The Stream, which consists of video stories, machinima and radio podcasts, is a production of BAVC and inspired by projects developed at the Producers Institute for New Media Technologies. SLFP participated in last year’s 10-day institute, which you can read more about in our earlier blog post “Our Report on the BAVC Producers Institute.”

Do watch each and every one of The Stream’s videos for a glimpse into the future of documentary filmmaking, where compelling stories cross over to new media platforms and beyond to capture a broader audience, encourage interactivity, provoke thought and action for social and environmental justice.

The program, titled “Saving Sacred Lands,” also featured interviews with Gathuru Mburu, director of the Institute of Culture and Ecology in Kenya; Silvia Gómez a consultant for Gaia Amazonas Foundation in Bogota, Colombia; and
Liz Hosken, director and co-founder of the Gaia Foundation in London.

Listen to the full program here.

For 10 days our team was immersed in learning about emerging new media technologies, how to harness them for social and environmental justice, how to nurture and grow communities, and how to motivate positive action using these exciting new tools. Topics ranged from alternate, augmented, virtual and hybrid digital reality, web 3.0, the “intelligent web,” data visualization, interactive mapping, to twitter strategy and crowd sourcing. We were surprised to learn that we are no longer filmmakers, we are “screen content producers!”

The project we developed and then presented at The Center is a global application made for mobile devices, like a smart phone, that will take you on a tour of sacred sites that are now maintained as national parks or, in the case of urban tours, to discover where sacred sites have been paved over.

We partnered with Dorothy FireCloud, the Superintendent of Devils Tower National Monument, to create a tour prototype. With Dorothy’s guidance and the help of our amazing mentors, Anselm Hook, a leading augmented reality specialist, and Paige Saez, a designer and strategist, we created a working prototype and a long-term vision for a mobile phone application that could have a profound impact on our collective understanding of sacred lands.

The tour tells the story of indigenous culture through indigenous voices using video, audio, photos and augmented reality so that a hidden history is unveiled. Augmented reality is when an image is overlaid onto a physical environment, as you can see in the video below.

GPS data triggers your hand-held device to play stories relevant to your exact location. For example, in our Devils Tower prototype, you will be able to look through your smart phone and see an Indian village overlaid onto the modern-day physical environment, then raise the phone to the sky, where you can learn about Lakota star knowledge and see it through the phone.

We love the way this technology encourages people to get out and experience nature while learning a history that is buried, lost, hidden, erased or literally underground, and in doing so recapture what it means to be in connection with the land.

At first blush, it may seem incongruous for a group that’s focused on protecting traditional cultures and ancient sacred places, but the Sacred Land Film Project is about to join Web 3.0. (OK, I admit I had to google “web 3.0″ to make sure that is what we are doing … so you can see what level I’m at.) But with so many developments that have already proven effective in communication and mobilization — like text messaging, Facebook, and Twitter — we are hoping the next steps will be even better at building community and fostering educational experiences.

The best part of this new development? We’re getting a lot of help. Losing Sacred Ground has been accepted for participation in the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) Producer’s Institute for New Media. The Institute is a 10-day workshop that partners documentary projects like ours with mentors in technology to help filmmakers develop projects that go far beyond theatrical screenings or television broadcast.

As BAVC describes it, “The intention of the Institute is to develop socially relevant media projects for emerging digital platforms … Producers may propose a range of delivery strategies, including cellphones, other hand-held devices, set-tops, Internet, portable software and more.”

Previous participants have designed online games, experiences in Second Life, interactive art exhibits, digital community spaces and marketplaces, and video-based educational platforms. You can check them out here.

Our team is hoping to use technology to encourage people to experience and appreciate the natural world. Our original idea was to combine documentary techniques with the concept of geocaching (a sort of treasure hunt using a handheld GPS) and audio guides/webcasting to create an experience we’re calling “geocasting.”

We envision an experience something like this: users can download an audio guide, with optional GPS coordinates, into their iPod, iPhone, GPS, or other mobile device. They can then travel to one of our sites — currently we’re hoping to start with the Shellmound in Emeryville and Devil’s Tower National Monument in Wyoming.

The audio guide will lead the user through the site, describing the people and cultures that once inhabited the areas that the listener is seeing. The sound might also include native music, interviews with people indigenous to that area, and commentary on modern impacts — for example, the controversy surrounding the climbing of Devil’s Tower. After their trip, geocasters will be able to share their experiences, photos and thoughts online on a dedicated website.

In addition, BAVC is going to help us develop an augmented reality component of this project. We’re not sure what this is going to look like yet — and any description I make is likely to be wrong. Suffice it to say, this will be the really innovative part of our project and most likely beyond anything we’ve imagined thus far.

