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.
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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. ...
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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...
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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...
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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 ...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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. ...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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 ...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...