Edit Standing Rock-Klamath Film

"Two Rivers" is the new feature film about the Water Protectors at Standing Rock, North Dakota, and on the Klamath River in California.   These two indigenous led environmental actions, 1500 miles apart, both fought to protect the water in their rivers.  Their stories expose both a fundamental dilemma, as well as a potential path forward. These stories need to be seen.

We're now in the edit room, but we need additional staff, and we need to sustain the work over the next few months. You can help us get this story out. Here is the sample reel from the new film, now in post-production: https://youtu.be/WeZ5RaeF0sk

How we protect our water has become a question of immense urgency.   Already, in the first 100 days of the new Administration, science and the environment have become the number one targets of cuts, de-regulation and outright attacks. If we are not able to protect our water, the most basic resource needed to sustain life, then what does this say?


The ticking clock of climate change, the political instability in Washington DC, and the profound impact of corporate money on how we make decisions has driven our society into a corner. The battle to protect or profit from our remaining natural resources has us flirting with extinction. But, while the dominant society seems either oblivious or paralyzed with confusion, one group of people appears pivotal: Native Americans – they make up only 2% of the population but sit on top of 60% of the remaining resources.  The stories of Standing Rock and the Klamath reveal what resistance strategies work, what fell short, and what challenges that white participants should understand in order to confront the depth of the problems we all face. 

The story of this film starts on the Klamath River in 2015, amid California's fifth year of drought. The tribes who live on that river are in a tough fight against agribusiness in the San Joaquin Valley over the water behind the Trinity Dam. As drought combines with climate change to ravage the rich environment of California, would this water flow down the Klamath River for the benefit of salmon, the health of the river, and the survival of the tribes and their neighbors? Or would it go to parched regions of the San Joaquin Valley to grow crops often destined mainly for export?   Our cameras rode boats up and down the Klamath with Yurok fishermen and biologists, and we drove out across dusty fields with successful Fresno County farmers 500 miles south. 


By the end of 2015, it was clear that despite tireless scientific monitoring of the river, deals being made in Washington DC threatened California's ability to sustainably manage its own water supply.  By early Spring of 2016 over 90% of the juvenille salmon in California's biggest rivers were dying from disease caused by low, warm water.  Then Donald Trump arrived telling California farmers that there was "no drought."

Later that summer came news of the Water Protectors at Standing Rock.  I happened to be reading Cadillac Desert, the classic book on the  US government's century long campaign to build dams all across the West.  The book's chapter on the Missouri River - where the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline would cross the water supply for 18,000,000 people - convinced me that Standing Rock and the Klamath are  two parts of the same story.  I packed my camping gear and took off.

Between September and the end of February 2017 I spent 10 weeks at Standing Rock most of it in the Oceti Sakowin and Vortex/Rosebud camps working to document the direct action campaign to halt the Dakota Access Pipeline. (Many thanks to Ryan Anderson, April Goltz, Josie Thundershield, Riley Red Horse, Sherman, Robby Romero, Leatha Liberty, Scott Wilson, Todd Muchow, & Caitlin Kleibor)

The resistance camps at Standing Rock were unprecedented, and produced the largest gathering of tribes in US history. It was the first time in more than 140 years that all seven bands of the Lakota were in the same place at the same time.

While the tenacity and prayerful resistance of Oceti Sakowin was powerful to witness, so was the militarized response to each succeeding action.  By December the arrival of thousands of veterans forced the Obama Administration to deny the pipeline permits to cross the Missouri River.  But, those acts proved too late and too little.  Within his first week in office, Trump reversed the denial and resurrected both the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Keystone XL pipeline.


The two stories of Water Protectors 1500 miles apart remained in synch.  On February 23, 2017 the camps at Standing Rock were forcibly evicted, while just two days before, on Feb 21, 2017 a Federal court in California issued an important decision about the Klamath and the Trinity Rivers.

Events at both places shine a light on an emerging indigenous leadership and they pose tough questions: How will we survive on this planet? Who has a viable vision? Who can provide leadership at this moment in our history?
 
During the last days of the Oceti Sakowin Camp we experienced the emotions of reuniting with people we had grown close to, the arrival of hundreds of heavily armed troops, and the destruction of the camps.


But, the end of the camps will not mean the end of the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline.  And, in California, even with huge rain storms, and positive judicial rulings, the salmon are still on the brink of extinction with only1% of the historic run returning this year to the Klamath River.  

So, we need your assistance to complete this film quickly and spread these stories.

Thanks to your help, we've already produced twenty video and written reports for Media Bridge Dispatch.com. Tens of thousands of people have watched these reports.

Take a look at our reel for the documentary about Water Protectors at Standing Rock, and in California along the Klamath River:
https://youtu.be/WeZ5RaeF0sk

Please help support the GoFundMe campaign. And please contact us with any comments or ideas. Thanks for helping!