Indigenous activism comes in many forms: survival, continuance or regeneration of cultural practices, political protest, legal actions, and creative interventions in writing and art making, to name a few. The ironically titled Home of the Brave, a four-minute history of conquest and subjugation of Native people, offers a searing critique of settler colonialism. Made forty years after the occupation and drawing on archival materials, the experimental film lay claim to an island commemorates the 1969 American Indian takeover of Alcatraz Island. As Long as the Rivers Run, another ironic phrase referring to a treaty assuring indigenous people of their fishing rights “as long as the rivers run,” documents a Nasqually transgenerational family’s struggle to ensure those rights are honored. The documentary Beyond Recognition models an alternative activism. Rather than working through the courts to gain federal tribal recognition, these Bay Area Ohlone activists organize to buy and conserve land for indigenous people to live freely.

—Hertha D. Sweet Wong