On Sacred Ground (2023)
Directed by Josh Trickell, Rebecca Harrell Trickell
Written by Josh Trickell, Rebecca Harrell Trickell, William Mapother
Starring William Mapother, Amy Smart, Frances Fisher
Release Date January 13th, 2023
Published January 6th, 2023
On Sacred Ground tells a very unique story. Long time character actor William Mapother stars in On Sacred Ground as a reporter with a very specific right wing perspective. He's long been suspicious of environmental terrorists and his reporting on that subject catches the eye of a right wing news outlet. This right wing news outlet, working in league with oil company lobbyists, seeks to hire Mapother's Daniel McKinney to cover the story of an oil pipeline that is the subject of Native American protests.
The story that news organization and the oil company are pushing is that the Native American activists are violent, eco-terrorists who are disrupting a safe and legal oil pipeline and causing the kind of environmental crisis that they claim to be protesting against. The propaganda has Daniel on the side of the oil company, a perspective furthered when he arrives at the site of the pipeline protest where he witnesses a particularly emotional and physical protest in progress.
Access to the site is controlled by an oil company representative named Elliott (David Arquette). Elliott claims that the violence of the protests is not coming from the army of mercenaries hired as security by the oil company or the lines of Police Officers also on the side of the oil company. No, according to Elliott the supposedly non-violent, mostly Native American protesters are the ones throwing rocks, threatening Police and Security and doing damage to oil company property.
What Elliott and Daniel's new newspaper boss, Ricky (Frances Fisher), did not expect was for Daniel to embed himself with the protesters. Thinking he can uncover the violence among the protesters, Daniel goes to their camp and finds himself drafted in as a volunteer in a very well organized and trained group of protesters. The protesters bring Daniel in, show him their training in non-violent protest and place him on the front line of that non-violent protest where he witnesses what has really been happening.
The story of On Sacred Ground is based on the story of a group of military veterans who joined the ranks of Native American protesters Standing Rock in North Dakota. This group of veterans were brought together by a fellow veteran, Wesley Clark Jr., son of General Wesley Clark, a former Democrat Presidential candidate. He went to Standing Rock at the behest of a friend and found Native American protesters being brutalized by what he called a private army employed by the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Find my full length review at Swamp.Media
