Cobb, Daniel M.
Summary: Join the Smithsonian Institution to discover the rich history of native Americans.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2016
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 970.004 NATCopies Available at Fife Lake
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD NATSummary: In spite of mounting ecological damage, the Amazon Basin continues to nurture age-old stories and beliefs. This documentary illustrates the importance of indigenous narratives to those who dwell near the city of Iquitos, Peru, and view their natural surroundings in mythical terms. Concerning a young man who has recently gone missing in the forest, the film depicts his mother's attempts to find...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Once forced to hide their heritage, Native Americans now enjoy both an acceptance and a celebration of their history and culture. By presenting the experiences of Native Americans from a wide array of fields including artisans, performers, and teachers, this program shows how many tribes are returning to the traditions and spirituality of their ancestors. Among those interviewed are Kevin...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The Karuk, Yurok, and Hoopa peoples live along northern California's Klamath River, and each tribe's ancient culture revolves around the majestic Pacific salmon. Today, four large hydroelectric dams have made salmon extinction a real and frightening possibility. This case study follows tribal members as they confront the owners of the dams-specifically, a global energy giant in Scotland which...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: This poignant collage features members of the Oglala Lakota Sioux living on and off the Pine Ridge reservation who present their unself-pitying yet pointed observations on Lakota history and modern-day Lakota life. Their creation myth and their attitudes toward Mother Earth and the concept of time contribute insights into their worldview, while footage of a major powwow and a tepee-raising...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North created the very genre of film documentary, with its documentation of Nanook the Inuit and the Eskimo traditions which were even then being threatened by the influences of whites. This program revisits the site of Flaherty's filming, and learns that he staged much of what he filmed, sired children to whose future he paid no heed, and is himself now part of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The Yuroks, California's largest Native American tribe, have lived near the mouth of the Klamath and Trinity Rivers for 10,000 years. This program details the many problems that beset them as they try to survive: their lands overrun by prospectors and soldiers in the 19th century, the primeval forest cut by lumber companies, environmental destruction that has nearly wiped out the fish on which...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Sculptor Allan Houser won international recognition for his depiction of the stoic, powerful figures of his Chiricahua Apache and Navajo families in wood, stone, and metal. This program follows Houser-also acclaimed for his murals and paintings-from quarry to studio, where he sculpts a face in marble, and to the Shidoni Foundry, where he casts a bronze head. The art of Houser, whose father was...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program looks at the fascinating finds at Chaco Canyon: the extraordinary city itself, the strange cult objects, the proofs of their mastery of astronomy; and at the many unanswered questions about the meaning of their depictions of humans, and the possible explanations for the disappearance of the Anasazi-leaving barely a trace of their highly advanced culture.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The abstract geometric paintings of Helen Hardin beautifully illustrate the artist's struggle to depict aspects of her native heritage yet depart from the Santa Fe/Dorothy Dunn model of her predecessors-including her mother, the acclaimed Pablita Velarde. This program takes a close look at the work of a gifted Santa Clara painter and printmaker who acted almost as if she knew that her time to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program examines the pottery of Grace Medicine Flower and her brother Joseph Lone Wolf, members of the renowned Tafoya family of Santa Clara Pueblo. They revived and expanded the traditional forms and techniques of their pre-Columbian ancestors, the Mimbres, to create exquisite works featuring abstract designs and emphasizing sgraffito and polychrome techniques. Together with their father,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Charles Loloma was one of the first Native American jewelers to use gold instead of silver and diamonds and other precious gems in addition to turquoise, coral, and shell. His innovative designs, so sculptural in quality, were internationally acclaimed. And his clients included celebrities, monarchs, and presidents. This program examines the work of Charles Loloma-and how the visionary behind...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Unconventional and "paradoxical" are two of the more common words people use to describe R. C. Gorman, an award-winning Navajo painter and printmaker who treats Native American subjects ranging from geometrics to nudes with a distinctly Mexican artistic sensibility. This program films the man The New York Times dubbed "The Picasso of American Indian Art" as he works, capturing his fascination...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: The first to portray the Native American as "real, not red," Fritz Scholder has been a major influence on an entire generation of Native American artists. This program films Scholder, an artist of Luiseno descent, as he takes his painting Television Indian and his lithograph Film Indian from conception to completion. His unsentimental vision and his technique-a blend of abstract expressionism,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: In decades past, Native-American artists who wanted to sell to mainstream collectors had little choice but to create predictable, Hollywood-style western scenes. Then came a generation of painters and sculptors led by Allan Houser (or Hazous), a Chiricahua Apache artist with no interest in stereotyped imagery and a belief that his own rich heritage was compatible with Modernist ideas and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: For the nearly two million Native Americans, representing 500 Indian nations, life in the U.S. today is a frustrating struggle to retain their ancient ways while functioning in the modern world, to carve out an identity in an overwhelmingly non-Indian culture. This program examines the needs and problems of today's Native Americans, both those who live on the reservation and those who have...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program, Dennis Wholey has a conversation about Native American religions with Suzan Shown Harjo, executive director of The Morning Star Institute in Washington, D.C. Topics of discussion include the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978; some common aspects of the approximately 300 remaining Native American religions being practiced in the U.S. today; the concepts of a supreme...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program with Bill Moyers, authors Louise Erdrich and the late Michael Dorris explain how traditions of spirit and memory weave through the lives of many Native Americans and how alcoholism and despair have shattered so many other lives. The devastating effect of fetal alcohol syndrome on their adopted son and on the Native American community as a whole is also discussed. The issues...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This classic anthropological study of a traditional Navajo family, the Neboyias, examines their lifestyle through the four seasons as they travel to each of their hogans-planting, sheepherding, harvesting, and weaving. The documentarist's style is natural and unobtrusive, allowing viewers to share in the Navajo world vision. Filmed in the Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly, and Window Rock areas...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006