist simultaneously in two places and dimensions of time is an immigrant’s ability to embody a transborder life, navigating the past, present, and future at once. To (be)long is to reclaim territory, in this case it is a transcendence of time and space as a means to reclaim a new dimension of territory or place that must exist in between two worlds, between the past and the future, between two identities, between one’s many selves. Smuggling traditions are acts of resiliency, self-preservation, resistance, and self-rematriation in a dimension of transborder indigeneity and within one’s many selves: to be an alien; to be the other; to be the threat; to be the dream; to be the backbone; to be the invasion; to be a cultural nomad; to be (in)visible; to be 500 years of historical weight; to be a ‘pinche india’; to be hope…

INDIGINEITY BEYOND THE SOUTHERN BORDER | A FILMMAKERS FORUM CURATED BY FEDERICO CUATLACUATL, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

Ayoungman tells the tragic story of the racially motivated murder of a much loved 24-year-old hockey star and champion pow wow dancer from the Siksika Nation, the inspiring generosity of spirit in his mother’s response, and the actions of two communities to bring their people together.

Gakaabikaang is a story of Indigenous people and communities in the Minneapolis metro area after the documented police killing of George Floyd. It is journalist Darren Thompson’s first film and features original footage from the frontlines of the protests that turned to violent clashes in city streets between citizens and police. From the burning of Minneapolis to the toppling of the statue of Christopher Columbus, Gakaabikaang features the voices and images of Indigenous people in the midst of one of the most destructive acts of civil unrest in U.S. history.

Darren Thompson (Ojibwe/Tohono O’ddham) is a Native American flute player and educator from the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe Reservation in Northern Wisconsin. He is one of Crazy Horse Memorial’s main performers and the opening act of Brulé’s summer concert series in the Black Hills. In 2016, Darren’s dedication to his music earned him a nomination from the Native American Music Awards for “Flutist of the Year” with the release of his second album, “Between Earth and Sky: Native American Flute Music Recorded in the Black Hills.”

Bobby “Dues” Wilson is a Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota actor, writer, poet, visual artist, and a founding member of Indian Sketch Comedy group The 1491s. Before his journey of creating hit television show, FX’s “Reservation Dogs,” he began his career in graffiti street art and spoken-word poetry. Michael R.L. Begay’s documentary follows Dues through his one-month residency in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

When Kyle Felter, the lead singer of I Don’t Konform, sent out a demo album to Flemming Rasmussen, the Grammy Award-winner producer of Metallica, they never imagined themselves a few months later rehearsing with Rasmussen inside a hot hogan on a Navajo reservation before recording their debut album at the iconic Sweet Silence Studio in Denmark. While following I Don’t Konform’s fairy tale journey, our documentary, Rez Metal, tells the larger compelling story of the heavy metal scene on Navajo reservations, where many youths have grown disaffected as a result of endemic poverty and high rate of suicides.

As indigenous fashion continues to demand the attention of the world stage, Lloyd “Kiva” New’s influences and contributions in contemporary Native American art, fashion, and entrepreneurship have impacted generations in the United States and Canada. Lloyd “Kiva” New (1916-2002) was born February 18, 1916 in Oklahoma, of Cherokee and Scotch-Irish heritage. Kiva New graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1938 and later served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He worked with the Southwest Indian Arts Project at the University of Arizona and was a co-founder of the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Before New co-founded the Institute of American Indian Arts, he was a successful Scottsdale fashion designer in the 1940s and 1950s. With his business, New tapped an entirely new market for Native artists, and his garments and accessories were recognized on a scale never seen before in Native clothing design. New became the first Native American to show at an international fashion show in 1951 with his participation in the Atlantic City International Fashion Show. In 1952, his clothing was featured in the Los Angeles Times as the trend to follow, and Miss Arizona Lynn Freyse wore a Kiva creation for the 1957 Miss America Pageant. Because of his accomplishments, New created more opportunities for Native people in the exciting world of fashion design. Kiva New served as IAIA president from 1967 to 1978, and in many other important roles at the school until he passed away in February 2002.

EMMY AWARD WINNER

The 4th World is a four-episode science-fiction/fantasy television series, with each episode running 60 minutes in length. Discourses of history not often portrayed for television or cinema will stand alone as the series creates a plateau for a stratosphere that has been ignored and not given its rightful voice. Intellectual strength will dominate and a spiritual presence will be born. There will be discussions between Pocahontas, Joseph Brant and other influential characters. A profound assessment of their own portrayal will be examined through the characters’ dialogue with each other.

If only we could go back in time and change the course of North American history. We are all subjects to what is past and what has already happened. We cannot change that path; however, we can rethink it and change our own course of thought and action.

Readers:
Shelley Niro (Mohawk, Six Nations)
ElizaBeth Hill (Mohawk, Six Nations)
Darlene Naponse (Anishnabe, Atikmeksheng Anishnawbek)
Jordan Wheeler (Cree, Ojibway Assiniboine, Irish, English, Scottish)

Being a descendant of the Hupa, Yurok and Karuk tribes of Northern California and of theatrical relatives on her Anglo-American side, Koli Kohler comes from a long line of storytellers. Koli’s warm personality shines through her songs as she takes us along her journey as a young woman who is “holding her own” while traversing young adulthood across states and various countries. Koli creatively engages the listener by braiding together catchy tunes, intriguing metaphors, and unique timing. Blending her clear voice with the harmonious sounds of ukulele, guitar, and piano, Koli blurs across the lines of pop, country, and folk.

Koli began her songwriting career at age 8 when Native News awarded her Native Voice of the Future for her song, “Christopher Columbus with the Big Butt,” known for its great hook to listeners of all ages. Koli has been nominated for six Native American Music Awards in 2019 and 2022 which include Female Artist of the Year, Single of the Year, and Best Folk Album.

Healing Across the Waters is about the evolving relationship—sometimes painful, sometimes joyous—between the Huna Tlingit, the National Park Service, and the landscape of Glacier Bay. It is told through the voices of the Huna Tlingit, the local community, and National Park Service staff. The film features a mix of archival material and visually rich footage from multiple shoots in Alaska to capture cultural practices and the new tribal house and totems in Glacier Bay.

Big Crow is a story about the power of hope in the most destitute place in America – South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. By age fourteen, SuAnne Big Crow had become one of the state’s best basketball players. By age seventeen, her wisdom, leadership, and determination had made her a household name across the Great Plains.

Thirty years after her tragic death, SuAnne’s spirit has proven legendary; everyone you meet on “the Rez” has a story about how SuAnne’s pride in her people continues to galvanize the Lakota in their fight to reclaim their language and save their culture.

Call Me Human tells an anti-colonialist story about revitalizing and preserving Indigenous languages, history, and culture. 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, backdropped 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.

Best Canadian Documentary, International Film Festival Vancouver
Best Canadian Documentary, Calgary International Film Festival
Audience Choice Best Documentary, Cinefest Film Festival