As we begin editing 350 hours of footage from eight sacred landscapes around the world, it is clear that indigenous cultures have myriad kinds of sacred places, and many different relationships, responsibilities, ceremonies, songs, prayers and stories. To find common themes and to draw distinctions, we have interviewed four “big thinkers” — Satish Kumar, Oren Lyons, Winona LaDuke and Barry Lopez — and we are posting some of their comments as web clips. In a world of sound bites, I see a pattern: the really profound comments take two, three, four minutes to unfold.

Satish Kumar brings a Hindu, Buddhist and Jain perspective to the definition of “sacred place.” For Satish, a UK-based writer, pilgrim and editor of Resurgence magazine, all of the Earth is the home of a divine, life-giving force so vast, mysterious and expansive that it is incomprehensible. As Satish explains it, humans embrace the Ganges River as sacred because all water is sacred, so the Ganges is a local symbol of universal sacredness. Mount Kailash is the home of the divine, a living mountain, but still essentially a symbol that all mountains have spirit and give life, as part of the sacred web of life.

It is a worldview of relationship: “This was Mahatma Gandhi’s idea,” says Satish, “moving from ownership to relationship — seeing that land does not belong to us. We belong to the land. We are not the owners of the land. We are the friends of the land, like friends of the earth. The fundamental shift is in this consciousness that land does not belong to us, we belong to the land.”

In a challenge to the environmental movement, Satish says, “We have to have an ecological worldview and understand that we are part of this web of life. But sometimes in our Western, materialistic and intellectual tradition where rationalism has dominated our thinking, even ecology has become a materialistic discipline — a scientific, rational, description of our relationship with the Earth. When you are thinking in terms of Earth being an abode of the divine, you are going further than a materialistic or a rationalistic worldview of ecology, to what I call reverential ecology. What I would call even spiritual ecology. When you have reverential ecology you see trees, mountains, rivers, forests not just in the visible and material dimension, but you see that all these elements have spirit.”

We found Satish’s explanation of sacred places so compelling that we edited a three-minute piece incorporating some of our best b-roll images, asked Jon Herbst to compose a musical score, and we present it here as a teaser of things to come, to give our friends and supporters a taste of the film series we are shaping. Enjoy!

I asked Winona about the apologies that have been offered to Aboriginal people in Australia and to First Nations people in Canada. These were national events of deep emotion and fanfare, but what was the long-term effect on healing the deep wounds of history?

Winona is executive director of the Native-led organization Honor the Earth, and she said a couple provocative things that I wanted to offer by way of introduction to the beautiful story she tells of real redemption that came to the Pawnee people after they and their seeds and food sources were relocated to far-off lands. It’s a story of homecoming.

But in Canada and Australia, the government apologies rang empty as resource grabs and massive new mines extract tar sands, nickel, cobalt, zinc and gold. “I would argue that we remain unable to fully heal because saying you’re sorry has to mean something,” Winona says, “and it has to change your behavior. That’s what you would tell a five-year-old: ‘You can’t kick your sister again.’ It has to mean something. Well, opening up a new mine after you say you’re sorry is not changing your behavior. Running a bulldozer over a sacred site is not changing your behavior. Allowing egregious contamination in a community after apologizing is not changing your behavior.”

“On one level, you want to tell them that what they’re doing is so wrong — in its spiritual terms, in terms of their own relationship to Mother Earth, and in terms of their denial of people’s humanity. Another facet that I always want to say is: Your plan is bad. You cannot continue to build a society that is based on conquest. We have run out of places to conquer, places to put our flags, new places to mine, new places to dam. At a certain point, you have to bring your world into some sort of economy that is durable and you need to do it sooner rather than later because the more you compromise ecosystems and spiritual recharge areas, the harder it will be for us all, including you, to recover.”

Enjoy the short film clip and hear Winona tell a powerful story of redemption and healing.

“I would say that probably the biggest loss I see in humanity now is the loss of understanding of relationship. They don’t understand their relationship.”

“There are almost seven billion people in the world today. The whole Earth is being covered with smoke. We’ve affected the big systems to the point of melting the ice in the north. We’ve disrupted the patterns of the Earth and we’re going to suffer the consequences.”

“For Indian nations and indigenous people, the most important thing is relationship. We value relationship way beyond anything else, way beyond what you can have. Relationship — to be close, to be next to the tree, to be next to the water, to be next to the earth. Relationship’s really good. It’s really rich. How do you maintain this relationship? How do you keep it fresh? How do you work with it? Well, our people have done that through ceremonies.”

