- These places are where the real nature of the world
glows and emanates, yeah.
- The mountains will be here long after we're gone
and they are sacred beings unto themselves,
- I think the West hasn't quite understood the need
to have a spirituality that links to the land
upon which they live.
- Long before the idea of national parks people
had sacred sites, the original protected lands.
For the dominant world religions,
the holy lands are in the Middle East--
Jerusalem, Mecca.
But for the world's indigenous people,
sacred lands are all around us and they are under siege.
In this series, eight threatened cultures
make a stand on sacred ground.
- The culture and the ecology of the planet
are disappearing hand in hand.
- This is my land.
I'm standing on my land.
You have no right.
- Our history tells us we know how to fight.
- No mining on sacred land.
- That they've tried instruct Indians to be capitalists
ever since you got here, but we don't value what you value.
- We own the land.
We own the water.
We own the sky.
We own everything.
We have to shift our attitude of ownership of nature
to relationship with nature.
The moment you change from ownership to relationship,
you create a sense of the sacred.
- In northern California, a tribe
tries to hold on to a stretch of river
threatened by expansion of one of the West's biggest dams.
- This is not a recreational area for us.
This is a life way.
- And in the Russian Republic of Altai,
shamans and activists confront a flood
of tourists, a gas pipeline that would cut through a World
Heritage site, and the destruction of ancient burials.
- Traditional people have a hold of a truth
that we set aside thousands of years ago
and it's not primitive.
It's profound.
And it is not part of the past.
It's part of the future.
- The largest country in the world, Russia,
is home to dozens of indigenous cultures.
One of the most secretive and beautiful
survived ancient invaders and Soviet repression
at the crossroads of Central Asia, the mystical Altai
republic.
- Life is lived in three realms and the song of the throat
singer reaches them all.
The low tone is for the world below, the high for the realm
above.
In this middle ground, the spirit journeys
of singers, healers, and shamans bring the world into balance.
- The word "shaman" originated in Siberia.
Traces of human life here go back to the Stone Age.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991,
the Altai republic was born.
The transition from government ownership of land
under Soviet control to a new Russian system allowing
privatization has left sensitive areas vulnerable.
So Altaians have created parks on their own
to protect history, biodiversity, and their beliefs
about the land.
At mountain passes and river crossings,
tying ribbons is an act of gratitude
to the spirits of place.
- Pilgrims still pray in these mountains
but most tourists come here to play.
Foreign investment in the Altai as a place of adventure
is causing a collision of values.
The founder of Altai's first nature parks,
Danil Mamyev is a geologist and a practitioner
of shamanic traditions.
In both worlds he carries responsibilities
for stones and mountains.
Mapping sacred lands to protect them,
Mamyev hopes to minimize damage from the growing
presence of outsiders.
This new indigenous protected area will regulate tourism
while ensuring community access to the sacred mountain
at the heart of the park, Uch-Enmek.
- Before approaching the sacred mountain,
Danil is blessed by Arzhan, a shaman who
can see into the three realms and remove obstacles
from the path.
The fire is a doorway to the spirit world
and milk is a pure offering of gratitude.
- Russia's state energy company, Gazprom,
is planning to build a natural gas pipeline directly
across Altai's fragile tundra and cultural sites,
bisecting a UNESCO World Heritage site,
the Ukok Plateau.
The pipeline will open the Chinese border
for the first time, creating an energy corridor
to one of the world's fastest growing economies.
- A place for listening and reflection, the Ukok Plateau
is known as a quiet zone.
It is the source of great rivers that flow north of the Arctic
Ocean and home to the endangered snow leopard.
Burial kurgans hide ancient heroes who are still honored
today.
- Local opponents of the pipeline
organize protests that couldn't have taken place
under previous governments.
Gazprom officials who came to Altai for hearings
were met with fierce resistance.
- In Altai, Danil Mamyev envisioned
a new model for parks.
Biodiversity and cultural sites are both protected here
and local people continue to live
within the park boundaries.
Park advocates race the clock as they
work to propose an alternate route for Gazprom's pipeline.
- Shamans and scientists are working together
to persuade the Russian government
to give legal protection to ancient cultural sites
and natural sites, sacred springs, and healing rocks.
- Altai was transformed after the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Nomadic herders were forced onto collective farms,
resulting in devastating famines.
