GET 35% OFF YOUR FIRST YEAR!

Limited time - use promo code: SPRING35 at checkout

Indigenous Peoples

Indigenous Peoples

In honor of Indigenous Peoples' Day, OVID presents a collection of films about indigenous people from around the world. From documentaries about Native Americans, like MORONI FOR PRESIDENT and AMÁ, to films like Charlie's Country about Aboriginal Australians, this collection explores and celebrates the range of experiences had by cultures around the world.

Share
Indigenous Peoples
  • Beneath Clouds (Ivan Sen)

    Directed by Ivan Sen • Drama • With Dannielle Hall, Damian Pitt, Jenna Lee Connors • 2011 • 90 minutes

    Lena is a fair-skinned teenage girl with a dark skinned mother in an isolated Australian town. She rejects the Indigenous family that surrounds her, and longs for the love of her Irish father. ...

  • Toomelah (Ivan Sen)

    Directed by Ivan Sen • Drama • With Daniel Connors, Michael Connors, Christopher Edwards • 2011 • 101 minutes

    In a remote Aboriginal community, 10 year old Daniel yearns to be a gangster, like the male role models in his life. Skipping school, getting into fights and running drugs for Linden, wh...

  • Stolen Spirits

    Directed by Anne Worthington • Documentary • 2022 • 31 minutes

    In 2021, in the small rural town of Genoa Nebraska, a harrowing search commenced to locate the graves of Native America children who were taken from their tribes and sent to the Genoa U.S Indian Industrial School, one of America’s la...

  • Written on the Landscape

    Directed by Anna Sofaer • Documentary • With Christopher Beaver • 2024 • 58 minutes

    Written on the Landscape: Mysteries Beyond Chaco Canyon conveys to viewers the brilliant achievements of the Chaco civilization -- many of which are in grave danger today. This documentary reveals the astounding ...

  • The Taking

    Directed by Alexandre O. Philippe • Documentary • 2021 • 76 minutes

    This illuminating essay uses film scenes to tell of the forced cultural appropriation of a world-famous landscape. Monument Valley is one of the most recognizable landscapes in the world. Its iconographic use in American Western...

  • Building on Tainted Soil

    Directed by Anneleen Ophoff • Documentary • 2022 • 26 minutes

    Augustine, Charmaine and Jim are some of the hundreds of thousands of Native American children placed in residential schools since the 1870s. The United States government funded over 360 boarding schools which systematically destroyed...

  • Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting

    Directed by Aviva Kempner and Ben West • Documentary • 2022 • 95 minutes

    A comprehensive look at the movement to eradicate the words, images, and gestures that many Native Americans and their allies find harmful, demeaning, and offensive. The film examines mascoting issues through archival foota...

  • The Mystery of Chaco Canyon

    Directed by Anna Sofaer • Documentary • 1999 • 56 minutes

    THE MYSTERY OF CHACO CANYON examines the deep enigmas presented by the massive prehistoric remains found in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico. It is the summation of 20 years of research. The film reveals that between 850 and 1150 A...

  • Last Cab to Darwin

    Directed by Jeremy Sims • Drama • With Michael Caton, Jacki Weaver, Ningali Lawford-Wolf, Emma Hamilton, Mark Coles Smith • 2014 • 123 minutes

    Rex is a cab driver who has never left the mining town of Broken Hill in his life. When he discovers he doesn’t have long to live, he decides to drive t...

  • Tribal Justice

    Directed by Anne Makepeace • Documentary • 2017 • 87 minutes

    TRIBAL JUSTICE is a feature documentary about a little known, underreported but effective criminal justice reform movement in America today: the efforts of tribal courts to create alternative justice systems based on their traditions. ...

  • The Modern Jungle

    Directed by Charles Fairbanks and Saul Kak • Documentary • 2017 • 71 minutes

    The Modern Jungle is a portrait of globalization filtered through Carmen and Juan, two Zoque people, and how modernity has affected their identity and relation to the indigenous culture. This film documents their strugg...

