2000
Sundance Film Festival, Park City, UT
Navajo Nation Museum, Window Rock, AZ
Arizona International Film Festival, Tucscon, AZ
American Indian Center, Chicago IL
Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL
Old Town School of Folk Music, Chicago, IL
NAES College, Chicago, IL
Durango Film Festival, Durango, CO
Smithsonian’s Native American Film Festival, New York City
Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC
US Geological Survey, Reston, VA

2001
Manchester, England
California State University, Fullerton, CA
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
Albuquerque Public Library, NM
Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ
Mesa Verde National Park, CO
Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL
Living Treasures Awards Ceremony, Chicago, IL

2003
Crow Canyon Archaeology Center, Cortez, CO
Sedgwick Cultural Center, Philadelphia, PA

2004
Finger Lakes Film Festival, Ithaca, NY
Arizona State Museum, Tucson, AZ

2006
Galleria Mistica, Tucson, AZ
Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA

2008
Congress of the United States, Washington DC

2010
Rough Rock Trading Post, AZ
Salt Lake City Public Library, UT

2011
University of Idaho
American Society for Environmental HIstory, Phoenix, AZ
Southern Oregon University, Ashland, OR
Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
Phil Thomas Performing Arts Center, Shiprock, NM
Farmington Public Library, NM

The abandoned mine here, about 60 miles east of the Grand Canyon, joins the list of hundreds of such sites identified across the 27,000 square miles of Navajo territory in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico that are the legacy of shoddy mining practices and federal neglect. From the 1940s through the 1980s, the mines supplied critical materials to the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

For years, unsuspecting Navajos inhaled radioactive dust and drank contaminated well water. Many of them became sick with cancer and other diseases.

The radioactivity at the former mine is said to measure one million counts per minute, translating to a human dose that scientists say can lead directly to malignant tumors and other serious health damage, according to Lee Greer, a biologist at La Sierra University in Riverside, Calif. Two days of exposure at the Cameron site would expose a person to more external radiation than the Nuclear Regulatory Commission considers safe for an entire year.

Read the full article to learn more.

The 27,000 square mile Navajo Nation, encompassing parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, contain the largest uranium deposits in the United States, and more than 500 abandoned Cold War era uranium mines, according to the EPA.

The internationally acclaimed film demonstrates environmental racism and the struggle a Navajo grandmother goes through to attain justice.

Perry Charley, director of the Uranium Education Program at Dine’ College in Shiprock, New Mexico, will present the film and lead a discussion of the lasting impact of mining on Indian lands.

Read the full article here.

First,  they made the issue super simple (deceptively simple?).  In this instance, it seems irresponsible, but in general, simpler messages work best. In our Return of Navajo Boy campaign, when we spoke of Elsie’s house made of Uranium rock, it brought tons of media and a federal response.  The Uranium house opened the door to a much larger and deeper examination of the issues of uranium contamination on the Navajo Reservation.  A deeper look into the LRA is probably not the intent of Kony 2012, and neither the film or the campaign are attracting those who might be so inclined. Get the bad guy is a pretty simple concept, and it appeals to millions.

Another observation is that the filmmakers broke the fourth wall. The filmmakers are visible, they tell their story from their own perspective, and their objective is clear from the outset.  This seems important.  We are experimenting with this transparency in our newest film, Food Patriots (www.foodpatriots.com), and I have to admit, being in the film feels mighty uncomfortable. We didn’t put ourselves much in www.RobbinIslandSingers.com, and people were confused about Groundswell’s role. They seldom understood that the Singing group and education project were our doing, and could understand even less our motivation for doing it.  The manner that Russell expresses his point of view is repulsive to some, but the folks he’s trying to reach identify with his western perspective and his motive, so in that regard, he’s right on his target.

Another observation is that we see ourselves in this film and we like our reflection. “We” are the privileged, the tech-savvy, and the social media using audience. We have the power to be a savior, to wear the white hat, and to get instant recognition among our friends.  The film is not about Kony, the LRA , the generations of child soldiers, ,orphans, or even Jacob. Its about us;  the power we can wield with a click of a finger, and the power we can influence if we all click together.

Kony 2012 emboldens my belief in Groundswell’s mission, and in the possibilities for documentary to truly influence social change.  There are so many incredible filmmakers out there making media that can make a difference — Kartemquin Films,  Siskel/Jacobs Productions, and even veterans like Michael Moore. Kony 2012 gives us all lessons we can use to re-activate the films we have made, and to borrow from elements that spawned success here to make our future work even more effective at moving audiences to take action.

The event, which starts at 7PM and lasts two hours, will also feature a Q&A session and presentation by Perry Charley, who is featured in the film’s epilogue. Charley is also the director of the Uranium Education Program at Diné College.

The KAFM Radio Room is located at 1310 Ute Ave, Grand Junction, Colorado. For more information, visit their official website.

Additionally, Charley will visit a series of Mesa University classes on the 27th and the 28th to make presentations about the uranium contamination on Navajo Nation.

See below for photographs of Northwestern interns organizing vast amounts of data provided by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

The camera pans across the vermillion mesas and buttes of Monument Valley that John Ford and John Wayne made mythic. Here, near the border between Utah and Arizona, lives the most famous family you have never heard of, the family of Happy Cly, pictured again and again in Arizona Highways, the portfolios of photographers Josef Muench and Ray Manley, and postcards sold at Goulding’s tourist lodge. Dissolve. The next scenes introduce Cly’s great-grandson, Lorenzo Begay. He leafs through old black-and-white pictures of his family, stills from a movie he has never seen: a smiling girl in a velvet- een blouse studded with silver conchos, a grinning boy with a bandana tied across his forehead. “I never thought that pictures would change anyone’s life,” Begay narrates. “But that was before the return of the Navajo boy.”

To read the full article, visit the Oxford Journals website.