SIFF: “Drowned Land” Chronicles a Fight for Resources
When describing the United States, people love to call the middle of the country “flyover states,” but the people who say that aren’t recognizing the very real individuals who live in these forgotten states. Their existence is not lesser than because of their geographical location. It’s this sentiment that’s at the heart of Colleen Thurston’s documentary Drowned Land. She’s from Oklahoma, one of those flyover states, and has focused her efforts in this film not on proving that this place deserves to exist, but on showing the long history of exploitation on this land.
Thurston is one of the subjects in the film because of her familial ties to the war for water rights playing out in Oklahoma. She’s a Choctaw Nation citizen whose ancestors were sent to this area on the Trail of Tears. The Choctaw Nation was forcibly removed from their original home so the federal government could exploit resources and make way for white settlements. This cycle of natural resource exploitation and displacement of the poor to make room for the rich continued. The Osage murders that were the recent focus of Martin Scorcese’s Killers of the Flower Moon were nearby, and the city of Greenwood, which was one of the most thriving Black communities in the country, was massacred by white Tulsans. As one of the film's subjects says, “Tulsa is a city built on extraction.”
Courtesy of Drowned Land
Drowned Land, aside from giving a robust history of Tulsa and Oklahoma, is about a present-day fight for resources. The state of Oklahoma signed an agreement to divert 85% of the water from the Kiamichi River, which is located in the Choctaw Nation and is the most ecologically diverse river in Oklahoma. This would not be the first time the river would be diverted, and Thurston’s grandfather played a role in its exploitation. Drowned Land masterfully balances this familial story with the greater impacts on the area around Tulsa – past and present. The blend of archival footage and home movies is used to a powerful degree and creates a feeling of community that permeates time and space. Oklahoma may start as a flyover state for many, but that’s not how they’ll feel about it when the film ends. “Why would anyone want to live in the poorest county of god-awful Oklahoma?” asks one of the film’s subjects. “It’s hard to understand if you don’t live there.”
The story of Drowned Land is not new. It’s the story of the United States and the land and the people whose backs the country was built on. In its hyper-specificity and personal angle, Drowned Land creates both a piece of art and a call for resistance. “We grow where we are planted,” says one of the film’s subjects. The Choctaw Nation were forced to this land, but now that they’re here, they will fight for its right to grow on its own.
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