However Wide the Sky: Places of Power

Pamela Pierce, founding partner and CEO of Silver Bullet Productions in Santa Fe, New Mexico recently announced that "However Wide The Sky: Places of Power" has received an Emmy award in the Best Documentary category. This beautifully filmed documentary originally aired on the New Mexico Public Broadcasting Station. Narrated by Indigenous actress Tantoo Cardinal, the documentary explores the history and spirituality of the Indigenous people of the American Southwest, who are deeply rooted in the land. Since the beginning of time, they have been stewards and protectors of their home lands, past and present. When the Pueblo people pray, they pray for the living land as far as they can see. However wide the sky is, this is who they pray for.

Pierce worked with tribal leaders to film on the land. The areas chosen are: Chaco Canyon, Bears Ears, Zuni Salt Lake, Mount Taylor, Pueblo of Santa Ana, Taos Blue Lake, Mesa Prieta and Santa Fe. These places intimately connect the people and their beliefs to the natural world. This is their story, of the land and who they are. Pierce says the concerns about the use, misuse, development, drilling and mining of scared places in New Mexico began a conversation between Silver Bullet Productions and tribal leaders about the importance of education in 2016.

 

"The land was treated as a commodity, something to be owned, mined, drilled or developed," she says. "In order to protect land and water rights, it seemed that educating about the significance of land might help alert those leaders. The more we know, the better we do. Film can be a powerful tool to change thinking, and motivate people to vote. The danger to land, and the fight to protect land, will always be an issue worth fighting for, regardless of culture or national origin. All land is sacred, and it is a universal concern worth fighting for."
 

The documentary features New Mexico's Chaco Canyon and Utah's Bear's Ears, which is significant because the locations are under siege. Bear's Ears is a modern day story of government versus layers of culture, and the risk of development if the power and policies of the U.S. shift -- it is just how fragile the protection of land is. Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is facing drilling for fracking wells. It's not just the wells and the roads that have an impact on the land. Tribal leaders see it as a real threat to their spiritual well being. Pierce thought it was important to really put that out there for the public to see and make them understand why this issue is important to tribes. From their perspective, the land does not belong to them. They belong to the land.
 

Pierce says some of the themes in the film include a distinction between stewardship and ownership, the layers of cultural life on every piece of land, no place is ever abandoned, but remains living from the ancestors who have come before, places have shared cultural history and the difference between being from a place, and of a place. Here is the trailer.