Two weeks ago, President Trump signed an executive order to cut funding for both NPR and PBS. This comes as a devastating blow to the country’s non-commercial, publicly-owned media outlets.
Each year, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the umbrella organization of NPR and PBS, receives a $535 million annually, a bipartisan appropriation from Congress. For PBS, federal funding accounts for 15 percent of their total budgetary needs, while additional funding comes from a diverse pool of donors, corporate sponsorships, and private money. This amounts to roughly $1.50 per year for taxpayer.
Since 1970, PBS has been producing and supporting quality, independent reporting and news, as well as award-winning documentary films that highlight Indigenous lifeways, intercultural vitality, and ecological knowledge keeping.
In light of this imminent threat to our nation’s public broadcasting, here are five recommended PBS-supported films from which Magic Canoe’s audiences have benefited greatly.
1. “Alaska’s Vanishing Native Villages” – Frontline
“A look inside Alaska Native villages fighting for survival against climate change. With the Howard Center at ASU, FRONTLINE examines why communities are relocating and why they’re struggling to preserve their traditions.”
2. “Klamath: After the Dams” – Tending the Wild
“The Klamath River now flows free for hundreds of miles from Southern Oregon to the ocean. But after the largest dam removal project in the U.S., challenges remain. Water shortages in the upper basin fuel toxic bacteria, disease outbreaks and conflicts over endangered fish as salmon swim upstream for the first time in a century.”
3. “Cultural Burning” – Tending the Wild
“For thousands of years, California Indians used fire as a tool for managing natural resources. Throughout the state, Native peoples conducted cultural burns on a wide range of plants and it was their fire regimes that created diverse habitat mosaics that sustained meadows, coastal prairies, and grasslands.”
4. “Covenant of the Salmon People” – KBTC
“Covenant of the Salmon People features a portrait of the Nez Perce Tribe as they continue to carry out their ancient promise to protect the Chinook salmon. The film explores the intertwined fate of the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce), salmon, and the landscape from which both evolved. The Nez Perce people are the oldest documented civilization in North America.”
5. The Beautiful Undammed – Wild Hope
“Ten years after the largest dam removal in history—on the Elwha River, in Washington State—scientists are chronicling an inspiring story of ecological rebirth. Recovering salmon populations are transferring critical nutrients from the ocean into the forests along the Elwha’s banks, enriching the entire ecosystem.”
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