Resources for Dr Morris's Native American literature courses. Also includes information on the 2019 and 2022 Indigenous Film Festivals organized by Kutztown University and the Widoktadwen Center for Native Knowledge.
Ama
Ama tells an important and untold story: the abuses committed against Native American women by the US Government during the 1960s and 70s. The women were removed from their families and sent to boarding schools. They were subjected to forced relocation away from their traditional lands and, perhaps worst of all, they were subjected to involuntary sterilization.
AWAKE: A Dream from Standing Rock
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota captures world attention through their peaceful resistance against the U.S. government's plan to construct an oil pipeline through their land. --IMDb
Bounty
ounty reveals the hidden story of the Phips Proclamation, one of many scalp-bounty proclamations used to exterminate Native people in order to take their land in what is now New England. In the film, Penobscot parents and children resist erasure and commemorate survival by reading and reacting to the government-issued Phips Proclamation’s call for colonial settlers to hunt, scalp, and murder Penobscot people.
Breaths
In this evocative short documentary, Inuk singer-songwriter and humanitarian Susan Aglukark weaves together stories of artistry, family, and belonging as she explores the complex cultural shifts of the last 50 years of Inuit life. Turning her lens on the turbulence of colonial transition, director Nyla Innuksuk examines the forces that shaped Aglukark's voice and how that voice is now being translated for a new generation of Inuit artists.
Cara Romero: Following the Light (2023)
Contemporary fine art photographer Cara Romero's work captures Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and lived experiences from a Native American female perspective. This powerful documentary features interviews with Cara and those closest to her, shows behind-the-scenes footage of her shoots, and looks at the rich California Indigenous history that informs her work.
Daughter of a Lost Bird
“Lost birds” – a term for Native children adopted out of their tribal communities. Right after the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 became the law of the land, Kendra Mylnechuk Potter was adopted into a white family and raised with no knowledge of her Native parentage. This beautiful and intimate film follows Kendra on her journey to find her birth mother April, also a Native adoptee, and return to her Lummi homelands in Washington State. With a sensitive yet unflinching lens, director Brooke Swaney (Blackfeet/Salish) documents Kendra and April as they connect with relatives and navigate what it means to be Native, and to belong to a tribe from the outside looking in. Along the way, Kendra uncovers generations of emotional and spiritual beauty and pain and comes to the startling realization that she is a living legacy of U. S. assimilationist policy. By sharing a deeply personal experience of inherited cultural trauma, the film opens the door to broader and more complicated conversations about the erasure of Native culture and questions of identity surrounding adoption.
Fighting Indians
"On May 16th, 2019, The State of Maine made history by passing LD 944 An Act to Ban Native American Mascots in All Public Schools, the first legislation of its kind in the country. For Maine’s tribal nations, the landmark legislation marked an end to a decades long struggle to educate the public on the harms of Native American mascotry. Fighting Indians chronicles the last and most contentious holdout in that struggle, the homogeneously white Skowhegan High School, known for decades as “The Home of the Indians.” This is the story of a small New England community forced to reckon with its identity, its sordid history, and future relationship with its indigenous neighbors. It is a story of a small town divided against the backdrop of a nation divided where the “mascot debate” exposes centuries old abuses while asking if reconciliation is possible." -- https://fightingindians.com/
First Stories: Two-Spirited
Filmmaker Lydia Nibley explores the cultural context behind a tragic and senseless murder. Fred Martinez was a Navajo youth slain at the age of 16 by a man who bragged to his friends that he 'bug-smashed a fag'. But Fred was part of an honored Navajo tradition - the 'nadleeh', or 'two-spirit', who possesses a balance of masculine and feminine traits. Through telling Fred's story, Nibley reminds us of the values that America's indigenous peoples have long embraced. -IMDb
The Good Mind
The Indigenous and sovereign Onondaga Nation – the Central Fire of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy – follows the Great Law of Peace, never accepted U.S. citizenship, has its own passport, and still maintains a traditional government led by Clanmothers and Chiefs, one of the world’s first true democracies that inspired the Founding Fathers of the United States and the women's suffrage movement. THE GOOD MIND spotlights the Onondaga Nation’s tireless environmental advocacy and their legal battle with the U.S. over ancestral land taken by New York State in violation of a 1794 treaty with George Washington. Motivated by ancient prophecies, the Nation seeks environmental stewardship of their sacred land and waters, which have suffered vast degradation by industrial resource extraction and pollution.
Holy Man: The USA vs. Douglas White
Holy Man: The USA vs. Douglas White is the story of Douglas White, an 89 year old Lakota Sioux medicine man from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, who spent 17 years in federal prison for a crime he did not commit. During the making of this film, filmmakers uncovered new evidence of White’s “actual innocence” and brought the case back to federal court. Holy Man offers a rare glimpse into the mysterious world of Lakota religion, their intimate connection to the land, and a provocative expose of the systemic injustice that Native Americans face in the criminal justice system.
