We Were Children

Benito Arévalo is an onaya: a traditional healer in a Shipibo-Konibo community in Peruvian Amazonia. He explains something of the onaya tradition, and how he came to drink the plant medicine ayahuasca under his father's tutelage. Arévalo leads an ayahuasca ceremony for Westerners, and shares with us something of his understanding of the plants and the onaya tradition.

In the town of San Miguel Tzinacapan, in Puebla’s Nahua Mountain Range, a family lost its father. His absence transforms the lives of those who were so deeply connected to him. Tere, now in charge of the family, must make money by selling crafts. Jorge is about to finish school and will soon have to choose his own path. Chayo, 16, must make an important decision. A year has passed, and the members of the family have been able to redefine themselves, finding their own destiny while always venerating their father’s memory.

Warru, or black-footed rock-wallaby, is one of South Australia's most endangered mammals. In 2007, when numbers dropped below 200 in the APY Lands in the remote north-west of the State, the Warru Recovery Team was formed to help save the precious species from extinction. Bringing together contemporary science, practical on-ground threat management and traditional Anangu ecological knowledge, this unique decade-long program has celebrated the release of dozens of warru to the wild for the first time.

The wild beauty of the Bella Coola Valley blends with vivid watercolor animation illuminating the role of the Nuxalk oral tradition and the intersection of story, place and culture.

The film follows Postcommodity, an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martinez and Kade L. Twist, who put land art in a tribal context. The group bring together a community to construct the Repellent Fence, a two-mile long ephemeral monument “stitching” together the US and Mexico.

A documentary film about Comanche activist LaDonna Harris, who led an extensive life of Native political and social activism, and is now passing on her traditional cultural and leadership values to a new generation of emerging Indigenous leaders.

In the '60s, the Mushuau Innu had to abandon their 6,000-year nomadic culture and settle in Davis Inlet. Their relocation resulted in cultural collapse and widespread despair.

Documents the conflicts and tensions that arise between highland migrants and Mosetenes, members of an indigenous community in the Bolivian Amazon. It focuses particularly on a system of debt peonage known locally as ‘habilito’. This system is used throughout the Bolivian lowlands, and much of the rest of the Amazon basin, to secure labor in remote areas.

Poet Layli Long Soldier crafts a searing portrait of her Oyate’s connection to the Black Hills, through first contact and broken treaties to the promise of the Land Back movement, in this lyrical testament to resilience of a nation.

A feature-length documentary from Canadian Geographic Films, and presents a powerful and emotional story celebrating the 100-year history of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). Through its backdrop of rarely seen RCAF archival footage and dramatic contemporary footage, the film showcases compelling stories from past and present RCAF members from across Canada.

Surviving Eugenics is a documentary about the history and ongoing significance of eugenics. Anchored by survivor narratives from the province of Alberta in Canada, which had eugenic sterilization actively in place until 1972, Surviving Eugenics provides a unique insiders' view of life in institutions for the 'feeble-minded', and raises broader questions about disability, human variation, and contemporary social policies.