In the 1930s, under Josef Stalin's iron grip,
thousands of Altaians died in political purges and labor
camps.
- Mainstream religions and native mysticism
were brutally repressed in the Soviet Union.
After examination by Stalin's scientists
for any supernatural abilities, shamans of Altai were killed
and their belongings were burned or shipped off to museums.
- Drawn by Altai's pristine beauty, visitors
are mostly unaware of local customs and taboos.
Altai has been discovered.
Resorts for summer pleasure and winter skiing
are under construction on newly privatized lands.
- Tourism creates new jobs and increases local pride
in Altai's culture and history.
It's a mixed blessing.
Westerners now come to Altai as spiritual tourists.
At Mount Belukha, Altai's ties most sacred peak,
European shamans bring paying customers
for healing ceremonies.
- Everybody has a different connection
with the spirits from this area and they find themself
how to do that.
And I am very glad about the people who come
with me because they really--
all of them is very open.
They don't need knowledge about history of the place.
They need connection with the spirits, connection
and the nature.
Now it's time for connection with the spirit of the wolf.
The wolf is coming for you from the North.
- Altaian shamans believe that imitation of their rituals
brings personal harm to visitors and spiritual pollution
to their sacred places.
- Pilgrim or tourist, the hunger to explore and connect
is universal.
These guardians of other sacred sites
from all over Central Asia come together
to share ways of engaging tourists
in an intimate conversation with nature.
- From Uch-Enmek Mountain, they follow Danil Mamyev
on a pilgrimage into the heart of Altai.
- The delegation of sacred site guardians
follows the route of the proposed natural gas
pipeline onto the Ukok Plateau.
The local guardians teach their guest
to tie ribbons and leave offerings
as they approach the burial kurgans of cultural heroes
thousands of years old, including the Ukok Princess.
- Ukok, the place where one can hear the heavens,
was her resting place.
Beautifully decorated with tattoos, her real name lost
in the tall grass of time, we call her shaman or princess.
We still feel the sadness of her youthful passing.
Our ancestors buried her on Ukok Plateau
surrounded by six horses.
For 25 centuries she lay in peace
in a leather casket carved with images of snow leopards.
- An undisturbed kurgan looks like a grassy hill,
but it disguises elaborate burial chambers.
- In 1993, without the knowledge of local people,
Russian archaeologists unearthed the spectacular Ukok princess
from the permafrost and took her to Moscow.
After the kurgan was emptied, a major earthquake
rocked the region.
Altaians demanded the return of their ancestor.
- On the plateau, the sacred site guardians
from Altai and Central Asia reached the farthest point
of their journey, the kurgan of the Ukok Princess.
- is
- At the empty grave, Maria Amanchina and Danil Mamyev
pray for the Ukok Princess and for the success
of their petition demanding her return.
- Sacred site is because gods live on the top of the hill
because that's a very peaceful place.
No consumerism there, no shops there, no shopping malls there.
So you are leaving the world behind you
to reach a place of total calm and total peace.
- All peoples have origin stories and creation stories
in which we're given a path.
And we often bumble around on it,
but we usually find our way.
And there's divine intervention at many times
in our people's histories, and in that divine intervention
there is also often a place where
we are instructed to go to find something to clarify our path,
to be healed, to know our direction, to get our food,
to be instructed.
And those are our sacred places.
- There is this great hunger in Euro-American societies
for intimacy.
When you're in the landscapes that
are defined by traditional people,
there's intimacy of every sort.
How did they get that?
Or more importantly, what are they doing not to lose that?
With intimacy comes strength.
And people who feel their own dignity
and a sense of self-worth can accomplish anything.
- In fact, the whole Earth is sacred.
It's your mother altogether and I don't care where you are.
There's no place that's not special.
We use the word sacred.
That's not an Indian word.
That comes from Europe, comes from your churches.
And we have our own ways and we have our own way to say things.
The way we use it, it's a place to be respected
- In northern California, along a river
that flows from Mount Shasta, the Winnemem Wintu tribe
resist the ruin of a landscape that is home
to 1,000 years of ceremony.
If the US government raises the height of Shasta Dam,
the flooding of a scenic river and the site
of an ancient coming-of-age ritual
could extinguish the Winnemem culture.
- Because this is a reliable water source, what they're
looking at is finding other ways to be
able to meet the population growth
and be able to provide that reliable water
source for everyone.
