A Thousand Roads
(2005, 40 min.) US
Director: Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/Arapaho)
Written by: Scott Garen and Joy Harjo (Muscogee Creek)
Produced for the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian
Executive Producers: W. Richard West, Jr. (Southern Cheyenne) and Peter Guber
Producers: Barry Clark and Scott Garen
Director of Photography: Claudio Miranda
Original Music composed by Lisa Gerrard and Jeff Rona
Narrator: John Trudell (Santee Sioux)

Cast in Order of Appearance:
Amanda Cook……………………...Alex Rice (Mohawk)
Dawn Nageak………………………Riana Malabed (Inupiat)
Johnny Chee……………………….Jeremiah Bitsui (Navajo/Omaha)
Johnny's Grandmother…………….Geraldine Keams (Navajo)
Don Santos Condori……………….Honorato Ninantay (Quechua)

A Thousand Roads was photographed in wide-screen Super 35mm and digitally scanned for projection at enhanced 2K resolution.

A Thousand Roads is a fictional work, produced by NMAI to explore the human context of the NMAI's collections. The film is striking visually, and presents through its beauty and its stories an imaginative entry into knowing about Native people living in the vast indigenous geography that comprises the Americas. Rather than presenting a conventional historical perspective, the film is composed of short contemporary fictions about individuals, grounding them in emotional truths to which an audience can easily relate.

The film threads together four stories, taking us into the life of a stressed-out Mohawk stockbroker in Manhattan; a young Inupiat girl sent to live with her grandmother in Barrow, Alaska; a Navajo gang member who must find his core values in his reservation on the mesas of New Mexico; and a Quechua healer in Peru, attempting to save a sick child. Each story explores what it means to belong to a specific community.

Since its world premiere in January 2005 at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, A Thousand Roads has been screened in more than forty venues, throughout the United States and in Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, and—in 2006—Peru.