Right to Remain:
NATIVE RIGHTS & ICE
RIGHT TO REMAIN: NATIVE RIGHTS & ICE is a Native American-led animated short film series rooted in Minnesota. The project transforms know-your-rights information into visually compelling, culturally grounded, and widely shareable media to support Native communities facing hostile and discriminatory interactions with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The first short film in the series animates an original track by Tall Paul (Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and Oneida), a Minnesota-based rapper and activist.
His song addresses the targeting of Native American communities by federal immigration enforcement systems and provides critical know-your-rights information embedded within the powerful rap song’s lyrics.
WE REMAIN SOVEREIGN explores how identity documentation has become critically linked to survival for Native American citizens, and what it means to reclaim one’s Indigenous identity and assert tribal sovereignty in the face of increasingly dangerous and discriminatory colonial systems of control and oppression. While rooted in personal storytelling, this film speaks to a shared experience among Indigenous people across the U.S.
Guided by the words of Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph (voiced by Chaske Spencer - Lakota/Cherokee), an animated resistance film collapses past and present to confront state violence, center Native American-led defiance, and transform history’s warning into action through knowing one’s rights. The film interweaves past and present, juxtaposing
Chief Joseph's famous “Let me be a free man” speech with contemporary scenes of ICE raids, protests, and Native-led resistance in wintertime Minnesota. As images of modern detention, state violence, and urban unrest collide with illustrated moments from the 19th century and Native American tribal resistance to US federal forces, Chief Joseph’s voice becomes a guiding force, warning, witnessing, and insisting on freedom for all people across time.
COMING SOON
