I was merely nine years old when Jimi Simmons, already incarcerated and institutionalized for the majority of his life had been charged with murder. Making the River is director, Sarah Del Seronde’s first feature documentary that examines the issues surrounding this controversial murder charge.

Jimi Simmons’ life was borne from the façade of state governments and federal law. In reality, he was a product of an uncaring, discriminatory system that theoretically intended to rehabilitate, but rarely did it attempt to transform the individuals within its care, simply because they weren’t recognized as such.

Just seventeen months old, Jimi, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Rogue River Band, was taken from his family and placed into the care, as a ward, of Oregon State. Three years later, Oregon State and the Federal government terminated the Confederated Tribes and the identity of a culture and life-way was decimated once more. It seems hard to believe that Jimi would have to endure what few of us can comprehend—the loss of freedom—in order to find and nurture his identity behind the same iron-clad bars that stripped him of his culture. Fortunately for him, at that time, the prison climate was rife with Native people—lost within a system that neglected to distinguish them too—these individuals were simply surviving.

Making the River wasn’t plucked from any current headlines, it was a story buried beneath the detritus of state government responsibility. It is a complex documentary that tells one story, but an extremely difficult story. As Sarah Del told me in our conversation, Walla Walla State Penitentiary, at that time, was a social experiment gone awry. In retrospect, this experiment was on a route to failure from day one, when a system fails to provide the tools for rehabilitation, no matter how many liberties you extend to an individual, there is no direction for that individual to go in other than the wrong direction. Making the River is a powerful documentary that utilizes very little flare to tell its story. Throughout the documentary, the unassuming Jimi relates what transpired in his life with a seemingly emotionless exterior, although he assures us that there is more to him than that which he exhibits. He reveals that hope is embedded in the title of the film, for the name provides a physical as well as a spiritual locale beyond the reach of system, if only one could make it past the river—to freedom.