As resting places for historical materials, archives are usually sites where colonial power is held in place. With an approach to filmmaking that prioritizes stories of the originating Indigenous communities, Jennifer Dysart uses found footage and personal storytelling to inspire change in how countries and communities imagine and relate to archives and to history.

Caribou in the Archive (8:10 minutes; 2019)
Rustic VHS home video of a Cree woman hunting caribou in the 1990s is combined with National Film Board of Canada film footage shot in northern Manitoba in the 1950s. At the heart of this personal found footage film, the filmmaker describes the events that led to saving an important piece of family history from being lost forever.

Kewekapawetan: Return After the Flood (29 minutes; 2014)
Upon seeing a description of several hours of 50-year-old black and white 16mm film about the flooding of her Cree community of South Indian Lake, Manitoba, Canada (O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation) held in cold storage at the provincial archives, the filmmaker embarked on a journey to return the material to the community. Through this found footage, the filmmaker presents the story of her Indigenous community’s dispossession and displacement demanded by a major hydroelectric project and the community’s ongoing story of survival.