Western Colorado University to Screen Two Films on Indigenous Stewardship, Land, and Water on Nov. 12

Western Colorado University’s Clark School for Environment and Sustainability and WCU Native American Advisory Council will present Rooted: A Story of Rematriation and River as Teacher on November 12 at 4 p.m. in the University Center Theater. The evening will include special guests, with details to be announced. 

Together, the two short documentaries invite audiences to consider how restoration and conservation can support Indigenous relationships with ancestral lands, cultural revitalization, and shared stewardship.

Rooted: A Story of Rematriation, created in partnership with Montezuma Land Conservancy and Trees, Water & People, explores the Traditional Harvest Project and restoration work along the Mancos River in Southwest Colorado. The film highlights how low-tech restoration methods that support natural river processes can strengthen river systems while renewing relationships with land.

The story reaches beyond the physical work of restoration to examine the trust, cultural knowledge, and sustained partnerships that make stewardship possible. Guided by Indigenous community members and partners, the Traditional Harvest Project connects land access, traditional harvesting, cultural education, and ecological restoration.

In reflections on his first year in a shared role with the two organizations, Cross-Cultural Programs Coordinator Wyatt Wilson describes a growing effort to help audiences understand why Indigenous land access matters and why restoration must include cultural revitalization. Screenings of Rooted across Colorado have opened conversations about drought resilience, Indigenous stewardship, and the relationships underlying conservation work.

“Meaningful change almost always begins through relationship,” Wilson writes.

River as Teacher, directed by Navajo (Diné) filmmaker James Foguth of Nizhoni Films, brings a complementary perspective from the Colorado River. Through Navajo river monitoring trips in the Grand Canyon, the documentary explores how the river conveys knowledge through experience, ceremony, observation, and intergenerational exchange.

The film examines a place-based approach to stewardship in which cultural values, lived experience, and environmental observation inform how people understand and care for the river. It offers a starting point for considering how Indigenous knowledge and scientific approaches can contribute to thoughtful land and water management.

From the Mancos River to the Grand Canyon, the films ask audiences to reflect on what it means to learn from place—and how ecological restoration, cultural continuity, and responsibility to future generations can move forward together.

The films will be followed by Native American-inspired foods at the Rare Air Café in the University Center in honor of Native American Heritage Month.