  • Embrace of the Serpent

    Directed by Ciro Guerra • Drama • With Nilbio Torres, Antonio Bolívar, Jan Bijvoet • 2015 • 125 minutes

    At once blistering and poetic, the ravages of colonialism cast a dark shadow over the South American landscape in EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT, the third feature by Ciro Guerra. Filmed in stunning b...

  • Homecoming - Máhccan

    Directed by Suvi West, Anssi Kömi • Documentary • 2023 • 76 minutes

    Filmmaker Suvi West takes the audience behind the scenes of the museum world, revealing a visual, philosophical, and spiritual realm. Sámi herself, she seeks a connection with her ancestors through old museum objects, eventually...

  • Ella's Riot - Rahčan

    Directed by Anne Marthe Blindheim • Documentary • 2023 • 72 minutes

    Sami singer Ella is torn between her strong ties to her hometown in Finnmark and her new life in Oslo with her boyfriend and a successful career with her band ISÁK. But when a mining company threatens Sami land and water, she de...

  • The River Between Us

    Directed by Carl Gierstorfer • Documentary • 2022 • 88 minutes

    The people of the Mashco Piro fled deep into the Peruvian Amazon to escape the cruelty of colonialist rubber companies. They cut all contact with the outside world and entered an isolation they haven’t abandoned to this day. Carl Gie...

  • Moroni For President

    Directed by Saila Huusko & Jasper Rischen • Documentary • 2017 • 82 minutes

    The Navajo Nation is the largest Native American reservation in the United States. Every four years, the Navajo tribe elects its president, whom many consider the most powerful Native American in the country. In the mids...

  • Charlie's Country
    Movie + 1 extra

    Charlie's Country

    Movie + 1 extra

    Living in a remote Aboriginal community in the northern part of Australia, Charlie is a warrior past his prime. As the government increases its stranglehold over the community’s traditional way of life, Charlie becomes lost between two cultures. His new modern life offers him a way to survive but...

  • In My Blood It Runs

    Directed by Maya Newell • Documentary • 2019 • 84 minutes

    Dujuan is a 10-year-old Arrernte boy from Mparntwe (Alice Springs) in Australia. Full of life and exuberance, he learns, with the support of his loving mother and grandmother, to hunt, speak two Indigenous languages and become a healer. D...

  • How to Build an Igloo

    Directed by Douglas Wilkinson • Documentary • 1949 • 10 minutes

    A demonstration of igloo-building in Canada's Far North, showing how the site is selected and how blocks of snow are used to make a snug shelter in only an hour and a half. As the camera follows each stage, the commentary explains t...

  • Nice Colored Girls

    Directed by Tracey Moffatt • Drama • With Gayle Mabo, Cheryl Pitt, Janelle Court • 1987 • 16 minutes

    This stylistically daring film audaciously explores the history of exploitation between white men and Aboriginal women, juxtaposing the “first encounter” between colonizers and native women with ...

  • Haida Modern

    Directed by Charles Wilkinson • Documentary • 2020 • 80 minutes

    Haida artist Robert Davidson is one of the foremost cultural icons of the age. HAIDA MODERN features candid and revealing conversations with the artist himself, along with commentary from art historians, politicians, musicians and f...

  • Expedition Content

    Directed by Ernst Karel & Veronika Kusumaryati • Documentary • 2020 • 78 minutes

    Note: For best viewing results, please manually adjust the streaming quality to 720p or higher.

    An immersive marvel of sonic ethnography, Expedition Content draws on audio recordings made by recent college graduate...

  • Secrets from Putumayo

    Directed by Aurélio Michiles • Documentary • With Stephen Rea • 2020 • 83 minutes

    This is a documentary about the man widely considered to be the pioneer of international human rights inquiries, Roger Casement (1864-1916). His work in Africa, Brazil, and his native Ireland still has repercussion...

  • In the Light of Reverence

    Directed by Christopher McLeod • Documentary • 2001 • 73 minutes

    Across the USA, Native Americans are struggling to protect their sacred places. Religious freedom, so valued in America, is not guaranteed to those who practice land-based religion. Every year, more sacred sites - the land-based eq...