Approximately 20 Hardin High School students are premiering a film Thursday night that they spent the spring and summer creating — and nearly every word of dialogue is spoken in the Crow language.
The movie, titled The Sacred Culture of the Apsalooke Nation, was animated with help from Wonder Media and represents one of the more ambitious student film projects to come out of a Montana high school in recent memory. The Crow language, spoken by members of the Apsáalooke Nation, is among the Indigenous languages that linguists and tribal educators have identified as in need of revitalization efforts — making a film produced by young people in that language a meaningful cultural document, not just a school project.
The production involved writing, animation, and voice work across multiple months, with students navigating both the technical demands of filmmaking and the linguistic ones. That the final product is almost entirely in Crow — not subtitled English with a few phrases, but genuine Crow-language dialogue — reflects both the students' commitment and the support they received from their community.
While Hardin is roughly 225 miles east of Helena, the project resonates here given Montana's significant Indigenous population and ongoing conversations about language preservation in the state's school systems. The premiere Thursday night marks the public debut of a film that took the better part of a year to make.