“Where we’ve lost our way, I think, as human species, we’ve lost the understanding of relationship and therefore lost respect. But pockets of indigenous people have hung onto that. So, your teachers are going to be indigenous people.”

“Business as usual is over. It’s not competition; it’s cooperation. You are going to have to fight for the commons. We have an intellect and we better start using it for the common good because that’s where we have to change. Our future’s in our hands, and we can handle it, if we work together.”

How did Oren first learn about his relationship to the Earth? Listen to his story…

The long-awaited decision denied a petition for a permanent injunction and lifted a temporary injunction that had been granted to the plaintiffs, landowners on the Rai Coast, who bathe, fish and travel in the waters where millions of tons of mining waste would be dumped.

In his ruling, judge David Cannings found there was “a high likelihood that serious environmental harm … will be caused by operation of the [deep-sea tailings placement].” Yet he nevertheless refused to grant a permanent injunction, citing, among other things, the plaintiff’s delay in bringing the action (well after the government had approved waste-disposal plan), the economic consequences for the companies and other stakeholders, and potential negative impact on investor confidence in PNG as a whole.

Suggesting that the landowners might receive court help in the future — once the damage is done — the judge also noted, “If environmental harm of the type reasonably apprehended by the plaintiffs does actually occur, they will be able to commence fresh proceedings at short notice and seek the type of relief being denied them in these proceedings.” The court’s one concession to the plaintiffs’ requests was that they must be consulted and kept informed every three months on tailings-disposal issues, for the life of the mine. The Ramu plaintiffs intend to appeal the ruling.

Rewind one week, to a seemingly unrelated gathering at the David Brower Center (SLFP’s home office in Berkeley, Calif.) sponsored by Earth Island Institute, where Stewart Brand and Winona LaDuke debated about technology and the environment. An audience member — our friend Peter Coyote — stood up and commented that Brand was operating from a place of intellect and LaDuke from a place of wisdom. Peter suggested leaders would do well to have wisdom advisers, not just intellectuals and technocrats offering policy advice.

The concept strikes us as directly relevant to the court case in PNG. The ruling, applauded by the governor of Madang and PNG’s mining minister, is a clear example of the values that currently preside across the globe — particularly here in the United States, where our need to consume drives a frantic demand for more. The search for ever-increasing profits and more and more stuff is finally becoming imbedded in places previously considered too remote, pristine places like PNG, where people still live off the land and many deal in trade rather than money. These places are now under siege by a new value system that will reshape the land and the culture until they are a direct reflection of the dominant system. Wisdom seems far off indeed as mining waste begins to flow into the sea.

Here at the Sacred Land Film Project, we follow the news from afar, feeling as though it was just yesterday we were filming in Madang with our new partners and friends, promising to bring their story to the world. We are now in the heat of writing and editing the story, to fulfill our promise and produce a documentary record that will be a tribute to the voices of wisdom that still remain.

For more information, read the full court decision, visit Papua New Guinea Mine Watch, and listen to the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Tifanny Nongorr, comment on the decision.

On June 11 and 12, Eli Moore and Catalina Garzon of the Pacific Institute and Miho Kim of the Data Center led a mapping workshop with the Winnemem Wintu tribe to continue a long process of documenting sacred sites in the Winnemem’s traditional cultural territory. On Saturday, mapping terminology and GPS skills were mastered in the Winnemem village near Redding, and on Sunday a dozen young people practiced their new skills while visiting four sacred sites along the McCloud River. We filmed the workshop to include as a scene in our Losing Sacred Ground documentary series.

All over the world, indigenous communities are incorporating mapping into their communication and outreach strategies, as they craft the stories they want to tell to the outside world about their struggles to protect land, culture, language and sacred sites. Mapping now figures into five of our eight stories: in Papua New Guinea, Ethiopia, Russia’s Altai Republic, the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, and in Northern California.

As Winnemem leader Caleen Sisk-Franco says, “We need to create evidence to convince the Forest Service that this is a historic cultural district containing a network of sacred sites that all work together. Different places teach us different things and have different purposes. But we need them all.”

Members of the Genographic Project had planned to arrive on May 7 to begin collecting samples from several Q’eros communities, located in an isolated province of the Cusco region. The Q’eros — who are the subject of a segment in Sacred Land Film Project’s upcoming film Losing Sacred Ground — are a traditional, shamanic people who self-identify as the “last Inca.”

