A Ten-part documentary series
For 500 years, the history of California has been told by those who conquered it. People of the West reclaims that story through Indigenous voices, blending cinematic reenactments and lived experience to uncover the truth behind the myth of the American West.
Before colonization, California is a world of ceremony, sovereignty, and sacred balance, then everything changes.
The brutal reality of California’s mission system unfolds through the story of Aha’ya and Atsia of the Ohlone.
California's mid-1800s transformation is marked by conquest, massacres, and betrayal - this time by the Americans, led by the idea of "Manifest Destiny".
California's statehood unleashes a campaign of genocide and slavery against Native peoples, while California's first governor Peter Burnett declares "a war of extermination".
Chief Tenaya leads the Ahwahneechee in a desperate stand to defend their home in Yosemite Valley from James Savage and the Mariposa Battalion.
When a young Paiute boy cuts his hair in anger, his grandmother relives her own trauma as a survivor of the Sherman Indian Boarding School.
A Chumash family uprooted by federal Termination policy trades reservation life for 1950s Los Angeles, chasing the promise of the American Dream.
In the ashes of San Francisco’s American Indian Center, a new generation rises. Mohawk activist Richard Oakes and student leader LaNada War Jack rally Native voices from across the nation to reclaim Alcatraz Island.
When armed deputies raid a small card room on the Cabazon Reservation, young Brenda Soulliere is thrust into a legal battle that will redefine Native sovereignty.
From the Channel Islands to the Coachella Valley, California’s Native nations reclaim their role as caretakers of land and sea.
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