As messenger and translator for Hopi elders since 1948, Thomas Banyacya Sr. (1909-1999) traversed the globe trying to help non-Hopi people understand the warnings revealed in the Hopi Prophecy. In November 1995, the Sacred Land Film Project followed Thomas to the Whole Life Expo in Las Vegas where he made two presentations over two days. Here is part 1 of 2.
Sacred Land Film Project Director Toby McLeod participated in this year’s Run4Salmon, a two-week prayerful journey to restore McCloud River salmon runs and protect indigenous lifeways.
Surrounded by boutique storefronts in the upscale Fourth Street shopping area of Berkeley sits an unassuming 2-acre parking lot. For 5,000 years this was an Ohlone Village Site where two massive shellmounds grew—sites of burial and ceremony.
In 1875, biologist Livingstone Stone collected a sampling of belongings — baskets and ceremonial regalia — from the Winnemem Wintu people who lived along the McCloud River, below Mt. Shasta in northern California.
The birth of the radical environmental movement is captured in this short, poetic film on the legendary direct action at Glen Canyon Dam in March of 1981.
Why has the U.S. government failed to offer an apology to Native Americans? Canada and Australia are way ahead—but what good is an apology if actions do not follow?
There’s a story that has has played out all over the world. First come the missionaries doing good. Indigenous communities split apart and connections to land, ancestors and spirits of place weaken—not everywhere, but almost everywhere.
Hopi elder Thomas Banyacya (1909-1999) was selected as spokesman for traditional leaders in 1948, after atom bombs triggered Hopi awareness that the prophecized “gourd full of ashes” had finally appeared. We worked with Thomas from 1977 through 1999 and were fortunate to film him at Chaco Canyon, in Washington DC, and at sacred migration sites around the Four Corners area. His humor, good spirit and wisdom will be long remembered.
Filming a Chinese-government-owned mine in Papua New Guinea in 2010 led to some hair-raising moments as we were filming “Profit and Loss” when we were detained at gunpoint in a makeshift police station inside a shipping container…
Lisjan Ohlone leader Corrina Gould and her allies pray at the West Berkeley Shellmound and Village Site every year on the Spring Equinox. This year they went to protect the historic site from a new threat.