"Trojan Horse Filmmaking": Adam and Zack Khalil on Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild]

"In 1990, a federal law was passed requiring the return of Indigenous human remains and sacred items to their rightful communities. More than three decades later, most of those ancestors are still waiting-boxed, catalogued, and stored in museum basements and university archives. In Aanikoobijigan, filmmakers Adam and Zack Khalil turn their attention to that unfinished work, following the long, often painful effort to bring ancestors home for proper burial."

"For the Khalil brothers-Ojibwe filmmakers from Sault Ste. Marie-this project marks a shift. Best known for their work with the collective New Red Order, whose installations and short films often lean toward the conceptual, they recognized that Aanikoobijigan needed to serve a different purpose. They set out to make a film that could live in classrooms and museums as well as festivals: one that shows, in clear terms, what repatriation actually looks like, without flattening its emotional weight or historical violence."

Aanikoobijigan follows tribal specialists in Michigan carrying out the repatriation of Indigenous human remains and sacred items, navigating museums and university archives that retain collections. The film documents the long, often painful process of bringing ancestors home for proper burial decades after the 1990 federal repatriation law. The Khalil brothers shift from conceptual art toward an educational documentary intended for classrooms, museums, and festivals. The film shows repatriation in practical terms while preserving emotional weight and historical violence. The film also raises questions about institutions that claim to preserve history while perpetuating harm.

Read at Filmmaker Magazine