Profile of the great Sioux warrior and mystic medicine man who led his people in a bloody struggle for survival against the encroachment.

A general introduction to the series “People of the Australian Western Desert”, shot in 1965 with Djagamara and his family at Badjar and Minma and his family at Tika Tika and Yalara, in the Gibson Desert area of the Western Desert.

A kangaroo has been shot. A man of the Western Desert guts it using the stone in the handle of his spear-thrower. After singeing off the fur in a blazing fire. The kangaroo is cooked in a trench covered with glowing ashes and soil. The cooked kangaroo is cut up according to custom.

A man of the Western Desert who is a mapantjara or healer operates on another man who has a headache. He takes powerful bones from his stomach and pushes these into the patients head. He then sucks at the back of his patients head to draw out the sickness.

A man of the Western Desert collects gum from spinifex. His wife separates the gum from spinifex particles. He then melts the gum into a usable state. He then goes to a quartzite quarry and collects a large core; back at camp he knaps this to obtain a stone knife, a scraper for his spear-thrower, and a hand chopper. Using his spinifex gum he puts a gum handle on the knife and then sticks the scraper onto the handle of his spear-thrower, his previous...

Two men of the Western Desert chase amamu or evil spirit out of camp. Both men are mapantjara, men who have the power to remove powerful bones or stones from their stomachs and use them for medicine and dealing with the spirits. They chase the mamu away by removing bones from their stomachs and hitting these along and into the ground with their spear-throwers.

A nomadic family of the Western Desert moves from Yalara camp to Tika Tika camp a days walk away. On the way they gather fruit, grass seed, lizards and a rabbit eared bandicoot. After making camp and getting water from a deep well, they cook some of the food. This is an edited sequence shot over several days. The family consisted of a man, two wives and four children. They were in fact living at Warburton Mission at this time and were taken out to...

Legendary as one of America's greatest horse tribes, the 21st century Nez Perce decided to bring horses back to their land and lives with the unlikely help of a charismatic Navajo horseman, Rudy Shebala. His mentorship guides at-risk teenagers toward the strong medicine of horses, and his equine skills bring historic Nez Perce horse culture to modern renown.  But his personal demons imperil both accomplishments.  HORSE TRIBE is an epic story about...

Based in Sydney, Australia, Karen Pearlman and Richard James Allen have been making dance films since 1985. They formed The Physical TV Company in 1997. This collection features three of their over 20 works for the camera: Rubberman Accepts The Nobel Prize (2001). A superhero who speaks only the language of dance makes an outrageous, graceful, and rambunctious physical acceptance speech. No surrender (2002). A young Indigenous woman is invaded, terrorized,...

Every Year in New Orleans, Louisiana the Mardis Gras Indian tribes gather on the Sunday closest to St. Joseph’s Day to celebrate their pride and joy. Influenced by his father Les Blank, son Harrod Blank joins the parade with his camera. This is a tribute piece to “*Always for Pleasure*”.