According to a communique from the Asociación para la Naturaleza y el Desarrollo Sostenible (ANDES), a Cusco nonprofit, the U.S.-based project did not consult with local or regional authorities; rather, a local guide hired by the project sent only a one-page letter to the communities announcing the upcoming visit.

The letter, released by ANDES, invited families to come to a “fun” presentation on the study, which would include “a projector and pretty pictures,” in an effort to encourage them, young and old alike, to offer their DNA samples. “The benefit,” the letter said, “is that the people of Q’eros can know their ancestral roots … You can learn about your origin from centuries and centuries ago.”

But Benito Machacca Apaza, president of the Hatun Q’eros community, said in an ANDES press release, “The Q’ero Nation knows that its history, its past, present, and future, is our Inca culture, and we don’t need research called genetics to know who we are. We are Incas, always have been and always will be.”

Concerns were raised among the community over the project organizers’ failure to obtain informed consent and to follow local regulations. A Q’eros delegation brought those concerns to regional officials in Cusco, who agreed, saying the expedition violated a local ordinance on biological diversity that requires notarized evidence of informed prior consent, along with other documents, before collecting DNA. According to ANDES, this marked the first time that a local government in Peru applied an ordinance “in defense of its citizen’s genetic integrity.”

Project head Spencer Wells told ScienceInsider, “We have cancelled our visit to the Q’eros until we find out exactly what happened.”

Yet a larger biodiversity issue looms that threatens the way of life of the Q’eros and other Quechua communities in the region. On April 15 President Alan García signed a decree allowing the import and planting of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the country, which could compromise the native species of Peru — in particular, the potato — which sustain these Andean communities and form a core part of their cultural identity.

Alejandro Argumedo of ANDES said in an email message, “Cusco is the center of origin of the potato, with the highest diversity of potato varieties found anywhere in the world. As guardians of the potatoes, Andean communities have, within challenging political contexts that favor international commercial interests, fought to protect their biocultural heritage. These actions have been supported by local governments, such as the Cusco regional government, and have led to five regions producing decrees that prohibit the use of GMOs … All that has been accomplished over the last 10 years of actions against GMOs in order to protect Peru’s Peru’s high-quality natural, non-GMO crops is now being threatened.”

Opponents of the decree, including the farming communities around Cusco, have been mobilizing and converged in Lima last week to protest. Many opponents argue that the country hasn’t conducted enough research and development in the field, and they are asking for a 15-year moratorium on GMOs, to give Peru more time to build the research infrastructure needed to fully assess and make the best decisions on the use of GMO crops.

Peru’s Congress is expected to discuss just such a moratorium in a new proposed bill. Meanwhile, Peru’s Minister of Agriculture Rafael Quevedo recently resigned in the heat of criticism over his support of GMO crops and his position as director of a company that uses them.

Learn more about the Q’eros in our Cordillera Vilcanota sacred site report and watch the video below.

In February, we had the good fortune to interview my old friend Barry Lopez, author of Arctic Dreams, Of Wolves and Men, and many other wonderful works of non-fiction and fiction. Barry dug deep to discuss his experiences with traditional peoples and the intimate relationships with place that characterize sacred lands and cultures.

It was on the subject of storytelling, however, that Barry settled into his comfort zone, and told us a four-minute long story that was a true gift. We thought we would share it online (with Barry’s permission) and we hope you enjoy it.

Under the deal, Russia’s state-owned Gazprom would pump 30 million cubic meters of natural gas annually to China. Talks have been stalled for years over price, but a Chinese source reportedly said that an agreement is now expected to be in place by June. He confirmed that the favored pipeline route would carry gas from Gazprom’s Arctic Yamal gas fields over the Altai Mountains and across the sacred Ukok Plateau to the Chinese border.

Local NGOs and communities have opposed the pipeline, citing potential impacts from the construction phase, including damage to the habitat of the endangered snow leopard and argali sheep and an influx of outsiders who may not share Altaian values. (See past Sacred Land News story.)

The Altai Republic is one of eight stories in our upcoming Losing Sacred Ground film series. To learn more about the Golden Mountains, read our sacred site report and check out an excellent photo essay by our colleague Gleb Raygorodetsky.

