Titles Available as of October 2020
This is a selective list of streaming video holdings in the American University Library. Streaming guides are created by doing multiple keyword searches in the library catalog to capture as many titles on a topic as possible. For complete up-to-date streaming holdings, please refer to our streaming catalog.
The American Indian: How He Earns a Living
Documentary of the 35-year fight of Carrie Dann and Mary Dann against the U.S. government's attempts to take over traditional Shoshone land in Nevada, part of 60 million acres guaranteed to them in the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley.
Awake, A Dream From Standing Rock
Record of the massive peaceful resistance led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to the Dakota Access Pipeline through their land and underneath the Missouri River.
Coming to Light: Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indians
Edward S. Curtis was a driven, pioneer photographer who set out in 1900 to document traditional Indian life. He became the most famous photographer of his time and created an enormous body of work. This film tells the dramatic story of Curtis' life, his work, and his changing views of the people he set out to document.
Argues that persistent toxic chemicals, such as PCBs, DDT, and dioxin, are possibly the greatest threat to the long-term survival of indigenous peoples, including Native Americans. Explores how these chemicals contaminate the traditional food web, violate treaty rights, travel long distances, and are passed from one generation to the next during pregnancy.
Follows the entire construction of a traditional Ojibwe birchbark canoe from choosing the tree on Madeleine Island to the launching of the finished craft. Master craftsman Nyholm and his helpers comment throughout, stressing the respect due to the materials and the process.
An account of the problems encountered by Native Americans living in urban areas and caught between two conflicting cultures, as shown by footage of 12 hours in the lives of a group living in Los Angeles.
A "Frontier conversation" documents a unique collaboration between indigenous and white historians from Australia and North America. In September 2004, a diverse group travelled through the top end of Australia meeting representatives of the traditional landowners, and engaging in a dialogue about indigenous history. The themes that emerged raised more questions than answers; from cultural appropriation and copyright, to land rights, the role of language and art, and what history means to indigenous communities in the current climate of cultural reclamation and survival. The film asks some difficult questions, such as how valuable can histories written by outsiders to any community be? What are the responsibilities of the historian, indigenous or not, to the people whose stories he or she attempts to tell.
Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action
Tells the story of four battles in which Native American activists are fighting to preserve their land and culture.
Across the United States, Native Americans are struggling to protect their sacred places. Religious freedom, so valued in America, is not guaranteed to those who practice land-based religions. Devils Tower in Wyoming is sacred to the Lakota, who perform sun dances and vision quests nearby. In this film the Lakota struggle to protect their sacred site from climbers and other encroachers.
Inaugurating the National Indian Memorial
Events of February 22, 1913, inauguration of National American Indian Memorial in Fort Wadsworth, New York. Shows U.S. government officials addressing Indians and ground breaking ceremony with Pres. William Howard Taft and Indian leaders.
David Begay, Adjunct Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northern Arizona University and Nancy Maryboy, President and Founder of Indigenous Education Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico invite us to understand Navajo ways of knowing. They describe a worldview that is place-based, emphasizes kinship and connection, and intimately orients the human within an interrelated and unified cosmos.
Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance
On a hot July day in 1990, an historic confrontation propelled Native issues in Kanehsatake and the village of Oka, Québec, into the international spotlight and into the Canadian conscience. A powerful feature-documentary emerges that takes you right into the action of an age-old aboriginal struggle. The result is a portrait of the people behind the barricades, providing insight into the Mohawks' unyelding determination to protect their land.
In many indigenous cultures one question keeps demanding attention: Can we survive in the modern world and should we? This film takes a closer look into this question from the viewpoint of four different indigenous peoples.
Explore the fascinating history of the Native American people. Follow their history from migration to the Americas, to the development of civilizations throughout the American continent. Discover how every part of America was flourishing long before European settlers arrived. See the impact of early Native Americans in North and South America. Discover the 'Cochise Effect' on the cultures of Arizona and Mexico.
Kili Radio, the "Voice of the Lakota Nation," is broadcast out of a small wooden house in the vast countryside of South Dakota. There, people converge to speak to the community about daily concerns and in doing so, strengthen their sense of identity. Daily existence on America's poorest reservation is hard.
This exciting and compelling one hour documentary invites viewers into the lives of contemporary Native American role models living in the U.S. Midwest. It dispels the myth that American Indians have disappeared from the American horizon, and reveals how they continue to persist, heal from the past, confront the challenges of today, keep their culture alive, and make great contributions to society.
Return: Native American Women Reclaim Foodways for Health & Spirit
RETURN features charismatic Roxanne Swentzell from Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico whose efforts to reclaim ancient foodways are echoed across the continent by Tlingit, Muckleshoot, Oglala Sioux, Menominee, and Seneca women. At its heart this film is about empowering people to overcome their current circumstances through eating as their ancestors did - nutritiously and locally. RETURN offers an approach to confronting the diabetes epidemic now rampant in Native American communities.
Red Crow Mi'gMaq reservation, 1976: by government decree, every Indian child under the age of 16 must attend residential school. In the kingdom of the Crow, that means imprisonment at St. Dymphna’s. That means being at the mercy of “Popper,” the sadistic Indian agent who runs the school.
Searching for a Native American Identity
This program features the late Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich, a husband-and-wife team who collaborated as writers before his untimely death. They attribute their beliefs in family, community, and place to their Native American heritage: she is half Chippewa, he is half Modoc. As Native Americans, their writing reflects the difficulties of American Indians today. In this program with Bill Moyers, Erdrich and Dorris discuss faith and the search for a Native American identity in a pluralistic society.
This classic anthropological study of a traditional Navajo family, the Neboyias, examines their lifestyle through the four seasons as they travel to each of their hogans-planting, sheepherding, harvesting, and weaving. The documentarist's style is natural and unobtrusive, allowing viewers to share in the Navajo world vision. Filmed in the Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly, and Window Rock areas of Arizona.
Spirits for Sale: The Commercialization of American India Rituals
Western spiritualists often seek enlightenment through indigenous religions once practiced in different regions around the world. Native American rituals are especially popular, and Europeans stage ceremonies based on American Indian beliefs for which they charge admission. America's original people are not pleased with this development, for they regard this practice as the exploitation of their heritage. They see these performances as "pay to pray" ceremonies with imposters playing the rolls of American natives. Beautifully crafted and filmed, Spirits for Sale explores both sides of an unlikely dispute between native peoples and present-day interpreters of their rituals.