What Was Ours

About the movie

On the isolated Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, three tribal members attempt to learn the location of vanished artifacts. Thousands of ancestral artifacts are in the darkness of underground archives of museums and churches, boxed away and forgotten. Like millions of indigenous people in many parts of the world, they do not control their own material culture. It is being preserved, locked away, by 'outsiders' who themselves do not know what they have. These beautiful ancestral objects-drums, pipes, eagle wing fans, medicine bags, weapons, and ceremonial attire are far from home, their meaning slowly being lost to time. Should tribes attempt to bring them back? What answers do they seek from these artifacts? How can they take control of their own past? Is recovering what's lost possible anymore? The three people - a teenage Powwow Princess, an Arapaho journalist, and a Shoshone elder haunted by his past in Viet Nam, travel off the reservation to seek answers.