Native American Heritage Month programming on PBS SoCal and KCET
November is Native American Heritage Month, a time to honor and pay tribute to the history, culture, and traditions of Native Americans. This month PBS SoCal and KCET have a lineup of programming that does just that, including the return of KCET Original Tending Nature.
KCET Original
Tending Nature
PBS SoCal: Wednesday November 20, 7:00 & 7:30 p.m. and Wednesday November 27, 7:00 and 7:30 p.m.
KCET: Sundays, November 3 - 24, 7:30 p.m.
This season explores the impact climate change and urban development are having on the Tongva tribe; the use of medicinal plants for holistic treatment by indigenous people; how the Yurok in the northern part of California are attempting to revitalize forests, rivers and wildlife; and how the Paiute are shepherding conversations around access to water resources. WATCH PREVIEW
The Warrior Tradition
PBS SoCal: Monday, November 11, 9:00 p.m.; KCET: Wednesday, November 13, 9:00 p.m.
Learn the heartbreaking, inspiring and largely untold story of Native Americans in the United States military. This film relates the stories of Native American warriors from their own points of view -- stories of service, pain, courage and fear. WATCH PREVIEW
American Masters
N Scott Momaday: Words from a Bear
PBS SoCal: Monday, November 18, 9:00 p.m.
Delve into the enigmatic life and mind of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and poet, best known for House Made of Dawn, and a formative voice of the Native American Renaissance in art and literature. WATCH PREVIEW
Independent Lens
Conscience Point and Jewel’s Hunt
PBS SoCal: Monday, November 18, 10:30 p.m.
In Conscience Point, a golf club built atop a sacred burial ground triggers a woman's relentless fight to protect her tribe from the onslaughts of development. And, in Jewel’s Hunt, a teenage girl in a remote village in Western Alaska, and her father, turn to the land to feed their family. Indigenous Alaskans have practiced the tradition of subsistence hunting for centuries, but how will it survive in a changing world? WATCH PREVIEW
Return To Rainy Mountain
KCET: Wednesday, November 20, 8:30 p.m.
N. Scott Momaday—recipient of the first Pulitzer Prize for Fiction awarded to a Native American writer—and his daughter, filmmaker Jill Momaday Gray, take viewers on a modern-day road trip loosely based on his Kiowa nation's ancestral myths and legends, from his bestselling book, The Way to Rainy Mountain. WATCH PREVIEW
Our American Family
The Kurowskis
KCET: Wednesday, November 20, 9:00 p.m.
One family shares the story of their mother, a woman born and raised on the Oneida Reservation in Wisconsin, who married the son of Polish immigrants. At the time, Native Americans had been pressured to forsake their heritage and assimilate into the culture of their white neighbors. WATCH PREVIEW
Native America
PBS SoCal: Sunday November 24 - Wednesday, November 27, 11:00 p.m.
Explore the splendor and ingenuity of the world created by America’s First Peoples, 15,000 years ago. Combining modern science with Native knowledge, the four-part series shines a spotlight on these ancient cultures and the communities that still thrive today. WATCH PREVIEW
And Now We Rise
A Portrait of Samuel Johns
KCET: Wednesday, November 27, 9:00 p.m.
Meet Samuel Johns, a young Athabaskan hip hop artist, founder of the Forget Me Not Facebook Group for displaced people in Alaska, and activist for a cultural renaissance as he heals from his own legacy of historical trauma. WATCH PREVIEW