Heritage Minutes: Tom Longboat

For You Flora is the story of a brother and sister of Anishinabe descent who spend their youth in a residential school in the 1960s and who, years later, attempt to make peace with their painful past. From the heartbreaking moment when the Oblates take the two children away from their parents to the events that unite them more than five decades later, this six-episode, one-hour drama miniseries depicts different eras in their lives, unfolding together in each episode to tell the story of how a Quebec Aboriginal family splits apart and manages to repair itself.

Heritage Minutes, also known officially as Historica Minutes: History by the Minute, are a series of sixty-second short films, each illustrating an important moment in Canadian history. They appear frequently on Canadian television and in cinemas before movies and are now also sold on DVD. The Minutes were first introduced on March 31, 1991 as part of a one-off heavily-promoted history quiz show hosted by Rex Murphy. The thirteen original short films were broken up and run between shows on CBC Television and CTV Network. The continued broadcast of the Minutes and the production of new ones was pioneered by Charles Bronfman's CRB Foundation, Canada Post Power Broadcasting, and the National Film Board. They were devised, developed and largely narrated by noted Canadian broadcaster Patrick Watson, while the producer of the series was Robert Guy Scully. In 2009 Historica merged with The Dominion Institute to become The Historica-Dominion Institute. While the foundations have not paid networks to air Minutes, they have made them freely available, and in the early years paid to have them run in cinemas across the country. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has ruled that Heritage Minutes are an "on-going dramatic series" thus each minute counts as ninety-seconds of a station's Canadian content requirements.

Set in the late 90s, Rustic Oracle is a dramatic feature about Ivy, an 8-year-old girl trying to understand what happened to her big sister who has vanished from their small Mohawk community. With minimal clues, Ivy and her mother Susan embark on an unwelcome journey to find Heather which will ultimately bring the pair closer together despite challenging circumstances. Behind the story of desperation, told through the eyes of a child, lies one of hope, growth, awakening and love.

A a psychological drama about Lydia, a young Innu woman who works at her father’s convenience store in a small First Nations community in rural Quebec. One night, as she prepares to close up shop, a masked robber enters the store and holds her at gunpoint. This traumatic experience becomes even more troubling when Lydia recognizes her assailant. Before long, she will have to make a decision that will forever change the course of her life.

Mathieu is a brilliant neurosurgeon whose perfect life is falling apart. Impending divorce, job loss, substance abuse, and a mid-life crisis are all factors that can cause him to go off the rails. In addition, the sudden death of his father forces him to return home to Anishiinabe territory, a place he has tried to avoid since his youth. Nevertheless, Mathieu agrees to go and deposit his father's ashes in the heart of their ancestral territory and wishes to find himself at the same time. The break away from the city promises to be a nice getaway until Mathieu realizes that he is now the prey of an evil creature known as the Wendigo. Mathieu's pilgrimage quickly becomes an unimaginable nightmare that will change him forever. Like it or not, our vices always catch up with us eventually.

Rose is the story of a sixteen-year-old pregnant, Indigenous teen who is pulled from her community and placed in a church to be overseen in her last months of pregnancy. When she delivers her child, it will be taken from her and put into a Canadian home by decree of an Indian Agent, Mr. Byrne. Rose has a secret and will not tell anyone the identity of the baby's father - not even her family. It is later revealed that the father of her child is a young Mohawk man, named Michael, who wants to keep the child in the community.

A Canadian kickboxer journeys to Thailand to study Muay Thai and to find himself. Along the way, his gaze will turn to Myanmar, where traditional boxers engage in a brutal form of bare knuckles fighting called Lethwei. It is there, in the Tiger’s Den, that he will come to know his destiny.

My “Indian” Name is a one-hour documentary that takes a look at how having their traditional names stripped away from them has impacted Indigenous peoples. Without their original names, people are often left trying to find how they fit in this world. Luckily today, steps are being taken to reclaim their basic right to their true names.

This documentary takes a look at the reality that faces a last generation status Indian as she tries to hold on to her culture after the recent passing of her main native reference, her Grand-father. « Because of the Indian Act I am forced into letting go of who I am and accepting that I am probably the last Indian in my family lineage. Although I always had uncertainties and questions about my true belonging to the Mohawk culture and my ties to my community, I've never felt as culturally empty as I do now. Even if I always knew that I was a last generation Indian, I never felt that I needed to justify or explain who I was because my Grand-father was Mohawk, which in turn granted me that right. With his death, my heart and my roots seem to have slipped further away. » Last Call Indian begins where the life of Morris Bonspille ends.

Pitago Stop is a humorous fiction series in the "mockumentary" style which depicts the daily life of employ-ees of a roadside rest stop in the indigenous community of Weymistis, Pitago Stop.