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People of the West()

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Seasons: 1

Episodes: 10

People of the West is a ten-part premium documentary series that reclaims the history of California through Indigenous perspectives. Blending oral histories, tribal archives, expert insight, and cinematic recreations, the series spans from creation stories and pre-contact life through colonization, state-sponsored violence, resistance, and cultural survival. Each episode centers Native voices and lived experience, reframing well-known events—from the mission system and Gold Rush to Alcatraz and modern sovereignty movements—through those who endured them. Visually ambitious and emotionally grounded, the series pairs sweeping landscapes with intimate storytelling to reveal California as it has always been: Native land. Designed to live both on screen and in classrooms, People of the West offers a corrective to dominant narratives while highlighting the resilience, continuity, and contemporary presence of Native nations shaping the state today.

Seasons & Episodes

Season 1

Episodes: 10

First Contact

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On Kumeyaay/Ipai land in 1542, a teenager’s coming-of-age ceremony collides with the arrival of Juan Rodríguez Cabril...

Spanish Missions

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The brutal reality of California’s mission system unfolds through the story of Aha’ya and Atsia of the Ohlone. Famili...

Gold Rush

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California’s mid-1800s transformation is marked by conquest, massacres, and betrayal. Fremont slaughters the Wintu as...

Genocide

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California’s statehood unleashes a campaign of genocide and slavery against Native peoples. Militias carry out massac...

Reservations

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Chief Tenaya leads the Ahwahneechee in a desperate stand to defend Yosemite from James Savage and the Mariposa Battal...

Boarding Schools

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When a young Paiute boy cuts his hair in anger, his grandmother relives her own trauma as a survivor of the Sherman I...

The American Dream

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A Chumash family uprooted by federal Termination policy moves from reservation life to 1950s Los Angeles, chasing the...

Red Power

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In the ashes of San Francisco’s American Indian Center, a new generation rises. Mohawk activist Richard Oakes and stu...

Gaming

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When armed deputies raid a small card room on the Cabazon Reservation, young Brenda Soulliere finds herself at the ce...

The Next Generation

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From the Channel Islands to the Coachella Valley, California’s Native nations reclaim their role as caretakers of lan...

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