Bring Them Home: A Screening at the National Discovery Center

AMERICAN PRAIRIE TO HOST “BRING THEM HOME” FILM SCREENING OCTOBER 29, 7 PM
Film focuses on Blackfoot effort to return buffalo to their ancestral lands

American Prairie is pleased to announce a screening of the new film Bring Them Home on October 29 at 7 pm. The event will be held in the Clyde Aspevig Event Center inside American Prairie’s National Discovery Center, located at 302 W. Main in Lewistown. Admission is free. Donations to American Prairie, however, can be made online at https://americanprairie.org or at the door with your phone using a QR code. Light refreshments will be available following the event, plus a panel discussion and “Meet & Greet” with the film’s co-directors.

Bring Them Home/Aiskótáhkapiyaaya, a production of Thunderheart Films, tells the story of a small group of Blackfoot people (the Blackfoot Confederacy) and their decades-long effort to establish the first wild buffalo (iinnii) herd on their ancestral territory since the species’ near-extinction a century ago. They believe that reintroducing the buffalo onto the Reservation would not only restore the land, but it would revitalize traditional culture and bring much needed healing to the Blackfoot community.

The 85-minute film is directed by the Blackfeet siblings Ivan and Ivy MacDonald, as well as Daniel Glick, who premiered the feature at the 2024 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, where it won the Big Sky Award. It is narrated by Academy Award-nominee and Blackfeet/Nez Perce actor Lily Gladstone, who also served as one of the film’s writers and executive producers.

In addition to following the efforts to restore the buffalo to their tribal lands, the film examines the role that buffalo played in Blackfeet life before the species was eradicated from the landscape. A press release for the documentary explains that “For Blackfeet, the buffalo are seen not only as fundamental to a healthy ecosystem, but as spiritual relatives. Their removal from the land meant the loss of the Blackfeet way of life, the trauma of which still reverberates today.”

The documentary follows four main individuals at the center of the buffalo conservation effort. They include Ervin Carlson, director of the Blackfeet Buffalo Program; Paulette Fox, co-creator of the Iinnii Initiative; and Leroy Little Bear, a tribal elder and educator involved in the Iinnii Initiative. The film explores their effort to restore a wild herd that is directly descended from bison that once inhabited Blackfeet lands, but also the obstacles they faced from ranchers who consider bison as a threat to cattle ranching.

About the Presenters

Ivan MacDonald, Co-Director / Producer
Ivan MacDonald is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and an enrolled member of the Blackfeet tribe. He was an inaugural fellow for the Netflix and Illuminative Producers fellowship and was an inaugural recipient of the Hulu and Firelight Kindling fund. Currently, he is the 2024 Mark Silverman honoree for Sundance’s Producing Lab. With his sister Ivy, he is also directing When They Were Here, which is a feature-length documentary about the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls’ crisis told through the lens of their family and community. His work has been supported by Sundance, ITVS, and IDA.

Ivy MacDonald, Co-Director
Ivy MacDonald is a director, producer, writer and cinematographer based in Montana. She is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet tribe. Bring Them Home is her most recent project. In late 2023 she co-wrote and co-directed her first narrative short film titled Buffalo Spirit, which will premiere later this year. She also helped produce Murder in Bighorn, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and aired nationally on Showtime. Ivy also won an Emmy for her production work on the 2020 ESPN short Blackfeet Boxing: Not Invisible. She is currently directing for her second feature length documentary titled When They Were Here, a documentary about the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls’ crisis within her community.

Daniel Glick, Co-Director / Writer
Daniel Glick is a director, writer, producer, cinematographer and editor. For his short film, Iniskim (2019), he was nominated for three Emmys (directing, producing and photography) and won one for photography. His first feature documentary film, A Place to Stand, the true story of poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, was broadcast nationally on PBS in 2018. He has directed and produced half a dozen fiction shorts and several dozen short and branded documentaries. Three of his most recent personal projects were Our Last Refuge, Iniskim, and Bring Them Home - all short films set on the Blackfeet Reservation that he worked on with Blackfeet tribal members.

Lily Gladstone, Writer / Executive Producer / Narrator
Lily Gladstone (Kainawa, Amskapi Pikuni, Nimi’iipu) was raised on the Blackfeet Reservation. She won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Other notable credits include Kelly Reichardt’s “Certain Women” and “First Cow”, Alex and Andrew Smith’s “Winter in the Blood”, and “Reservation Dogs”.