Filmmaker Robert Lundahl’s path has paralleled that of The Sun Runner’s coverage of industrial solar power projects and their impacts on both environmental and Native American cultural resources since at least 2010. Now, Lundahl has released a powerful new film, Who Are My People?, that tells the story of the very real impacts made by enormous multinational corporations such as Chevron, Bechtel, and even Google, upon Native American cultural and sacred sites.
With a “David vs. Goliath” battle over the destruction of these sites between multinational corporations—with cooperation from the federal and state governments (and usually the tacit cooperation of much of the mainstream media), pitted against tribes,a small but growing group of activists, desert residents overwhelmed by the number and size of these projects, and independent media, projects have scalped desert tortoise habitat, slaughtered desert foxes and burrowing animals, surrounded towns and agricultural operations, erased Native American geoglyphs and bulLdozed burial and cremation grounds, and wreaked untold havoc upon cultural and historical resources that cannot be recovered or restored.
-Steve Brown, Film on the Front Lines, The Sun Runner Magazine,
Documentarian Explores Viability Of Solar
Most everyone thinks solar energy is a good thing. It’s clean, renewable and will help climate change. Only if it’s done properly, says Robert Lundahl. The California documentary filmmaker is incensed at the rush to big projects that are damaging the Mojave Desert environment and threatening the cultural heritage of California tribes.
-Dave Becker, KNPR, National Public Radio, State of Nevada Program
It is no coincidence that the Las Vegas film premiere of “Who Are My People?” is on August 13 and that the National Clean Energy Summit 6.0 takes place the same day.
The Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, Secretary of Energy, Dr. Ernest Moniz, Chairman Jon Wellinghoff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will be there along with an array of Governors, Senators, former Senators, the CEO of the American Wind Association, the Director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory etc. will all be at the summit.
Emmy Award winning Film maker Robert Lundahl has invited them to the showing.
“They should be there because they need to understand the impacts of their policies,” Lundahl said.
-Roy L. Hales in Native Currents, Native News Network.
or filmmaker Robert Lundahl, the idea of the west and the desert inspired him from an early age. The vastness of the land and the symbol of having the open wilderness ahead of you was an image that has stuck with Lundahl throughout his life.
Now, he’s hoping to preserve that feeling with his latest documentary “Who Are My People,” which examines at U.S. energy policy and its effects on desert ecosystems, Native American tribes and the communities of the west.
“The story starts with my memories of going to the desert as a child,” Lundahl said. “I grew up in Los Angeles post war, before they put catalytic converters on cars. The air pollution was extreme. The desert, the west, represented relief from the ills and pollution of society and the cities.
-Lukas Eggen, The Ely Times.
Documentary filmmaker Robert Lundahl’s latest work, “Who Are My People?,” explores the effects of large-scale solar energy developments on Native American spiritual and cultural connections to Southern California’s scorched outback of creosote and alkaline lake beds. At the heart of the dispute is a contest between Native American traditions and developers and government officials who contend benefits from the projects such as greenhouse gas reductions and renewable energy production outweigh their disturbance of cultural resources in the bleak desert terrain.
-Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times.
You can’t have ‘green’ without social justice.” – filmmaker Robert Lundahl
EMMY® Award winning filmmaker Robert Lundahl takes a hard look at U.S. energy policy and its effects on desert ecosystems, Native American tribes and communities across the West. The film has special relevance locally, where major energy projects in San Diego and Imperial Counties have sparked legal actions as tribal members seek to protect their heritage and sacred sites from destruction.
-Miriam Raftery, EastCountyMagazine.com
During the course of shooting for his film “Who Are My People,” discussed at length in my piece in East CA, Filmmaker Robert Lundahl attended a September 15, 2012 scoping meeting for the proposed Rio Mesa Solar Electric Generating Station in Riverside County, later mothballed by its developer. He captured on video what seems to be a remarkable failure by the Bureau of Land Management to live up to the agency’s legal obligations to consult with Native tribes, and he’s made that available to us here.
-Chris Clarke, KCET, Rewire.
A new documentary, “Who Are My People?,” is stirring controversy around some of the giant, utility-scale solar projects that are emerging in the southwest desert. The documentary, by filmmaker Robert Lundahl, looks at these projects through the eyes of Native Americans, who have challenged numerous projects planned for California’s Mojave Desert. Some of the desert land is considered sacred to certain Native American nations.
-Chris Meehan, Renewable Energy World
Robert Lundahl’s film “Who are my People?” describes a collision of Worldviews. The US was catching on to the reality of Climate Change and had not yet realized that all “green technologies” are not necessarily good, or even environmentally friendly. As California’s business community embarked upon a crusade to carve out solar farms from the desert, they found ancient people in the way.
-Roy Hales, San Diego Loves Green
Who Are My People?, a documentary by Robert Lundahl, premiered on Saturday in San Diego, California. The film explores the disconnect that occurs when non-Indians assume that using sacred ground for renewable energy is an automatic benefit that must outweigh the rights of the land’s indigenous peoples to their ancestors’ history and ongoing traditional practices.
-New Day, Daily Kos
Among the reasons listed for BrightSource abandoning its Rio Mesa Solar Electric Generating System, which had been approved last October, an article in Clean Energy Authority.com states, “the project also faced steep criticism from the Native American community, even partly inspiring a documentary, “Who Are My People?”, that dealt with how many large-scale solar projects were approved by the Bureau of Land Management and others, despite outcry from the Native American community, chief among them the Chemehuevi, Quechan nations and by the La Cuna de Aztlan Sacred Sites Protection Circle, which filed lawsuits against numerous solar projects on the basis that they disturbed sacred lands and geoglyphs.”
The Board of Supervisors should take note that attitudes around the world are changing.
-Roy Hales, San Diego Loves Green
I was invited to review the documentary film “Who Are My People?” because of my professional familiarity with concentrating solar power technologies. I was responsible for the U.S. Department of Energy’s broad range of renewable energy electricity programs for several years during the Clinton Administration. “Who Are My People?” is well worth watching.
-Allan Hoffman, Physicist, Advisor to Five Presidents, East County Magazine
The scrutiny of big solar has been unrelenting, with every hiccup parsed for insight into solar market trends. In California the industry has weathered projects that have been put on hold (Blythe Solar), withdrawn (Rio Mesa), suspended (Hidden Hills) or failed outright (Carrizo, Calico, Beacon Solar and Imperial Valley Solar). Some moribund projects have been the victim of the delays and cumbersome requirements involved with siting massive power plants on public lands and dealing with environmental and cultural sensitivities.