Indigenous communities around the world resist threats to their sacred places—the original protected lands—in a growing movement to defend human rights and restore the environment. In this four-part documentary series, native people share ecological wisdom and spiritual reverence while battling a utilitarian view of land in the form of government megaprojects, consumer culture, and resource extraction as well as competing religions and climate change. Narrated by Graham Greene, with the voices of Tantoo Cardinal and Q'orianka Kilcher, the “Standing on Sacred Ground” series exposes threats to native peoples' health, livelihood, and cultural survival in eight communities around the world. Rare verité scenes of tribal life allow indigenous people to tell their own stories—and confront us with the ethical consequences of our culture of consumption. Produced by the Sacred Land Film Project. http://standingonsacredground.org/
Since 1984, Earth Island Institute’s Sacred Land Film Project has produced a variety of media and educational materials — films, videos, DVDs, articles, photographs, reports, school curricula materials and Web content — to deepen public understanding of sacred places, indigenous cultures and environmental justice. Their mission is to use film, journalism and education to rekindle reverence for land, increase respect for cultural diversity, stimulate dialogue about connections between nature and culture, and help protect sacred lands and diverse spiritual practices. For the last two decades they have focused on the production and distribution of documentary films, including In the Light of Reverence (2001), and their four-part series on sacred places around the world, Standing on Sacred Ground (2013).