Heroes and Human Beings: 2024’s Native Year in Review
In another stellar year for Native cinema, Indigenous editor Leo Koziol surveys the heroic work of filmmakers around the world—from their Rez and tribal villages to the red carpets of Hollywood.
If 2023 was a year of groundbreaking success for Native filmmakers, 2024 was one of steady-as-we-go building on recent progress. A year ago, Lily Gladstone (Piegan Blackfeet, Nez Perce) was an obscure Indie arthouse darling, known mainly for their poignant and touching acting turns; now they are an Oscar nominee, Golden Globe winner and Cannes Jury member who can can lend their name (and voice) as executive producer to new projects, helping raise the profile and advance the cause of remarkable films (Bring Them Home, Sugarcane)—and still have time to say hello to the aunties on the red carpet.
Others at the top of the Native “heroes” roster for 2024 include Taika Waititi (Māori), Sterlin Harjo (Seminole) and Sydney Freeland (Navajo). Waititi has a new feature for 2025 in the can (Klara and the Sun), just dropped a charming festive short film (The Boy and the Octopus, which you can watch here) and was an EP on well-received festival contenders The Mountain (the directorial debut of Waititi’s longtime collaborator, Rachel House) and SXSW Special Jury Award winner We Were Dangerous.
Native storytelling is a collaborative realm: we don’t pull the ladder up behind us; we jump in the waka (canoe) and pull together. Waititi and Harjo’s co-created drama-comedy Reservation Dogs finally scored multiple Emmy nods for its closing season (lead actor nominee D’Pharaoh Woon-a-Tai using the opporunity to highlight the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement). Harjo then became one of the recipients of the astonishing $800k MacArthur Genius grant.
Freeland, meanwhile, went back to her Navajo homeland for Netflix-funded sports drama Rez Ball (co-written with Harjo), which made its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival before launching in the top ten most popular films on the streamer globally. Freeland was also an executive producer on and directed much of Marvel’s new show Echo on Disney+.
Coming up around the outside are 2024’s emerging heroes, such as Kaniehtiio Horn (Mohawk), Devery Jacobs (Mohawk) and Gail Maurice (Cree). All three already have a strong presence in front of the screen, and are proving themselves as major talents to watch behind it.
Known for her star-turn cameo in Reservation Dogs (as “hoof lady”), Horn had impactful supporting roles in films like Possessor and Alice, Darling, where she was part of a strong female ensemble. She made her feature writer-director-lead debut with comedy thriller Seeds, which premiered at TIFF and went to theaters in Canada this October. Goashleyd simply loved Seeds, writing on Letterboxd: “… a fucking wild ride, the acting across the board is well done, a unique and interesting perspective on protecting your culture from corporate greed in today’s society.”
Jacobs, a star of Reservation Dogs, has moved into making her own movies. She recently produced and starred in D.W. Waterson’s queerleading sports drama Backspot (executive produced by Elliot Page), which went into cinemas and online this year. Native Letterboxd member Ali writes of the film: “A queer love story where the conflict is about overcoming stress and anxiety that gives cheerleaders and gymnasts the respect that they deserve.”
A veteran in Native acting circles, Maurice made an impact with her charming debut feature Rosie in 2022, and this year took the lead role in Ryan Cooper and Eva Thomas’s latest feature Aberdeen, which premiered at TIFF. Maurice plays the eponymous Aberdeen, a homeless Native woman battling bureaucracy. Among the Letterboxd reactions, there are cheers for the performances of both Maurice (“Utterly titanic,” says Lili) and Billy Merasty (“TIFF needs to add a category for Most Perfect Line Delivery and give it to Billy Merasty asap,” writes Madsfrechette). Maurice’s career as a multi-talent continues; she has just completed production on new feature Blood Lines, due to release in 2025.
Around the World
Stepping off Turtle Island (North America) and onto the Guajira Peninsula, we find even more Indigenous screen heroes. The award for queer Indigenous warrior of the year belongs to Georgina Epiayu, featured in Colombian director Mónica Taboada-Tapia’s Soul of the Desert / Alma del Desierto.
The film follows the journey of Epiayu, a trans woman from the Wayúu community, who embarks on a quest to reclaim her basic right to have her identity recognized. Awarding Soul of the Desert the Queer Lion award at Venice this year (over Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, among others), the prize’s jury stated: “Through a powerful cinematic gaze that transcends the documentary genre, [the film addresses] the complex issues of gender identity, ethnicity, citizenship and civil rights.” The resilience of Epiayu in the face of adversity is something that stays with you long after the film has concluded.
In Hawai’i, Standing Above the Clouds explores intergenerational healing and the importance of safeguarding cultural traditions, told through the lens of Native Hawai’ian mothers and daughters fighting against development of their sacred mountain, Mauna Kea. The picture made an impact at HotDocs, where it won the Bill Nemtin Award for Best Social Impact Documentary.
I caught up with Standing Above the Clouds director Jalena Keane-Lee and Native artist-activist Hāwane Rios, to hear the duo emphasize the crucial role of mothers and grandmothers in their movement, sharing personal experiences of healing through intergenerational connection. “I bring my grandmother with me when I show up and I stand up and speak up for the land that I love, because she taught me what that means,” Rios tells me. “I bring my mother with me. I bring my sister with me, and I bring our daughters with me.”
