Vision Maker Media, celebrating 50 years as the world’s premiere source of media by and about Native Americans, announced the lineup of its year-long, 10th Vision Maker Film Festival.
The festival's theme is "Everything is Connected." The festival theme reflects a foundational concept in Indigenous storytelling relating to the interwoven relationships between land, culture, community and identity. Each film chosen for the festival will feature a screening and panel discussion at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln's Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center.
The streaming version of these monthly forums will be made available on the first date of the following month online.
Upcoming titles featured in the Everything is Connected 2026 Vision Maker Film Festival include:
April 13: "Scha’nexw Elhtal’nexw Salmon People: Preserving a Way of Life" is inspired by the late Chexanexwh Larry Kinley, a Lummi fisherman and tribal leader who embodied a belief in tribal sovereignty. The film follows two Lummi families fishing for sockeye. As they come to grips with a depleting fishery, Larry asks: “Who Are We Without Salmon?” Celebrating the resilience and adaptive natures of salmon and the people, the film is a reflection on a spiritual life way centered on respect and gratitude.
June 8: "Aanikoobijigan" [ancestor / great-grandparent / great-grandchild] follows the eleven Indigenous repatriation specialists that make up the Michigan Anishinaabek Cultural Preservation and Repatriation Alliance. Through an essayistic approach, the film critically explores the reasoning that justified unearthing our ancestors’ remains and storing them in museums, and presents vérité portraits of the courageous individuals doing the hard, emotionally draining work of fighting for their return.
July 13: "Without Arrows" is a longitudinal portrait of a Lakota family living on a reservation in South Dakota that unfolds over the course of 12 years. Delwin Fiddler Jr. is a champion grass dancer who grew up on the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Reservation in South Dakota, but left as a young man to escape a trauma that splintered his family and built a new life in Philadelphia. Thirteen years later, Delwin returns home to attempt to heal the past.
August 10: "The Land Returns" chronicles a surprising new way that Indigenous nations are regaining their land, with individual settlers, local governments, environmental organizations and even corporations are returning stolen land to Indian nations as part of a growing grassroots movement of restitution and reconciliation.
September 14: "Uncovering Boarding Schools: Stories of Resistance and Resilience" chronicles present-day efforts by Klamath tribal members to uncover the difficult and often hidden history of Indigenous children forced into government-sanctioned boarding schools, including some religious schools that were previously unknown, in order to bring about community reconciliation and healing.
November 9: "One with the Whale" travels to St. Lawrence, Alaska, a remote island in the Bering Sea — where hunting whales is a matter of life and death — to profile Native teen Chris Apassingok. Apassingok became the youngest person ever to harpoon a whale for his village. His family is blindsided by online condemnation of his act by people who don’t understand the importance of the hunt to his community’s survival. "One with the Whale" also explores parallel issues of food insecurity, environmental racism, climate change, cultural genocide and social media.
December 14: "Whose Land? O’odham Land" documents the landscapes and cultural legacy of the O’odham people living in Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora, whose voices are often excluded from mainstream discussions about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Through intimate storytelling, the film explores the impact of the U.S.-Mexico border on O’odham ancestral land, traditions, and identity — while celebrating the resilience of those fighting to maintain their heritage.
May and October titles will be announced.
For more information about Vision Maker Media’s 10th Vision Maker Film Festival, please visit the Vision Maker website.
