Directed by Arlene Bowman • 1985 • United States
In NAVAJO TALKING PICTURE, Diné film student Arlene Bowman travels to a Reservation to document the traditional ways of her grandmother. In spite of her grandmother’s forceful objections to this invasion of her privacy, the filmmaker persists. Ultimately, what emerges is a thought-provoking work that calls into question issues of “insider/outsider” status in a portrait of an assimilated Navajo struggling to use a “white man’s” medium to capture the remnants of her cultural past.
Up Next in Native Nonfiction
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White Shamans and Plastic Medicine Men
Directed by Terry Macy and Daniel Hart • 1996 • United States
This award-winning documentary deals with the popularization and commercialization of Native American spiritual traditions by non-Indigenous people. Important questions are asked of those seeking to commercially exploit rituals and sa...
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Faces, Displays, and Other Imaginary ...
Directed by Woodrow Hunt • 2020 • United States
A familiar route is remapped to contemplate and remember the complicated past of Indigenous labor in the Pacific Northwest.
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Long Line of Ladies
Directed by Rayka Zehtabchi and Shaandiin Tome • 2022 • United States
LONG LINE OF LADIES tells the story of a girl and her community as they prepare for her Ihuk, the revived coming-of-age ceremony of the Karuk tribe of Northern California.
