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.

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Indigenous Peoples
  • Aguilucho: Dance of the Harpy Eagle

    Directed by Daniel Byers • Documentary • With Jose de Jesus Vargas • 2021 • 22 minutes

    In the remote Darién Gap rainforest, indigenous communities face the advance of loggers and cattle ranchers, an existential threat to their way of life and the ecosystem upon which they rely. When a rare Harpy...

  • When Two Worlds Collide

    Directed by Heidi Brandenburg & Mathew Orzel • Documentary • 2016 • 103 minutes

    In this tense and immersive Sundance award-winner, audiences are taken directly into the line of fire between powerful, opposing Peruvian leaders who will stop at nothing to keep their respective goals intact. On the...

  • Dreams from the Outback

    Directed by Jannik Splidsboel • Documentary • 2019 • 79 minutes

    Once, Australia discussed whether Aboriginals belong to fauna or to human beings. Today in the Kimberley, home to various Aboriginal communities, most are in transition, causing limbo and distress. Some have given up; others choose ...

  • Sun Kissed

    Directed by Maya Stark & Adi Lavy • Documentary • 2012 • 85 minutes

    For fifteen years Dorey and Yolanda Nez thought they were the only family on the Navajo Reservation who had children with an extremely rare genetic disorder that only shows up at a rate of one in a million in the general populat...

  • 10th Parallel

    Directed by Silvio Da-Rin • Documentary • 2011 • 87 minutes

    10th PARALLEL takes us on a 300-mile journey up Brazil's Envira river into the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, to the frontier of a territory populated by the country's uncontacted indigenous tribes. Our guide is Jose Carlos Meirelles, ...

  • The Exiles

    Directed by Kent Mackenzie • Documentary • With Yvonne Williams, Homer Nish, Tom Reynolds
    • 1961 • 72 minutes

    The Exiles chronicles a night in the life of young Native Americans who fled reservation life to roam the Bunker Hill district of Los Angeles. Outside filmmaker Kent Mackenzie crafted ...

  • Bedevil

    Directed by Tracey Moffatt • Drama • 1993 • 90 minutes

    BEDEVIL is the stunning debut feature from Tracey Moffatt (NIGHT CRIES, NICE COLORED GIRLS) and the first feature directed by an Australian Aboriginal woman. Inspired by ghost stories she heard as a child from both her extended Aboriginal an...

  • Night Cries

    Directed by Tracey Moffat • Drama • With Marcia Langton, Agnes Hardwick, Jimmy Little • 1991 • 19 minutes

    On an isolated, surreal Australian homestead, a middle-aged Aboriginal woman nurses her dying white mother. The adopted daughter’s attentive gestures mask an almost palpable hostility. Their...

  • 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...

  • Standing on Sacred Ground

    1 season

    Indigenous communities around the world and in the U.S. resist threats to their sacred places--the original protected lands--in a growing movement to defend human rights and restore the environment.

    In this four-part documentary series from the producer of IN THE LIGHT OF REVERENCE, native peopl...

  • Coming to Light

    Directed by Anne Makepeace • Documentary • 2000 • 84 minutes

    Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) was a driven, charismatic, obsessive artist, a pioneer photographer who set out in 1900 to document traditional Indian life. He rose from obscurity to become the most famous photographer of his time, create...

  • 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...

  • Fire and Ice

    Directed by Christopher McLeod • Documentary • 2014 • 57 minutes

    From Ethiopia to Peru, indigenous customs protect biodiversity on sacred lands under pressure from religious conflicts and climate change. In the Gamo Highlands of Ethiopia, scientists confirm the benefits of traditional stewardshi...

  • Islands of Sanctuary

    Directed by Christopher McLeod • Documentary • 2014 • 57 minutes

    Native Hawaiians and Aboriginal Australians resist threats to their sacred places in a growing international movement to defend human rights and protect the environment. In Australia's Northern Territory, Aboriginal clans maintain ...

  • Profit and Loss

    Directed by Christopher McLeod • Documentary • 2014 • 57 minutes

    From New Guinean rainforests to Canada's tar sands, PROFIT AND LOSS exposes industrial threats to native peoples' health, livelihood and cultural survival. In Papua New Guinea, a Chinese-government owned nickel mine has violently r...

  • Pilgrims and Tourists

    Directed by Christopher McLeod • Documentary • 2014 • 57 minutes

    In the Russian Republic of Altai, traditional native people create their own mountain parks, to rein in tourism and resist a gas pipeline that would cut through a World Heritage Site. In northern California, Winnemem Wintu girls gr...

  • We Still Live Here

    Directed by Anne Makepeace • Documentary • 2011 • 56 minutes

    Celebrated every Thanksgiving as the Indians who saved the Pilgrims from starvation, and then largely forgotten, the Wampanoag Tribes of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard are now saying loud and clear, and in their Native tongue, 'As Nuta...

  • Patrimonio

    Directed by Lisa F. Jackson, Sarah Teale • Documentary • 2017 • 83 minutes

    A multi-billion dollar American development is poised to engulf a small coastal community in Mexico with a mega hotel/condo complex. But local people are banding together to save their way of life and the delicate ecosyst...

  • Apache 8

    Directed by Sande Zeig • Documentary • 2012 • 57 minutes

    For 30 years, the all-female Apache 8 unit has protected their reservation from fire and also responded to wildfires around the nation. This group of firefighters, which recently became co-ed, soon earned the reputation of being fierce, lo...