The Ballad of Crowfoot
1968 · 10m · Canada
Directed by Willie Dunn
Genres: documentary, historical, musical
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, provocative
A ballad by Willie Dunn paired with archival images recounts the colonial betrayals surrounding Siksika chief Crowfoot and his negotiation of Treaty 7 for the Blackfoot Confederacy.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1968 doc-ballad hybrid about colonial treaty betrayal should be a slam dunk provocation, but Dunn's restraint — the way he lets archival silence do the heavy lifting instead of hammering the injustice — actually makes it weirder and more subversive than expected.
Dunn situates himself in a lineage of politically conscious folk-documentary that few were working in at the time, and the precision of pairing original ballad with archival material creates a formal argument about how indigenous history gets told — this is curation as counter-narrative.
The choice to let Dunn's own voice carry the ballad over static images rather than dramatize or montage-build creates an almost unbearable intimacy; it's a small decision that transforms what could be educational into something that sits in your chest.