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Standing on Sacred Ground

Four Films. Eight Cultures. One Fight.

Documentary

Indigenous people resist government mega-projects, consumer culture, competing religions, resource extraction and climate change in this four-part documentary series. In the US and around the world, native communities share ecological wisdom and spiritual reverence while battling a utilitarian view of land.

Mar 1, 20141 seasons4 episodesEndedEN

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Graham Greene

Narrator (voice)

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Winona LaDuke

Self

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Q'orianka Kilcher

Acting

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Seasons

Season 1

4 episodes

Premiered Mar 1, 2014

Episodes

1–4 of 4

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Ep 1

Pilgrims and Tourists

Mar 1, 2014

In the Russian Republic of Altai, traditional native people create their own mountain parks to rein in tourism and resist a gas pipeline that would cut through a World Heritage Site. In nothern California, Winnemem Wintu girls grind herbs on a sacred medicine rock as elders protest U.S. government plans to enlarge one of the West's biggest dams and forever submerge this touchstone of a tribe.

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Ep 2

Profit and Loss

Mar 1, 2014

In Papua New Guinea, a Chinese government owned mine has violently relocated villagers, built a new pipeline and refinery on contested clan land, and is dumping mining waste into the sea. In Alberta, First Nations people suffer from rare cancers as their traditional hunting grounds are stripmined to unearth the world's third-largest oil reserve.

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Ep 3

Fire and Ice

Mar 1, 2014

In Ethiopia's Gamo Highlands, the benefits of traditional stewardship are confirmed even as elders witness the decline of spiritual practices that have long protected their natural surroundings and religious tensions erupt into a riot. In the Peruvian Andes, the Q'ero are driven from their ritual site by intolerant Catholics as Q'eros potato farmers face a more ominous foe: climate change.

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Ep 4

Islands of Sanctuary

Mar 1, 2014

In Australia's Northern Territory, Aboriginal clans maintain Indigenous Protected Areas and resist the destructive effects of a mining boom. In Hawaii, indigenous ecological and spiritual practices are used to restore the sacred island of Kahoolawe after 50 years of military use as a bombing range.