POWERLANDS interview with Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso on Indigenous Filmmaking

Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso is the director of POWERLANDS.

Tell us about the issue your film focuses on.

Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso: At the age of 19, I began researching and following the trail of some of the corporations – BHP, Glencore, and Peabody Coal - that are destroying my community in Navajo Nation. I visited Indigenous communities in Mexico, Colombia and The Philippines that are facing these same corporations and learned from their paths of resistance.

Powerlands shows that in every corner of the earth, indigenous people are being pushed off their land by corporate extractive industries. But in all of these nations, Indigenous people are refusing to stand by and let the earth and their culture be taken. 

Whose perspectives does your film feature?

Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso: The story of this film is told by indigenous women themselves. This film is in seven languages, including several indigenous languages rarely captured on film.

My grandmother taught me how to stand on the frontlines. She taught me about the ways that my ancestors have resisted displacement since colonial settlers came here. When thinking about how to tell the stories in this film, I think first about the storytelling traditions I have learned from elders in my community. That is why this story is told through the stories, voices, and languages of Indigenous women on the frontlines of these struggles.

What did you learn from the process of making this film?

Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso: I think what was most powerful for me was being with families in these other communities and seeing in person the connections and similarities with my own family. Aside from the personal, of course there was the fact that we were often facing the same corporations, and that the corporations were using the same tactics. And the resistance they were leading deeply inspired me, and is at the heart of my film.

It was important to me that Powerlands show the many daily ways we resist, and the power of that resistance. It takes so many forms, from prayer to protest, from art to learning our own languages. The most important lesson is that everyone is Indigenous somewhere, and we all have a stake in preserving this planet. 

Bring the documentary POWERLANDS and director Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso to your campus + community.