This Indigenous Peoples Month, explore films that honor Indigenous voices, cultures, and stories. Start streaming at kanopy.com/category/11074.
When the Muscogee Nation suddenly begins censoring their free press, defiant journalist Angel Ellis battles against her own tribal government to expose corruption and fight for freedom of the press for her people. In an intimate and unflinching verité-style, Bad Press follows Angel and her scrappy team of fellow journalists as they fight to restore the truth-telling function of their tribal newspaper, Mvskoke Media.
Since their high school graduation, former Spokane Reservation best friends Seymour (Evan Adams) and Aristotle (Gene Tagaban) have taken different paths. Both ventured off to college in Seattle, but while Seymour embraced the opportunities of the white world, Aristotle returned home embittered. Sixteen years later, they are brought together following the sudden death of an old childhood buddy. Seymour, now an openly gay poet and unofficial spokesman for Native Americans, is met with resentment on the rez. At the wake, tensions are heightened, and Aristotle’s long festering bitterness is dangerously exposed.
With an older brother in jail and living with their single mother on Pine Ridge Reservation, Johnny and his sister Jashuan’s lives develop new challenges when their absentee cowboy father suddenly dies. The loss prompts Johnny to strike out for Los Angeles, but it would mean leaving behind his beloved sister.
After a devastating loss, Tana (Lily Gladstone) packs up her grandmother’s Cadillac and hits the open road to South Dakota, reconnecting with family, finding closure, and making unexpected connections along the way. A personal reverie summoned from a beguiling mix of fact and fiction, The Unknown Country is an arresting debut feature from Morrisa Maltz.
Filmed over 13 years, Without Arrows chronicles the vibrance and struggle of a Lakȟóta family. Delwin Fiddler Jr., a champion grass dancer from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, left his reservation as a young man and built a new life in Philadelphia. A decade later, he abandons it all and returns home to fulfill his mother’s ambition and carry on the legacy of their thiyóšpaye (extended family).