Proponents of the pipeline point out the benefits of a stable supply of oil from a friendly neighbor in a time of rising fuel prices and Middle East instability. But the Times editorial argues that the environmental risks, for both Canada and the United States, are “enormous.”

In Alberta, the extraction of oil from the tar sands requires the stripmining of swaths of boreal forest, along with the burning of natural gas and consumption of large quantities of water to produce steam to a turn tar-like substance called bitumen into oil. The Times’ editors came to the same conclusion SLFP did when we filmed in Alberta last year: “Operations in Alberta have already created 65 square miles of toxic holding ponds, which kill migrating birds and pollute downstream watersheds, a serious matter for native communities.”

In the United States, the greatest threat is from pipeline leaks; the Times cites multiple recent spills from existing tar sands pipelines. The new pipeline would cross an important U.S. water reservoir, the Ogallala Aquifer, thus threatening “disastrous consequences” if a leak were to occur.

Two Nebraska senators are opposing the pipeline’s proposed route, but “political pressure to win swift approval has been building in Congress.” Because the pipeline would cross an international boundary, the State Department must approve its construction; that decision is expected later this year.

This controversial issue is one of those featured in Sacred Land Film Project’s upcoming film series Losing Sacred Ground.

At issue are the plans of the Chinese state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corp. (MCC) to extract nickel and cobalt from an area called Kurumbukari, send it through an 84-mile slurry pipeline to their refinery at Basamuk Bay and, after processing, dump the untreated waste into the sea. An estimated 5 million tons of various heavy metals and toxins would be dumped annually.

Whether MCC will be allowed to do so in an operation euphemistically called “deep-sea tailings placement” is expected to be determined by the court in the next few months. (They’ll announce the date of their decision in April.) More than a thousand villagers from the Rai Coast, those most likely to be impacted by the disposal, have joined the lawsuit.

At stake for MCC is the millions of dollars it says it’s losing each week that the project is delayed, and millions more if the court rules it must come up with an alternative method for waste disposal. At stake for the villagers at Basamuk Bay and the Rai Coast is their source of food, the water in which they bathe, and their primary pathways of transportation.

The court case has brought some important facts to light:

• MCC admitted that they’ve already dumped ore into the bay, despite a standing court injunction specifically banning the practice.

• MCC’s contract with the Papua New Guinea government allows it to import ore from other countries and process it at the Basamuk plant, including disposing of those additional tailings in the sea.

• The company used false information in a brochure it distributed to villagers about the deep-sea impacts of the tailings disposal.

• In early March, MCC alerted villagers that they should avoid fishing and swimming in the waters near the Basamuk refinery because of a spill of sulphuric acid that occurred four days earlier. The company later retracted that warning and said only a few liters of acid had dripped onshore. Skeptical villagers report that the coral has turned white and they are afraid to eat fish from the bay.

During our shoot in PNG last April, we visited the sites that the court saw from their helicopter — the refinery site at Basamuk, the mining site at Kurumbukari, the sometimes precariously braced slurry pipeline. We met the lead plaintiff at the time, Sama Mellambo, who has since withdrawn (some people believe his decision was made under duress), and two brothers who were resisting relocation by the mine.

We have constantly been astonished by the reports we hear from this developing story, and we anxiously wait with the rest of the country for the court’s verdict, which will determine the fate of tens of thousands of people and the direction of millions of dollars.

Community members are tasked with proving the mining waste, or tailings, flushed into the ocean will cause environmental harm. They have united together with power in numbers: 998 landowners have joined the plaintiff’s case to submit opposition to the waste dumping. Learn more about the lawsuit at Earthworks.

Additional information and commentary available at The National, Papua New Guinea Mine Watch, Ramu NiCo website.

The tiny, flying red insects.

The ubiquitous body odor.

A toddler, naked save a pair of rubber boots, running to the river’s edge, delighted, excited, by a boatload of odd foreigners.

The smell of burnt hair as men scorch the pig for the feast. The rough, cool skin of a grandma as she grasps my hand, her fingers calloused from twisting bilum, a bark that’s made into string bags.

Even though we took thousands of photos and forty-odd hours of footage, I know we will never successfully convey what it’s like to be in Papua New Guinea.

I’m hoping that this video will impart some of the spirit of the place — the color and energy and many surprises we came across every day.

Canoes are a lifeline in Bosmun, the village depicted in this clip. The only road into town is the river, and it’s the same way villagers access their gardens, fish traps or visit relatives. The local “public motor vehicle,” an open-backed truck in other regions, is a motorized dugout canoe in these parts.

