Ex Pajé

A documentary essay on coming of age and the power of the unconscious. In the same vein as Sweatlodge Song, this is a message of courage and hope.

An intimate and thrilling portrait of a young Siksika woman and the deep bonds between her father and family in the golden plains of Blackfoot Territory as she prepares for one of the most dangerous horse races in the world… bareback.

Conservation groups, First Nations, and scientists come together in this timely short film, as a decades-long battle to protect endangered old-growth forests in BC escalates at Fairy Creek (the last unprotected, intact valley on southern Vancouver Island). The film explores the characters’ individual relationships with ancient forests, and why it’s imperative we collectively protect them. It touches on potential solutions, like a transition away from old-growth in the future of logging, and Indigenous sovereignty.

Amá is a feature length documentary which tells an important and untold story: the abuses committed against Native American women by the United States Government during the 1960’s and 70’s: removed from their families and sent to boarding schools, forced relocation away from their traditional lands and involuntary sterilization. ​The result of nine years painstaking and sensitive work by filmmaker Lorna Tucker, the film features the testimony of many Native Americans, including three remarkable women who tell their stories - Jean Whitehorse, Yvonne Swan and Charon Aseytoyer - as well as a revealing and rare interview with Dr. Reimart Ravenholt whose population control ideas were the framework for some of the government policies directed at Native American women.

In this feature-length documentary, three generations of the Caribou Inuit family come together to tell the story of their journey as Canada's last nomads. From the independent life of hunting on the Keewatin tundra to taking the reins of the new territory of Nunavut on April 1, 1999, we see it all. The film is the result of a close collaboration between Ole Gjerstad, a southern Canadian, and Martin Kreelak, an Inuk. It's Martin's family that we follow, as the story is told through his own voice, through those of the Elders, and through those of the teens and young adults who were born in the settlements and form the first generation of those growing up with satellite TV and a permanent home.

Standsinwater Sutherland is 2Spirit Cree living in Northern Ontario. Holding her eagle feather, she sits and tells her story: her quest to identity, how teachings learned along the way took her from the concrete jungle of Toronto back to her reservation and her commitment to help her community regain their culture and traditional ways.

The documentary reveals the impact of the Coronavirus on one of the indigenous but affected by the disease in the country. Narrated in first person by Divino, which highlights the desperate struggle of his village, Sangradouro, east of Mato Grosso, to survive the most tragic epidemic known by the Xavante nation. Crossed with archival material and images captured during a pandemic, the film seeks to relate a traumatic past with the reality of Covid-19.

Carrie Davis was part of the child removal system near the end of the Sixties Scoop. With guidance from her uncle Emmett Sack and the community, Carrie reconnects to their land, language, and culture.

The Blackfoot bareback horse-racing tradition returns in the astonishingly dangerous Indian Relay. Siksika horseman Allison Red Crow struggles with secondhand horses and a new jockey on his way to challenging the best riders in the Blackfoot Confederacy.

Nóouhàh-Toka’na, known as swift fox in English, once roamed the North American Great Plains from Canada to Texas. Like bison, pronghorn and other plains animals, Nóouhàh-Toka’na held cultural significance for the Native Americans who lived alongside them. But predator control programs in the mid-1900s reduced the foxes to just 10 percent of their native range. At the Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana, members of the Aaniiih and Nakoda tribes are working with the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute and other conservation partners to restore biodiversity and return Nóouhàh-Toka’na to the land.