Ishi's Return

"The Last Wild Indian"

A short documentary about Ishi, billed in 1911 as the "last wild Indian" when he wandered out of the woods in Oroville, CA, and became a national sensation. When Ishi died, his brain was removed and sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Eighty years later, his descendants in California fight to have his remains repatriated to his ancestral home.

Contrary to the master narrative that Indians would die off, the film shows how Native Americans managed to survive the darkest period of their history and reclaim parts of a fractured past.