The village spent days making the ceremonial canoe in this clip, and it was a whole community effort. At first I didn’t fully appreciate the skill required to carve a canoe that is perfectly balanced, and won’t flip, wobble or lie to low in the water. I didn’t realize that one slip with the ax could destroy weeks of work. I didn’t know you could make paint by chewing mango leaves and spitting its juices back out.

So this is just a taste of what we saw in PNG — I hope you’re as blown away as we were.

Cameraman Andy Black, sound recordist Dave Wendlinger and I were honored last month to be a part of the Makahiki ceremony, which welcomes the season of rain to Hawaii. As part of the ecological and spiritual restoration of the island, the Protect Kaho‘olawe Ohana (PKO) performs the ritual every year, opening the ceremony in November and closing in February. PKO members revived Makahiki in 1982 and have conducted the ceremony every year since. At three locations on the island, offerings are presented to the revered sky god Lono, as the people chant ancient prayers of gratitude and call for rain to “regreen the island.”

I had requested permission to film the ceremony, but our colleagues in the ohana felt strongly that filming would disrupt the focus required of each individual. However, they suggested that participation in the ceremony would give me a better feeling for the life of the island, the depth of the healing needed, and the continually evolving cultural response to the needs of nature and demands of history.

In the 30 years I’ve known and worked with the Hopi I’ve never been allowed to film a ceremony there and I’ve accepted that I never will. In our recent trip to the village of Bosmun in Papua New Guinea, the elders debated late into the night whether they would let us film the transcendental flutes at dawn. Ultimately, the decision was no filming of the flute players — too sacred, too dangerous — but audio recording was allowed. I definitely feel disappointment when a visually stunning and spiritually powerful ceremony passes before my eyes with the camera in its case, but I fully accept it and try instead to appreciate what is going on around me — and inside me.

Small groups carefully prepared 12 different offerings, which were then presented to the mo-o-Lono priests and baked in an underground fire called an imu. Each presenter stated his or her name, where they’re from, the plant being given, and where it was grown. As the sun set we walked barefoot across lava rocks to a shrine where the chants, prayers and food for the gods were presented. As the first offerings were held up to the sky, a rainbow arced down and touched the island in the east, and a beam of light came streaming out of a dark cloud in the west. It reminded me of the full double rainbow that appeared (right) over the sacred point known as Kealaikahiki in June during our first film trip to the island.

In our collaborations with communities in sacred places around the world I have come to appreciate the important role of “rituals of generosity” in which the people give to the earth and ask for nothing in return. The good spirit, humor, focus, joy, care and commitment of the community all manifested in beautiful bundles — ho-o-kupu — created out of sweet potato, taro and other gifts of the earth, wrapped in green ti leaves and one by one set on platforms in the sky. It was a true ritual of generosity. To participate, and forget about filming, was a blessing. The rain, the gentle ocean and numerous shooting stars were clear answers to our collective prayers. The island absorbed the moisture, the love and the laughter with quiet purpose.

Back in Berkeley, a new moon sets over San Francisco Bay and the winter solstice approaches. It’s time for reflection on a busy year and a transition from 40 months of travel and shooting to an intensive year of editing. With Hawaii our final story to film (18 hours shot so far), we have begun to try to get our heads around 53 hours of tape from the Altai, 46 hours from Ethiopia, 34 hours from Peru, 42 hours from Mount Shasta, 42 hours from Papua New Guinea, 44 hours from Australia, and 50 hours from Canada. Now begins the joy and struggle of weaving our eight stories together.

I spent the past week editing the wise words of our good friend Danil Mamyev (left) from the Altai Republic of Russia. On our first filming trip for Losing Sacred Ground, Danil took us on a pilgrimage up Uch Enmek Mountain. Like the Hawaiians who watch for hoaiolona, signs from nature, Danil encouraged us to fully experience the journey by going with pure intentions, being open and listening to the land. In both Altai and Kaho‘olawe, giving energy to the land revealed signs, lessons and inner realizations that are the essence of sacred places.

Our time on Kaho‘olawe ended with a day of filming the Makahiki Games. The main event was wrestling, and the competition was intense in all categories — men, women and children. No matter how much dust was kicked up or how hard the loser was thrown to the ground, every battle ended with smiles, touched foreheads and a deep aloha breath. Warrior training continues in the 21st century.