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California — a biodiversity hotspot — provides an abundance of plants for both food and medicine. To Native peoples across the state, gathering locations were like supermarkets today. They provided all the resources necessary to survive. These native plants are relevant today as they reinforce cultural continuity for California’s Native peoples and provide healthy, drought-tolerant alternatives to the processed foods typically found in Western diets. In contemporary California, movements such as “eat local” and scientists’ “discovery” of the health benefits inherent in chia and sage, for instance, have led to an increasing awareness and desire to purchase indigenous foods. But while more and more people are recognizing the benefits of California’s indigenous plants, the scale of the commercial food industry often prohibits access to local indigenous communities. In this video, we visit members of the Chia Cafe Collective, a group working in Southern California to revive Native food practices and raise awareness about the precarity of these important cultural resources.

Ohlone elder reclaimed sacred land in the Bay Area.
‘In the Land of My Ancestors’ celebrates the legacy of beloved Ohlone elder Ann-Marie Sayers. Sayers has devoted her life to preserving the stories and culture of her Indigenous ancestors. This documentary challenges viewers to consider the perilous impact of colonization on the Ohlone people in the Bay Area. It also follows Sayers as she provides a refuge in the sacred Indian Canyon for Indigenous people to reclaim their culture, spirituality, and heritage.

A film by Rucha Chitnis.

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Return to Foretop’s Father follows 78-year-old Crow tribal elder, storyteller and pipe lighter, Grant Bulltail, as he travels from Crow Agency in Montana to Heart Mountain in Wyoming. Through his journey and the stories he learned from his grandfather, He Comes Up Red, Grant reveals a dark past of genocide, ethnocide, and the destruction of nature.

Grant’s mission is to bring awareness to the disconnect between people and nature, cumulating in the universal impacts of climate change. By connecting stories that have been passed down to him from generations of Native Americans, Grant presents his perspective on the modern crisis through a historic pipe ceremony at the base of the sacred Heart Mountain (Foretop’s Father).

Through the eyes of a Native American elder and historian, Grant reveals a unique perspective on the importance of nature on modern society, and how the ongoing disconnect is creating a crisis from which we may never recover.

We are pleased to announce that Grant Bulltail, one of our founding board members, is a 2019 recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship – recognized for “artistic excellence” in storytelling and for his continued contribution to “our nation’s traditional arts heritage.”