Imagine historical films where actual historians write the scripts
Indigenous History Now is a new nonprofit film studio. Run by a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and artists, we are dedicated to sharing the rich histories, cultures, and languages of the Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere and parts of Oceania. We do this through the production of feature-length documentary films, faithfully researched and peer-reviewed to the standards of an academic publication, and distributed for public viewing at no cost. We do not believe anyone should have to pay to access this knowledge, so we do not charge to watch any of our documentaries (though this commitment does make us reliant on grants and donations to continue our work).
The importance of Indigenous history education
As of 2024, only 18 states in the US require their public schools to incorporate any sort of education about Indigenous American peoples at all. For many of those states, that education is a mere one or two units and often ends at the year 1900, ignoring the past 120 years of Indigenous history and giving the false impression that Indigenous people have all disappeared (we most certainly have not). American school curricula also usually do not touch at all on the Indigenous histories of American overseas states and territories like Hawai'i, Guam, and Puerto Rico, nor on the Indigenous histories of other Western Hemisphere nations like Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. For-profit film and television has yet to adequately address this need, leaving millions of Americans unaware of (or misinformed about) the thousands of years of vibrant human history in their own homes and the realities of life for their Indigenous neighbors.
This lack of knowledge unfortunately is often replaced with misconceptions, misinformation, and ultimately discrimination against Indigenous peoples today. IHN seeks to fill these gaps in our education and media landscapes and thereby repair relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.
The importance to Indigenous people
This lack of education about Indigenous histories, cultures, and languages is not a mere oversight. It is the result of decades of government policy explicitly aimed at eliminating Indigenous cultures. The greatest impact of these policies have been felt by Indigenous people themselves. 70% of the US' Indigenous population lives outside of our traditional landbases and the communities where culture is shared, while 85% are not raised speaking our languages. Natives who grow up outside of our communities learn as little in school about our histories as non-Natives do, forcing us to look elsewhere for the tools necessary to connect with our cultures and languages.
IHN strives to be one of those resources, providing culturally-informed programming, as well as a detailed language-learning series written by linguists designed specifically to assist reconnecting Natives who are often in non-ideal language-learning contexts (learning languages that often have few available resources and doing so separated from other speakers).
Our future vision
We have so far been operating as an all-volunteer force, and to date have been able to reach around half a million viewers. But it is very difficult to research and produce documentary films to our standards with only part-time volunteers. Our ultimate goal is to have a paid crew of 10 full-time researchers and producers. This will enable us to travel, conduct archival research, interviews, and on-location filming, access sources in other languages like Spanish, French, and Portuguese, and publish several, quality documentaries each year. More staff will also let us regularly publish other forms of educational media like TikTok and YouTube Shorts, which we have tried to do with an "on this day in Native history" series, but have been unable to maintain with an all-volunteer team.
Our $50,000 goal is our first phase of fundraising. Achieving this goal will allow us to hire our first, full-time staffer and build a proper recording studio, enabling us to publish films at a more consistent pace and at a higher quality, and ultimately to reach and teach more people about Indigenous American history. Some of the films we are working on publishing this year include our intro to language learning series focused on learners of Indigenous American languages, and a deep dive into the US' policies of genocide towards Indigenous peoples and how those policies are currently being replicated in Palestine.
You can view all of our work on the Indigenous History Now YouTube channel as well as our website (under construction).