Keane-Lee, meanwhile, describes the sensitivity of documenting sacred Native ceremonies—an emotional and pivotal part of the film. “Documenting ceremony was such a privilege and an honor, just to be able to be let into that space and to be able to document rituals and practices that have not always been shared,” Keane-Lee explains. “That was something that, as a film team, we just tried to remain very grateful for, and we took it one step at a time.”
Opening the Hawai’i International Film Festival this year, TINĀ is the feature debut of director Miki Magasiva (Samoan), one of several notable creative brothers in New Zealand. He’s previously known for directing a chapter of award-winning anthology We Are Still Here, and with TINĀ, he offers a long-awaited star turn for Samoan actress Anapela Polataivao (who was undoubtedly the reason New Zealand short Night Shift made it into Cannes; watch it here). Haiku Dan caught the film at HIFF: “I laughed and cried. The emotional beats hit hard, it’s all well shot, and maintains a steady pace until a glorious cathartic finale.”
Revisiting Reel Injun
An unsung hero of Indigenous cinema is Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond (no relation to the singer). A prolific artist, his landmark work is Reel Injun, made with Catherine Bainbridge (Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World) and Jeremiah Hayes. Released in 2009, Reel Injun explores one hundred years of cinema and how it defined—for better or worse—the Native American image to the world. For any scholar or student of Indigenous cinema, a course in Native Film .101 should start with this feature (indeed, there are scholarly guides aplenty: here, here and here).
Both a road movie and a chronological journey through a century of sometimes contradictory Native depictions in Hollywood cinema, it’s a bumpy ride. Only at the end do we finally find Native filmmakers reclaiming and telling their own stories in their own way, achieving a remarkable goal: portraying Native people as human beings.
I caught up with Diamond this year for a reflective conversation fifteen years on from his groundbreaking work: “When making Reel Injun, we were changing the way Native people are represented in films,” he told me. “We’ve seen more of that change since. It seems like there are a lot more young Native people who want to get into film as well, and different types of storytelling.”
Diamond’s personal journey is at the center of Reel Injun, his open heart and open mind at times placing him in unusual situations, such as when he visits an American Indian-themed summer camp. The filmmaker does it again this year in two new documentaries, Red Fever, which had its premiere at HotDocs and So Surreal: Behind the Masks, which premiered at TIFF.
Both documentaries flip the lens: rather than looking at how the mainstream has negatively portrayed Native culture, they daringly look at how others have taken influence from Native culture—in fields as diverse as sport, film, fashion, politics and the surrealist art movement. In Red Fever, a central scene finds Diamond naively attending New York Fashion Week, where Native designs have been culturally appropriated. In contrast, a pivotal moment in So Surreal sees film subject Chuna McIntyre dancing in the halls of the Louvre, reclaiming space from the artists who stole his people’s masks and used them in their art movement.
“So Surreal: Behind the Masks is about how the Northwest Coast Native people in northern British Columbia and the Yupik people in Alaska, how they influenced the Surrealists,” says Diamond. “When the churches outlawed Native ceremonies, they would raid potlatches [gift-giving ceremonies] and confiscate all the items that they were using for their ceremonies, masks and robes and whatever else they would be using.”
The masks and surreal designs inspired a new phase in an entire arts movement, he explains: “People took the masks and sold them to museums, a lot of them ending up in New York. In World War II, the French surrealists fled to the United States, to New York, and they found these masks and they ended up in Paris and in private collections.”
Red Fever has a similarly rich story to tell, from Inuit designs stolen by major fashion houses, to how the Iroquois federation inspired the birth of democracy in the United States as well as encouraging female leadership. One coup for Diamond was convincing feminist icon and organizer Gloria Steinem to be interviewed in the film: “It turned out that one of the places we were filming, Akwesasne, she had been there, she had a gathering there. We spoke with our contact in Akwesasne, and said we would like to talk to her about Iroquois women, so we secured Gloria Steinem, who spoke of this hidden history of strong women.”
“[Red Fever] thoroughly explores cultural appropriation and fetishization through some really eye-opening and revelatory history,” writes Tysoneko in their Letterboxd review. “It’s insane and heartbreaking how many massive ways [Indigenous] people have contributed to our culture that have been completely erased from our cultural lexicon.”
Heroes and Human Beings
There are many more films to champion this year. We haven’t even touched on Moana 2, two of whose three directors are of Samoan heritage, and whose historic New Zealand theatrical release—concurrent screenings in both English and Māori—just broke box office records there. More on that coming to Journal soon, and we can continue the wider Indigenous cinema conversation in the comments of our Native Year in Review 2024 list.
Special mention must go to the recent crop of new releases at Vancouver International Film Festival. Ninan Auassat: We, the Children by Kim O’Bomsawin won the fest’s TIDES Award; The Stand by Christopher Auchter won the Northern Lights Audience Award; and Jules Koostachin’s Angela’s Shadow won the Panorama Audience Award (both Auchter and Koostachin’s prize were sponsored by Letterboxd).
We’ll borrow lines from the opening titles of Reel Injun to inform the last word in this year’s Native film round-up:
In over 4,000 films, Hollywood has shaped the image of Native Americans. Classic westerns like They Died with Their Boots On created stereotypes. Later blockbusters like Little Big Man, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Dances with Wolves began to dispel them. Not until a renaissance in Native cinema did films like Once Were Warriors and Smoke Signals portray Native peoples as human beings.
Reel Injun concludes that Native filmmakers have progressed to a point where, at last, we can be seen and respected as human beings—something heroic for 2009 and perhaps still heroic today, and something to reflect upon as we look back at the year in Native cinema for 2024.
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