Season 1

Season 1

Premiered October 23, 2018
Explore the world created by America’s First Peoples. The four part series reaches back 15,000 years to reveal massive cities aligned to the stars, unique systems of science and spirituality, and 100 million people connected by social networks spanning two continents.

Watch Season 1 of 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.
Full Length 53m 31s
From Caves to Cosmos
Full Length
From Caves to Cosmos
53m 31s
Combine ancient wisdom and modern science to answer a 15,000-year-old question: who were America’s First Peoples? The answ
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Nature to Nations
Full Length
Nature to Nations
53m 31s
Explore the rise of great American nations, from monarchies to democracies. Investigate lost cities in Mexico, a temple in
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Cities of the Sky
Full Length
Cities of the Sky
53m 31s
Discover the cosmological secrets behind America’s ancient cities. Scientists explore some of the world’s largest pyramids
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New World Rising
Full Length
New World Rising
53m 31s
Discover how resistance, survival and revival are revealed through an empire of horse-mounted Comanche warriors, secret me
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About Season 1

At the intersection of Native knowledge and modern scholarship is a new vision of America and its people.

Native America is a four-part PBS series that challenges everything we thought we knew about the Americas before and since contact with Europe. It travels through 15,000-years to showcase massive cities, unique systems of science, art, and writing, and 100 million people connected by social networks and spiritual beliefs spanning two continents. The series reveals some of the most advanced cultures in human history and the Native American people who created it and whose legacy continues, unbroken, to this day.

The series explores this extraordinary world through an unprecedented combination of cutting edge science and traditional indigenous knowledge. It is Native America as never seen before—featuring traditional knowledge held by America’s first peoples, history-changing scientific discoveries, and rarely heard voices from the living legacies of Native American cultures.

Emmy-award winning cinematographers bring Native America to life through filming across two continents - from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from northern Canada to southern Peru. Academy Award nominated animators tell Native stories in a whole new light by drawing upon powerful imagery and little known legends. Native American scholars, Faithkeepers, and chiefs make the story intimate by sharing some of their most private, traditions, knowledge, histories and ceremonies. And Native American rock legend Robbie Robertson of The Band, brings the story to life through his special connection to the content.

Each hour of Native America explores Great Nations and reveals cities, sacred stories, and history that has long been hidden in plain sight. In America’s Southwest, First People emerge from the earth to build stone skyscrapers with untold spiritual power, and transform deserts to fertile fields. In New York, warriors renounce war and found America’s first democracy five hundred years before the Declaration of Independence – and later inspire a young Benjamin Franklin. On the banks of the Mississippi, rulers raise a metropolis of pyramids from swampland and draw thousands of pilgrims to their new city to worship the sky. And in the American West, nomads transform a weapon of conquest into a new way of life, turning the tables on European Invaders, and building an empire.

Each hour traverses continents and millennia to weave together strands of this untold story. These are only some of the stories told across four hours of Native America. The sum of the hours reveals a belief that is shared by the diverse cultures of Native America — people are deeply connected to earth, sky, water, and all living things. It is a belief rooted in over ten thousand years of living on this land and continues to resonate in the lives of Native Americans to this day.

Watch Extended Interviews

Extended Interview: Severin Fowles on Native Science
Archaeologist Severin Fowles re-imagines Native religion as Native science. So many of what have been traditionally described as “beliefs” are actually profound scientific methods for acting in the world.
Clip 1m 25s
Extended Interview: Severin Fowles on Native Science
Clip
Extended Interview: Severin Fowles on Native Science
1m 25s
Archaeologist Severin Fowles re-imagines Native religion as Native science. So many of what have been traditionally descri
Show More
Extended Interview: The Earliest Cave Paintings in America
Clip
Extended Interview: The Earliest Cave Paintings in America
2m 58s
Archaeologist Anna Roosevelt dates the cave paintings in Brazil's Amazon jungle to 13,000 years ago. Her discovery rewrite
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Extended Interview: The Importance of Names
Clip
Extended Interview: The Importance of Names
2m 36s
Zuni elder Jim Enote speaks on why knowing Native names is an important source of information. Native names often reflect
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Extended Interview: Beau Dick on the Family of Mankind
Clip
Extended Interview: Beau Dick on the Family of Mankind
2m 10s
Beau Dick, the late great Kwakwaka’wakw chief and artist reflects on the power of family. Through thousands of years of tr
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Extended Interview: Leigh Kuwanwisiwma on Corn as Teacher
Clip
Extended Interview: Leigh Kuwanwisiwma on Corn as Teacher
2m 30s
Hopi elder Leigh Kuwanwisiwma has learned many life lessons from corn. These lessons are so important that he believes it
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Extended Interview: G. Peter Jemison on the Longhouse
Clip
Extended Interview: G. Peter Jemison on the Longhouse
4m 41s
Seneca faithkeeper Pete Jemison speaks on how the longhouse was constructed and what it means to the Haudenosaunee people.
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Extended Interview: Jim Enote on Lessons from Farming
Clip
Extended Interview: Jim Enote on Lessons from Farming
1m 57s
Zuni elder Jim Enote reflects on lessons learned from farming and each person’s responsibility to take care of the earth.
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Extended Interview: Ian Thompson on Ancient Earthen Mounds
Clip
Extended Interview: Ian Thompson on Ancient Earthen Mounds
3m 35s
Choctaw scholar Ian Thompson reflects on the ancient American tradition of earthen mounds and mound cultures. They are an
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Extended Interview: Religion at Teotihuacan
Clip
Extended Interview: Religion at Teotihuacan
2m 38s
Harvard professor of Religion David Carrasco speaks on religion in general and Teotihuacan in particular. He finds common
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Extended Interview: Ian Thompson on the Trail of Tears
Clip
Extended Interview: Ian Thompson on the Trail of Tears
4m 28s
Choctaw scholar Ian Thompson reflects on the bitter chapter of history commonly called the Trail of Tears. From a deeply p
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Extended Interview: Diana Magaloni on the Power of Pigments
Clip
Extended Interview: Diana Magaloni on the Power of Pigments
2m 52s
Art historian Diana Magaloni illuminates the extraordinary measures Aztec artists took to preserve their culture in the Fl
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Extended Interview: Evidence of the Comanche
Clip
Extended Interview: Evidence of the Comanche
2m 15s
Archaeologist Severin Fowles, with the help of tribal cultural consultants, finds evidence of the illusive Comanche. Hundr
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Extended Interview: Burning a Forest to Revive a People
Clip
Extended Interview: Burning a Forest to Revive a People
3m 23s
Valentin Lopez, the Chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band of California, reflects on how reviving ancient environmental
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Extended Interview: David Carrasco on Shared Beliefs
Clip
Extended Interview: David Carrasco on Shared Beliefs
4m 24s
David Carrasco illuminates the similarities of the religious beliefs shared by indigenous peoples across the Americas. The
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