Living Desert | KCET
Living Desert
Episode 6
The desert is a unique and highly fragile environment that is culturally valuable to Native communities. Despite appearing barren, the desert supports a wide swath of life: plants, animals, humans, and cultural practices. But the desert has also been seen as a location prime for urban development and large-scale extractive industries such as mining, wind, and solar energy development. In the past few years, these industries have expanded in the Mojave desert and had devastating impacts on the delicate environment and the Native cultures dependent on them. In this video, we explore how Native peoples continue to live in the desert and how they are confronting threats to their environment.
Co-produced by KCETLink Media Group and the Autry Museum, this six-part multimedia series and one-hour documentary special are presented in association with California Continued, a groundbreaking exhibition now on view at the Autry.
Full Episodes
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Tending the Wild
tending the wild
E1: Cultural Burning - How Native American Peoples Use Fire to Rejuvenate the Land
Episode 1
Suppressed for over a century, indigenous cultural burning is still practiced today and holds important lessons for managing the threat of destructive wildfires.
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Tending the Wild
tending the wild
E2: Keeping the River - How the Klamath River's Native Peoples Maintain Their Relationship With Salmon
Episode 2
The Yurok, Karuk, and Hupa peoples have maintained a close relationship with the Klamath River. They have secured traditional fishing rights and mobilized against the threats of dams and agriculture, setting an example for Native environmental rights.
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Tending the Wild
tending the wild
E3: Weaving Community - How Native Peoples are Rediscovering Their Basketry Traditions
Episode 3
Despite barriers to access, traditional gathering and basket weaving is still practiced across California as a new generation is rediscovering and preserving its cultural heritage.
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Tending the Wild
traditional ecological knowledge
E4: Decolonizing the Diet - How Native Peoples are Reclaiming Traditional Foods
Episode 4
The Chia Cafe Collective is working to revive Native food practices and raise awareness about the threats to native plants in Southern California.
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Tending the Wild
traditional ecological knowledge
E5: Gathering Medicine - How Native Medicinal Practices Are Thriving Today
Episode 5
Native herbalism has a long history and continues to be practiced today. This video explores a holistic approach to health and how the environment can inform healthy living.
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Clips & Segments
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Tending the Wild
The knowledge of native people about plants and their uses is open to everyone if they are willing to learn. Hoopa tribe descendant, Kat High, talks about the need to establish gardening areas in local communities.
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Tending the Wild
Cahuilla Artist Gerald Clarke Jr. honors his Native American heritage as well as makes a comment about the alcoholism and diabetes that plague native communities. Meet Gerald Clarke Jr and his native weaving creations.
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Tending the Wild
Herbalist Sage LaPena explains that a resurgence of traditional medicinal practices in Native communities and in popular culture often leads to a lack of access by Native communities to needed plants.
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Tending the Wild
Craig Torres of Chia Cafe Collective talks about how educators train modern society to phase out the harmful elements of their diets.
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Upcoming Airdates
Articles
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Tending the Wild
Tribe's vegetable gardens died during long repair dispute.
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Tending the Wild
If you smell something burning this week as you visit Sequoia National Park, that might just be two centuries of cultural misunderstanding going up in smoke.
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Tending the Wild
"Our tradition says that if we don’t catch salmon, they’ll stop coming back.”
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Tending the Wild
Here's one answer to LA's "emergency" record snowmelt: give Native people access to their lands.
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Tending the Wild
KCET is giving away five pairs of tickets to see Native Voices at the Autry’s newest play, "Fairly Traceable." The tickets include admission to the Autry to see the exhibition, “California Continued.”
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Tending the Wild
To call Native peoples the "original environmentalists" is to mischaracterize their actual relationship to the land.
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