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 visitors? Forest Service management practices? Water bottling plants sucking water out of the base of the mountain? Please watch our new four-minute film clip: The Spring at Panther Meadows. For the full, sad story — before watching the clip — you can read the November 10 posting below.

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 their origin point as a people. Its waters flow down to become the Winnemem, the middle water, known by its conquerors as the McCloud River. Winnemem ancestors lived along this river for countless generations, until Shasta Dam flooded them out and stopped the salmon runs.

On Saturday, we hiked to Panther Meadows to visit the spring. When we filmed In the Light of Reverence, a visit from the Winnemem would be a joyous time, with people singing songs to the spring and bubbles viewed as personal greetings. This time, an ominous fog filled the meadow and a white rope surrounding the bone-dry spring seemed to form the outline of a coffin. Indeed, the spring seemed dead.

Where once white sand danced when water emerged from the mountain to touch the air, now a hard packed suface of dry, brown soil lay lifeless between rock walls that usually cradle clear, cold water. The Winnemem stared in disbelief. In tribal memory the spring has never gone dry. How could this be?

When the Giver of Life stops giving — this is a frightening moment.

Tribal leader Caleen Sisk-Franco tried to counsel her people to have hope, to pray, and to fight harder to protect their sacred places. But when she got down on her knees in the dry spring bed to try to call the water back, she could not hold back the tears.

Looking down on a spiritual leader who has become a good friend, my heart was breaking. It felt like all of our efforts have failed. Global warming. Dams. Water bottling factories. Vanishing salmon. A corrupt government refusing to honor promises or recognize indigenous people. Time passing and changes coming too slowly.

A visitor from the Altai Republic of Russia, Urmat Yntaev, got down on his knees and tried to rouse the waters with a deep throated chant. Winnemem women grieved and wailed at the loss of this friend, their mother. The teen age boys who danced the war dance on Shasta Dam cried as they tried to find the words to pray for the spring’s revival. My cameraman, Will Parrinello, after filming for two-and-a-half hours, finally had to stop after the light faded, and as the songs and prayers went on he finally was able to relax and experience the scene and tears came streaming down his face.

But all of the droplets offered by humans did not bring the water back. We can only hope that a wet winter of rain and snow, a change in human behavior and a growing indigenous movement to support each other’s struggles will set things in balance and bring Panther Spring back to life.

Check out SLFP’s new video: Song for the Rainbow Serpent! 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 the land and still enforces the law. Xstrata Zinc is starting to excavate an open pit mine at McArthur River and is building a 5.5 kilometer diversion channel to redirect water around the deep hole the mining company is digging. When we tried to enter the area with traditional owner Harry Lanson, the mining company threatened to arrest us for trespassing and ordered us to leave. As Harry Lanson asserted his right to visit the land he was born on, to show us his sacred sites, a helicopter landed within 100 feet of our “mob” — which included more than a dozen children. We retreated back down the road to the river. Even after the humiliation and stress, the Aboriginal women proceeded with the dance they had come to do next to the river, to honor the female form of the Rainbow Serpent, which in English they refer to as a “mermaid.”

Check out a new two-minute film: A Song for the Rainbow Serpent