Thursday March 13, 2008, 5:30pm & 7:30pm
Directed by Hank Rogerson & Jilann Spitzmiller
Nearly all indigenous nations sit on land threatened by environmental hazards - toxic waste, strip mining, oil drilling, and nuclear contamination. The realities that the tribes live with are often bleak: children play near radioactive waste; rivers are poisoned; and reservations are surrounded by strip mines and smoke stacks that spew noxious fumes.
This film takes an in-depth look at specific environmental issues that threaten Indian nations, focusing on a handful of activists who are leading the fight to protect their homelands. This documentary is filmed in some of the most beautiful parts of Montana, Alaska, New Mexico, and Maine.
The first story focuses on Gail Small, an attorney and a member of the Northern Cheyenne Nation in Montana. Ms. Small is leading the campaign against 75,000 proposed methane gas wells that threaten to make much of the reservation unsuitable for farming or ranching.
The second story features Evon Peters, Chief of Arctic Village, a remote community north of the Arctic Circle. Mr. Peters leads the fight against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), home to the Porcupine Caribou herd that provides Mr. Peters’ people with their sustenance.
The third story shows a Navajo family who reluctantly got involved in fighting uranium-mining companies that are spoiling the groundwater under their community in Crownpoint, NM. Mitchell and Rita Capitan have witnessed the toll that uranium mining has taken on members of their community (e.g., Navajos who live near mines have a 28 times greater chance of developing lung cancer than the general population) are these stories are part of the reason this Navajo family has taken up the fight.
The final portion of this documentary tells the story of Barry Dana, former chief of the Penobscot Nation in Maine, who is battling the paper companies that are polluting the river on which his island nation is located and the state government agencies that are allowing this to happen. Pollution has left his people unable to fish or swim or harvest medicinal plants from the river upon which they have depended for over 10,000 years.
