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Celebrate and explore Native American Heritage Month with WKAR!

Native American Heritage Month 2021 | TV Listings

National Native American Heritage Month
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Celebrate and explore Native American Heritage Month with WKAR!

Nov. 1 - Nov. 23. | Airing in primetime on WKAR-HD and WKAR World. Listings are subject to change.

NOVEMBER 2021

1 | Mon | 8 p.m. | WKAR WORLD 23.2
Stories I Didn't Know  
Rita Davern examines an ugly reality at the heart of a Minnesotan family legend. While her family members have always been proud to say that their ancestors once owned Pike Island, a beautiful piece of land in Minnesota, the story of its acquisition is far less glorious than its profitability. Rita's attempts to understand what happened and why leads her on a journey that requires facing the complicated legacy of westward expansion in the United States.

1 | Mon | 9 p.m. | WKAR-HD 23.1
Warrior Lawyers: Defenders of Sacred Justice
Examine how the contemporary Native American Nation is rebuilding through the personal stories of Native Attorneys, Tribal Judges and their colleagues as they face challenges along their way to promote Sacred Justice.

2 | Tue | 8 p.m. | WKAR WORLD 23.2
America ReFramed: On A Knife Edge  
On a Knife Edge is the coming-of-age story of George Dull Knife, a Lakota teenager growing up on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation. The film traces George's path to activism, inspired by his family's long history of fighting for justice for Native Americans. His focus: shutting down the liquor stores in Whiteclay, a tiny town nearby that exists only to sell beer to the reservation's vulnerable population. With 5 million cans sold a year, the devastating results include public drunkenness and violence.

8 | Mon | 8 p.m. | WKAR WORLD 23.2
Warrior Tradition
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.

9 | Tue | 8 p.m. | WKAR-HD 23.1
Finding Your Roots: The New World  
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. traces ancestors of actor John Lithgow and journalist Maria Hinojosa who thrived in North America long before the birth of the United States.

9 | Tue | 8 p.m. | WKAR WORLD 23.2 
America ReFramed: Blood Memory  
For Sandy White Hawk, the story of America's Indian Adoption Era is not one of saving children but of destroying families and tribes. As an adoption survivor, Sandy sets out to reclaim the missing pieces of her stolen past and discovers that her's was not an isolated case. Blood Memory explores the communal healing that is sparked by the return of this stolen generation, as Sandy helps organize the first annual Welcome Home Ceremony in the community from which she was removed over 60 years ago.

9 | Tue | 9 p.m. | WKAR-HD 23.1
American Veteran: The Return  
Hollywood war stories seem to end with the hero's triumphant return, but in reality, the road back to civilian life is often less certain. Hosted by actor, Vietnam War veteran and Native American activist Wes Studi.

9 | Tue | 9 p.m. | WKAR WORLD 23.2
Unspoken: America's Native American Boarding Schools  
"Unspoken" looks at a dark chapter of American history, the federal Indian boarding school system. The goal was total assimilation into Anglo civilization at the cost of Native American culture, tradition, and language. The film story starts with pre-history and comes full circle to modern day. Much of the film is told in first person Native American voice by the people who continue to live it."

14 | Sun | 10 p.m. | WKAR WORLD 23.2
Native America: From Caves to Cosmos  
Combine ancient wisdom and modern science to answer a 15,000-year-old question: who were America's First Peoples? The answer hides in Amazonian cave paintings, Mexican burial chambers, New Mexico's Chaco Canyon and waves off California's coast.

14 | Sun | 11 p.m. | WKAR WORLD 23.2
Native America: Nature to Nations  
Explore the rise of great American nations. Investigate lost cities in Mexico, a temple in Peru, a potlatch ceremony in the Pacific Northwest and a tapestry of shell beads in upstate New York whose story inspired our own democracy.

15 | Mon | 8 p.m. | WKAR WORLD 23.2
Searching for Sequoyah
This hour-long documentary spans two countries and three Cherokee nations, leading viewers on a journey through the life and death of Sequoyah. It allows viewers to learn more about Sequoyah through the written language he created for the Cherokee people, interviews with his descendants, cave writing depictions, and more.

