Ten years in the making, In the Light of Reverence explores American cultures relationship to nature in three places considered sacred by native peoples: the Colorado Plateau in the Southwest, Mt. Shasta in California, and Devils Tower in Wyoming.
The Spring at Panther Meadows runs dry. Produced as a preview of the Sacred Land Film Project’s latest film series, Standing on Sacred Ground, http://StandingOnSacredGround.org. It is a four-part series that chronicles indigenous people in eight communities around the world standing up for their traditional sacred lands in defense of cultural survival, human rights and the environment.
Every August, two thousand people visit northern Australia’s Gove Peninsula in Arnhem Land to attend the Garma Festival, an international celebration of the Aboriginal culture that is still strong around Yirkalla.
Set in the Altai Republic of Russia in southern Siberia, Mapping is Power follows cultural specialist Maya Erlenbaeva and shaman Maria Amanchina as they visit sacred sites near Kosh Agach. Indigenous people are mapping their sacred sites to protect them.
In the misty mountains of the Vilcanota Cordillera, southeast of Cusco, on the steep slopes of the Andes, the Q’eros grow potatoes, herd alpaca, chew coca and pray to the mountain deities they call Apus.
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.
With the Australian Federal Supreme Court preparing to hear a case on the legality of the McArthur River mine expansion and river diversion plan, a group of 50 men, women and children boarded a bus in Boroloola and traveled nearly 1000 kilometers to Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory.
Before dawn on the fourth and final day of the Mascal Ceremony in Ethiopia’s Gamo Highlands, a fire is lit in a sacred grove and elders gather to chant in the new year. Fundamentalist Protestants disrupted the closing ceremonies, as captured in this four-minute video clip.
A Native American tribe that was literally taken off the map in California’s history books — and is still unrecognized by the U.S. government — is using technology to put itself back on the map.
This film clip from Standing on Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Tourists (2014) depicts the conflict in the Altai Republic of Russia, where Altaian shamans have for years objected to outside shamans conducting rituals at sacred places, which they consider to be disrespectful, inappropriate and spiritually dangerous.