The most immediately satisfying of the three shorts in this Rated Y for Youth series entry, “Three Thousand” uses archival footage and typically innovative NFB animation to produce a sort of hyperlucid reclamation of Inuit history, which is then projected into the future in its breathtaking final moments.

Artist Asinnajaq is the creator of this little gem, and she also graces the Straight’s cover this week in appropriately spectral fashion.

Of the two other contributions, both very fine, “Butterfly Monument” overcomes technical crudity in its effort to memorialize teen activist Shannen Koostachin, who went head-to-head in 2008 with Minister of Indian Affairs Chuck Strahl to get a school built in Attawapiskat before losing her life in a car accident. And after last year’s The Road Forward, Marie Clements returns to ruminate on an early-20th-century ethnologist-photographer with “Looking at Edward Curtis”.

His work, though problematic, is given a fair hearing by participants including musician Ostwelve in this frank, thoughtful, and very handsome essay.