- We're running out of river.
It's a thought that we can hardly tolerate.
But hopefully, there'll be good people
in the world who understand this and realize
that dams are not the answer to the world's water shortage.
- Caleen Sisk is the chief and spiritual leader
of a nation of 125 people.
They fight to save the waters of the world,
not with weapons of war but with dance song and ceremony.
- We believe that this spring is so sacred,
we only go up there once a year to sing
at the doorway of our creation story and let the mountain
know, the spring know that we're still doing
our jobs as was given to us.
That's what we promised when we were put on Earth,
is that we'll always go there.
We'll sing to it and make sure that we're
doing as much as we can for all the water,
all the way down to the oceans.
It's hard for a person to realize
about being out in a pristine, sensitive area
when they grow up and all they have is sidewalks.
They don't understand that this is
where their water comes from.
They turn their tap on and they get water,
but they don't realize that all of the upper watershed
is where that water comes from.
People can live without oil, they can live without gold,
but nothing can live without water.
- The middle water people, or Winnemem,
took their name from a river.
Their territory extended from the spring on Mount Shasta
all the way down the river renamed the McCloud.
Thousands lived in the densely populated watershed,
rich with salmon and acorns, until newcomers
brought devastating disease and Gold Rush-era violence.
In the 20th century, the remnants
of the tribe and the once famous McCloud River salmon
lost their homes to Shasta Dam and the largest reservoir
in California.
- It's pretty magnificent, isn't it?
602 feet high and Shasta Dam is 183 feet thick.
And one of the main reasons for looking at raising Shasta Dam
is the fact that there is only so much water on this Earth.
By 2025, they project there will be 50 million people living
in California.
We're not going to have enough water for everyone,
so they are looking at options.
One of the options is raising Shasta Dam.
- The paradox of water supply and water demand in California
is that the vast majority of precipitation
occurs in the far northern portion of state
and the demand is in the southern portion of the state.
So dams help to bridge that paradox.
That's what makes the growing season possible in California.
- Raising Shasta Dam would allow Central Valley farmers to buy
taxpayer-subsidized water and resell it at a substantial
profit to Southern California's cities.
Cheap water from Shasta Lake has made the desert bloom
for the last 70 years.
When the federal government built the Central Valley
project in the 1930s, the keystone was Shasta Dam.
The need for power generation, flood control,
and a steady supply for thirsty farmlands was unquestioned.
Migrating salmon were permanently
blocked from reaching their spawning grounds
and when the water began to back up behind the new dam,
dozens of Winnemem villages and burial grounds on the McCloud
River disappeared from the map.
Racing the waters of Shasta Lake,
government agents dug up family plots along the McCloud River
and reburied the bodies in a segregated cemetery
on higher ground.
But the living Winnemem were given no land
to replace their lost homes.
- So the loss was more than just 26 miles
of our sacred places and our dance grounds
and our way of life that had been known by the older
people in my tribe, but we also lost a lot of dignity
that came with being run out of our homeland and no place
to go.
- When they reburied their dead here in the 1940s,
the Winnemem were acknowledged as a tribe.
But in the 1980s, the US government
left the Winnemem off the list of federally recognized tribes,
taking away their right to the cemetery
and their voice in the decision on raising Shasta Dam.
- And I don't know why the government can't recognize us.
You know, they know we've been here from day one.
And we're not going away.
- If you could give me what your major concerns
would be regarding the dam raise?
- Working for the Bureau of Reclamation,
an ethnologist must document cites the proposed government
project could destroy.
- This site over here, up where the trees come down,
and on that site where the creek comes in,
there's burials up there.
- Folks that were massacred here,
are they still in this area?
Were they part of what's already been relocated?
- No, they're still here.
They're still here.
- And would they--
are their locations subject to the proposed project area?
- Yes.
- OK.
- This will devastate the Winnemem a second time.
The United States goes all over the world to protect and give
freedom to indigenous peoples.
But right here in their own backyard,
nothing is sacred here.
Sacred places are being destroyed.
But it's not just happening here.
Things are changing in our world that
take away from the health of our lands,
the health of our waters.
- People don't understand how our religion works
when we have these places of power or places
of prayer that are out in the open and out in nature.
And it really doesn't mean that much to them,
but to us it does.
We dance for the land, we dance for animals,
and we dance for the people, and we
dance for Mother Earth itself.
