SLFP Project Director Toby McLeod discussed his experiences filming Losing Sacred Ground and In the Light of Reverence and shared his thoughts on human relationships with sacred natural places on the July 27 edition of the weekly radio program “A World of Possibilities.”

The government of Papua New Guinea dealt a harsh blow to traditional landowners May 28 when it passed a pair of amendments to the country’s Environment Act barring legal challenges to mining and other resource projects.

Note: The SLFP crew went to Papua New Guinea in April, 2010 to film a segment of Losing Sacred Ground. We are posting a few stories from that trip.
The woman selling bananas smiles at me, warmly, excited. I snap her picture, then, like so many times before, I spin my camera around so she [...]

Winnemem Wintu tribal members have embarked on an unusual and historic journey in an effort to bring Chinook salmon back to the McCloud River.

As many of you know, the Losing Sacred Ground film series follows the story of Aboriginal communities seeking to reverse Australia’s rapid environmental degradation and prevent further losses of their revered sites. After a successful court battle to stop Xstrata zinc mine from expanding, the Northern Territory Parliament enacted legislation that overturned the legal [...]

I traveled to Oahu, Molokai and the Big Island last week, continuing discussions with Native Hawaiians about our proposal to make the ongoing saga of Kahoʻolawe Island one of the eight stories in Losing Sacred Ground. This was my fourth research trip over two years to meet with members of Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana and the [...]

A single English cucumber, wrapped in plastic, costs $3.69. Lettuce is upwards of $5 for three ounces. At one of the town’s three restaurants, a plate of French fries with melted cheese and gravy — yes, three great fats, together known as poutine — is about $8.
This is the reality of the cost of living [...]

Filming tar sands in Alberta, hearing stories of resistance and cancer, eating moose on Lake Athabasca, looking for sacred sites beseiged.

In July, we traveled for the second time to Russia’s Altai Republic, this time to film a meeting of 25 sacred site guardians from all over Central Asia who gathered to discuss strategies for protecting cultural and biological diversity locally and globally. At the invitation of the Foundation for Sustainable Development of Altai (FSDA), delegations [...]

In October, six new brides paraded through a green meadow,  the tops of their heads covered with  a yellow headdress made of butter. A throng of women beat drums, sang and danced. The four-day Mascal ceremony in Ethiopia’s Gamo Highlands was drawing to a close as the rainy season gave way to planting, harvesting and [...]

The Rift Valley feels like it has forever been a home to humans. It’s hard to imagine all that’s gone down here between Lucy, our great great grandmother, 3 million years ago, and Haleka Malabo, a sacred site guardian in Ethiopia’s Gamo Highlands, today. Walking down a gentle hill into Dorbo Meadow on the first [...]

In April, I went to New York’s American Museum of Natural History to show a work-in-progress film on Russia’s Altai Republic at a conference on cultural and biological diversity. I met Satish Kumar, who has edited the magazine, Resurgence, for 35 years. Satish said to me, “Please be careful with the subject of sacred sites. [...]

We filmed the annual pilgrimage of the Winnemem Wintu to their healing spring on Mt. Shasta this past weekend. Everyone was overjoyed to see the spring bubbling and flowing into Panther Meadows, which is carpeted with wildflowers. As the glaciers in the rest of the world continue to melt, the glaciers on Mt. Shasta are [...]

Our three-week film shoot in Peru is drawing to a close as we head back to Cusco after two great days at Machu Picchu. Everyone on the crew — associate producer Ashley Tindall, cinematographer Vicente Franco, sound recordist Willy Elizarde, and fixer Vernonica Perez — is getting a little tired as we’ve had several 4 [...]

After filming at Q’oyllur riti for two days, we pack up quickly and chase up the rugged mountain trails after the Q’eros with all our equipment, horses and aching lowlander lungs. We arrive in Qochamoqo long after the Q’eros have arrived home, some in Qochamoqo and some back to the other Q’eros villages, like Hatun [...]

In the early morning, the Q’eros enter Anccasi on their way to the annual festival of Q’oyllur riti at Mount Ausangate, the main apu for these indigenous people of southern Peru. They come through town in small groups and families, first heralded by the whimsical dancers and drum-and-pipe band that staggers hungry and slightly inebriated [...]

We are now in Anccasi, a tiny Quechua village of wattle-and-daub huts and a handful of cinder block buildings around a dirt square at somewhere around 3700m, a full day’s drive from Cusco. It is cold. Period.
Fortunately for us some money for the community materialized about a year ago and allowed Alejandro Chispe (the mayor) [...]

