Drowned Land : Indigenizing dominate culture - Pt. IV
Thursday, November 20 Timebuddy
United States: 11am HST, 1pm PST, 2pm MST, 3pm CST, 4pm EST
Europe: 21:00 GMT, 22:00 CET
Australia: Friday, November 21, 8am AEDT
For this screening and Q&A event we will hear from Colleen Thurston (Choctaw), Director of the documentary Drowned Land, which shares the stories of a group of water protectors determined to preserve the lifeline of their community and end a cycle of environmental exploitation on the Kiamichi River in Oklahoma.
Winding its way through southeastern Oklahoma, deep in the Choctaw Nation, the Kiamichi River is a bastion of eco-diversity. Much to the dismay of communities along the river, the state of Oklahoma recently signed an agreement to dam and divert 85% of its remaining water.
This isn’t a first for the Kiamichi and its tributaries, already twice-dammed to create reservoirs. One, Sardis Lake, is named after the town that was flooded by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1980. All that is left of Sardis is the cemetery, now an island in the middle of the lake.
Residents of communities along the Kiamichi are determined that their water source should not be further disturbed. A group of locals have banded together to fight developers and the state in court over their river, invoking the Endangered Species Act–not only is the Kiamichi the most ecologically diverse river in the state, it is the most mussel-diverse river in the world.
This is the fourth and final event in our fall series exploring how Indigenizing dominant culture can encourage a greater balance between humans and the more-than-human world.
SCREENING INFORMATION TO COME....
Guest Speaker
Coleen Thurston is a documentary storyteller, producer and film curator from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She has created non-fiction film and videos for the Smithsonian Channel, Vox, and museums, public television, and federal and tribal organizations. Grounding her filmmaking practice in place-based narratives and Indigenous world views, her work has screened at international film festivals and broadcast nationwide. Her work has been supported by Firelight Media, the Sundance Institute, Patagonia, ITVS, Vision Maker Media, the Ford Foundation, the Redford Center, and Creative Capital. Colleen’s first feature documentary DROWNED LAND (2025) examines the cycle of displacement as it is related to resource extraction in her tribe, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Colleen is the project producer for the Indigenous video series Native Lens, and is a senior programmer for Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival and an Associate Programmer for MountainFilm. She has curated film programs for institutions such as the Momentary (Bentonville, AR), the Smithsonian’s Native Cinema Showcase (Santa Fe, NM), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), UCLA Film and Television Archives and Vidiots (Los Angeles, CA) and numerous film festivals. Thurston is the founder of the Indigenous Moving Image Archive and is currently an Tulsa Artist Fellow and International Documentary Association Fellow. drownedland.com
This is a fundraiser event. Attendees donate $5 for each ticket. Please purchase as many as you would like to donate. All attendees MUST REGISTER.
