A film about transboundary mining is coming to Haines this weekend.
Uprivers focuses on the lives, of two indigenous women on either side of the Alaska / British Columbia border. Alaskan filmmaker, Matthew Jackson will host the screening along with one of the leading protagonists, Jacinda Mack.
The film captures the devastation to Mack’s homelands after the Mount Polley mine disaster in British Columbia. Ten million cubic meters of wastewater containing dangerous chemicals poured into local waterways when the earthen dam collapsed.
Filmmaker Matthew Jackson of Sitka has been traveling around Southeast Alaska presenting the 30-minute film.
The film asks difficult questions through its two protagonists.
“It’s really the stories of these two women that I was lucky enough meet in the course of trying to learn about transboundary mining and it is the story of Jacinda Mack and Carrie James and kind of how both of them are responding in their own ways to the mining boom that is happening in British Columbia right now,” said Jackson.
Mack was thrown into the spotlight because of the 2014 Mount Polley disaster. Her community was just downstream and overnight she found herself advocating for responsible mining in Canada.
Carrie James is a lifelong resident of Ketchikan, where Jackson was born.
Jackson says he was compelled to tell the womens’ stories several years ago after he learned about the KSM mine, a large proposed transboundary copper and gold mine near Ketchikan. And he eventually recognized the women’s stories were a powerful way to explore the issue.
“Because they seemed to have parallel stories on opposite sides of the border,” said Jackson.
Though he says the film is not anti-mine.
“The conversation I want to have is how valuable is our clean water? How valuable are our salmon? How are these mines going to affect our way of life?,” said Jackson. “And, I’m not anti-mine and I don’t think that Carrie and Jacinda are anti-mine either. But what we do have to ask is some really hard questions about how British Columbia’s history managing mines and what the impacts will be and what’s at risk.”
Jackson says the film presents political solutions. But he says it also offers a more fundamental message:
“Jacinda has this lovely phrase which is, “sharing our love stories with the land” and I hope the film inspires people to do that,” said Jackson.
The film, Uprivers, will soon be embarking on a parallel screening tour in British Columbia.
Lynn Canal Conservation is hosting the film screening with filmmaker Mathew Jackson and Jacinda Mack at the Chilkat Center for the Arts Saturday, April 28, 7-8:30 p.m.
A trailer for the film can be watched here.