We’re hoping that this project will help people connect to the rich histories of environments that they might otherwise overlook. We also think it will be fun! So stay tuned for more details as the project gets under way.

In other SLFP news, if you haven’t already checked out our newly posted photo slide shows highlighting our Losing Sacred Ground production trips to the Altai Mountains of Russia and Australia, you can do so here. A gallery from the best of In the Light of Reverence is also included. Stay tuned, we’ll be posting more in the coming weeks.

“We decided to present the Spanish version of the Guidelines at WILD9 precisely because this important international conservation gathering takes place in the traditional lands of the Maya people of Yucatan, shared by Mexico and Guatemala,” said Gonzalo Oviedo, IUCN Senior Adviser on Social Policy and close collaborator in this work. “This is one of the areas of Latin America with the greatest richness in biological diversity and indigenous spiritual traditions – and one where both are at risk because of many threats. Through this publication, IUCN wants to add its contribution to the efforts for their conservation.”

The Russian publication was presented last Friday at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting on the protection of traditional knowledge in Montreal, Canada.

“The CBD has recognized the importance of the protection of sacred natural sites in various documents and decisions, and produced its own guidelines for it,” said Petr Azhunov, Baikal Buryat Center for Indigenous Cultures. “But mostly these decisions remain on paper. I am attending the traditional knowledge meeting to explore ways in which we can make better use of the CBD to strengthen action on the ground, and I am highlighting the opportunities that the new Russian translation of the IUCN Guidelines offer for working with communities in Central Asia and congratulate all who have made it possible.”

Thanks to the WCPA Specialist Group on the Cultural and Spiritual Values of Protected Areas, and to Gonzalo Oviedo, IUCN Social Policy Advisor, for completing new versions of the guidelines accessible to a wider audience around the world. We are also grateful for the support of ProNatura in Mexico for making the guidelines widely available in Latin America, and The Christensen Fund for financial support.

Here’s a sneak preview:

In northern California, soft October light shimmered on the McCloud River as Winnemem Wintu leaders Caleen and Mark Sisk-Franco showed us signs of ancestral villages. The grinding rocks, home sites and burials will be submerged if Shasta Lake, the enormous reservoir held back by Shasta Dam, is enlarged by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and backs further up into this wild stretch of the McCloud River.

Upstream from the houseboats, marinas and weekend fishermen, a tall boulder balances over a deep, shining pool named for the sucker fish spirit that inhabits it. If the dam is raised, the Winnemem will never see the Sucker Pool again. For generations, young warriors and leaders have swum across the pool as part of their initiation rites.

Mark and Caleen knelt on the shore, lit a pipe, put hands in the water and prayed for the sacred site as Will Parrinello filmed this quiet healing and blessing ceremony. “This is not a recreation area to us, it is a life way,” Caleen said later. “I had to swim across this pool, years ago. To think we might lose it breaks my heart.”

For the Winnemem, it was a bittersweet year. After strong local resistance, Nestlé dropped plans to bottle millions of gallons of pure water from within Mt. Shasta that would have threatened the mountain’s artesian springs. But high on the mountain’s slopes visitors continue to dump human cremation ashes in the Winnemem’s sacred spring, causing ecological harm to a pristine meadow and water source, and wreaking spiritual havoc by defiling the tribe’s origin place.

Facing daunting odds the Winnemem fight on, like indigenous communities all around the world. Their tenacity and sense of humor give me hope. “We will endure no matter what,” says Caleen, “and if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry.”

Read the full version of Sacred Land Film Project’s 2009 Annual Report.

POWER PATHS offers a unique glimpse into the global energy crisis from the perspective of a culture pledged to protect the planet, historically exploited by corporate interests and neglected by public policy makers. As Anishinaabe activist Winona LaDuke says in the film, “We need to create a way of life where a community is not forced to cannibalize their mother in order to live.”

The film follows an intertribal coalition as they fight to transform their local economies by replacing coal mines and smog-belching power plants with renewable energy technologies. POWER PATHS follows the Just Transition Coalition in its attempts to balance Navajo and Hopi losses from the 2006 closure of the Mohave Generating Station and Peabody Energy’s Black Mesa mine by creating green jobs. This transition would honor their heritage, protect their sacred land, and provide electricity to their homes. At a time when the planet as a whole hungers for alternatives to fossil fuels, POWER PATHS offers proof that going green is not only possible—it’s the only choice we have.

In the Bay Area, POWER PATHS is scheduled to air on Tuesday, November 3 at 11 p.m. on KQED-9. Check local listings for your PBS station, or visit the PBS website.

In the Light of Reverence

Winnemem Wintu tribal leader Caleen Sisk-Franco and tribal member Marc Franco as well as filmmaker Toby McLeod will attend the screening and be there for Q&As after the film.

