Documentary Premiere - Stop the Reroute: Taking a Stand on Sacred Land

For immediate release:
website: oakfolkfilms.net

Community Film Premiere

Stop the ReRoute: Taking a Stand on Sacred Land
(feature-length documentary – 89 minutes)

Saturday, March 28, 2009
7:00 PM

Roosevelt High School auditorium
Minneapolis, MN

Ticket price: $5

Tickets can be purchased in advance at Northern Sun, 2916 East Lake Street, Minneapolis, or at the door the evening of the event.

Contact: James V. Gambone
952-472-3379

Documentary Summary

Stop the ReRoute: Taking Stand on Sacred Land will make its Twin Cities community debut at Roosevelt High School in the same high school auditorium where organized opposition to the reroute of Highway 55 began in 1996.

Indigenous and environmental activists tell the story of a truly unique moment in Minnesota history in this inspiring documentary. A coalition of activists came together to preserve historic and sacred land from being destroyed by a highway project. Dedicated young people put their lives on the line, sitting in trees and blocking construction. Neighborhood folks fought through legal channels to keep their homes and their park from being destroyed. And Native Americans, including descendents of Little Crow’s band of Dakota, articulated their long-standing and sacred connection to this “land of the lodge,” from the days before Europeans, to present day ceremonies at Coldwater Spring.

This unlikely coalition faced off against the most powerful agency in State Government—the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT)—over a portion of the Highway 55 project that was to be rerouted through Minnehaha Park. Between August of 1998 and December of 1999, the coalition sustained the longest urban encampment in Minnesota and US history. The film shows what happens to people who speak their truths to powerful institutions and exercise their rights to protest and demand inclusion in making public policy.

The film carefully documents how these activists lived in tipis, make-shift huts, tents and condemned houses over two, very cold Minnesota winters. They gathered petitions, challenged and lobbied public officials, shot “witness videos,” attended dozens of public hearings, chained themselves to bulldozers, were sawed out of trees they were trying to save, participated in numerous acts of civil disobedience, and kept the sacred fire burning. Very early one winter morning, 600 police raided the encampment and arrested 37 people. Even after pepper spray and brutal treatment by the police, the activists returned to their camp and carried on for another year.

This documentary is an unofficial contribution to the Minnesota sesquicentennial celebration. Never-before-seen photographs and testimony document the case made by the Mendota Mendawakenton Dakota that the area impacted by the Highway 55 reroute, including Coldwater Spring, was sacred land long before the State of Minnesota was founded.

This is a complex and universal story about a clash of cultures, and deeper questions about the limits of the human spirit. The documentary asks every viewer to consider how we all must make choices between a petroleum-based transportation system and a sustainable, earth-centered one. It asks the questions: “How far are you willing to go for something you believe in—especially if your voice is not being heard? Who decides what Native American sacred land, spiritual practices or water rights are in a secular, and technologically-driven society?”

In the end, the highway was built, the Savanna cut, hundreds arrested, the encampment destroyed, the Burr Oak savannah cut and the highway rerouted. But the community’s efforts and legacy continues. Grafts from sacred trees were replanted and are growing across the river in Mendota. The coalition and efforts that continued after the encampment ended, helped to keep the spring from being compromised by forcing a highway redesign that included raising the roadbed. And the Mendota Mendawakenton Dakota are using the two books published about this history and this documentary to help press their case for official tribal recognition from the Federal government.

Oak Folk Films has entered Stop the ReRoute: Taking a Stand On Sacred Land in festivals worldwide, and is seeking a theatrical distributor. We are developing an educational DVD which will be marketed to environmental, Native American, civic engagement and academic groups and organizations.

The documentary has already been chosen to appear as the only local film in the Walker Art Center’s “Women With Vision Festival” at 2 PM on March 21, 2009. This locally-produced, feature-length documentary is aiming for national and international distribution.

A special pre-release showing for those interested in writing a review of the documentary will take place from 2-4:30 on Friday, March 13th at IFP North, Minnesota Center for Media Arts, 2446 University Avenue West, Suite 100, St. Paul, MN 55114, phone 651-644-1912.

If your deadline needs are earlier, please contact James V. Gambone for a preview copy: 952-472-3379 or jgambone@oakfolkfilms.net