The Blackfeet Flood

Brian Plonka / director of photography 

Funded by ITVS Open Call contest. Awarded 270k.

In 1964, a devastating flood tore through

Montana’s Blackfeet Reservation — uprooting

homes, killing 31 people, and signaling the

end of a way of life for many traditional families.

Fifty years after the worst natural disaster in

the state’s history, a Blackfeet man named

Butch returns home to confront the tragedy that

left him an orphan at 14, and to try to remember

“What it means to be Blackfeet.”