Toby and I arrived in Lima, Peru on May 13 for a few days of logistical set-up for this shoot and then flew on to Cusco to meet up with our director of photography Vicente Franco, sound recordist Willy Ilizarbe and our fixer Veronica Perez Orbezo. We spent a couple of days in Cusco which [...]

In their continuing struggle to regain federal recognition as a tribe, the Winnemem Wintu have been lobbying for a state resolution sponsored by Assemblyman Jared Huffman of Marin. Assembly Joint Resolution 39 (AJR 39) urges the federal government to investigate the Winnemem’s history and treaty claims and encourages the U.S. Congress to restore federal recognition [...]

“Why is this sacred but that is not sacred?” “Is Kaho`olawe deserving of focus if Mauna Kea and Haleakala and Kilauea are excluded?” “Is sacred land separate from knowledge, chants, stories, heiaus?” “The bombing of Kaho`olawe has been stopped, but they are still bombing Makua Valley on Oahu, so why not film there?” These are [...]

Unlike our recent production trips to Siberia and Australia, where we did extensive research at our home base in California and then just went in shooting, the possibility of making a film about Native Hawaiians restoring Kaho`olawe is going to be a long and delicate process. The issues in Hawaii are old, deep and complicated. [...]

In their endless struggle to regain federal recognition, the Winnemem Wintu traveled to Sacramento today to lobby for passage of a non-binding resolution — AJR 39 (Assembly Joint Resolution 39) — which would urge the U.S. Congress to look into their situation and take corrective action. We filmed the Winnemem’s day in the halls of power to [...]

Rising gracefully out of the ocean south of Maui is a presence everyone feels. It’s the island you cannot visit. Littered with “unexploded ordnance” courtesy of the U.S. Navy, access is restricted. Yet the island is the site of a cultural renaissance with international implications. Native Hawaiians control visitation to this sacred place and are [...]

In the post 9/11 world, it’s risky to comment on human tragedies that produce martyrs in places which then come to be regarded as “sacred.” Innocent people who die deserve tremendous respect. The place of their passing comes to have great emotional power for those left behind. So it was quite surreal to find myself [...]

Caleen Sisk-Franco, Spiritual Leader and Tribal Chief of the Winnemem Wintu, discovered last week that the healing spring on Mt. Shasta that is the birthplace of both the Winnemem people and their ancestral river had dried up. Everyone asked why — Global warming? Cremation ashes that have been dumped in the spring by New Age [...]

What do you do when a sacred spring goes dry? Perhaps you cry enough tears to fill it up. Maybe you get scared that this is a sign that the world is ending.
On the southern slope of Mt. Shasta, just below tree line, the Winnemem Wintu revere a bubbling spring that they consider to be [...]

Three percent of the world’s zinc lies beneath the serpentine riverbed of northern Australia’s McArthur River — and the zinc will soon be headed to China’s steel mills. For Aboriginal Australians, the entire river is respected as the Dreamtime pathway of the Rainbow Serpent, one of the most important of the ancestor spirits who formed [...]

Three percent of the world’s zinc lies beneath the serpentine riverbed of northern Australia’s McArthur River — and the zinc will soon be headed to China’s steel mills. For Aboriginal Australians, the entire river is respected as the Dreamtime pathway of the Rainbow Serpent, one of the most important of the ancestor spirits who formed [...]

We’re preparing our Annual Report and have created an aerial map of the McArthur River Mine diversion. The river follows the Dreamtime pathway of the Rainbow Serpent, but a giant zinc deposit has attracted the attention of mining giant Xstrata, which plans to divert the river through a 5.5 kilometer channel so that they can [...]

In Australia’s Northern territory in 2007, we traveled from the Garma Festival at Grove Peninsula in Arnhem Land to the McArthur River mine 70km southwest of Borroloola, to the state’s capital in Darwin where the Aboriginal people of Boroloola gathered to observe the court proceedings on the legality of the McArthur River mine expansion and [...]

The situation for many of Australia’s Aboriginal people is bleak, after two hundred years of land theft and racist oppression. Visiting the artist Bardayal Nadjamerrek in the small, growing community of Kabulwarnamyu, in the heart of Arnhem Land, was like a breath of fresh air. “Lofty” — as he’s known throughout Australia — and his family [...]

Project Director Christopher McLeod and crew—having just returned from three weeks in the Altai Republic of Russia where they filmed the first segment of our new 12-part series, Losing Sacred Ground—are now in their second week of filming in Australia. Read about their recent adventures in this article published on 7/31/07 in the Northern Territory [...]

This afternoon we took a break from filming Anton took the men out to fish around the other side of the island. While they were hunting barracuda by boat, Steve’s daughters took me fishing for barracuda by hand. Juanita (15) managed to keep an eye on her little sisters Shanny (9) and Harriet (3) [...]

