NAPT Programs

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Programs currently in broadcast. Check your local PBS station's listing. Aleut Story: From indentured servitude and isolated internment camps, to Congress and the White House, this is the incredible story of the Aleuts’ decades-long struggle for our nation’s ideals.
Apache 8: The all-women wildland firefighting crew from the White Mountain Apache Tribe has been fighting fires on the Reservation and throughout the United States for more than 30 years. With humor and tenderness, four extraordinary women from different generations share their personal stories. [Press Kit] As featured on June 20, 2011, on PBS Newshour
*A Blackfeet Encounter*: This program traces the consequences of the Lewis & Clark expedition's arrival and investigates the struggles and triumphs of the Blackfeet today. Distributed by American Public Television (APT). [Press Kit]
*Columbus Day Legacy*: Examine the quintessential American issues of free speech and ethnic pride as you follow the ongoing Columbus Day Parade controversy in Denver, Colorado. Tensions rise as Denver's Native American and Italian American communities publicly fight over race, history and what it means to be an "American." [Press Kit]
Choctaw Code Talkers: In 1918, not yet citizens of the U.S., Choctaw members of the U.S. American Expeditionary Forces were asked to use their Native language as a powerful tool against the German Forces in World War I, setting a precedent for code talking as an effective military weapon and establishing them as America's original Code Talkers. [Press Kit]
The Creek Runs Red: The EPA calls the mining town of Picher, Oklahoma the most toxic place in America, but the Quapaw tribe still calls it home. Today the town is divided by fears of serious health risks, environmental politics, civic pride, and old racial tensions between the Quapaw people and the non-Indian community who share the town.
For the Generations: Native Story & Performance: The efforts of contemporary Native performers to recast themselves in the 21st century are examined in this documentary. Told through the artists' own words, the program explores health and fitness issues that plague Native youth on and off the reservation. [Press Kit]
For the Rights of All: Ending Jim Crow In Alaska: This documentary reveals the true-life story of an extraordinary Alaskan woman who becomes an unlikely hero in the fight for civil rights. [Press Kit]
Games of the North: Playing for Survival: For thousands of years, traditional Inuit sports have been vital for survival within the unforgiving Arctic. Acrobatic and explosive, these ancestral games evolved to strengthen mind, body and spirit within the community. Following four modern Inuit athletes reveals their unique relationship to the games as they compete across the North. [Press Kit]
Good Meat: Once a star athlete in his community, Beau LeBeau (Oglala Lakota) now weighs 333 pounds--an unhealthy weight which has triggered the onset of Type II Diabetes. His mother's untimely death from complications due to Diabetes motivates him to drop the excessive pounds. Enlisting the help of a physician and nutritionist, Beau starts exercising and takes up a traditional Lakota diet of buffalo meat and other Native foods. [Press Kit]
GRAB: GRAB is an intimate portrait of the little-documented Grab Day in the villages of the Laguna Pueblo Tribe, who annually throw water and food items from the rooftop of a home to people standing below them. A community-wide prayer of abundance, thanks and renewal, Grab Day exists at the intersection of traditional Native and contemporary Western cultures. [Press Kit]
*In The Mix: What's it like to be a young Native American today? In this In the Mix* special, teens from cities and reservations throughout the United States share their lives, problems and solutions. Shot around the country, the program features profiles of accomplished teens, short films made by young Native Americans, and an insightful discussion with a group of young leaders. [Press Kit]
*Indian Relay*: Follow multiple Indian Relay teams as they compete throughout the Indian Relay season. Many of the teams consist of families with Indian Relay roots stretching back generations. Bragging rights and money are at stake for the teams that compete in the Indian Relay circuit. [Press Kit]
Jim Thorpe: The World's Greatest Athlete: Beginning with Thorpe's boyhood at the Sac and Fox Nation to his rise to athletic stardom at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, filmmakers chronicle Thorpe’s win of two gold medals at the 1912 Summer Olympics and his fall from athletic grace. [Press Kit]
*The Last Conquistador*: This film uses the construction and dedication of a monument to the conquistador Juan de Onate as a springboard to examine his legacy in New Mexico. [NAPT Press Kit] [POV Program Page]
*March Point: A coming of age story, March Point* follows the journey of three teens from the Swinomish Tribe who have been asked to make a film about the threat their people face from two local oil refineries. [PBS Press Kit]
Maria Tallchief: An untold story on the life and artistry of Maria Tallchief, who rose from an Indian community in Oklahoma to become America’s first prima ballerina. Her partnership with Balanchine helped create the New York City Ballet and changed the course of ballet in America.
Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege: Although the mountain volcano Mauna Kea last erupted around 4000 years ago, it is still hot today, the center of a burning controversy over whether its summit should be used for astronomical observatories or preserved as a cultural landscape sacred to the Hawaiian people.
