The Environmental Crisis on Native American Lands

At 3 Generations, we have long believed it important to bring worldwide attention to the degradation of Native American lands due to oil extraction. To that end, we made, and are still distributing the film A Different American Dream. We were distressed to learn that climate change is also having a negative impact on those same stunningly beautiful lands. The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the Oglala Sioux Nation, has been hit with a weather-induced humanitarian disaster.  As The New York Times recently reported, massive amounts of snow have produced terrible flooding and created a state of emergency in South Dakota. Residents do not have the resources to deal with a crisis of this magnitude, and outside help has also been “conspicuously low”. This flooding has been the worst the reservation has seen in at least a generation.

This environmental disaster is exacerbated by the challenges that already plague Native Americans all over the U.S. Half of Pine Ridge’s residents live in poverty and the unemployment rate is 20 percent. Circumstances that have made the situation in Pine Ridge a perfect “collision of nature, poverty, and inadequate infrastructure”.

Unfortunately, these are not coincidental nor surprising given our country’s treatment of Native Americans. Evidence shows that climate change is taking the largest toll on poor and vulnerable people. And much of the harm is not by accident, but because of the failure of governments to close the development gaps that leave Native Americans, at risk. Governments have the power to redress these inequalities and build climate change resilience. Until that happens it is incumbent upon us to bring attention to these crises.

Ultimately it is the youth on reservations will be most adversely impacted by climate change.  Thus, at 3 Generations, we are making a commitment to create and support programs that focus on empowering Native American youth. These include helping the next generation of Native filmmakers and activists find their own voice to fight for change. Watch this space for upcoming details about these programs. In the meantime, our films A Different American Dream and Native Silence are available for educational and community screenings.

A shocking piece of investigative journalism in the New York Times by Pulitzer Prize-winning Eric Lipton confirms and amplifies what we’ve been raising awareness about for the last 4 years. The news from the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation is ominous. The trade off between short term economic gains from fracking and its long term environmental damage disproportionately harms the residents of the reservation. Of course, this story from Fort Berthold is only one example of the danger of relaxing of environmental protections.

“The venting of unburned methane fouls the air with chemicals that are not only in some cases carcinogenic but over the next 100 years will be 30 times as potent a cause of global warming as carbon dioxide. At the same time, the improper burning of methane can create pollutants that cause a variety of respiratory problems.” — Eric Lipton

Of course, this comes as no surprise to us. Key members of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara nations, the protagonists of our 2016 feature documentary, A Different American Dream, knew that this crisis was coming. This is the message of our film.  As if it were not bad enough when we filmed in 2015, the situation is even worse as 2018. As we write this report, the E.P.A. is proposing to further loosen regulations on pollution and fossil fuels at power plants—that is, if the E.P.A. survives the government shutdown and their current lack of funding.

We’ve put up A Different American Dream on Vimeo On Demand, as we believe this warning becomes more important every day. We believe that legislation must be strengthened and enforced, because lives are at stake. Not just at Fort Berthold, but across the globe.

For those who haven’t seen the film, give it a watch here:

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/adad