Give Us Our Skeletons! documents the struggle of the Sami of Lapland to reclaim the skeletons of two Sami men who were executed in 1854 for murder. Their descendants counter that they were part of an independence revolt. The skeletons reside in the Anatomical Institute in Oslo, Norway, where they are used for scientific study. The issues are complex: “scientific study” has included the measurement of Sami to document them as an “inferior” people to the Norwegians, Finnish, and Swedish, and to validate the practice of eugenics, including sterilization of Sami women.

(50 mins, Video, Permission TV2 Denmark)

Riding the Tiger
John Haptas, Kristine Samuelson (U.S., 1999)
A visual essay, Riding the Tiger is constructed from a collage of voices relating experiences of the Vietnam War. The remembrances of soldiers-both Vietnamese and American-journalists, and farmers are interspersed with a timeline of the war, while protests against the war cut with footage of miles of junked military aircraft provide a telling reminder of the cost of our involvement.

Photographed by Jon Else. (34 mins, Video, Color/B&W, Permission of the artists)