Institutional Copy
Price: $150
Institutional copy purchased for non-profits, public schools, university libraries/departments, corporations, etc. comes with public performance rights for the life of the media for non-commercial and educational exhibition when no admission fee is charged.

Home Viewing Copy
Price: $30
For private usage. No public screening rights.

Winner of Native Spirit Award, 2008 Southern Winds Film Festival

Coyote's Journey: The Elder's Cut is a creation story from the Karuk tribe of the Klamath River in Northern California. Pineifich (Coyote) creates the world and rests... He is bored. Wondering what to do, he remembers hearing of an inland ocean full of Indian money, and sets out upriver to find it. As he goes along, he steals berries from Chimush (Lizard) and is cursed by Kacahka'ach (BlueJay):

Hey can you help me? Coyote ate all my berries. Don't hurt his legs, though, or his eyes.
I'll sing him that "Make'em thirsty song". Then he'll know he done something wrong.

Coyote drowns on a sand bar and is eaten by Swoosh and Pishpishi (Ants and Yellowjackets) Then he picks himself up and starts all over again upriver and over ridges taking shortcuts to nowhere. Along the way he creates sacred dances and sacred places, and he puts his wisdom into songs and stories. In the Karuk language the word for "shadow" is the same as the word for "spirit".

Coyote's Journey: The Elder’s Cut is sung and told in both English and the Karuk language by Charlie Thom, one of the last fluent Karuk story tellers. Additional voices and singing are by project leader Clarence Hostler of the Hupa and Yurok tribes. As ceremonial leaders the two men are helping to bring about a renaissance of Native California Culture.

The show was performed in 2000 and 2001 in San Francisco, Arcata, and Yreka.

Total running time: 60 min.
Format: NTSC