Bison calves being moved at the American Prairie Reserve (Photo courtesy of the American Prairie Reserve).
American Prairie will host a screening of the award-winning documentary film “Bring Them Home,” which details the effort by a group of Blackfeet people to re-establish a wild buffalo herd on their native territory.
The screening takes place next Tuesday, Oct. 29, in Lewistown.
The film won the 2024 Big Sky Award when it premiered this year at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. The award honors the film that best presents the character, history, tradition and imagination of the American West, according to the film festival.
The film was directed by Blackfeet siblings Ivan and Ivy MacDonald, along with filmmaker Daniel Glick, and is narrated by Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner Lily Gladstone, a Blackfeet and Nez Perce actor who was also a writer and executive producer of the film.
A film poster for “Bring Them Home,” which will screen on Tuesday, Oct. 29 at American Prairie’s National Discovery Center in Lewistown. (Image courtesy Thunderheart Films/American Prairie)
“Bring Them Home” details the stories and efforts of four people at the heart of the effort to restore a free-range buffalo population to traditional Blackfeet lands and hurdles they faced along the way from the ranching community in particular.
It also highlights the role of the buffalo, or American bison, in Blackfeet culture before the animal was nearly extinguished by settlers up through the early 1900s.
The film’s subjects include Ervin Carlson, the director of the Blackfeet Buffalo Program; Paulette Fox, co-creator of the Iinnii (wild buffalo) Initiative; and Leroy Little Bear, a tribal elder who is part of the initiative.
The Iinnii Initiative was put together in 2009 by the four tribes that compose the Blackfoot Confederacy; there are now about 800 buffalo on the Blackfeet Nation lands. The initiative has been promoting screenings of the film for the past several months.
The film will be screened at American Prairie’s National Discovery Center in Lewistown at 7 p.m. Admission is free but American Prairie said it is accepting donations both at the door and online.
The prairie-restoration organization said there will be a panel discussion and meet and greet with Ivan and Ivy MacDonald after the 85-minute film is over.
The MacDonalds are both enrolled Blackfeet members, and they have worked together and separately on several projects highlighting Native American communities. The two are currently directing a second full-length documentary about missing and murdered indigenous women and girls called “When They Were Here.”