11:00 a.m.–12:45 p.m. on Thursday, March 5, at the Princess Royale

2:00 p.m.–3:45 p.m. on Saturday, March 7, at the Gold Coast Theater (followed by filmmaker Q&A)

In Drowned Land, filmmaker Colleen Thurston unravels personal and collective history to tell the story of the Choctaw Nation and the Kiamichi River. The film examines the cascading losses that can be traced back to European colonization — how the Choctaw people lost their homes when they were forced to relocate to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears, and how extractive environmental practices are leading to the loss of their current water source, the Kiamichi River by diverting the water to hydroelectric dams.

Thurston serves as both storyteller and archivist in Drowned Land. She grounds the viewer in her own family history early on—we meet her and her parents, and discuss the legacy of her grandfather, an engineer for the Army Corps of Engineers who helped put up other dams on the Kiamichi that are now jeopardizing the river’s health.

We learn about the documentary’s subjects through scenes and conversations, and Thurston assumes an easy rapport with all of them that speaks for itself. Thurston is a character in her own film, asking questions, having conversations, and thinking out loud. Drowned Land assumes a point of view so intimate that at times I almost forgot I was watching a movie, not riding in the car with an old friend or walking through a forest with a family member. The film itself implies an implicit web of connection between all of the Choctaw people, all of the characters we meet, and by extension, every human being.

But Thurston also reckons with the possibility of her own grandfather’s complicity in the current crisis. When Thurston and her mother visit a museum in Greenwood, Mississippi, on what was once Choctaw land, we hear the story of Greenwood LeFlore, a tribal leader from the 1800s who ceded the last of the Choctaw Nation’s land in Mississippi to the U.S. government and facilitated the peoples’ removal. Thurston’s mother calls him “a real piece of work.” It’s not explicitly stated, but I couldn’t help but make a connection to the story of Thurston’s own grandfather. Was he complicit in the suffering of his own people?

By the end of Drowned Land, Thurston seems to come to a conclusion, but it’s complicated:

“His legacy is more than a string of dams across our landscape. His work flows together with mine. This isn’t a story about redemption, but it is a story about reclamation.”

Drowned Land is a story about extraction of natural and cultural resources, but mostly, it’s a story about people. People aren’t so easily separated from their environment, and as we so often forget, we are part of nature, too. I keep thinking back to one scene in particular, in which one of the film’s subjects, Charlotte, leads Thurston through a forest in the Choctaw Nation, expertly identifying edible mushrooms, berries, and plants. They talk about how most people don’t know how to find these things because the knowledge was lost — when the Choctaw people were forcibly removed from their land, they lost the ancestral knowledge that was intrinsically tied to that place. When they were forced to move from Mississippi to Oklahoma, they had to completely relearn how to be.

At the end, the community’s perseverance pays off, and the power company withdraws its application for a hydroelectric plant on the river. But it’s a bittersweet ending: the Nation will have to continue fighting new proposals for hydroelectric plants upstream. The film’s protagonists hope that someday, the Kiamichi can be recognized as a person, but until then, people will have to keep standing up for her rights.

The film’s final act shows Thurston and her family — she became a mother since starting this documentary — working alongside other community members to restore an old Choctaw cemetery, which straddles an oil pipeline. In Choctaw, a singer delivers heart-wrenching lyrics: “We will not be like the beautiful bones of a forgotten city.” In the next scene, Thurston and her child discuss what to plant in their garden — and how planting seeds and continuing traditions can nourish future generations.

It makes sense that the film ends in this deeply personal place. For Thurston, personal and collective struggle are one in the same. Ultimately, Drowned Land leaves the viewer thinking about continuation and resilience, and how people continue to live and uplift one another in the face of adversity.