The emotionally charged documentary Crying Earth Rise Up! was showcased to a full house at this week’s Sedona International Film Festival in Sedona, Arizona.
Filmmaker Suree Towfighnia and film editor Sharon Karp were on hand for the screening. “This is the fourth screening of the film,” Towfighnia said. ” We literally finished production just last week. So I feel a sense of relief and accomplishment.”
The film, narrated by Tantoo Cardinal, focuses on two Oglala Lakota women on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. One is Elisha Yellow Thunder, a young mother with a daughter, Laila, who was born with cloacal abnormalities that causes internal organs to be connected. Laila’s only functioning kidney fails at age 8. Elisha’s quest to determine the cause of her daughter’s birth defects leads her to the water on her homeland. Majoring in geology, she is mentored by Dr. Hannan LaGarry, a geology professor and author of 5 year study on hydrology the Ogallala Aquifer who teaches her to study water and uranium outcroppings on her homeland as a possible cause of the high number of birth defects and stillborn babies on Pine Ridge. “My little girl’s story is too big not to tell,” Yellow Thunder said.
via It's Mother Earth vs. Father Greed in New Pine Ridge Uranium Documentary – ICTMN.com.