Directed by Christopher McLeod • Documentary • 2014 • 57 minutes
From Ethiopia to Peru, indigenous customs protect biodiversity on sacred lands under pressure from religious conflicts and climate change. In the Gamo Highlands of Ethiopia, scientists confirm the benefits of traditional stewardship even as elders witness the decline of spiritual practices that have long protected trees, meadows and mountains. Tensions with evangelical Christians over a sacred meadow erupt into a riot. In the Peruvian Andes, the Q'eros, on a pilgrimage to a revered glacier, are driven from their ritual site by intolerant Catholics. Q'eros potato farmers face a more ominous foe: global warming is melting glaciers, their water source. Andes farmers, scientists and visiting Ethiopians struggle to adapt indigenous agriculture to the changing climate.
FIRE AND ICE is one part of the 4-part Standing on Sacred Ground series, in which indigenous people from eight different cultures stand up for their traditional sacred lands in defense of cultural survival, human rights and the environment.
Directed by Christopher McLeod • Documentary • 2014 • 57 minutes
Native Hawaiians and Aboriginal Australians resist threats to their sacred places in a growing international movement to defend human rights and protect the environment. In Australia's Northern Territory, Aboriginal clans maintain ...
Directed by Staffan Julén • Documentary • 2006 • 78 minutes
This documentary combines biography and history as it accompanies the Inuit hunter Hivshu, a.k.a. Robert E. Peary II, on a quest to trace the story of his great grandfather and his other ancestors, including the Eskimo family the famous...
Directed by Tracey Moffatt • Drama • 1987 • 16 minutes
This stylistically daring film audaciously explores the history of exploitation between white men and Aboriginal women, juxtaposing the “first encounter” between colonizers and native women with the attempts of modern urban Aboriginal women ...
