Lily Gladstone chronicles Blackfeet Nation's reunion with buffalo in new SIFF documentary

Award-winning actor and Mountlake Terrace High School alum Lily Gladstone is making waves in film yet again.

This time, she's the executive producer and narrator behind "Bring Them Home," a documentary that tells the story of the decades-long effort to reintroduce buffalo to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana. "Bring Them Home" will be screened at the Seattle International Film Festival on May 16 and 18.

Gladstone told Soundside's Libby Denkmann the film is not just about the buffalo — it's also about how such a story is told in the first place.

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"It's not a platitude saying that Indigenous people are leading the way, this documentary shows that in a very real way," Gladstone said.

That took some work on Gladstone's part.

The emotional core of "Bring Them Home" is centered on the connection the Blackfeet have with the buffalo.

Millions of buffalo — known as iinnii in the Blackfoot language — were wiped out by white settlers and the American government during the 19th century. The near-extinction of the buffalo paralleled the murder and displacement of Native peoples.

Throughout the documentary, members of the Blackfeet Nation link the separation of the buffalo from ancestral lands with the separation of past generations who were sent to boarding schools.

The return of the buffalo represents a form of healing from that separation, Gladstone said.

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But when she first signed on to executive produce the documentary, Gladstone noticed many of the perspectives highlighted were from non-Native environmentalists.

Gladstone pushed back.

"I feel like the wildlife documentaries sphere and wildlife preservation is from a Western lens," Gladstone said. "There's this inherent sort of value placed on being objective, not anthropomorphizing the animals that you're watching. It's a worldview that certainly you can understand, but from an Indigenous worldview, it's impossible."

Then Blackfeet Nation members Ivy and Ivan MacDonald joined the directing team. Gladstone said the siblings brought a humanist, "non-extractive" lens to the project. They brought the Blackfeet perspective Gladstone said the documentary had to have.

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"Because we are plains people, we were the subjects of this genocide, just as the buffalo were," Gladstone explained. "We were in lockstep through colonization. Both of us were almost wiped off the face of the earth. And as the buffalo revitalize, so do we as a people."

"Bring Them Home" is showing at SIFF on May 16 and 18. You can find out more information about showtimes and tickets on SIFF's website.