4799 Shattuck Ave
Oakland, CA 94609
USA
Two native women on Pine Ridge reservation expose the human cost of u
ranium mining and its impact on the water, land and people of the Great Plains.
When Debra White Plume’s drinking water tests high for radiation, she sets out to determine the cause. What she finds alarms her.
A nearby uranium mining operation is extracting ore from deep in the ground by tapping the High Plains/Ogllala Aquifer, a huge underground cache of water covering 174,000 square miles from Texas to South Dakota which supplies drinking water to 82 percent of the people who live within the aquifer boundary. The mine’s planned expansion further threatens the aquifer.
Elisha Yellow Thunder intimately understands the dangers of contaminated water. A young mother and a geology student, she unknowingly drank water with high levels of radiation while pregnant with her first daughter, whose severe medical anomalies are life-threatening.
Directed by Suree Towfighnia, 2015