Home From School: The Children of Carlisle
HOME FROM SCHOOL follows the difficult journey of Soldierwolf and tribal elders as they delve into the controversial history of Indian boarding schools, patch together the historic record and personal stories of the relatives who were shipped away, and, finally, travel to Carlisle to reunite with, and ultimately retrieve, the lost children of their tribe.
I Like Girls
In this animated short from Diane Obomsawin, four women reveal the nitty-gritty about their first loves, sharing funny and intimate tales of one-sided infatuation, mutual attraction, erotic moments, and fumbling attempts at sexual expression. For them, discovering that they're attracted to other women comes hand-in-hand with a deeper understanding of their personal identity and a joyful new self-awareness.
Lakota vs the United States
A chronicle about how the Lakota Indians fight to reclaim control of the Black Hills. Will investigate how the sacred land was stolen in violation of treaty agreements and feature interviews with Indigenous citizens.
Mankiller
Wilma Mankiller, an advocate for women and Native Americans, defied all odds to become the Cherokee Nation's first female principal chief.
Naked Island - Hipster Headdress
This ultra-short film is an unapologetic confrontation of cultural appropriation and everything that's wrong with hipsters in headdresses. The takeaway? Just don't do it. Naked Island is a series of 14 super-short and incisive films that expose the dark underbelly of modern-day society.
Native Women: Politics
An emotionally moving and upbeat program that gives voice to Aboriginal women. Historical segments in the program contrast the traditional equality of power, male to female within native communities, versus the regression in the roles and power of First Nations women in Canada under European dominance. Strong women "leaders" emphasize how they view the rebuilding of balanced self-government within their community in the future. The Indian Act and Bill C31 are examined to highlight their effect on First Nations women. Broadcast: Global Television - AWARD - Best Documentary, Native American Journalists Assoc.
Night Raiders (2021)
2043 - in a dystopian future a military occupation controls disenfranchised cities in post-war North America. Children are considered property of the regime which trains them to fight. A desperate Cree woman joins an underground band of vigilantes to infiltrate a State children's academy and get her daughter back. A parable about the experience of the Indigenous peoples of North America, NIGHT RAIDERS is a female-driven sci-fi drama about resilience, courage and love.
Red Fever: The Indigenous Influence on Western Culture
Neil Diamond and Catherine Bainbridge (RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World) team up again for RED FEVER, the follow-up to their award-winning feature documentary, Reel Injun. Red Fever follows Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond's journey to the four corners of North America and to Europe to uncover why the world is so fascinated with Native people. Through iconic and entertaining pop culture images, Red Fever looks at the roots of how and why Native cultures of North America have been revered, romanticized, appropriated - and in the process, uncovers the truth about the profound impact of Indigenous peoples on western culture.
Reel Injun
The history of the depiction of Native Americans in Hollywood films. -IMDb
Rhymes for Young Ghouls
Red Crow Mi'gMaq reservation, 1976: by government decree, every Indian child under the age of 16 must attend residential school. In the kingdom of the Crow, that means imprisonment at St. Dymphna’s. That means being at the mercy of “Popper,” the sadistic Indian agent who runs the school.
Stories from Our Land Vol. 2 - Finding Home
This short film chronicles filmmaker Nyla Innuksuk's emotional journey to Nunavut to connect with the land of her ancestors and with her Inuk father, whom she has not seen in over 20 years. Nyla's return to her Igloolik birthplace culminates with a lesson on lighting a qulliq, the traditional Inuit oil lamp.
Sugarcane
An investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indian residential school sparks a reckoning on the nearby Sugarcane Reserve.
This River
This short documentary offers an Indigenous perspective on the devastating experience of searching for a loved one who has disappeared. Volunteer activist Kyle Kematch and award-winning writer Katherena Vermette have both survived this heartbreak and share their histories with each other and the audience. While their stories are different, they both exemplify the beauty, grace, resilience, and activism born out of the need to do something.
Tribal Justice
Two formidable Native American women, both chief judges in their tribe's courts, strive to reduce incarceration rates and heal their people by restoring rather than punishing offenders, modeling restorative justice in action. -IMDb
Two Spirits
Examines the role of two-spirit people in the Navajo culture in the context of the story of a gay youth named Fred Martinez. Martinez was a nádleehí or a male-bodied person with a feminine essence, who was murdered in a hate crime at the age of sixteen. Discusses the traditional Native American perspective on gender and sexuality and the need for a balanced interrelationship between the feminine and masculine. Includes interviews with Martinez's mother, Pauline Mitchell.
Warrior Women
“Warrior Women” is the story of mothers and daughters fighting for indigenous rights in the American Indian Movement of the 1970s. The film unveils not only a female perspective of history, but also examines the impact political struggles have on the children who bear witness.
Without a Whisper
WITHOUT A WHISPER - KONNON:KWE uncovers the hidden history of the profound influence Indigenous women had on the beginnings of the women’s rights movement in the United States.
Women Rule (Native America, Season 2, Episode 3)
Native women are leading, innovating and inspiring in the arts, politics and protecting the planet. "Native America" explores the diverse ways they carry forward deep traditions to better their communities, their lands and the world.
