Film
Unconquering the Last Frontier
Review
Unconquering the Last Frontier documents how mistakes of the past can be corrected in the north end of the Olympic Peninsula. The beauty of this region is well expressed through stunning photography.
The title is derived from the book Conquering the Last Frontier written by Thomas T. Aldwell, one of the major developers of the Port Angeles, Washington region.
The history of development along the Elwha River is well documented through visual narrative and personal histories, then contrasted with the negative effects upon the natural resources and Native People.
Anthropology, Sociology, Environmental Studies
Date Entered: 11/09/2018
Reviewed By David Liberty, StreamNet Library, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission
Press Screener 8:55
Song On The Water
Review
Dr. Colleen Boyd, assistant professor of anthropology at Ball State University, praises Song on the Water for providing “insight into the ironies of living tribally in the 21st century.” Says Boyd, “It is not a simple tribute to Coast Salish peoples, pretty pictures and wise words; the film makes us think about the complexities of your subjects’ lives. Having said that, it is also incredibly beautiful—the lighting, glowing faces and wonderful photography.”
Chief Harold Hudson Ahousat
Amy Edenshaw is Haida. Her family includes a long lineage of carvers from Haida Gwaii. Her father was Douglas Edenshaw, son of Henry Edenshaw, Grandson of Albert Edenshaw. Her mother was Haida from Hydaburg, AK, Raven, from the Bear House.
Chief Frank Nelson, Alert Bay
Lundahl’s documentary, Song on the Water, takes viewers along with 50 indigenous canoes, their crews and communities on a modern-day voyage to a traditional potlatch. It is a remarkable journey for all, as up to 5,000 people join together in this communal, spiritual event. Filled with beautiful photography and inspiring Coast Salish songs and cultural expressions, the one-hour film explores what the voyage means to the “pullers,” ground crews and elders who share the waves, the traditions and a vision of a positive future for Coast Salish youth.
Pat Mallinson, KCTS 9, Seattle
Song on the Water has aired over 240 times in 80 cities on PBS stations.
Press Screener 6:58
Who Are My People?
Review
KCET SoCal Focus
By Chris Clarke
Lundahl returned to the California desert a few years ago after spending decades traveling, landing in Las Vegas, the Bay Area, and the Pacific Northwest among other places. He spent the 1990s documenting a battle by the Elwha Klallam, a tribe on the Olympic Peninsula, to remove two salmon-killing dams on the Elwha River. To many people's surprise, that battle was successful. The Elwha Dam was finally demolished last year, and the Glines Canyon Dam demolition should be complete sometime this year.
Who Are My People? Is Well Worth Watching.
East County Magazine
A unique article by Dr. Allan Hoffman
Editor’s Note: The ECOreport is pleased to present a unique article by Dr. Allan Hoffman, former senior executive at the Department of Energy, who served under five Presidents between 1978 and 2012, reviewing ECOreport partner, Robert Lundahl’s film, “Who Are My People?”
At the ECOreport, we have been aware that Lundahl’s film captures a key transition in the history of renewable energy, as concentrating solar, which had been developed in the US, began to return in the hands of international firms building large solar facilities in the Mojave desert.
Lundahl ventured to these remote locations to capture responses from Native American elders whose communities and tribal groups have had a connection to the land since time immemorial. The film is about resulting conflicts in values that define renewable energy in its current form, and provide a consultative view about how we implement these technologies today, and in the future.
March 6, 2015--I was invited to review the documentary film “Who Are My People?” because of my professional familiarity with concentrating solar power technologies. I was responsible for the U.S. Department of Energy’s broad range of renewable energy electricity programs for several years during the Clinton Administration. “Who Are My People?”is well worth watching.
It presents the concerns of several Native American (NA) tribes related to the placement of a number of solar power tower generating facilities on federally-owned areas of the Mojave Desert. These locations are administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a division of the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI). The concerns relate to the placement of facilities on sites sacred to the NA tribes and the related destruction of geoglypths and other religious structures and burial sites that are valued parts of their NA culture.
Don’t pave paradise to put up a solar array
Mineral County Independent News, Nevada. Thomas Mitchell
At one point in the film an exasperated woman explains, “Ruining things to go ‘green’ is an oxymoron.”
That is pretty much the theme of Robert Lundahl’s documentary film “Who Are My People?” which had its Nevada premiere earlier this month, the same evening after Harry Reid’s perennial Brother Reid traveling planet salvation show, otherwise called the National Clean Energy Summit 6.0, in which a gaggle of government and industry luminaries touted the value of renewable energy projects, mostly on federal public land.
Unlike Reid and company, Lundahl, who grew up in the desert Southwest, sees something wrong with literally paving over hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine desert — which has been home to Native Americans and countless species of wildlife for thousands of years — with solar panels, solar mirrors and windmills, which in 25 years will be so much hazardous waste to be abandoned or hauled off, further scaring the landscape.
