We Were Children
Mar 03, 2012 | IMDB 7.5
88 min Watch NowDocumentary
For over 130 years till 1996, more than 100,000 of Canada's First Nations children were legally required to attend government-funded schools run by various Christian faiths. There were 80 of these 'residential schools' across the country. Most children were sent to faraway schools that separated them from their families and traditional land. These children endured brutality, physical hardship, mental degradation, and the complete erasure of their culture. The schools were part of a wider program of assimilation designed to integrate the native population into 'Canadian society.' These schools were established with the express purpose 'To kill the Indian in the child.' Told through their own voices, 'We Were Children' is the shocking true story of two such children: Glen Anaquod and Lyna Hart.
MOVIE COMMENTS
SIMILAR MOVIES
The Stand
Killing the Indian in the Child
Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy
Our People Will Be Healed
The Lost Children
Documentário Brasil Tupinambá
Chaos Glacier Country
Women in the Shadows
Tawai: A Voice from the Forest
Resident Orca
Northlore
Monica in the South Seas
The Last Stop
Holy Angels
Being Canadian
The Pearl Button
Seven Songs from the Tundra
Genoveva
The Chocolate Farmer
This Is the Way We Rise
SIMILAR MOVIES
The Stand
IMDB 1 | Oct , 2024
On a misty morning in the fall of 1985, a small group of Haida people blockaded a muddy dirt road on Lyell Island, demanding the government work with Indigenous people to find a way to protect the land and the future. In a riveting new feature documentary drawn from more than a hundred hours of archival footage and audio, award-winning director Christopher Auchter (Now Is the Time) recreates the critical moment when the Haida Nation’s resolute act of vision and conscience changed the world.Killing the Indian in the Child
IMDB 6.5 | Feb , 2021
The Indian Act, passed in Canada in 1876, made members of Aboriginal peoples second-class citizens, separated from the white population: nomadic for centuries, they were moved to reservations to control their behavior and resources; and thousands of their youngest members were separated from their families to be Christianized: a cultural genocide that still resonates in Canadian society today.Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy
IMDB 9 | Apr , 2021
Follow filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers as she creates an intimate portrait of her community and the impacts of the substance use and overdose epidemic. Witness the change brought by community members with substance-use disorder, first responders and medical professionals as they strive for harm reduction in the Kainai First Nation.Our People Will Be Healed
IMDB 5.7 | Sep , 2017
Legendary documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin provides a glimpse of what action-driven decolonization looks like in Norway House, one of Manitoba's largest First Nation communities.The Lost Children
IMDB 7.4 | Nov , 2024
After a plane crash, four indigenous children fight to survive in the Colombian Amazon using ancestral wisdom as an unprecedented rescue mission unfolds.Documentário Brasil Tupinambá
IMDB 10 | Aug , 2021
Chaos Glacier Country
IMDB 0 | Sep , 2024
An expedition to climb British Columbia's highest mountain goes awry in the face of bad weather, a series of comic mishaps and the stubborn insistence of its leader on using antique climbing equipment.Women in the Shadows
IMDB 0 | Jan , 1991
Filmed on location in Saskatchewan from the Qu'Appelle Valley to Hudson Bay, the documentary traces the filmmaker's quest for her Native foremothers in spite of the reluctance to speak about Native roots on the part of her relatives. The film articulates Métis women's experience with racism in both current and historical context, and examines the forces that pushed them into the shadows.Tawai: A Voice from the Forest
IMDB 6.2 | Sep , 2017
Explorer Bruce Parry visits nomadic tribes in Borneo and the Amazon in hope to better understand humanity's changing relationship with the world around us.Resident Orca
IMDB 0 | Apr , 2024
Resident Orca tells the unfolding story of a captive whale’s fight for survival and freedom. After decades of failed attempts to bring her home, an unlikely partnership between Indigenous matriarchs, a billionaire philanthropist, killer whale experts, and the aquarium’s new owner take on the impossible task of freeing Lolita, captured 53 years ago as a baby, only to spend the rest of her life performing in the smallest killer whale tank in North America. When Lolita falls ill under troubling circumstances, her advocates are faced with a painful question: is it too late to save her?Northlore
IMDB 6 | Feb , 2025
Weaving animation and live action, Northlore delves into the transformational stories of people living in Canada’s North and their deep connection to the land and its wildlife.Monica in the South Seas
IMDB 0 | Nov , 2023
Finnish filmmaker and artist Sami van Ingen is a great-grandson of documentary pioneer Robert Flaherty, and seemingly the sole member of the family with a hands-on interest in continuing the directing legacy. Among the materials he found in the estate of Robert and Frances Flaherty’s daughter Monica were the film reels and video tapes detailing several years of work on realising her lifelong dream project: a sound version of her parents’ 1926 docu-fiction axiom, Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age.The Last Stop
IMDB 7.8 | Apr , 2017
The Élan School was a for-profit, residential behavior modification program and therapeutic boarding school located deep within the woods of Maine. Delinquent teenagers who failed to comply with other treatment programs were referred to the school as a last resort. Treatment entailed harsh discipline, surveillance, degradation, and downright abuse. Years later, the patients who were institutionalized in this facility still carry the trauma they endured, with mixed opinions on the impact of their experience.Holy Angels
IMDB 0 | Oct , 2017
Documentary about the Holy Angels Residential School in Alberta, where hundreds of First Nations children were imprisoned.Being Canadian
IMDB 5.5 | Sep , 2015
What does it actually mean to be Canadian? This humorous documentary, featuring interviews with a who's-who of famous Canadians, hopes to find the answer.The Pearl Button
IMDB 6.9 | Oct , 2015
The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds all the voices of the earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of two mysterious buttons which were found on its ocean floor. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline and the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian Indigenous people, the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.Seven Songs from the Tundra
IMDB 6.4 | Feb , 2000
An anthology of stories about the indigenous Nenet peoples of the Northern Russian tundra, and how their way of life was disrupted by the advent of Soviet power.Genoveva
IMDB 0 | Aug , 2015
A photograph of an unknown Mapuche great-grandmother is the starting point of this documentary essay. Through the analysis of said picture, conversations with family members, a trip to southern Chile cities, and an actress who re-enacts the photo, we see the existing prejudice against indigenous people.The Chocolate Farmer
IMDB 7 | May , 2011
For ancient Mayans, cocoa was as good as gold. For subsistence farmer Eladio Pop, his cocoa crops are the only riches he has to support his wife and 15 children. As he wields his machete with ease, slicing a path to his cocoa trees, the small jungle plot he cultivates in southern Belize remains pristine and wild. His dreams for his children to inherit the land and the traditions of their Mayan ancestors present a familiar challenge. The kids feel their father's philosophies don't fit into a global economy, so they're charting their own course. Rohan Fernando's direction tenderly displays a generational shift, causalities of progress in modern times and a man valiantly protecting an endangered culture. Breathtaking vistas of lush rainforests contrast with the urban dystopia that pulled Pops children away from him. Will one child return to carry on a waning way of lifeThis Is the Way We Rise
IMDB 8 | Jan , 2021
An exploration into the creative process, following Native Hawaiian slam poet Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, as her art is reinvigorated by her calling to protect sacred sites atop Maunakea, Hawai`i.