The Chief announces The People will abandon Sa' and Ch'idzigyaak during a brutal winter when food cannot be found.

Sa' convinces a weeping Ch'idzigyaak that they must fight to survive rather than accept a certain death.

Sa' kills a squirrel with a hatchet and the women share their first meal together at the abandoned camp.

The women fashion snowshoes from birchwood and make caribou-skin sleds to prepare for a long journey.

The women begin traveling toward a distant old fishing spot, pulling their loaded sleds tied to their waists.

The women nervously cross a fragile frozen river and reach the other side safely.

The women recognize their old camp by fishracks still standing and decide to make it their base.

The women insulate their shelter and set up animal traps to survive the deep winter ahead.

The women successfully hunt muskrats in spring and accumulate a large supply of fish through the summer.

The People return to the camp where they abandoned the women and find no trace of them.

Daagoo leads a search party and tracks the women down by following a faint scent of smoke.

Sa' calls out to Daagoo in the dark, voluntarily revealing the women's location to the search party.

The women feed the gaunt search party and demand guarantees against future abandonment before agreeing to share their food.

The Chief accepts the women's terms and leads The People to receive food and supplies from the women.

The women are welcomed back into The People with honorary roles and live out their days respected and happy.

The People abandon elderly Sa' and Ch'idzigyaak during a brutal winter, leaving them to die in the Alaskan wilderness. Sa' rouses Ch'idzigyaak from despair and the two women begin an unlikely fight for survival, hunting small game and fashioning tools from what little they have. They undertake a grueling journey to a former fishing camp, crossing dangerous terrain and fragile ice to build a shelter and store enough food to outlast the winter. Through seasons of hard work and growing friendship, the women transform from helpless outcasts into skilled and self-sufficient survivors. When The People send a search party led by Daagoo, Sa' chooses to reveal their location and negotiate a dignified arrangement for helping the starving tribe. The women are ultimately welcomed back with honor, their triumph proving that age is no measure of a person's worth or strength.

The headline survival story of two abandoned women.

Ozhii Nelii leaves a bundle of babiche for her mother before departing with the tribe, but Ch'idzigyaak refuses to acknowledge the gift.

The women's fire goes out during the night, showing them how quickly death could come without constant vigilance.

Sa' kills a rabbit caught in a trap during the night by squeezing its beating heart.

Ch'idzigyaak wakes before Sa' and urgently restarts the dying fire before the cold can overwhelm them.

The women sleep in a snow pit at the edge of a frozen lake before attempting a dangerous river crossing.

Ch'idzigyaak secretly decides to stop moving and accept death, only forced to get up by the need to urinate.

Sa' makes a warming broth to restore their strength and the women reluctantly push onward through their pain.

Ch'idzigyaak catches a grouse as the cold begins to ease, lifting both women's spirits after the long winter.

The women relocate to an insect-ridden thicket to hide their large food supply from potentially dangerous tribes.

The women realize they cannot conceal their presence because they stripped too much bark from the surrounding birch trees.

Sa' discovers vast patches of cranberries atop a nearby hill during a solo exploration and brings the news back to Ch'idzigyaak.

The Chief reflects on how The People have suffered since abandoning the women and desperately hopes to find them alive.

Daagoo and the young hunters spot bare patches on birch trees as the first solid clue that the women passed through.

The men return to The Chief carrying dried fish from the women as proof they are alive and thriving.

Shruh Zhuu approaches Ch'idzigyaak while she gathers wood, jokingly asks for his hatchet back, and they tearfully embrace.

Behind the main arc of survival lie dozens of smaller but crucial moments that determined whether Sa' and Ch'idzigyaak would live or die. From the gift quietly left by a guilty daughter to the fire that went out in the night, these events reveal how fragile and hard-won the women's survival truly was. Ch'idzigyaak's darkest moment — secretly planning to die, only rising because of physical necessity — shows how close despair came to winning. The women's realization that their presence could not be hidden and their scramble to adapt illustrates the constant ingenuity their situation demanded. Meanwhile, back with The People, the Chief's private anguish and Daagoo's sharp-eyed tracking demonstrate how the tribe's fate remained bound to the two women they left behind. These secondary events trace the quiet, unglamorous work that forms the true spine of survival.

The smaller moments that shaped the women's survival.

Shruh Zhuu secretly hides a hatchet for his grandmother before the tribe departs, though Ch'idzigyaak refuses to acknowledge him.

Ch'idzigyaak breaks down weeping after the tribe leaves, overwhelmed by her daughter and grandson's participation in her abandonment.

The women discuss their regrets about having whined and contributed less than they were capable of during their years with the tribe.

Sa' reflects during a hard travel morning on how trivial their old complaints were compared to the dangers they now face.

Ch'idzigyaak reveals that her family abandoned her deaf and blind grandmother to the elements when Ch'idzigyaak was a child.

Sa' reveals that as a young woman she was abandoned after openly defying a chief who wanted to leave an elder behind to die.

Sa' reveals she survived alone when the elder she tried to save died, later finding a man also deserted by his tribe.

The women sew rabbit fur gifts for each other through the winter, marking the deepening of their friendship.

Sa' chases a bull moose across an entire day but cannot kill it, returning exhausted to a frightened Ch'idzigyaak.

A great loneliness encloses the women as winter returns and they finally have time to dwell on being abandoned.

Daagoo privately worries that The Chief's guilty conscience will destroy his leadership and is desperate to find the women alive.

Sa' privately convinces Ch'idzigyaak to help The People by pointing out that Ch'idzigyaak's own starving grandson is among them.

Daagoo tells the women that The People lost several members, mostly children, in the difficult months after the abandonment.

Ch'idzigyaak learns from Shruh Zhuu that Ozhii Nelii is paralyzed by shame and aging rapidly from grief.

Ozhii Nelii and Ch'idzigyaak finally reunite, and Ch'idzigyaak returns the babiche to her daughter as a symbol of restored connection.

Beneath the physical journey of Two Old Women lies a deeper emotional journey shaped by secrets, regrets, and hard-won realizations. Small acts of loyalty — like Shruh Zhuu hiding a hatchet — and raw grief — like Ch'idzigyaak's tears after abandonment — establish the emotional stakes from the very beginning. As the women grow closer, they share buried histories: Ch'idzigyaak's haunted memory of her abandoned grandmother, and Sa's fierce, painful past of being deserted for defending the vulnerable. These revelations reframe who these women are and why survival means more to them than simply staying alive. The loneliness and guilt that build through the middle of the story culminate in decisive moments — Sa' persuading Ch'idzigyaak to forgive, the tribe confronting its shame, and a mother and daughter finally reuniting with the babiche that once connected them.