If you have Netflix, I recommend watching "Reel Injuns".

[Behind the Aegis]

It is a documenatary on the portryal of Native Americans in the movies. It starts out really, really, slow. BUT, within 20 minutes, it picks up and is quite interesting and informative. It touches on stereotypes and how they eventually were challanged.

[Broken_Hero]

1. Sounds good, thanks for the rec.

My wife still loves the holy hell out of Smoke Signals, and the Education of Little Tree. My personal favorite is actually a Maori based movie called Once Were Warriors, the movie is eerily similar to what I've encountered within Indian country.

[Behind the Aegis]

2. The creator of "Smoke Signals" is in it.

There are also lots of clips from it and interviews with a few actors. They touch on Native life around the world toward the end. The focus is primarily the indiginous to North America. I am telling you though, those first 20 minutes...very slow, but it is worth the wait.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Native peoples around the world have been subjected to many of the same indignities

Once Were Warriors was a powerful film and well worth seeing. When I saw it at a Portland Film Festival, the audience gasped with one voice when they realized what the oldest daughter was going to do after being raped.

Another one, again showing the effects of colonization on Native peoples, is the difficult-to-find Australian movie The Fringe Dwellers. It concerns an Aboriginal family living in a small town. At the time, I was dating an Australian, and I asked him if he felt that the racism of the white townspeople had been overplayed. His opinion was that people in that part of Australia (he had some idea where the film was taking place) were MORE racist than portrayed in the film.

[Broken_Hero]

5. Another good one is Rabbit Proof Fence

its about aborigine sisters, and to boot, if memory serves its based on a true story.

[Neoma]

3. That movie shocked me.

In retrospect, not surprising... but the red-faced white guys were just hilarious.