References to the Dakota Access Pipeline and the builder’s conflict with the Lakota and Dakota peoples of Standing Rock Reservation have been circulating in the news since the pipeline’s inception in 2014.

The anti-pipeline protests caught the attention of Josh and Rebecca Tickell, documentary filmmakers and environmental activists.

The Tickells worked alongside the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to ensure their story was accurately told. The result of their efforts, “On Sacred Ground,” premiered at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre on Friday, Jan. 20.

It is the first feature film written by the Tickells, along with William Mapother, who stars in the lead role alongside David Arquette, Amy Smart, Frances Fisher, Irene Bedard, David Midthunder, Kerry Knuppe and Mariel Hemingway.

The Tickells both directed and produced the film. A test screening took place during the 2021 Sedona International Film Festival with the Tickells, along with Arquette and Hemingway hosting a question and answer session afterward. Patrick Schweiss, executive director of SIFF, says that the Tickells are audience favorites at the film festival.

“We’ve shown virtually every film they’ve had in the past and got to see the sneak preview of this one before it was even completed,” Schweiss said. “We are honored to bring their film back for its theatrical debut.

Dakota Access Pipeline

The debate between Energy Transfer, co-owners of the DAPL, and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe includes the charge that DAPL violates Article II of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which guarantees the “undisturbed use and occupation” of reservation lands surrounding the proposed location of the pipeline. In 2015, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, operating as a sovereign nation, passed a resolution regarding the pipeline stating that “the Dakota Access Pipeline poses a serious risk to the very survival of our tribe and … would destroy valuable cultural resources.”

While the DAPL does not cross the reservation, the tribe argued the pipeline traverses a Sioux burial ground and goes under nearby Lake Oahe that the tribe uses for fresh water, and that the federal government did not adequately engage the Standing Rock Sioux during the permitting process, a requirement under federal law.

Energy Transfer’s website claims that the DAPL has not impacted groundwater in any of the four states through which it passes since going into service in June of 2017.

It also claims that the Standing Rock Sioux’s water intake has been moved to a location about 75 miles away from the pipeline.

Within the first six months of the pipeline’s operation, five spills were documented, outraging American Indian groups who warned that the project posed a threat to the environment.

The issues of the debate have reached the administrations of Presidents Barak Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

In 2020, U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg ordered the DAPL shut down over concerns about its potential environmental impact.

In 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribes that the single 2015 environmental review for the two miles of pipe installed below Lake Oahe was insufficient. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with this decision in February 2022.

“On Sacred Ground” took about five years to produce and is currently premiering in markets nationwide. Rebecca and Josh Tickell Rebecca Tickell is a director, producer, environmental author, actress and activist. Her husband Josh is the author of four books, a film director, a speaker and an expert on sustainability and the climate. He has been a featured guest on talk shows and news programs. His work focuses on movies with a social message.

Together, the Tickells won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival with their first film, “Fuel,” premiered their oil spill documentary, “The Big Fix,” as an official selection at Cannes and have made nine films together.

The Tickells’ 2020 film “Kiss the Ground” details Tickell’s decade-long journey around the world to learn how the effects of climate change can be reversed by regenerating the world’s soils. Actor Woody Harrelson narrates the film. “Kiss the Ground” had an Earth Day premiere at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival. “Kiss the Ground” contributed to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s allocation of $20 billion to climate-smart agriculture.

In 2016, their film “Good Fortune,” a biopic about entrepreneur John Paul DeJoria, owner of Paul Mitchell Hair and Patron Tequila, was released to rave reviews, winning “Best of Festival” film at the SIFF.

Goal of ‘On Sacred Ground’

“The perspective of the film was something we carefully crafted, that we took our time to think about the most reverent, respectful way that we can tell this story,” Rebecca Tickell stated. “It was with a lot of consultation. Our hope was to infuse the film into the mainstream [population], so others could be touched in that same way.”

Tickell says that they had a shoestring budget and felt for their first feature film, they “were totally crazy” for picking a topic of this magnitude.

“There are so many moments where the film almost didn’t happen. But I think that there is a bigger message here and we felt ‘called’ to this project,” she said.

“When you do a film about a current issue, you’re still thinking about the current issue,” Josh Tickell said. “We’re now several years later, a different administration, government-wise, on a different time world-wise, and you start to think about the lasting lessons. Or, how is this perceived in today’s world? What will the audience take away now that it’s been five or six years?

“It doesn’t necessarily shift the film, but it does shift how we perceive it,” he said.

Through their experience in bringing about social issues to audiences, the Tickells said that they believe that if you present a problem, there is a solution.

“There is no such thing as an intractable environmental problem,” Tickell said. “That’s been our experience over the 20-plus years of doing this work. When people who are holding different interests around an issue truly come to the table and they truly commit to finding solutions, there’s always a way.”

The Tickells said they wanted to ask big questions without necessarily having the answers. “If we’re not going to respect each other, we’re sure as hell not going to respect the planet,” Josh Tickell stated. “It’s just this cascade of disrespect of extraction. Whereas, if you come in a project like this and say, ‘OK, here’s the honest-to-God truth, this is billion dollars in bank accounts. It has nothing to do with energy security; it has to do with money.’ OK, that’s the truth.

“Now let’s talk about respect,” he said. “What’s going back to the environment? What’s going back to the indigenous people? Can you avoid sacred sites? You know, all these things come into play.”

As filmmakers, the Tickells said they present issues that incorporate change down the road.

“If people understood all the different sides of this issue, maybe this pipeline wouldn’t change, but maybe the next pipeline would change or the next 100 pipelines and the next 1,000,” Josh Tickell said. “We open our eyes to the idea or the possibility or the way we’ve done things isn’t necessarily the way we have to do them in the future.”

These films are tools that create change, Rebecca Tickell said.

“There’s nothing like that experience when you watch a movie; it has the power to open your mind or change your heart forever. That’s what we hope to do with our films,” she said.

“For us, the thing that keeps us going is that we are committed to something big. Bigger than ourselves, bigger than our success, we want to make films that make a difference,” Tickell said.