The documentary Reel Injun, by Canadian filmmaker Neil Diamond, won the Canada Award for best documentary at the first of two 2010 Gemini Awards Industry Galas.

Diamond’s documentary “Reel Injun,” an examination of Hollywood’s treatment of Native Americans through the years, also airs as a PBS “Independent Lens” selection.

In it, he draws on many of the films from Hollywood antiquity he watched while coming of age in “Reel Injun” basically covers a century of time, during which film attitudes toward Native Americans evolved as profoundly as Diamond’s understanding of who the good guys really were in the films he watched as a child.

Recent films featuring Native American characters have been much more sympathetic than those made during the John Ford era, which itself was preceded

Watch the full episode. See more Independent Lens.

source: montreal gazette, nola