Djunawunya, Arnhem Land, east of the town of Maningrida, July 1978. Frank Gurrmanamana is responsible for preparing the final mortuary ceremonies for his brother who had died six years before. The brother had been buried in Maningrida, but now his remains are being brought back to his home country. Central to the ceremonies is Harry Diama, the senior blood-relative of the deceased man, but Harry lives in Maningrida and is pre-occupied with a pending...

At Ngurgdu (Spring Peak) in the Northern Territory, an area soon to be irrevocably disturbed by uranium mining, 80-year-old William Alderson (known as “Yorky Billy”) reflects on his life in the outback. His father was an Englishman from Yorkshire (hence Yorky’s nickname) who spent 45 years in Australia and “tried everything” – working as a prospector, a railway worker, drover and buffalo hunter. After only 3 years of school, his only son,...

The lives of twelve-year-old Lou and her younger brother, Oz, change forever in 1940 when an accident involving their parents results in their being uprooted from their New York City home and moved to live with their great-grandmother in the mountains of Virginia.

One of the major works produced by the AIAS Film Unit, this documentary observes the profound effect on an Aboriginal community of political and bureaucratic decisions made far away. Although specific to time and place, the film is timeless and universal in its observations of a conflict between an Indigenous minority and a powerful government. The film presents an insiders view of events that followed an announcement made without warning on 13 March...

Follows the Dutton family, led by John Dutton, who controls the largest contiguous ranch in the United States, under constant attack by those it borders--land developers, an Indian reservation, and America's first National Park. It is an intense study of a violent world far from media scrutiny--where land grabs make developers billions, and politicians are bought and sold by the world's largest oil and lumber corporations. Where drinking water poisoned...

Pulitzer and Bancroft prize-winning historian Taylor (William Cooper's Town) offers a rich, sprawling history focusing on the Iroquois Six Nations of New York and Upper Canada during the era of the American Revolution. Taylor examines Indians' wise but unsuccessful attempts to hold onto their land as colonists encroached on it. One of Taylor's great insights is that historians have taken at face value what European settlers said about the "preemption...

"In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century, attracting tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Native allies from around the world. Its slogan "Mni Wiconi"--Water is Life--was about more than just a pipeline. Water Protectors knew this battle for Native...

Winona LaDuke's Chronicles is a collection of stories of Indigenous communities from the Canadian subarctic to the heart of Dine Bii Kaya, Navajo Nation. Stories range from visits with Desmond Tutu, front line Indigenous leaders, to restored Indigenous farming, and the ability of this society to move from a Tipi to a Tesla. This book tells of the need and the ability to make an elegant transition to a post fossil fuels economy. Chronicles is a book...

Across the United States, Native Americans are struggling to protect their sacred places. Religious freedom, so valued in America, is not guaranteed to those who practice land-based religions. This film presents three indigenous communities in their struggles to protect their sacred sites from rock climbers, tourists, strip-mining and development and New Age religious practitioners. Examines: Mato tipila (Devil's tower, Wyoming) (25 min.); Hopitutskwa...