Movies Similar to Akicita: The Battle of Standing Rock

Ways of Knowing: A Navajo Nuclear History(2025)

The American Southwest holds a dark legacy as the place where nuclear weapons were invented and built. Navajo people have long held this place sacred, and continue to fight for a future that transcends historical trauma. This is their story.

Noble Sissle's Syncopated Ragtime(2018)

Combining footage unseen since WWI with original scores from the era, this film tells the story of Noble Sissle's incredible journey that spans "The Harlem Hellfighters" of World War I, Broadway Theatre, the Civil Rights movement, and decades of Black cultural development.

Holocaust Denial vs. Freedom of Speech(1994)

LaDonna Harris: Indian 101(2014)

A documentary film about Comanche activist LaDonna Harris, who led an extensive life of Native political and social activism, and is now passing on her traditional cultural and leadership values to a new generation of emerging Indigenous leaders.

As Long as the Rivers Run(1971)

Examines the violence and civil disobedience leading up to the hallmark decision in U.S. v. Washington, with particular reference to the Nisqually Indians of Frank's Landing in Washington.

The Lost Spirits(2009)

The last surviving Native Americans on Long Island are the focus of The Lost Spirits. The film chronicles their struggles as an indigenous people to maintain their identity amidst relentless modernization and a heartless bureaucracy.

Anti-Objects, or Space Without Path or Boundary(2017)

The title of this video, taken from the texts of the architect Kengo Kuma, suggests a way of looking at everything as “interconnected and intertwined” - such as the historical and the present and the tool and the artifact. Images and representations of two structures in the Portland Metropolitan Area that have direct and complicated connections to the Chinookan people who inhabit(ed) the land are woven with audio tapes of one of the last speakers of chinuk wawa, the Chinookan creole. These localities of matter resist their reduction into objects, and call anew for space and time given to wandering as a deliberate act, and the empowerment of shared utility.

Contrary Warriors: A Film of the Crow Tribe(1985)

Examines the impact a century of struggling for survival has on a native people. It weaves the Crow tribe's turbulent past with modern-day accounts from Robert Yellow-tail, a 97-year-old Crow leader and a major reason for the tribe's survival. Poverty and isolation combine with outside pressures to undermine the tribe, but they resist defeat as "Contrary Warriors," defying the odds.

maɬni—towards the ocean, towards the shore(2020)

An experimental look at the origin of the death myth of the Chinookan people in the Pacific Northwest, following two people as they navigate their own relationships to the spirit world and a place in between life and death.

Dislocation Blues(2017)

Filmed during the 2016 Standing Rock protests in South Dakota, Sky Hopinka's Dislocation Blues offers a portrait of the movement and its water protectors, refuting grand narratives and myth-making in favour of individual testimonials.

Malcolm X: Make It Plain(1994)

Narrated by actress Alfre Woodard, this trenchant, eye-opening doc traces the radical civil rights leader’s life from his tumultuous childhood, through his rise in the ranks of the Nation of Islam, to his 1965 assassination.

Nuuca(2018)

In this evocative meditation, a disturbing link is made between the resource extraction industries’ exploitation of the land and violence inflicted on Indigenous women and girls. Or, as one young woman testifies, “Just as the land is being used, these women are being used.”

Still We Rise(2022)

50 years on, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy is the oldest continuing protest occupation site in the world. Taking a fresh lens this is a bold dive into a year of protest and revolutionary change for First Nations people.

Skydancer(2011)

For more than 120 years, Mohawk ironworkers have raised America’s modern cityscapes. They are called 'sky walkers' because they walk fearlessly atop steel beams just a foot wide, high above the city. In this nuanced portrait of modern Native Americans' double lives, Jerry McDonald Thundercloud and his colleague Sky shuttle between the hard-drinking Brooklyn lodging houses they call home during the week and their rural reservation, a grueling drive six hours north, where a family weekend awaits. While the men are away working, their wives often struggle to keep their children away from the illegal temptations of an economically deprived area.

Pete the Pond(2022)

Pete the Pond has spent the last 20 years trying to return Britain's aquatic wildlife to its former glory. Despite his best efforts, the abundance of creatures he remembers from his childhood are quickly disappearing. As he sets out to build yet another wildlife pond in a British garden, a letter from his local council threatens to destroy his life's work.

Sweetheart Dancers(2019)

Sean and Adrian, a Two-Spirit couple, are determined to rewrite the rules of Native American culture through their participation in the “Sweetheart Dance.” This celebratory contest is held at powwows across the country, primarily for heterosexual couples … until now.

The Red Elvis(2007)

A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.

Dolores(1984)

Mitakuye Oyasin(2015)

Lakota people from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota describe the ongoing struggle of their people.

Chasing Voices: The Story of John Peabody Harrington(2021)

For 50 years, controversial ethnographer John Peabody Harrington crisscrossed the United States, frantically searching and documenting dying Native American languages. 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. Today tribes are accessing the notes, reviving their once dormant languages, and bringing together a new generation of language learners in the hope of saving Native languages.