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.
Every year, California hosts PantheaCon, a gathering of pagans. This year we were invited to show film scenes and organize a dialogue about New Age appropriation of indigenous spirituality and to discuss protocols for visiting sacred places.
When we were filming in the Altai Republic of Russia for Standing on Sacred Ground in 2007, renowned Altaian throat singer Nogon Shumarov spent hours with us singing several shamanic songs that connect humans to nature and other dimensions of reality.
Dr. John O’Connor is the family physician who documented several cases of a rare bile duct cancer in the small town on Lake Athabasca, downstream from the massive tar sands mines
Watch Native Hawaiians call back the rain, and use indigenous ecological and spiritual practices to restore the sacred island of Kaho`olawe after 50 years of military use as a bombing range.
See Aboriginal elders practice ancient rituals and protest government collusion with mining companies that is destroying a sacred river in Australia’s Northern Territory.
Tensions explode in the Gamo Highlands of Ethiopia when evangelical Christians interrupt an ancient traditional ceremony and begin building a church in the heart of a sacred meadow. This scene comes from the Fire and Ice episode of the four-part series, Standing on Sacred Ground.