Reel Injun is illustrated with excerpts from classic and contemporary portrayals of Native people in Hollywood movies and interviews with filmmakers, actors and film historians, while director Diamond travels across the United States to visit iconic locations in motion picture as well as American Indian history.

[5] The film was inspired, in part, by Diamond's own experiences as a child in Waskaganish, Quebec, where he and other Native children would play cowboys and Indians after local screenings of Westerns in their remote community.

[3] Interview subjects include Sacheen Littlefeather, Zacharias Kunuk, Clint Eastwood, Adam Beach, Jim Jarmusch, Robbie Robertson, Russell Means, Wes Studi, and scholars Angela Aleiss and Melinda Micco, and film critic Jesse Wente.

Locations visited include the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wounded Knee, Camp Nominigue, the Crow Agency in Montana as well as Monument Valley.

Reel Injun began a limited release at theaters in Toronto and Vancouver; it debuted on television on CBC News Network's The Passionate Eye series on March 28, 2010.