Steve Johnston and his son Anton came into King Ash Bay on the McArthur River to take us out to Vanderlin Island, their home and one of the Sir Edward Pellew Islands in the Gulf of Carpinteria. The islands sit at the mouth of the McArthur, and the Johnstons have reported that the oysters, [...]

When we tried to enter the McArthur River Mine area with Traditional Owner Harry Lanson, we were told we would be arrested if we didn’t leave immediately. When Harry argued that he should be able to visit his sacred sites, mine security forces called in the troops. Here is how close the chopper was to [...]

The McArthur River watershed floods during the monsoon, and perhaps the Aboriginal people keep track over tens of thousands of years, relating the severity and length of flooding to the health of the people and their land. When a mining company wants to put an open pit zinc, lead and copper mine in the [...]

On our first day in Borroloola we were down by the McArthur River waiting for a group of Aboriginal women to arrive for a riverside interview. While we were waiting, I saw a beautiful white egret standing amidst the grass and I went down to the river’s edge to take a photograph. When the [...]

For twenty-three days I saw no newspapers, no clocks, no calendars, no mirrors. Time and identity melted into the landscape of the Altai: racing clouds and falling rain, a new and growing moon, shamans’ fires sputtering under spoonfuls of cow’s milk and crackling to devour dry cedar. I was transfixed by the rippling green [...]

Maya Erlenbaeva is mapping sacred sites for the Foundation for Sustainable Development of Altai. She has spent the last two years meeting with elders and visiting sacred places around Kosh Agach and recording detailed information and locations on maps. Maya’s colleague, Chagat Almashev, explained: “Russians don’t recognize spiritual places, they’re intangible. So our strategy [...]

When we met the shaman Maria Amanchina in Kosh Agach she asked us about our dreams. She wanted to know where we had been and what we had felt as we traveled through the Altai. I told her that I had two dreams while camping on Uch Enmek. In one dream, I saw a [...]

We made it out of Kosh-Agach and up to the Ukok Nature Park’s camp at the sacred radon springs, cold water baths that Maria told us would reinvigorate us (if not make us glow a bit for the next 200 years!)  As soon as we arrived a massive snow storm headed our way. [...]

Two days ago we repacked all our gear and selves back into our two minivans and made our way along the Chuisky Tract (the only “highway” through the Altai). This two-lane road was once a part of the Silk Road and still functions as the main conduit for anything moving from Russia, China and [...]

…to our incredible crew!  After days of rain, Will and Andy — ever the über-professionals — take a break from their “rest” day to dry out the equipment
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We’re a week into our shoot and are exhausted but elated. We are back in residence at the Uch Enmek Nature Park yurts having just returned from three days climbing through the wet alpine wilderness to Uch Enmek Mountain with Danil (a phenomenal guide who manages to maintain his humor while we interview him in [...]

After three days and two nights of slogging through rain, mud and sleet — Danil our indefatigable guide and inspiration — we emerge from the Siberian forest and toe-step up the slick moraine to where Danil will give his offering to the mountain.And this is the moment just before the clouds descended upon us and, [...]

We arrived last night to the cozy campground at Uch Enmek Nature Park, a serene round of traditional gers (a type of large yurt) at the edge of the sacred Karakol Valley. We are here to find out how Altaians protect this landscape, which has been an important burial ground for millenia (as evidenced by [...]

Two days ago we left the grim streets of industrial Barnaul for Gorno-Altaisk, the capital city of the Altai Republic. Arriving after a five hour drive in a speeding minivan, our beleaguered bodies crammed in among the sharp corners of our equipment, our eyes delighted at the sight of Gorno’s verdant hills and (almost) [...]

We met today with Rima Yerkinova, the director of the Altai Museum, and interviewed her (for four hours!) about the 1993 unearthing of a 2,500 year-old burial on the Ukok Plateau by Russian archaeologists. A young woman’s body, frozen in permafrost, was removed from an elaborate grave and some Altaian people still feel that the [...]

Today, we finally put to use the 700 lbs. of equipment that we’ve hauled halfway around the world. Our first interview of Losing Sacred Ground was with Mikhail Shishin, a pensive professor of cultural anthropology and philosophy in Barnaul. He also is the committed leader of a determined group of Russians and Altaians that have [...]

Here’s the Sacred Land Film Project crew, looking jet-lagged yet spry, in Moscow’s Red Square. From left to right, we are Will Parrinello (camera), Toby McLeod (director/producer), Andy Black (sound and camera) and Ashley Tindall (associate producer). After a 14 hour flight from San Francisco through Atlanta and what will be a 12-hour layover (and [...]