The Environmental Crisis on Native American Lands

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