Educational Media Reviews Online

Our Story: The Indigenous Led Fight to Protect Greater Chaco highlights a disturbing incongruity in land use in the Greater Chaco Region. The Chaco Culture National Park is part of the ancestral land of Pueblo and Diné peoples, among others, and home to the impressive pre-Columbian ruins that led to its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. While these distinctions might serve to protect the park itself, the surrounding Greater Chaco Region is also studded with countless irreplaceable sites, both the natural and those built by the people who once thrived there. Native people still inhabit the region, of course, but it’s oil and gas extraction that’s now thriving, with 91% of the available land leased for fracking. 3,000 new wells were proposed in March of 2020.

At only 47 minutes, Our Story is incredibly efficient in explaining the complex nature of the region’s difficulties. Early on, the “checkerboard issue,” wherein parcels of land are controlled by an assortment of legal jurisdictions, is illustrated by a map along with 40,000 oil and gas well sites. It’s an alarming image that instantly brings viewers to a point where they can recognize that activists face a daunting bureaucratic landscape in their fight to protect the natural and cultural ones. Similarly, the deeply unsettling term “sacrifice area,” used to describe zones where corporate interests and energy development lead to the devastation of people living there, is effectively and heartbreakingly deployed.

The explanations of Greater Chaco’s situation are nicely balanced with first-hand narratives from residents and activists. Learning what a sacrifice area is isn’t the same as learning what it’s like to live in one and suffer from the kind of health problems that are known to result from the oil and gas extraction taking place. However, Our Story is far from being all bleak. In recounting their own experiences and reflections on their home, the individuals featured here show viewers why the area is worth saving and preserving for future generations.

Our Story doesn’t have a tidy ending, but this makes it all the more compelling as a teaching tool. The film notes that while President Biden announced in 2021 that the Department of the Interior would undertake measures to safeguard Greater Chaco, the exact nature of these measures and their results are still a work in progress. The Bureau of Land Management recently proposed a 10-mile buffer zone surrounding the national park, but substantial endeavors are also needed to address the fracking sites already in existence. The Greater Chaco Coalition combines the efforts of communities, individuals, and organizations active in protecting the region and shares resources and updates at #FrackOffChaco. Our Story is a powerful introduction to learning more about this work.

Awards:
Durango Independent Film Festival, Audience Award, Best Native Cinema Film; Nature Without Borders International Film Festival; Docs Without Borders Film Festival; SRFA Cannes Silk Road Film Awards; Hollywood International Diversity Film Festival, Cultural Perspective Award

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