Dawnland

Jun 14, 2018

1h 26m

★ 6.0

A documentary about cultural survival and stolen children

Overview

They were forced to assimilate into white society: children ripped away from their families, depriving them of their culture and erasing their identities. Can reconciliation help heal the scars from childhoods lost? "Dawnland" is the untold story of Indigenous child removal in the US through the nation's first-ever government-endorsed truth and reconciliation commission, which investigated the devastating impact of Maine’s child welfare practices on the Wabanaki people.

Genres

Documentary

Dawnland Trailers

Cast

No Cast found.

For millennia, Native Americans successfully stewarded and shaped their landscapes, but centuries of colonization have disrupted their ability to maintain their traditional land management practices. From deserts, coastlines, forests, mountains, and prairies, Native communities across the US are restoring their ancient relationships with the land. As the climate crisis escalates these time-tested practices of North America's original inhabitants are becoming increasingly essential in a rapidly changing world.

7.5

NUKED

Oct 22, 2023

The US detonated 67 nuclear weapons over the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands during the Cold War, the consequences of which still reverberate down four generations to today. "NUKED," is a timely new feature documentary focussing on the human victims of the nuclear arms race, tracing the displaced Bikinian's ongoing struggle for justice and survival even as climate change poses a new existential threat. Using carefully restored archival footage to resurrect contemporaneous islanders’ voices and juxtaposing these with the full, awesome fury of the nuclear detonations, NUKED starkly contrasts the official record with the lived experience of the Bikinians themselves, serving as an important counterpoint to this summer’s Oppenheimer.

9.0

Falas da Terra

Apr 19, 2021

'Falas da Terra' sheds light on the plurality and the struggle of the indigenous people for the right to exist, in a historical rescue of valuing their cultures.

7.6

The Price of Protest

Aug 18, 2019

United States, September 1st, 2016. American football player Colin Kaepernick kneels during the national anthem, protesting police brutality against black people. Part of the population regards the gesture as an unacceptable affront to the flag. Later, he loses his place on his team. Today, however, he is considered by many as a true hero.

0.0

Tribal Justice

Feb 5, 2017

Two formidable Native American women, both chief judges in their tribe's courts, strive to reduce incarceration rates and heal their people by restoring rather than punishing offenders, modeling restorative justice in action.

0.0

They Are Sacred

Apr 27, 2025

Following young Anders and his father, Dr. Grant Bruno, of the Samson Cree Nation, this documentary gives viewers unique access to the world of an autistic child, and to follow his father’s journey to bring back traditional First Peoples perspectives in our contemporary world.

No Image Available

5.0

Plains: Testimony of an Ethnocide

Jun 1, 1971

A documentary on the massacre of Planas in the Colombian east plains in 1970. An Indigenous community formed a cooperative to defend their rights from settlers and colonists, but the government organized a military operation to protect the latter and foreign companies.

0.0

Warrior: The Life of Leonard Peltier

Nov 1, 1991

An intimate exploration of the circumstances surrounding the incarceration of Native American activist Leonard Peltier, convicted of murder in 1977, with commentary from those involved, including Peltier himself.

5.0

First Daughter and the Black Snake

Apr 15, 2017

The “Prophecy of the 7th Fire” says a “black snake” will bring destruction to the earth. For Winona LaDuke, the “black snake” is oil trains and pipelines. When she learns that Canadian-owned Enbridge plans to route a new pipeline through her tribe’s 1855 Treaty land, she and her community spring into action to save the sacred wild rice lakes and preserve their traditional indigenous way of life. Launching an annual spiritual horse ride along the proposed pipeline route, speaking at community meetings and regulatory hearings. Winona testifies that the pipeline route follows one of historical and present-day trauma. The tribe participates in the pipeline permitting process, asserting their treaty rights to protect their natural resources. LaDuke joins with her tribe and others to demand that the pipelines’ impact on tribal people’s resources be considered in the permitting process.

7.0

The Human Factor

May 7, 2021

How US politicians and diplomats, over the past 25 years, have come close to achieving something almost impossible: securing peace between the State of Israel and its Arab and like-minded neighbors, mired in a struggle both dialectical and violent since the early 20th century, due to historical and religious reasons, entrenched offenses and prejudices, and the invisible and tyrannical hand of third countries' geopolitical interests in the area.

9.0

Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy

Apr 29, 2021

Follow filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers as she creates an intimate portrait of her community and the impacts of the substance use and overdose epidemic. Witness the change brought by community members with substance-use disorder, first responders and medical professionals as they strive for harm reduction in the Kainai First Nation.

No Image Available

0.0

Tough Love

Dec 31, 2014

Fighting to reunite with their children, 'Tough Love' chronicles the lives of two parents with cases in the United States child welfare system as they attempt to prove to the courts and the system that they deserve a second chance to be a parent and have a family.

3.0

Foster Child

Mar 8, 1987

Gil Cardinal searches for his natural family and an understanding of the circumstances that led to his becoming a foster child. An important figure in the history of Canadian Indigenous filmmaking, Gil Cardinal was born to a Métis mother but raised by a non-Indigenous foster family, and with this auto-biographical documentary he charts his efforts to find his biological mother and to understand why he was removed from her. Considered a milestone in documentary cinema, it addressed the country’s internal colonialism in a profoundly personal manner, winning a Special Jury Prize at Banff and multiple international awards.

10.0

Documentário Brasil Tupinambá

Aug 9, 2021

No overview available.

8.0

Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting

Jan 14, 2021

Examining the movement that is ending the use of Native American names, logos, and mascots in the world of sports and beyond.

0.0

Through the Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film

Feb 19, 2017

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.

7.1

There's Something in the Water

Sep 6, 2019

Elliot Page brings attention to the injustices and injuries caused by environmental racism in his home province, in this urgent documentary on Indigenous and African Nova Scotian women fighting to protect their communities, their land, and their futures.

9.5

When the Mountains Tremble

Sep 30, 1983

A documentary on the war between the Guatemalan military and the Mayan population, with first hand accounts by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú.

8.2

Baraka

Sep 15, 1992

A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.

0.0

A Moment in the Sun

Sep 5, 2025

As the solar eclipse of 2024 races towards Houlton, Maine - a township of approximately 6,000 people - they must find a way to host 40,000 stargazing strangers the only way they know how: with open arms and open hearts.

Dawnland

Overview

Genres

Dawnland Trailers

Cast

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