Introduction

by Christopher McLeod, Project Director

In the spring of 2005, I was invited to screen In the Light of Reverence at a UNESCO conference in Tokyo on sacred sites, biodiversity and cultural landscapes. Hundreds of people attended and I was amazed at the rapidly growing international interest in this issue, and the sense of urgency about threats to sacred places around the world. Indigenous people are asserting their land rights on every continent and it became clear to me that these stories need to be documented on film — now.

Since my return from Japan, I have been researching stories for a film called Losing Sacred Ground. We will document contested cultural landscapes around the world in a documentary mini-series for public television. With a global focus, we’re confident this next film will have even greater scope and longevity than our previous films.

There is no shortage of stories to tell.

World trade agreements and major resource deals are accelerating the extraction of oil, gold, timber and water on every continent. Machines are pushing deeper into the remote territory of indigenous people whose values and spiritual connection to land inspire powerful resistance. It’s a compelling conflict — the drive for short-term, maximum wealth accumulation colliding with communities that include nature as kin. As Jerry Mander writes in Paradigm Wars, native people “stand square in the path of the globalization juggernaut.”

From the highlands of Peru, where 10,000 native people took to the streets and stopped Newmont Mining Corporation from scouring gold from sacred Mt. Quilish, to the tundra of northern Europe, where the Sami are fighting the privatization of a healing spring they call Suttesaja, the alliance in defense of sacred lands grows stronger. Northern Cheyenne activist Gail Small speaks for many when she says, “Our spiritual connection to the land is the basis of our resistance.”

These are just a few of the surprising stories we will capture on film in the months and years ahead. Our vision is based on a simple premise: that the human rights, land rights, and religious freedom of people whose beliefs collide with the industrial paradigm should be honored and respected. If you are fighting to protect a sacred site, please tell us your story.

After I returned home from Japan, a Hopi friend, Leonard Selestewa, and his wife and daughter visited my family in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. We took them to see the towering redwoods near our home. Standing by a clear stream in the green forest, the desert-dwelling corn farmers experienced the tall trees’ magic. The place brought back a memory for Leonard: “My grandfather told me: ‘To be Hopi, your prayers have to encompass the entire world.’”

Preserving what we love at home and beyond has never been a greater challenge. Listening to native people and learning from them has never been more crucial. They have preserved the ancient wisdom that we are part of nature, not separate, and that what happens to nature happens to us. Indigenous communities nurture the values that can sustain us in the future and help keep the earth alive.

The sacred natural sites that grace every continent are culturally and biologically important in and of themselves. But let us also appreciate them as doorways opening to a priceless opportunity — the paradigm shift that just might save our teetering society.

Let’s walk through the door together.

Project Goals

Places of spiritual significance to indigenous people are the meeting ground of cultural and biological diversity. When a sacred grove is cut, or water from a sacred spring privatized, or a sacred mountain stripmined, both cultural and environmental impacts are extreme. The adversary may be hostile, indifferent or well-meaning: mineral extraction, development schemes, eco-tourism, and even creation of nature parks by conservation groups can hasten the extinction of species and cultures. A common problem is lack of understanding or respect for spiritual connection to land. The Sacred Land Film Project excels at increasing understanding and respect through powerful documentary films.

These stories of indigenous people defending their sacred sites will make a difference locally, on the ground, and also globally, in the hearts and minds of decision-makers, urban dwellers and students of all ages. Two main goals of this five-year project are:

• to provide an enduring historic record of indigenous communities’ sacred land struggles as an educational tool that will be useful for the continuation of traditional knowledge and the preservation of cultural landscapes, and
• to protect sacred places and indigenous cultures at the regional, national and international levels by raising awareness, clarifying conflicts and common lessons learned from history, and inspiring audiences to action through broadcast and educational distribution.

The films will prove — in part by showing scientists “discovering” and affirming — that cultural diversity and biological diversity are symbiotic. Like viewing images of the Earth from space for the first time, or seeing Joseph Campbell’s universal symbols that arose independently in cultures isolated from one another, viewers of the film series will experience the understanding that virtually every culture in the world has sacred sites, and these places of power are inextricably linked to the vibrant, diverse life of the land. As a new World Wildlife Fund report, Beyond Belief, concludes: “Sacred sites are probably the oldest method of habitat protection on the planet.”

