Our Story: The Indigenous Led Fight to Protect Greater Chaco Debuts in Albuquerque to Sold-Out Crowd!
Coalition documentary advances greater protections for Greater Chaco
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 20, 2022
Panel video: https://www.facebook.com/FrackOffChaco
Tiwa Territory (Albuquerque, NM): Pueblo Action Alliance and the Greater Chaco Coalition hosted the public premiere of the award-winning documentary film Our Story: The Indigenous Led Fight to Protect Greater Chaco at Guild Cinema to a packed-house this evening, with tickets selling out in presale.
Winning multiple film festival awards, Our Story is a 47-minute documentary that highlights the Indigenous-led fight to stop fracking and protect the Greater Chaco Landscape.
A panel moderated by Somah Haaland (narrator of Our Story) and Rebecca Sobel (Our Story consultant and Organizing Director for WildEarth Guardians), featured Julia Bernal (Director of Pueblo Action Alliance and Our Story Co-Producer), Daniel Tso (Navajo Nation Council Delegate and Our Story Co-Director) and Samuel Sage (Counselor Chapter Community Services Coordinator and Vice-President of the Board of Diné C.A.R.E.) occurred after the screening.
Emerging from a long-standing collaboration between grassroots Diné leaders, Pueblo organizers, and the Greater Chaco Coalition, members of the film team worked together over three years to showcase stunning footage of the region, conduct historical research, gather interviews from key grassroots leaders and political representatives, and engage in a collective editorial process. While the Greater Chaco Coalition (@Frack Off Chaco) is a collaborative effort between Indigenous community leaders, Native groups, nonprofits, and public lands and water protectors, Our Story exclusively centers Indigenous voices.
The film debuts as Interior Secretary Deb Haaland advances the Honoring Chaco Initiative, a two-part process involving the withdrawal of federal minerals within 10 miles of Chaco Culture National Historical Park and a new collaborative process to finally address the need for landscape-level management reforms.
For over a century, the federal government has quite literally treated the Greater Chaco region like a national energy sacrifice zone – allowing oil, gas, and mining companies to exploit layers of law, regulations, and oversight, permitting fracking spills, leaks, and explosions daily, and disproportionately harming Indigenous communities.
Our Story reaffirms the need for the Department of the Interior to chart a new course with its Honoring Chaco Initiative and center meaningful consultation and consent with impacted communities and environmental justice outcomes in the process. As the film shows, this must include a pause on all oil and gas related activities until Interior completes a comprehensive landscape-level management plan that finally addresses the cumulative impacts of oil and gas activities in the region and provides assurances and safeguards to address disproportionate impacts to public health, local quality of life, cultural resources, water resources, air quality, environmental, social, and economic justice issues, and climate change. Land management decisions must protect the integrity of the entire Greater Chaco cultural landscape, which goes well beyond 10-miles of Chaco Culture National Park..
Additional links:
Directors’ statement: https://www.videoproject.org/our-story.html
Statements:
“Pueblo Action Alliance gives its gratitude to the organizers within the Greater Chaco coalition that give their love and compassion to protecting this landscape. What we have tried to emulate in this film, is the solidarity built between the Pueblo and Diné organizers regardless of other political tensions. With this film being a product of that virtue, this coalition will continue to use this film as a resource for future organizing efforts.”
---Pueblo Action Alliance