Film Archive recommends films to stream for Native American Heritage Month

  • An older Apache woman and a young Apache girl sit in a field of yellow flowers
    Still image from the 2020 film “Gather,” which tells the story of reclaiming traditional Native American foodways.
November 9, 2021
To mark Native American Heritage Month, the Yale Film Archive has compiled a list of six documentary films telling Native American stories.  These films are available to Yale faculty, staff, and students through the library’s streaming video services (Yale NetID is required.)  If Yale viewers encounter problems with the videos, they are advised to try a different web browser. The following films will be available for streaming throughout the month of November:
 
Beyond Recognition (Michelle Grace Steinberg, 2014)
An Ohlone woman and her allies preserve Native culture in the Bay Area, establishing the first women-led urban Indigenous land trust.
 
Gather (Sanjay Rawal, 2020)
An Apache chef, Yurok ecological activists, and a science-loving Lakota high-schooler reclaim and recover traditional foodways.
 
A Good Day to Die (David Mueller and Lynn Salt, 2011)
The story of Dennis Banks, the Ojibwe civil rights activist and co-founder of the American Indian Movement (AIM).
 
More Than a Word (John Little and Kenn Little, 2017)
An exploration of Native American-based sports mascots and their impact on perceptions, attitudes, and policies.
 
Reel Injun (Catherine Bainbridge and Neil Diamond, 2010)
Through hundreds of clips, see how a century of “the Hollywood Indian”  has unfairly shaped the image of Native Americans.
 
Rumble (Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana, 2017)
Hear the music of “Indians who rocked the world” including Link Wray, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Redbone, and more. 
 
Founded in 1982 and incorporated into Yale University Library in 2017, the Yale Film Archive supports teaching, learning, and research while fostering a robust film culture at Yale. The archive traces its roots back to 1968 when Yale acquired the Griggs Collection of 206 classic films on 16mm. Today, the collection encompasses a growing archive of more than 7,000 elements, including many unique and original 35mm and 16mm films, and a video collection of over 40,000 DVDs, Blu-rays, and VHS spanning the history of cinema from 160 countries. The archive occupies the seventh floor of Sterling Memorial Library, renovated in 2020 with customized viewing booths, staff offices, video collection stacks, a film preservation suite, and a 23-seat screening room. The archive’s public programming include the long-running series, Treasures from the Yale Film Archive. Learn more about Yale Librarys streaming video collections