My Louisiana Love traces Monique Verdin's quest to find a place in her Native American community--the Houma Nation--as it reels from decades of environmental degradation. Monique must overcome the loss of her house, her father and her partner--and redefine the meaning of home. [Press Kit]
*Native Waters: A Chitimacha Recollection* will presents one of the most unique natural landscapes in North America--the Atchafalaya Basin, which is the largest river swamp in America. The Atchafalaya River itself is a former channel of the Mississippi River, now feeding nearly a million acres of bottomland hardwoods, bayous and backwater lakes. This vast expanse of low lying wetlands comprises on of the most complex and fragile ecosystems on the continent. [Press Kit]
*Oceti Sakowin: The People of the Seven Council Fires*: Across the rolling plains of the Midwest, a great nation was created by a people who had their own system of government and a livelihood that was forever changed by settlers. The Oyate, the people, tell their own story in this hour-long documentary. [Press Kit]
The Oneida Speak: In 1935, while the country was deep in the depression, a group of Oneidas in Wisconsin took advantage of a federal writing program designed to employ Americans. Many, who wrote in their own language, recorded their daily life to a federal infiltrator sent to drive people off the land to a devastating small pox epidemic. [Press Kit]
Power Paths: An exploration of energy through the eyes of Native Americans as they reveal their quest to tap wind, solar, biomass and other power sources for their communities and cities across the country. [Press Kit]
*Racing the Rez: Moving beyond stereotypes of the past and present, Racing the Rez* tells the complex story of contemporary life on the Navajo Nation--America's largest Indian Reservation--from the perspective of two high school boys' cross country teams. [Press Kit]
River of Renewal: Jack Kohler (Karuk/Yurok/Hoopa) returns to his tribe to discover how politics and economics have impacted tribal fishing and the environment after industry changes the Klamath River’s ecosystem. [Press Kit]
*Smokin' Fish*: A young Tlingit, Cory Mann, makes a pilgrimage to his ancestral home and is forced to confront the dichotomy between his history and the world he lives in. His personal life story parallels his culture's heart-wrenching disintegration and struggle to revitalize itself. [Press Kit]
*Standing Bear's Footsteps*: 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. [Press Kit]
Standing Silent Nation: A Lakota family tries to make a living off the land in a non-traditional way. The White Plume family tests their sovereign rights by tapping into the booming hemp product business. Produced by Prairie Dust Films. [POV Program Page]
The Thick Dark Fog: Walter Littlemoon attended a Federal Indian boarding school in South Dakota sixty years ago. The mission of many of these schools in 1950 was to "kill the Indian and save the man." The children were not allowed to speak their language or express their culture or Native identity in any way. This is the story of how Walter confronted his past so that he could renew himself and his community.
To Brooklyn and Back: A Mohawk Journey: Mohawk filmmaker Reaghan Tarbell follows the steps of her late grandmother and interviews Mohawk women who helped build Little Caughnawaga, the legendary Mohawk ironworking community, that lived in Brooklyn in the mid 1900s. [Press Kit]
The Silence: Saint Michael is a village of 370 residents on the southwest coast of Alaska, 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle. Catholic missionaries came to the Alaskan wilderness to bring education, medicine and teach the word of God. Priests became trusted elders in the community, but weird things would start to happen upon their arrival in 1968. For the first time, a small group of survivors will confront the very institution that devastated their village. [More]
The Twelve Days of Native Christmas: This short film is a visual and musical adaptation of the well-known classic Christmas song, The Twelve Days of Christmas. [Press Kit]
Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?: A seven-part, four-hour series that uncovers the root causes of our huge and alarming racial and socio-economic disparities in health.
*Up Heartbreak Hill*: Thomas, Tamara and Gabby--three Native American teenagers in Navajo, New Mexico--traverse their senior year at a Reservation high school. As graduation approaches, they must decide whether to stay in their community--a place inextricably linked to their identity--or leave in pursuit of opportunities elsewhere. [Press Kit]
*Video Letters from Prison: Embark on a journey of transformation as one family from the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota finds healing through the path of the heart. Video Letters from Prison* follows the lives of three Oglala Lakota sisters as they reconnect with their incarcerated father via a series of video letters. [Press Kit]
Waila! Making the People Happy: Through four generations of the Joaquin family, this film explores the unique form of music that embodies polka, cumbias and tejano, and shows how “chicken scratch” or waila developed in the O’odham Indian nations in Arizona. [Press Kit]
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. Dr. Arne Vainio is an Ojibwe physician who works on the Fond du Lac Reservation in northern Minnesota. Frustrated by middle-aged Native men not coming in for health screenings, he came to the realization that he was also avoiding the necessary screenings. [Press Kit]
Waterbuster: A personal story of how a multimillion dollar project displaced the Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara Nation. Producer J. Carlos Peinado returns to the Fort Berthold Reservation and discovers stories of the past as he assesses tribal identity. [Press Kit]
*Way of the Warrior*: One-hour documentary about the warrior ethic in Native American communities. Its purpose is to explore how Native communities have traditionally viewed their warriors and why, during the 20th century, Native men and women have volunteered for military service at a rate three times higher than non-Indians.
We Shall Remain: This five-part series produced for American Experience explores several key themes, including Native survival strategies, mutual perceptions of Indians and Whites, the diversity of Native opinions and perceptions, and the placement of Native American history in the larger historical context.
*Weaving Worlds: Through untold stories of the intricate creation and often political sales of Navajo rugs, Weaving Worlds* discloses the intimate portrait of economic and cultural survival through art. Audiences will discover the delicate balance between cultural continuity, increased globalization, and artistic motivation of this traditional form. [Press Kit]
Station Relations Contact for PBS Stations: Georgiana Lee (Navajo) \| glee3@unl.edu NAPT 1800 N 33rd Street __________________________________________________________ When Will These Programs Be On In My Area? NAPT gets this question a lot from loyal viewers. Shows distributed by NAPT are often broadcast on different dates and times on various stations throughout the country. To find out when a certain program will be on TV in your area, you can log on to the PBS Station Finder, enter your zip code, and you'll be connected to your local station's website. There you can search for the program in their schedule listings. Better yet, call your local station's viewer services department and ask them if and when they are carrying that show. You get the information quickly, and you help NAPT to increase its reach into television markets around the country by letting those stations know that people in their service area are interested in this type of programming. So become an NAPT activist, call your local station and tell them you want to see Native programming on your public television station.