- We don't want to be just surviving,
but we want to be thriving.
We are trying to be happy again and building back
all of the things that my dad and mom where robbed of.
- Around the world, 20 sacred peaks hold the Earth together
and 20 sacred springs give young healers their gifts of power.
If the people forget to come to these places
and sing and do ceremony, the spirits die.
And nature thinks we don't need her anymore.
- Been down at the gate long?
- In 2007, shamans and throat singers
from the Altai Republic of Russia
came to the United States to meet the Winnemem.
Like many travelers before them, they
felt the pull of pilgrimage to Mount Shasta.
- My people lived all the way up the river
and that's how we survived was the salmon.
And then they completed this during World War II
while our people--
- Sharing common fears of losing sacred ground to government
projects, the Altaians and Winnemem
are linked in an indigenous network.
- --help you somehow.
- And that's the greater alliance
for Mother Earth, you know, that we're really
looking for because whatever happens our water happens
to your water.
We're a poor people here, financially.
- But we're one of the richest tribes, traditionally
and culturally.
- In similar rituals, shamans from opposite sides
of the Earth use fire, water, prayer, and song
to touch the spirit world.
In both countries, they have witnessed environmental changes
affecting the snows and springs.
They were all unprepared for what they found at the Winnemem
Spring on Mount Shasta.
- There's not a story in our backgrounds
that tells us of the time that this ever dried up.
This is the very first time.
Waters of the world are disappearing.
The government of this country has
no way of understanding this.
This is a sacred space.
This has been here from when time began.
And so for hard times like these,
we're going to have to get ready.
We're going to have to fight a little harder, do
a little more.
It'll take a lot of tears of the Winnemem people
to fill this spring back up.
This is our doorway back home.
This is where we came from.
It's like our mother is gone.
I pray to be strong.
I pray for the spring to come back.
Please don't leave us.
- Well, we've affected the patterns of the Earth
and we're going to suffer that consequence.
Where we lost our way, I think, as the human species,
we lost the understanding and therefore lost the respect.
But pockets of indigenous people have hung on to that
and we're truly an endangered species.
- At the same time, you know you see
people who retained connection and never forgot
or somehow, as is in many of our prophecies, woke back up
and remembered.
And those people remain on these front lines.
- The Winnemem mom have sued the federal government for failure
to protect their sacred sites and asked the California
legislature to support tribal recognition.
- This resolution was simply an opportunity for us to right
an historic wrong-- to help right an historic wrong--
by urging the federal government to stop ignoring this tribe.
- We are now a part of your history
and all we're asking is, is that you allow us to continue on
into the future carrying our things that
are important to us.
- You guys are an inconvenient tribe
for the federal government and that
would be my framing on this, that you are in the wrong place
when it comes to their plans for Shasta Dam,
and so they've decided to ignore you out of existence.
- We've got a tribe of this small little group
of people who're going to fight this big United States
government.
We're not going to go down without a fight.
- In 2004, inspired by a vision, the Winnemem
held a war dance in full view of their adversary, Shasta Dam.
For four days and nights, they fasted and danced
in spiritual warfare for the first time since 1880,
when their ancestors confronted government agents who
had taken over their fishing grounds on the McCloud River.
- Way back when, that was something
that we did when something threatened our way of life.
And we're ready for the ultimate battle.
- That was our river.
We lived there for thousands of years
and somehow it got away from us.
And so today, we don't own any land on the McCloud River.
- On the top left is the symbol that it'll use.
So on this, right now in this unit, it's a little fish.
- It's a fish.
I couldn't see it.
- A free computer program that enables users to create maps
over a base map of the world.
I'm going to say Google Earth.
- Got it.
- Wait, team number what?
- So the way a GPS unit works is each of these little receivers
is communicating with satellites that are
floating above us somewhere.
- Determined to preserve access to their sacred sites
for future generations, the Winnemem
create new maps from old tribal records.
- Many of these villages are under the lake now.
So the government has effectively
taken us off the map.
We have to get back on the map.
We have to get back in the public view to say,
this territory is one Winnemem.
- We're going to go to Two Sisters
today and climb her quick.
- Mapping covers more than geography and history.
- You gotta know these things.
- It helps the tribe pass on traditional knowledge
of their spiritual landscape and allows the Winnemem to keep
sensitive information private.
