EDMONTON, Alberta-For more than 30 years, a treasure trove has sat in boxes-a collection of 900,000 hours of video and audio tape focused solely on Indigenous events, messages, stories, and people. The Government of Alberta had purchased the collection for a cool $80,000. Eventually they turned around a resold it to Bert Crowfoot and the Alberta Native Communications Society for just $1-and the promise that the collection would be kept safe.

The collection has sat untouched through the decades, sitting in storage at three different buildings-until now. Crowfoot has enlisted help from the d...