As at Wounded Knee, Standing Rock

“Last summer, as I was raising finishing funds for my film on 1970s Native activism, the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy burst onto the scene, igniting Indian Country like nothing I’d ever seen,” said Kevin McKiernan. Visiting Standing Rock then (and again this month with Yurok tribal member Willard Carlson), McKiernan was struck by the similarities to the 1973 uprising, which he covered for NPR. “The newly restructured film is about passing the torch from one generation to the next,” he said.

“As a young Lakota told me,” McKiernan said, “‘Standing Rock is our Wounded Knee.'”

McKiernan’s new film is 80 percent complete. Anyone able to donate is asked to do so at McKiernan Productions, P.O. Box 30036, Santa Barbara, CA 93130, or via his tax-deductible sponsor, the San Francisco Film Society, 39 Mesa Street, Suite 110, The Presidio, San Francisco, CA 94129-1025 (please mark contributions FSP 1359).

Above is a still from the film, which can be viewed here (and has the work-in-progress time code embedded).