By: Maya Barillas Mohan, Staff Writer
Discussions on the impacts of human interactions with the natural world are only becoming more critical as we increasingly experience a worsening climate crisis. The British Columbia Environment Film Festival uses short films to increase awareness and understanding of these issues, especially within the locality of our province. They are guided by the belief that “movies have been used to entertain, to tell stories, to educate and inform, and to energize people and mobilize action.”
I watched The Medzih Story: Restoring a Caribou Landscape to understand how the festival satisfies its mission of “bridging the scientific community and the film industry.” This 20-minute movie documents “the work one Indigenous community [Fort Nelson First Nation (Dené/Cree)] is doing to help restore decades of industrial impacts on the land base as a mechanism to help stabilize boreal caribou populations.” I minored in environmental sciences, so I felt equipped to recognize the finer details of wildlife conservation and resource extraction, especially focusing on the presentation of an Indigenous perspective. However, after watching the movie I realized the filmmakers’ goal wasn’t to impart the semantics of their rehabilitation plan, but rather explain to a broader audience why it’s important to care about the caribou in Fort Nelson, northern BC.
The Medzih Story crops in on a team of researchers and the Fort Nelson First Nation community members revitalizing an area historically wrought by boom and bust the oil and gas industry. Over a million kilometres of pathway have been cleared, but the trees that make up the surrounding forest are so slow-growing they can be just eight feet tall at 100 years old. The paths cut into the forests for machinery have yet to grow back so wildlife territory can be restored. Old growth is important for fragile ecosystem management and carbon storage.
The documentary, named for the Dené word for woodland caribou, has seismic lines running through it. These seismic lines are paths cut through boreal forest, fragmenting animal territory. As a result, the wolves on the land become more efficient hunters and need less space to hunt. They can more easily outnumber the caribou and threaten fragile population dynamics. Habitat restoration for the caribou is in turn vital for cultural restoration, as various Indigenous Nations have historically lived alongside the caribou for sustenance, clothing, and tools and in turn, has associated caribou with spiritual, medicinal, and ceremonial connections.
Cultural restoration is shown in the movie where it connects caribou preservation to the creation of drums from their hide. Referring back to the film festival’s mission, this movie effectively entertains as it tells stories from multiple perspectives. It interviews biologists, members of the community, and a child to cover the importance of science, culture, and the future. The film educates and informs the viewer by using gorgeous visuals to entice and elevate the importance of the work depicted. It mobilizes the viewer by instilling a general support for climate support by incorporating optimism and altruism into changing conditions.
Supporting organizations like the BC Environment Film Festival and watching documentaries such as this can help enrich your own understanding of the natural world, thanks to people who work hard to platform it.
Learning about different environmental problems can be daunting because there are so many, and in such far-flung reaches of the globe. Supporting organizations like the BC Environment Film Festival and watching documentaries such as this can help enrich your own understanding of the natural world, thanks to people who work hard to platform it.
You can watch The Medzih Story: Restoring a Caribou Population at BCEFF Online Festival November 1–30. Tickets to the event can be obtained at https://www.bceff.org/event-list.
