When the streets of our cities are quiet and it seems empty.

We are not alone.

This land is filled with the spirits of our ancestors who still love this place.

My name is Chad Charlie.

I knew that I was a storyteller all my life, right?

In the end, I was like, kind of want to do comedy, you know, people think I'm funny.

I think I'm funny.

Let's try it out.

I did it for ten years.

Come and get your authentic Indian handmade dreamcatchers.

And on the back it'll say made in China.

I actually kind of just ended my standup career because of the depression that kicked in after leaving Standing Rock.

It was like, I'm not going to let these stories die with my depression, you know?

My great great grandfather had a book published, and it was all short stories about his life and oral history of our people.

That inspired me to create my first film "Uu?uu ~tah."

People are trained their entire lives to be a whale hunter, and the story that I tell is a different story.

It's a story about a young man who becomes a whale hunter, and he's guided along the path of his purification by his grandmother.

That's how I wanna incorporate our culture, the current ways of life that we deal with right now, but also in an historic perspective.

I had originally cast somebody else in that role.

They last minute just got cold feet.

It was the first day of production, and I'm just like, alright, well, put me in wardrobe, you know?

I kind of, I guess, convinced myself, yeah this will turn out okay.

One of my grandmothers was the grandmother on-screen.

Another grandmother of mine was the voice of the grandmother.

One of my grandfathers is in it.

I feel like that's important to me is to be able to not only tell these stories, but involve the community in the whole project just so I can not only gain their support, but let them see that I'm on the verge of doing something great.

So I can inspire the younger ones.

Children, catch!

My goal is to do the impossible and the impossible to me is write a story where the Indian actually wins, because we don't have that.

In order for us to win it has to be a fictional story, it's an ugly truth.

I think it's important to understand that when when people go through situations such as Standing Rock, we should be able to focus on what happens afterwards.

That was my world and going back into reality, it was hard.

The real world for me at the moment, was going back to the rez, selling fireworks.

It's called "Firecracker Bullets," it's a poetry piece telling a story of how I come from a place that gave me PTSD and go directly into a place that triggers that very PTSD.

Boom, boom, boom.

See, what's wrong is there's a system.

If you're a problem, you go to prison, fight for the water, you get an eviction.

But I only got one good question to ask.

What do we do when our people are under attack?

We stand up and fight back because we are no longer the victims.

You can push us back to the rez, take away our rights, it only makes us stronger when we stand up and fight.

Somebody asked me, Why don't I talk that much?

Because I used to talk all the time.

That was my career as a comedian.

My goal whenever I enter a room is to close my mouth and open my ears.

My opinion comes out in the writing.

You represent the red, white, and blue.

I represent the red, brown, and black.

Shoot us down.

We stand.

Shoot us down.

We stand.

Shoot us down.

We stand.