The Challenge: Funding

For ten years we swam against the current and successfully produced the award-winning film on Native American sacred places, In the Light of Reverence. That project convinced many skeptics, from funders and federal land managers to legislators and newspaper editors, that sacred land protection is a real and critically important issue.

We know well the many battles being fought in the United States. We now want to examine and reveal the effect of American power, Western values and the global economy on indigenous cultures and sacred lands around the world. To tell this global story we need a broad network of allies and partners, a thorough research phase, and time to secure all of the funding in advance to sustain an ambitious project over five years — from 2006 through 2010.

Our previous film production timelines have been determined by:

• the difficulty in gaining access and trust from native communities,
• high standards for production values, and
• the necessity to repeatedly pause production in order to fundraise piecemeal.

The positive reception of In the Light of Reverence among indigenous communities has opened up a tremendous number of previously inaccessible stories. Native communities now invite us to film because our process honors consultation and collaboration. Our productions are acclaimed for the beauty of images and words, the uncommon quality of interviews with people of diverse perspectives, and fair and balanced editing.

The obstacle that remains is fundraising for the issue. Film is an expensive and risky creative venture. Many funders prefer to give directly to social programs in native communities. Funders who understand the importance of protecting cultural, environmental and spiritual sites are rare. Funders who appreciate the necessity for a thoughtful and artful film to enlighten a mass audience about a little-understood issue are rarer still.

The crucial communication of indigenous people’s stories depends on independent filmmakers like us — and we depend on the support of individuals like you. Your tax-deductible donation will help launch a groundbreaking documentary film series that will truly make a difference. Please consider making a donation to the Sacred Land Film Project.

If you are a trustee or staff member of a foundation, and have read this far, we would be happy to submit a detailed funding proposal and invite your collaboration on this critical issue of preserving traditional knowledge, indigenous cultures, biodiversity and sacred sites. Please send us an inquiry.

Thank you very much for your interest and support.

Film Treatment — A Sample Scene: Destiny Manifests

Glacial in winter, scorching in summer; crawling with predators and poisonous plants, the stony soil a burial ground for the dreams of a farmer — small wonder the newcomers saw the place in need of salvation. Godless, they called it, and godless they left it, a century later, treeless and drained, wracked and ruined by the violence of men and machines. The cause of human enrichment was served, and a gradual movement mistakenly called progress occurred.

The native survivors witnessed, and waited, and resisted. They sang under their breath. Maybe the spirit of the land heard them. They persisted, and stonewalled, and reclaimed. Their land, from ridgeline to river bottom, would recover. The newcomers became old-timers and passed on, but birds and fish and the people who belonged remained. They are here now, pulling 50-gallon drums out of estuaries, planting baby sugar pines, and teaching pale skinned people on vacation how to view the landscape: not as a godforsaken ruin, but as an oasis for species and spirit, able to recover even from deliberate devastation, even from massacre.

The Sacred Land Film Project is known for powerful documentary films about conflicts over special places in the United States. In 2006, we will research and develop a major, international television mini-series, Losing Sacred Ground, which will portray contested cultural landscapes, including sites in Aboriginal Australia, Central Asia, the Rift Valley in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, and the Colorado Plateau and greater American Southwest. We will explore India’s sacred groves, Japan’s mountain sanctuaries, Europe’s World Heritage Sites and UNESCO Biosphere Reserves in Columbia and Mexico. Though our focus will be on the indigenous worldview and traditional guardians of sacred places, for comparison we will also cover “mainstream faiths” and the evolution of their sacred sites — such as Mt. Kailash and the Ganges in south Asia, and Mt. Sinai, Mecca and Jerusalem in the Middle East.

These important stories will be told in the style for which the Sacred Land Film Project (SLFP) has become known — emotionally powerful, journalistically balanced, visually stunning and intellectually challenging. SLFP combines the best of documentary filmmaking — the marriage of artistry and journalism — with cutting-edge collaborations on the technical and cultural fronts. We will initiate partnerships with indigenous filmmakers to produce material for the film series and collaborate with technical wizards to anticipate changes in the techniques and delivery of film imagery and narrative content. The shooting format will be High Definition TV. We recognize that creative features on DVDs, websites and study guides — considered extras by many filmmakers — are essential to successful public education campaigns, ensure the longevity of documentaries, and maximize the impact of our donors’ dollars. The Council on Foundations’ 2005 Henry Hampton Award for In the Light of Reverence is evidence of our prior success at meeting these goals. The protection of Zuni Salt Lake in 2003 and the closing of the 273-mile coal slurry line from Black Mesa to the Mohave Power Plant on December 31, 2005 mean even more.

