Re: Catching Up -- 'The Cherokee Word for Water.'

We saw "The Cherokee Word for Water" last night at the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, and I cannot recommend it too highly.

It's a rather modest but extraordinary and beautiful film about Wilma Mankiller, first female Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, a very well-known American who is sorely missed. She passed away in 2010 after a long illness. The movie is clearly a labor of love, a more than 20 year project by Kristina Kiehl and Charlie Soap (Charlie was/is Wilma's husband and partner), both of whom were at the screening last night. We had the opportunity to meet Wilma and chat with her a bit in California about 10 years ago or so, and to tell the truth, the encounter has always stayed with us. She was an inspiration not only to the people of the Cherokee Nation, but to women and indigenous peoples all over the world.

The film deals with her first project for and with the Cherokee Nation, well before she was elected Principal Chief. She worked with Charlie Soap -- who was then housing coordinator for the Nation -- on bringing piped water to some isolated communities like Bell and Oak Ridge in Adair County, Oklahoma, a project that required that the people in the communities that would benefit from the water would voluntarily band together ('gadugi') by digging 18 miles of trench through rocky and hilly terrain, laying the pipe themselves, and recover some of their sense of purpose, society and tradition in the process.