Newsreview.com recently posted an article about the history of the Winnemem Wintu struggle illustrated in In the Light of Reverence and quoted McLeod, “It’s meaningful that eight years later we’re collaborating on a screening in Chico where they’re going to continue to tell their story. It’s about having dialogue and opening people’s hearts and minds. Their perspective on the environmental crisis is critically important. They’re determined to prevail and endure.”

To learn more about the screening, visit SLFP’s screenings page.

Coming Up From the Roots

Caitlin will also discuss the work of WEA’s Women and Land Initiative, which unites legal advocates with indigenous women environmental justice leaders to advocate for protection of  sacred sites, environmental health and to work towards energy justice. In 2008, SLFP teamed up with WEA to film the amazing work behind this initiative. You can view the video clip filmed and edited by SLFP staff member Marlo McKenzie here.

SLFP also filmed a meeting between WEA and Jeneda Benally (Diné) from Save the Peaks Coalition. An amazing spokesperson on behalf of protection of the San Francisco peaks, Jeneda shared the history of the battle and the spiritual significance of the mountain in Diné culture. To learn more you can watch the video, read SLFP’s sacred site report or RSVP to events@womensearthalliance.org to check in on a live conference call hosted by WEA’s Weaving the Worlds Conference Call series on Monday, Oct. 12, at 10 a.m. Pacific time. Moderated by Caitlin Sislin, Jeneda Benally and Howard Shanker, Esq., attorney for the Save the Peaks Coalition and principal at The Shanker Law Firm, will discuss the lawsuit Save the Peaks coalition just filed against the United States Forest Service, pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).  Callers will also learn about the history of legal action in this case, what the Ninth Circuit’s en banc decision means for sacred site protection in the U.S., and the Coalition’s allegations under NEPA.

I now look out of my new office window and see a giant redwood grove on Strawberry Creek at the southwest corner of the U.C. Berkeley campus. Just upstream, 27 years ago, Glenn Switkes and I edited The Four Corners: A National Sacrifice Area?, our masters thesis film at the Graduate School of Journalism. So, I feel like I have come home.

With the invaluable help of Jessica Abbe, Marlo McKenzie, Vicki Engel and Quinn Costello, we moved the film project into the Brower Center on April 13, as sheetrock dust swirled and workers hustled to put the finishing touches on a remarkable work of art. We were the first tenants to move into the building and have watched it come to life as our colleagues from Earth Island Institute moved in, then International Rivers, then the Center for Ecoliteracy… Though some offices are still awaiting their tenants, the building is 100% leased, and will soon receive a coveted and well-earned Platinum LEED rating — the first in the city of Berkeley.

Over the last year, as the building went up and we designed our new space, our architect, Hope Mitnick, urged me to appreciate the huge concrete wall in my office-to-be (the back of the elevator shaft). Concrete is in, Hope assured me, it’s beautiful. I have since learned that the concrete in the Brower Center is 50% slag from steel smelters in China, waste that would have been left to pollute land and water but was instead shipped across the Pacific on a barge. This brilliant, novel, recycled substitute ingredient reduced the building’s carbon footprint by 40%. I love my concrete wall!

The Brower Center is composed of 53% recycled materials. Light streams into giant windows. Sunrays are captured by solar panels that provide one third of the building’s electricity and heat water flowing through floors and ceilings to warm our offices. Rainwater falling on the roof is captured and stored in a 5,600-gallon cistern in the basement and used to flush toilets and irrigate plants. Local artists crafted a rock garden in the courtyard, painted a wall with soil in the reception area, and converted brass artillery shells (found on eBay) into door handles at the front entrance.

Seven years ago, when Earth Island Institute invited me to a “vision meeting” in Berkeley to discuss ideas for a building that would honor the memory of David Brower, I was happy to attend and found myself urging the building’s founder and main proponent, Peter Buckley, not to drop plans for an auditorium. Apparently, it was going to take up too much space and cost too much. As a filmmaker, I argued that the auditorium would be the building’s most powerful educational gathering place, where the force of image, music and word — tools that David Brower understood well and used to maximum effect — could be marshaled to inspire audiences to take action to protect the Earth. Thanks to Peter’s vision (and a generous donation from the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation) we now have a fantastic theater, where films are already moving audiences and inspiring dialogues are reaching for the new ideas we desperately need to get our species back on a sane path.

Now that the move is “over” we return full time to filmmaking — with the first task to select a new Associate Producer from an incredible field of applicants. As I write this, into the office flows news of death in Peru, resistance in Tibet, a court ruling on the San Francisco Peaks and a lawsuit filing by the Winnemem Wintu. Filmmaking will have to wait until next week. It’s time for an e-mail alert to the Sacred Land Defense Team!