About the Documentary

Power Paths offers a unique glimpse into the global energy crisis from the perspective of a culture pledged to protect the planet, historically exploited by corporate interests and neglected by public policy makers.

The film follows an intertribal coalition as they fight to transform their local economies by replacing coal mines and smog-belching power plants with renewable energy technologies. This transition would honor their heritage and support future generations by protecting their sacred land, providing electricity to their homes and creating jobs for their communities.

Their story is a parable for our time, when the planet as a whole hungers for alternatives to fossil fuels. For environmental trailblazers, it’s proof that going green is not only possible—it’s the only choice we have.

The Power Paths story begins in the 1960s, when two massive coal mines open on Navajo and Hopi reservations in Arizona. Between them, they produce enough coal to satisfy the unquenchable energy thirsts of Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. They also comprise the single largest strip-mining complex in the world. For more than 30 years, the mines—and the Mohave Generating Station they supply—scar sacred native land, drain the natural aquifers and pollute the Southwestern skies.

Meanwhile, beneath the high-tension power lines that carry electricity to the neon-saturated Vegas Strip, Native American reservation dwellers have no electricity or running water.

Sickened by the economic disparity and the mounting toll on their land and health, some Navajo and Hopi tribe members begin pressuring their tribal governments not to renew the mining leases, but to no avail. As a result, a handful of grassroots organizers from both tribes join forces with The Sierra Club, the Grand Canyon Trust and the National Parks and Conservation Association to fight back. Calling themselves the Just Transition Coalition, they take on wealthy and entrenched adversaries from Peabody to Southern California Edison.

They succeed in closing the power plant (and subsequently the mines) in 2005. But the ecological and moral victory comes at a cost: About half of the adults on the reservations had worked for the mines, and are now unemployed.

Undeterred, the Just Transition Coalition shifts gears and heads for California, where they win a legal battle to use the shuttered Mohave plant’s cap-and-trade pollution credits to finance investment in solar panels and wind turbines for their reservations.

In one scene, a Navajo mother screws a light bulb into a kitchen socket for the first time and sees it light up, enabling her children to stop depending on sunlight or dangerous kerosene lanterns in order to do their homework. She weeps in relief and gratitude.

Today, more tribes are seeking investments and partnerships to create green-energy economies on the reservation, with hopes that one day, renewable energy will replace casinos as a primary means for economic development and tribal self-sufficiency.

As the nation at large struggles to disengage itself from the chains of a fossil-fuel-based economy, Power Paths signals cause for hope that an alternative is not somewhere in the future, but possible right now. And Native Americans are leading the way.

The Filmmakers

Bo Boudart
Bo Boudart has written and produced programs for television networks including PBS, the Discovery Channel, Fox TV and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The themes center on nature, science, indigenous cultures and the environment.

Boudart’s recent projects include Oil on Ice, for which he was co-producer and principal videographer. Focusing on issues of energy policy, Alaska Native human rights and conservation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, this documentary won the International Documentary Association’s Pare Lorentz Award, a Hugo Award, an International Wildlife Film Festival Best Environmental Documentary Award and was nominated for Best Feature documentary at the American Indian Film Festival. Boudart also produced Umealit: The Whale Hunters, a Nova series documentary for WGBH and PBS. Boudart also wrote, co-produced and shot The Sea Is Our Life, a documentary about the protection of offshore Arctic waters against oil drilling that jeopardizes the subsistence needs of Inupiat Eskimos. The film won Best Short at the American Indian Film Festival.

Norman Brown
Norman Brown, a Navajo native, has written, produced and directed documentary, dramatic and educational films and videos about Navajo subjects. In 2005, he wrote, produced and directed Rez Hope, a docu-drama made to educate Native American communities about the effects of drug, alcohol and substance abuse; teenage suicide and pregnancy; student violence and loss of native culture. He developed an outreach program for the greater Native American population, designed to promote discussion of these problems with the New Mexico Department of Health, community health advocacy groups and Native American youth organizations.

Brown wrote, directed and produced A Gift of Life, a 40-minute educational video about genetics, and Kei’ Bidziil, a four-part TV series about strong family relations. He has also produced a number of public service announcements about Navajo health and has been video technical advisor and production specialist for Navajo Area Indian Health Service. He has been a Native American technical advisor for ABC TV series such as The Return of Jimmie Blackwater and Hope and Prey. Brown has played principal roles in feature films including The Thin Red Line, Raising Arizona, Black Day, Blue Night and The Doe Boy.

Christopher Philipp
Philipp has over 25 years of media experience. He was location producer, videographer and researcher for Oil on Ice. Philipp contributed to production stock footage acquisition at Bay Area Videography. He was the producer/director for R. Buckminster Fuller, creating video documentation and exhibits for Fuller’s World Game seminars in Washington, San Diego and Toronto (1977-1978), as well as the Thinking Gallery for the New England Aquarium Gallery. Gallery was an NSF grant-funded project, and the 20-minute video was adapted into the country’s first public interactive computer/videodisc touch screen exhibit, designed and created by Philipp with assistance from the MIT Media Lab.

Philipp received an Emmy from Northern California’s National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for Television News, an educational documentary exploring whether television journalism is a public service and/or a business. He also received a Silver Envision Award for videography on Dreams and Challenges, a film on students’ future goals. He also has more than a dozen years of teaching experience in video and digital media production at the college and high school levels.

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