Telluride MountainFilm Review
Red Gold: Film Gives Salmon Fishing a Voice in Face of Copper Mine
By Lucia Stewart, 6-09-08
In Bristol Bay, Alaska, a controversial copper and gold mine is proposed at the headwaters of Talarik Creek and Koktuli River, the world’s largest salmon fishery where tens of millions of trophy-size salmon spawn each year.
The film, Red Gold, tells a story of remote Native American sustenance-users, Alaskan commercial fisherman, sport fisherman and residence that all share the commonality of salmon fishing at the core of their existence. For the first time, all user groups have come together in opposition of Pebble Mine development — the story at the heart of this film.
Red Gold premiered at Telluride Mountainfilm and won the “Audience Award” and the “Festival Director Award,” along with great enthusiasm and standing ovations for Telluride local filmmakers, Travis Rummel and Ben Knight of Felt Soul Media, an award-winning producer of fly-fishing films.
Ben Knight, the co-director of Red Gold, had a goal of no narration in this film. After 10 years at a newspaper industry, he wanted to be unbiased as possible. “I wanted people to tell the story the way they wanted it to be heard,” he said in an interview following the award’s ceremony at Telluride Mountainfilm.
And this truly comes out in the film. As most environmental-based films have an agenda and narration is the most common way to express a film’s objective, instead Red Gold lets the residents of Bristol Bay tell the story.
But that was also a challenges in creating this film: finding the right voice to represent all sides of the story — along with timing the three-week salmon run in the location of wild, remote Alaska.
“It was a great experience to sit back and let the two filmmakers find the story and listen to passionate people on both sides,” said Lauren Oakes, Alaska Trout Unlimited Program Officer who assisted with logistics for the film.
Filmmaker Ben Knight said he wished he found more natives who supported the mine since they live with a mixed cash-sustenance economy. “But its such a touchy subject within each village,” said Knight. “Many are taking jobs but in the exploratory phase where the land destruction is minimal.”
The Alaska Governor is on the fence about the mine. In Bristol Bay, 79 percent of locals oppose the mine.
“Pebble Mine meetings are filling rooms in Alaska, but in the Lower 48, there is very little awareness of the mine,” said Oakes.
Northern Dynasty Minerals expects a 2009 decision on whether to apply for permits to build the Pebble Mine, both an underground and open pit copper, gold and molybdenum mine with a projected $400 billion in revenue. The open pit is projected to be the largest in the world, 2 miles wide, several thousand feet deep, and generate 2.5 billion tons of waste material. The entire complex would by 15 square miles and include two settling lakes, of which one would be larger then the Three Gorges Dam in China.
Future screenings of Red Gold and distribution is up next. Alaska Trout Unlimited will host screenings in conjunction with an August 26th ballot initiative for ability or inability for mines to operate within a certain distance of streams.
This is this first film dealing with the topic of Pebble Mine and Bristol Bay.
For more information, visit:
Felt Soul Media
The Wire, Felt Soul Media’s blog
Save Bristol Bay.org
The Pebble Partnership, Northern Dynasty Mineral’s site.
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My thought is salmon are more important than Chinese electrical needs, that enabling more coal fired generation is only enabled by megamines. The theft of metals is an everyday, ongoing, great stress and inconvenience to farming. This country has sold their industry to the third world, and the third world can supply themselves with all the metals they need from their third world brothers and sisters. Bristol Bay salmon are mostly exported, I would guess, to Asia, where they are further processed to come back to the US. It is cheaper that way. Perhaps oil prices will alter that business model. Nevertheless, a few thousand people are supported, invested, in Bristol Bay salmon, and a megamine is not in their best or even better interest. It is to be stopped at all possible cost. There are no salmon runs in the Congo or Australia or in South America. South America has ruined estuaries, native fisheries, raising hatchery pen salmon to sell to the Japanese and Chinese in competition with Bristol Bay salmon. Get the copper, the moly, the gold, there. Complete the environmental destruction they so approve of in those countries. We cannot have it happen to Bristol Bay. We have already ruined the Columbia and Sacramento River runs. We need to learn from our mistakes.
NO PEBBLE MINE. It makes as much sense as the USFS Wildland Fire Use option. Ruin it to save what? Money in the budget? What national interest? Incineration of forests is in the national interest? Pshaw!!!! Quit the foolishness. No Bristol Bay heap leach megamine, mega dammed spoils pond. The whole of the scale and insanity of it all is beyond good sense. And for whose benefit? Is this a Native Owned deal? Not on your life. This is just plain exploitation because "institutional investors" (parked tax collections and public employee pensions) need to grow their portfolios. BS. Enough of the landscape despoiling. If we can't drill in the Arctic, how can we open pit mega mine at the headwaters of the most magnificent and productive native salmon fishery in the world? Stupid comes to mind. Self serving comes to mind. What is gold, anyway? A place to speculate with money, for a limited number of people? Bling for those who can afford it. Transportable wealth in times of strife? Obsolete, in reality. A big con game. If the people who live there don't want it, then why does it have to happen? The people who live where National Forests are want logging, but it can't happen because of pressure from NGOs. So where are the NGOs in this deal? Too busy facilitating the incineration of our forests in the lower 48?
Once again taking from the native is just far out greed. Greed, greed, greed, greed, greed! 400 billion is tooooooooooo much money and to whose benefit? Not for the salmon, not for the natives, and it sure is not for the chinese. it's for the greedy Mofos who want to start the mine. I will be there to protest, i will make sure of that.