Powerlands Film and Hydro Extraction on the Kwenitekw

In the 2023 documentary Powerlands, a young Diné filmmaker investigates displacement of Indigenous people and devastation of the environment caused by the same chemical companies that have exploited the land where she was born. On this personal and political journey she learns from Indigenous activists across three continents. It is worth noting that the same challenges continue here in the mid-valley of Kwenitekw, with the impoundment and industrial generation facilities operated by FirstLight Hydro (a subsidiary of Montreal-based PSP Investments) and Great River Hydro (a subsidiary of provincially-owned HydroQuebec).

Nolumbeka Project President David Brule participated in a showing of the Powerlands film this past week at the Sunderland, MA library and used the opportunity to make these parallels for the local attendees. Some talking points we drafted for him to share that evening are below:

Powerlands Talking Points

 Shared with David Brule 11.12.24

 Some observations about the relationships in the valley of Kwenitekw among Indigenous People and these Places, and how this is deeply affected (damaged) by corporate and government interests asserting control and enforcing extraction. This is happening everywhere, as the film demonstrates, including here in the lands we call home, because rampant colonization and exploitation is systemic, pervasive, and ongoing.

·      Twelve thousand years of continual human presence in this valley makes it abundantly clear that sustainability in the broadest sense is based upon shared cultural values. Our current mindset and practices are increasingly demonstrating their shortsightedness and lack of balance.

·      In the northeastern part of this continent, Turtle Island, original human cultures center around relationship with water and the web of connections – human and other-than-human- that flow from that life source.

·      With the imposition and ongoing practice of Euro-American cultural values and practices on the landscape - a unilateral taking of energy/spirit and a severing of reciprocal relationships - the wellbeing of both the Original Peoples and the Land has been deeply compromised and continues to degrade. The River began and nurtured those understandings and stories, and holds them together.

·      The granting of control over the River and watersheds by colonizing governments to profit-motivated interests has never taken these sustainable values  and their cultural manifestations into account, despite a patchwork of legal means intended to at least acknowledge, if not remediate, those conditions.

·      As energy consumption fueled by endless economic growth continues, this assertion of control continues to consolidate, with governments themselves working in unison with corporations through energy policy and public financing. This is amply evident with Canadian and American governments and multinational investment firms limiting and stalling intervention in business-as-usual, from both Native cultural protectors and the public.

·      For Kwenitekw with All of Our Relations, this is perhaps the first and last opportunity to change that paradigm and make a move toward restoration and balance. These stories need to be picked up and carried forward for the wellbeing of all; as we treat our Mother, so we treat each other.