15 | Mon | 9 p.m. | WKAR-HD 23.1
Chasing Voices
From 1907 until his death, ethnologist John Peabody Harrington crisscrossed the U.S., chasing the voices of the last speakers of Native America's dying languages. Moving from one tribal community to the next, he collaborated with the last speakers to document every finite detail before their languages were lost forever.

15 | Mon | 9 p.m. | WKAR WORLD 23.2
The Good Road: Virginia: Balance
Virginia is in a state of struggle between the past and present. Balance in nature and balance in community requires people of all backgrounds, ethnicities and tribes. There is so much in the balance and activists are stepping in to maintain that equilibrium. Monacan Nation Chief Kenneth Branham, whose ancestors lived in villages at Rassawek on the banks of the James River, talks with Craig Martin and Earl Bridges about how modern development is threatening the tribe's traditional burial site. The Rassawek community population was much larger than the colony at Jamestown, and yet most of the historical interest and preservation goes to Jamestown.

15 | Mon | 9:30 p.m. | WKAR WORLD 23.2
Stories from the Stage: Good Kind of Trouble
The late John Lewis took pride in creating "good trouble" and standing up against unfair laws and power structures. Tonight's tellers share stories of their own "good trouble." Native American Maulian Dana fights to ban Native American mascots in Maine schools; Ronald Smith stands up for his integrated marriage; and Wanda Castro Borrero's boss pushes back against patients who don't want to see her because of her last name. Hosted by Theresa Okokon.

16 | Tue | 8 p.m. | WKAR WORLD 23.2 
America ReFramed: Sisters Rising
Native American women are 2.5 times more likely to experience sexual assault than all other American women, and 86% of the offenses are committed by non-Native men. This documentary follows six women who refuse to let this pattern of violence continue in the shadows. Their stories shine an unflinching light on righting injustice on both an individual and systemic level.

16 | Tue | 9 p.m. | WKAR WORLD 23.2
Warrior Women  
This documentary is the untold story of American Indian Movement activists who fought for civil rights in the ‘70s, anchored by one of the Red Power Movement's most outspoken Lakota leaders, Madonna Thunder Hawk, and her daughter Marcy Gilbert.

21 | Sun | 10 p.m. | WKAR WORLD 23.2
Native America: Cities of the Sky
Discover the cosmological secrets behind America's ancient cities. Scientists explore some of the world's largest pyramids and 3D-scan a lost city of monumental mounds on the Mississippi River; native elders reveal ancient powers of the sky.

21 | Sun | 11 p.m. | WKAR WORLD 23.2
Native America: New World Rising  
Discover how resistance, survival and revival are revealed through an empire of horse-mounted Comanche warriors, secret messages encoded in Aztec manuscript and a grass bridge in the Andes that spans mountains and centuries of time.

22 | Mon | 8 p.m. | WKAR WORLD 23.2
Horse Relative
This documentary explores the historic art of horse regalia and how the tradition is being revived and reinterpreted by Dakota communities for a new generation. Interviewees discuss the sacred relationship between the horse and the Dakota people, and the centuries-old tradition of dressing horses for ceremonies and celebrations. The film also looks at the efforts of artists, educators and community leaders to preserve and restore the Dakota language, cultural traditions and lifeways. Beyond chronicling how the Dakota people of Minnesota are working to keep their cultural identity thriving, this documentary also details a story of migration, following the difficult path Native people and their horse relatives traversed as foreigners settled the surrounding lands.

22 | Mon | 9 p.m. | WKAR-HD 23.1
The People’s Protectors
Meet four Native American veterans who reflect on their experiences in the military during the Vietnam War and how their communities helped them carry their warrior legacy, even as they struggled with their relationship to the U.S. government.

23 | Tue | 9 p.m. | WKAR-HD 23.1
Home From School: The Children Of Carlisle
Northern Arapaho tribal members travel to Pennsylvania to retrieve the stories and the remains of children who died at Carlisle Indian boarding school in the 1880s. More than a century later, will these Native American boys finally come home?

23 | Tue | 9 p.m. | WKAR WORLD 23.2
The Medicine Game
This documentary, a film six years in the making, shares the remarkable journey of two brothers from the Onondoga Nation driven by a single goal - to beat the odds and play the sport of lacrosse for national powerhouse Syracuse University. The obstacles in their way are frequent and daunting, but the brothers' love for the game, each other, and their family's unyielding determination propel these young men towards their dream.

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