Images of the landscape surprise the eye. What seems in a wide panorama to be a barren desert is shown close up to contain otherworldly flowers, animals, and flowing springs. Urban graffiti dissolves into ancient petroglyphs as drumming and singing are heard. Backlit feathers and masked dancers from another era are revealed to be encircled by 21st century tourists in t-shirts, cameras flashing. Trees, glorious in sunlit green, are actually tiny seedlings, in a surrounding forest of stumps. A tiny clapboard church could be in Alabama or Mississippi; the image widens, and it seems to be built on the rocky ruins of a primeval, still practiced religion in Ethiopia, or Australia, or Scotland.

With adequate funding, we will be able to select the most urgent and compelling stories that illustrate these themes, and begin capturing them on film in 2007. The series will be ready for broadcast by the end of 2009.

Target Audience

Many in the world are ignorant of the assaults being carried out in our name to preserve our lifestyle. For people already aware of threats to sacred lands, inspiration comes from stories of places managed by indigenous communities, and of successful collaborations with scientists, educators, activists and artists to preserve bio-cultural diversity.

Our target audience includes the widest possible broadcast audience, with a focus on decision-makers — local and national legislators, government officials, scholars, scientists, researchers, conservation professionals, journalists, religious communities, property owners, investors and funders. Additional screenings will extend our outreach to native communities, protected area managers, corporate executives and students. Both broadcast and community screenings followed by panel discussions and dialogue will be designed to inspire citizen activism, so that viewing is not a passive experience, but one that moves people to take action.

Our goal is to reach people whose lives have been touched by encounters with spirituality and the natural world, or who are concerned with environmental and cultural preservation, social justice and enjoyment of protected areas. This includes tourists and travelers, indigenous people working to protect sacred sites, members of mainstream faiths seeking to restore connections to the traditional sacred places of their religion, public land managers, environmentalists, musicians, poets, outdoor enthusiasts, and students of indigenous issues, land use conflicts and world history.

Viewers of Losing Sacred Ground will see things they have never witnessed and emerge discussing ancient concepts in a new way. These important stories will stimulate public dialogue about the relationship of land and culture, spirit and place, and indigenous and non-indigenous.

The urgent need for a paradigm shift in our culture is painfully obvious. Fast-paced consumerism, ongoing denial of the history of land theft, and the violent exploitation of nature all need to be exposed as a dead end. But before we can choose a different path, we must first envision a new way. We believe that artfully told stories of sacred land struggles will lead our audience to a doorway that opens to this new paradigm. We are actively searching for stories now. If you are fighting to protect a sacred place or know of a great story, please send us details.

The work of the Sacred Land Film Project is distinguished by flexible content, adaptable to any educational or professional setting, and by extensive distribution activities and supplemental materials, which allow us to continually update our audience about new issues. The Losing Sacred Ground film series will be supported by comprehensive educational tools (developed during our 15 years of work on In the Light of Reverence), including: a DVD, a website with detailed profiles of sacred places around the world, a Sacred Land Reader and Teachers’ Guide (both downloadable for free), discussion guides to stimulate dialogue aimed at conflict transformation, and research reports like our recent publication Corporate Responsibility for the Protection of Native American Sacred Sites. During production of Losing Sacred Ground, the project director will post regular blogs as “Reports from the Field,” with accompanying video clips — so that the footage we shoot is put right to use. During distribution, we will organize screenings, symposia and conferences to carry the issues raised in the film series into the realm of public discourse and international social policy debate.

A film has tremendous power to affect change and redefine issues of corporate responsibility, environmental justice, cross-cultural collaboration and spiritual relationship with nature. Over 25 years, we have developed an educational project with a track record that positions us to accomplish this critically important multimedia project in a timely manner, disseminating valuable information and compelling stories at every step of the process.

Please make a donation and support the production of Losing Sacred Ground.

Thank you very much.