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Indigenous Peoples (5)
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Age of the BuffaloAustin Campbell 1964 14 minA vivid recollection of the free west of the North American Indigenous Peoples and the vast herds of buffalo that once thundered across the plains. From paintings of the mid-1800s, the animation camera creates a most convincing picture of the buffalo hunt, both as the Indigenous People and, disastrously, the white hunters practised it. -
The Ballad of CrowfootWillie Dunn 1968 10 minReleased in 1968 and often referred to as Canada’s first music video, The Ballad of Crowfoot was directed by Willie Dunn, a Mi’kmaq/Scottish folk singer and activist who was part of the historic Indian Film Crew, the first all-Indigenous production unit at the NFB. The film is a powerful look at colonial betrayals, told through a striking montage of archival images and a ballad composed by Dunn himself about the legendary 19th-century Siksika (Blackfoot) chief who negotiated Treaty 7 on behalf of the Blackfoot Confederacy. The IFC’s inaugural release, Crowfoot was the first Indigenous-directed film to be made at the NFB.
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IkweNorma Bailey 1986 57 minPart of the Daughters of the Country series, this dramatic film features a young Ojibwa girl from 1770 who marries a Scottish fur trader and leaves home for the shores of Georgian Bay. Although the union is beneficial for her tribe, it results in hardship and isolation for Ikwe. Values and customs clash until, finally, the events of a dream Ikwe once had unfold with tragic clarity.
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Mistress MadeleineAaron Kim Johnston 1986 57 minPart of the Daughters of the Country series, this film, set in the 1850s, unfolds against the backdrop of the Hudson's Bay Company's monopoly of the fur trade. In protest, some Métis engage in trade with the Americans. Madeleine, the Métis common-law wife of a Hudson's Bay Company clerk, is torn between loyalty to her husband and loyalty to her brother, a freetrader. Even more shattering, a change in company policy destroys Madeleine's happy and secure life, forcing her to re-evaluate her identity.
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Rendezvous Canada, 1606Joan Henson 1988 29 minThe dramatic story of two youths--one French and one Indigenous--who share a pivotal time in Canada's history: the first contact between European and First Nations peoples.