The hour-long film is a pastiche of desert scenes and running commentary from archeologists and scientists, as well as tribal leaders who point to various sacred sites that could be destroyed or despoiled by the industrial-scale “green energy” projects.
Some of the more striking footage in the film is aerial footage of the Intaglios — giant figures carved into the desert floor near Blythe, Calif. The largest of these prehistoric figures, or geoglyphs, measures 171 feet from head to toe.
Portland, Oregon
Andrea Morison, MA is Coordinator, Peace Valley Environment Association, Fort St. John, BC, Canada
“Who Are My People?” a documentary film by Robert Lundahl, will leave you thinking that the English language is at a deficit when it comes to allowing one to accurately describe, in a single word, what we now, inaccurately label ‘green’ and ‘renewable’ energy.
Lundahl brings you to the southwestern California desert, a seemingly perfect location for the world’s largest solar installations.
Afterall, what could be wrong with capturing all that California sunshine on a blank desert landscape?
Plenty, it turns out. In fact these massive solar installations take up huge quantities of land and on this particular landscape lies some of the of the world’s greatest, unsolved mysteries! (Read More).
Fort St. John, BC, Canada
Wagner, South Dakota
World Premiere
June 15, 2013 (San Diego) – The world premiere of the documentary film “Who are My People?”, presented by the Activist San Diego, will be June 22, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. at Joyce Beers Uptown Community Center, 3900 Vermont Street, San Diego. The film created by Robert Lundahl is about the environmental struggles, indigenous lands and Native peoples. Lundahl and several tribal elders and leaders will attend the premiere.
The one-hour television documentary film takes an in depth look at the current and controversial topic of the build out of large scale renewable energy in the deserts of the west. The Los Angeles Times indicates, we are at a “Flashpoint” between competing value-systems. Bodies have been exhumed, and geoglyphs destroyed, in an area that is a long-term indigenous settlement.
“Who Are My People?” depicts how the world's energy firms like Solar Millennium, the German Solar Giant, have met their match in a small group of Native American elders, in the hottest desert on the planet. The film takes us behind the scenes of two of the largest solar projects in the world, "fast tracked" by US renewable energy policies.
“Documentary filmmaker Robert Lundahl’s latest work, “Who Are My People?,” explores the effects of large-scale solar energy developments on Native American spiritual and cultural connections to Southern California’s scorched outback of creosote and alkaline lake beds.
At the heart of the dispute is a contest between Native American traditions and developers and government officials who contend benefits from the projects such as greenhouse gas reductions and renewable energy production outweigh their disturbance of cultural resources in the bleak desert terrain.”
Louis Sahagun Los Angeles Times
Is The US Department of the Interior Committing Cultural Genocide And Ecocide?
Originally published on San Diego Loves Green
by Roy L. Hales
While Secretary of the Interior Jewell addressed the Clean Energy Summit 6.0 in Las Vegas last week, a very different examination of America’s solar policy was happening just down the street.
If you were to go by the media says, it was the Nevada premiere of San Diego filmmaker Robert Lundahl’s documentary “Who Are My People?” Lundahl interviewed on Nevada Public radio and featured in The Las Vegas Review-Journal, Thomas Mitchell’s column, and The Ely Times. (That last article is listed in the Bureau of Land Management’s California News Bytes.) San Diego Loves Green also did a write-up, which was picked up by The Native News Network and Salem News.
Lundahl contends that, in their rush to develop supposedly “green” energy in the desert, the Department of the Interior is destroying pristine habitat, failing to consult with the tribes and violating Native American sacred sites.
Joshua Tree, California
Las Vegas, Nevada
Beverly Hills, California
Western Canada’s award-winning environmental news magazine.
The Watershed Sentinel has been the voice of the grassroots environmental movement in BC (and beyond) for over 25 years.
Comox, BC, Canada
Dolores Broten, Watershed Sentinal
Filmmaker Robert Lundahl’s “Who Are My People?” (53 min., 2014) tells the unusual but sadly familiar story of the conflict over the land between First Nations and development, between well-meaning environmental values and precious indigenous knowledge. In this case the tribal peoples are Quechan, Kumeyaay, Yaqui, and Chemehuevi, among others, trying to protect the sacred sites of their homelands in the deserts of the USA from solar and wind power development.
In the Mojave desert the scale is enormous. Between 200 and 250 solar and wind electricity projects are being planned, with disruption of the ecology on a massive scale. But in those millions of acres of desert are at least 17,000 geogylphs, sacred sites, and artifacts, which the indigenous people say keep the story of their land and their creation views intact.
Trailer 1:30
“Who Are My People” released theatrically in 6 states.