- This is Klut-Sohn, which is Eagle Rock.
You can come here and be right here,
and then that eagle spirit comes out and helps you.
It's kind of like the protector of the whole river.
- The youth of the tribe or especially concerned about
a medicine grinding rock needed for their coming-of-age
rituals.
Shasta lake already covers Puberty Rock
for much of the year.
- I think Puberty Rock is in between that rock
and that bush, right where that tree is almost.
- Yeah, looks good to me.
- What's the accuracy?
- Give or take 16 feet.
Let's call it P Rock.
- If the dam is raised, the rock may be underwater permanently.
- Look up there.
Look at that.
Is it an eagle?
- Yeah, the eagle.
- We believe that Puberty Rock has a purpose, that all
of these places have a purpose.
And if they're not used, then they go dormant.
And if they go dormant, then the energies that are in them dies.
- We were put down here to take care of the land,
take care of Mother Earth.
When the dam raises, a lot of places will be under the water.
And if they're in the water, we can't get to them.
You know, we can't dance underwater.
- Certainly, there are trade-offs.
We are very much aware of the concerns
that the Winnemem Wintu have raised with the enlargement
of Shasta Dam.
There are some environmentally and culturally sensitive areas
that must be examined and that must be resolved.
Ultimately, the Congress will authorize
construction of the dam raise or they will not.
- What we're going to do is smoke off your hats,
and then you're going to take it out to the falls
and run the water in it.
This is our sacred water.
All good things should come from that.
- In the Winnemem way, girls come of age in a four-day
initiation ceremony.
Across the river from the tribe, they
pray and practice traditional tasks near the medicine rock
that anchors the ritual to this spot.
At the start of the ceremony in 2010,
the rock was still under water at the foot of the Two Sister
Mountains.
The tribe went ahead anyway, hoping
the release of water from Shasta Dam
would lower the lake enough for the ceremony to be completed.
- That's the crossing of being a child into a young adult.
I think that's one of the things that society or people don't
do anymore.
I think it makes a difference on how the kids act
and how they treat their parents or how they treat the land.
- I just appreciate being out there with these girls
and helping my little sister do this.
It made my heart smile when she asked me.
It's really important, I think, that you young girls
go through this.
And you make me want fast also, like,
do we need to do to become young men.
Makes me want to get more culturally involved.
And I just want to say I love you both.
- Just in time, the rock emerged from the receding waters
of the reservoir, caked with mud.
- Morning.
Want some?
- Yes.
- OK.
- Before they swam across the river
to join the tribe as adults, the girls grind medicinal herbs.
100 years ago, even 1,000 years ago, this rock
was a touchstone for the Winnemem.
Puberty Rock symbolizes the survival
of a people who, come hell or high water, never let
go of their culture.
- On that last day, when they swim across the river,
I think it's the final transformation
being a young adult, just swimming across in and leaving
the child part there.
- All right.
You're almost there.
200 yards to go.
- You washed your cares away and now you're
ready for the big time.
- I guess that our tribe is lucky in a way
that so many of us still believe this way.
- For us, the biggest thing is to have non-indigenous peoples
understand that there is a way to be there,
a way of walking on that land without destroying it.
- So we're not going to be able to make everyone happy,
but they're going to certainly try--
- Settler society or society born of this empire
has a disconnect from the world.
It is the nature of the transience of America
that most generations today do not live in the same place
as their parents or their grandparents.
It is the psychology of the West or the idea
of the greener pastures, a state of mind.
And so there is no connection to place.
- A loving relationship is characterized by reciprocity.
I give, I receive.
The reciprocal relationship is something
that must always be nurtured.
And what traditional people, I think,
say at so many junctures is, you have to be talking to the Earth
and listening to the Earth all the time.
So to remain in a loving relationship with the Earth
means keep that conversation going.
- Human beings are always talking about human rights.
And that's fine.
Human rights are important.
But without the rights of nature,
just human rights are not enough.
Rivers have a right to flow clean
and pristine and unpolluted and undammed.
- The Earth is this alive, no doubt about it.
It's alive.
The teachers who know that the best are indigenous people.
And I don't care where you go.
They will tell you the same thing.
It's always about peace and it's always about equity
and it's always about respect and it's always about nature.
And that's where we have to go.
And we have to do this.
We have to do this collectively.
Put your minds together.
One heart, one mind, one spirit, to be unified.