Back in the 1980s, when I was younger—and more limber—I led 20 week-long backpacking trips in the canyon country of southern Utah. In the Cedar Mesa area, south of Canyonlands National Park, every…
In March 2014 there was a brief media dust-up after the Washington Post reported that the Koch brothers were the largest leaseholders of tar sands acreage, having leased 1.1 million acres. The Post…
I’m headed to Dartmouth at the invitation of old friend Terry Tempest Williams, to show Profit and Loss and Islands of Sanctuary on Wednesday. Terry has hiked the area of eastern Utah where…
As our films head for PBS broadcast in places like Honolulu, it is heartening to continue to cultivate the relationships that led to the film stories being told. Collaboration with the Protect Kaho`olawe…
Our filming in Hawai`i took us to many special places beyond Kaho`olawe. Listening to stories about the amazing, profound impact that the extended family known as the Protect Kaho`olawe `Ohana had throughout the islands…
In early February, I made a pilgrimage back to the Four Corners area to visit old friends at Zuni and Hopi, to show some films, and to find out about sacred site battles old and new. Tops on everyone’s mind is the proposal to build a resort hotel…
When we filmed the canoe ceremony in Bosmun village on the Ramu River in Papua New Guinea, there was an all night debate about whether we would be allowed to film the transcendental flute players who started playing at midnight heading into the final day of the four-day ceremony.
It was a cold afternoon in DC, gray skies but no rain, perfect weather to drive a crowd into an auditorium to watch four hours of films. The Capitol dome sat quiet and irrelevant off to the northeast, spitting distance from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
As indigenous leaders from around the world head to the Bay Area this week to celebrate the premiere screenings of Standing on Sacred Ground, the excitement heightens my awareness of both the honor and humbling responsibility of directing this project.
The fire was hungry. It consumed milk, vodka, bread, cheese, lamb’s heads, cow’s legs, barley, cedar, juniper, water and the prayers and songs of a dozen shamans from all over Asia. The fire roared, sparked, smoked, called out to ancestors and spirits, and seemed very happy to be fed by the people…