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Life Arts    H4'ed 5/15/15

Sacred Land Film Project Premieres Sunday on PBS

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All that is sacred is local. None of us are untouched by the possibility of deep loss.

Winona LaDuke lives on the White Earth reservation, just up the highway from the small Minnesota town where I spend my summers. LaDuke, Former Vice-Presidential candidate for the Green Party in 2000 is featured in this film. Having seen first hand what she and Honor the Earth have done to protect sacred lands in Minnesota, Canada, the Dakotas and elsewhere from mining, big oil and reckless development, her statement in the trailer for Standing on Sacred Ground carries a lot of weight for people in the Midwest. It is at once political and deeply spiritual.

We end up with a belief that is doesn't matter what we do here, because salvation is someplace else. So, let 'em mine. Let 'em dam.

This film speaks far beyond the threats facing indigenous people. In some ways, Native cultures are the unheralded guardians of all that is holy on the planet.

Get engaged with this thoughtful series. Organize a screening party or two. What better way to begin the season of outdoor exploration than to gain an appreciation of the spiritual beauty of the planet?

There is no place on the planet where indigenous people do not face dire threats to sacred lands. Consider the Fort Laramie Treaty here in the United States, which has been dishonored. Imagine what is happening in remote areas of the world where treaties are a non sequitur and resource extraction is God.

Visit the Midwest where the borders of Minnesota, Iowa, The Dakotas, and Nebraska meet; take some time to abandon the interstates and encounter the sacred. Detour to Wind Cave. Listen to the wind and feel it as it moves across your skin. Wind Cave National Park, or "Washun Niya," is literally the believed to be the breath of Mother Earth by the Lakota people. The people were born there and emerged into the world at the invitation of the trickster and have regretted leaving ever since. Move on to Devils Tower, known to indigenous people as Grey Horned Butte, a short drive away from Rapid City. It is also sacred to the Lakota People.

Take a lazy drive north and visit Knife River Indian Villages in central North Dakota, where the activities of an ancient earth lodge civilization are still visible in the undulating earth. The Midwest is rich with uncounted buttes, trails and grasslands that shelter the sacred. Thunder Butte near Fort Berthold North Dakota is now threatened by fracking in the Bakken Oil Fields.

Standing On Sacred Ground shows us eight indigenous communities around the globe who are standing as witnesses and protectors in defense of their creation stories.

Their stories are our stories.

Narrated by Tantoo Cardinal, Q'orianka Kilcher and Graham Greene, this series teaches how nature and culture are completely intertwined and offers a blueprint for holy living.

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Georgianne Nienaber is an investigative environmental and political writer. She lives in rural northern Minnesota and South Florida. Her articles have appeared in The Society of Professional Journalists' Online Quill Magazine, the Huffington (more...)
 

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