Native American Studies Research Guide

A short documentary about Ishi, billed in 1911 as the “last wild Indian" when he wandered out of the woods in Oroville, CA, and became a national sensation. When Ishi died, his brain was removed and sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Eighty years later, his descendants in California fight to have his remains repatriated to his ancestral home. Contrary to the master narrative that Indians would die off, the film shows how Native Americans managed to survive the darkest period of their history and reclaim parts of a fractured past. (Via Kanopy)

URBAN REZ explores the controversial legacy and modern-day repercussions of the Urban Relocation Program (1952-1973), the greatest voluntary upheaval of Native Americans during the 20th century. During the documentary, dozens of American Indians representing tribal groups from across the West recall their first-hand experiences with relocation, including the early hardships, struggles with isolation and racism. Interviewees also speak about the challenges of maintaining one's own tribal traditions — from language to hunting — while assimilating into the larger society. Actor, musician and Oglala Lakota member Moses Brings Plenty narrates this insightful film about this seldom-told chapter in American history. (Via Kanopy)

In this award-winning documentary, Cecilia Fire Thunder- the first female President of the Oglala Sioux tribe, defies a proposed South Dakota law criminalizing all abortions, with no exceptions for rape or incest, by threatening to build a women's clinic on the sovereign territory of the reservation. She ignites a political firestorm that sets off a chain reaction in the lives of three young Lakotas on the Pine Ridge Reservation, forcing each of them to make choices that define who they are and the kind of adults they will become. (Via Kanopy)

For millennia, Alaska Native peoples thrived in the seasonally harsh conditions of life in the far north. They depended upon strong social, cultural and spiritual practices passed from generation to generation. (Via Kanopy)

In 1973 a rookie reporter is sent to cover armed members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who have taken over the historic village of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. En route to Wounded Knee, he is threatened by a paramilitary group whose members oppose the takeover and consider the press the "enemy of the people." To get the inside story, the reporter circumvents government roadblocks surrounding the besieged village and embeds with the militants. When the Indians finally surrender after 10 weeks, two activists are dead and more than a dozen have been wounded in firefights with federal agents. The FBI arrests those who remain, including the reporter. Forty years later, the reporter meets a Yurok Indian fisherman in California, a man he unwittingly had photographed during the 10-week occupation. The two become friends, traveling back to the Dakotas and later to the pipeline protests on the Standing Rock Reservation, where they examine the legacy of 1970's activism in Indian Country. (Via Kanopy)