Vision Maker Media (Firm)

URBAN REZ explores the controversial legacy and modern-day repercussions of the Urban Relocation Program (1952-1973), the greatest voluntary upheaval of Native Americans during the 20th century. During the documentary, dozens of American Indians representing tribal groups from across the West recall their first-hand experiences with relocation, including the early hardships, struggles with isolation and racism. Interviewees also speak about the challenges...

Emmy nominated documentary,Walking into the Unknown, traces the intimate journey of a middle aged American Indian male through the health care system as he gains a deeper understanding of himself and the health risks he faces.

"Before there was light, before there was earth, the game was played." - Oren Lyons..Sacred Stick examines the historical, cultural, and spiritual aspects of lacrosse. From the ancient Maya to the world famous Iroquois Nationals team, this program explores a uniquely Indigenous sport that, like Native peoples themselves, adapted and endured within the dominant culture. As lacrosse surges in popularity, it has now become the fastest growing sport in...

Facing scorching temperatures, 19-year-old Andy Payne, a small-town Cherokee boy, takes home the gold after winning a grueling 3,422-mile foot race designed to bring attention to the newly constructed Route 66 Highway. The race recounted in this Emmy-nominated film became one of the wildest promotion schemes in history, allowing Andy to win enough money to marry his girl and keep the family farm.

Across the Creek explores both the unbridled dreams and the painful reality of Lakota people from South Dakota. In the face of unfathomable challenges, they are taking steps to better their lives. "It’s still here."That’s the assurance of Lakota elder Albert White Hat that the spirituality, songs and power of Lakota people are fully present today. "It’s still here,"he says again, for emphasis. These words seem at odds with appearances on the...

RED POWER ENERGY is a documentary film that combines engaging storytelling with in-depth journalism. Told solely from the Native perspective, with a nearly all-Native film crew and all-Native Advisory Council, the film features Western and Great Plains American Indian tribes from North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado. First-person stories illustrate the complex realities of American Indian reservations grappling with how to balance...

CHASING VOICES tells the extraordinary life story of controversial ethnographer John Peabody Harrington. Beginning in 1907, Harrington crisscrossed the United States frantically searching and documenting dying Native American languages. For the next 50 years, this became his obsession. Harrington amassed over a million pages of notes on over 150 different tribal languages. Some of these languages were considered dead until his notes were discovered....

Set against a background of rising tension and protest, a Lakota teenager learns first-hand what it means to lead a new generation and enter adulthood in a world where the odds are stacked against him. Filmed over a five-year period, ON A KNIFE EDGE provides a privileged view into the interior world of George Dull Knife as he becomes politically active with the American Indian Movement, confronts the challenges of growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation,...

In 1877, the Ponca people were exiled from their Nebraska homeland to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. To honor his dying son's last wish to be buried in his homeland, Chief Standing Bear set off on a grueling, six-hundred-mile journey home. Captured en-route, Standing Bear sued a famous U.S. army general for his freedom--choosing to fight injustice not with weapons, but with words. The Chief stood before the court to prove that an Indian...

A deeply personal family film that follows Kate Beane, an urban, Dakota scholar, and her family as they trace the remarkable life of their celebrated relative, Ohiyesa (Charles Eastman), an important author, activist, lecturer, and one of the first Native American doctors. Along the way, Beane uncovers uncanny parallels between their lives, though they were born more than 100 years apart.