Set on Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation, What Was Ours follows three tribal members (a young Northern Arapaho journalist, a teenage powwow princess, and an Eastern Shoshone elder) as they search for artifacts taken from their communities generations ago. Initially the search for artifacts is driven by the creation of a ‘virtual museum’ project but they start to want the actual artifacts back. Their journey leads them into the vast basement archives of major museums, where they discover thousands of ancestral objects packed away in storage. What began as a search for history turned into a personal conversation about memory, identity, ownership, and healing. As some young tribal members push to bring these objects home, elders question whether reconnecting with sacred artifacts violates long-held cultural traditions. PBS Independent Lens (79min)

Featured on HBO’s Last Week Tonight With John Oliver 

Best Doc— Big Sky Doc Fest & American Indian Film Fest 

In Partnership with TXST Center for Study of Southwest