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What to Stream This Month

Daniel Hautzinger
Comanche tribal members Jhane Myers and Philip Bread prepare for their annual fair outside of Lawton, Oklahoma. Photo: Providence Pictures
Comanche tribal members Jhane Myers and Philip Bread prepare for their annual fair outside of Lawton, Oklahoma. Photo: Providence Pictures

Find our streaming recommendations for the previous and following months.

Do you ever wish you could binge-watch your favorite PBS programs? If you’re a member you already can; if not, it’s easy to join. With WTTW Passport, members can watch a huge library of PBS and WTTW programming on-demand on any streaming device. To learn more about WTTW Passport, check out our dedicated site. You can activate or sign up for Passport here.

Each month we’ll bring you a few Passport picks. November is Native American Heritage Month, so we’ve included some important documentaries on America’s first peoples. This Veteran’s Day, November 11, was also the 100th anniversary of the World War I Armistice, the perfect time to learn from that devastating war and remember the millions of people who died in it. And, of course, Thanksgiving is approaching, so get some recipe advice and take a look back at the first European settlers.

Native American Heritage Month

The four-part series Native America ended yesterday, but you can still stream it and learn about the incredible civilizations built up hundreds of years ago in this hemisphere. And take a look at one of the earliest American people we have discovered remains for, in NOVA: First Face of America.

Kodiak Alutiiq is an Alaskan Native language of which there are now fewer than 40 remaining fluent speakers. Learn about the efforts of four women to save the language and the traditions of their people by passing them on to young people in the documentary Keep Talking.

 

The federal government has long struggled with and failed in its dealings with Native Americans. Learn about one little-known part of the government's injust treatment of Native Americans in Unspoken: a boarding school system meant to achieve assimilation by education and the stripping away of any remnant of Native culture or tradition.

For a less broad and more personal look at Native Americans, try two profiles of remarkable women: Medicine Woman, about Susan La Flesche Picotte, America's first Native doctor, and Mankiller, about Wilma Mankiller, the Cherokee Nation's first female Principal Chief.

Finally, take a look at Chicago's Native American community here.

World War I

American Experience's three-part The Great War examines the war from the perspective of America by telling the stories of those participants who have often been left out of history, from Native American code talkers to Latino and African American soldiers to suffragists.


Thanksgiving

Another American Experience, The Pilgrims, tells the tale of some of America's first European settlers as they fled England for this country 400 years ago. 

If you're hosting Thanksgiving and need help roasting your turkey, Julia Child is here to help, in a special episode of The French Chef all about turkeys!