National Geographic’s short film showcase highlights DamNation, a documentary about America’s dams, with an excerpt featuring Katie Lee, the Desert Goddess of Glen Canyon. From Nat Geo:
When the Glen Canyon Dam was approved in April 1956, a group of archeologists and river runners set out to document more than 250 culturally significant sites and 125 side canyons that would be flooded by the project. One of those river runners was Katie Lee, a folk singer and Hollywood starlet turned activist. As she describes, “We would go around a corner, and spread out before us would be this incredible site … Everything was in the right position; everything was perfect.”
In this excerpt from the award-winning documentary DamNation, filmmakers Ben Knight and Travis Rummel interview the “desert goddess.” Now in her 90s, Lee reminisces about walking naked through the enchanting landscape—”It was absolutely the most natural thing in the world”—and the significance of what was lost in the flood. “I don’t think Eden could have touched Glen Canyon,” she says. DamNation was produced by Patagonia, and the full-length film can be seen through Vimeo on Demand.
Leo Banks profiled Katie Lee in the Weekly way back in 1999. An excerpt:
Katie Lee’s considerable passion is never far from the surface. It shows when her blue eyes widen in a rage, and in the tenor of her voice when she takes off on one her rants against greed or government bureaucrats. She has a theatricalings an arm toward the big window in her study, beyond which lay the pink and purple hills of Jerome, in central Arizona’s Verde Valley.
“I suppose it’s strange that I’d wind up here in an old mine town,” she says, eyeing the gouges in the ground that yielded one of North America’s greatest lodes of copper: “Look at what they’ve done to the earth. My earth.”
But Jerome, population 500, is actually the perfect place for Lee. The mining has long since ended, and the town is now home to artists, longhairs, rednecks, witness protection graduates and fools bold enough to cling to their own ways of thinking and doing.
The buildings hang precariously, and it seems, impossibly, against the steep slopes of Cleopatra Hill. Some have even slid a few feet or more. But so far they’ve hung on, and so has Lee, a former Hollywood starlet of some note and a folk singer who recorded eight albums. At 79, she’s also an author and environmental activist seeking to convince the world that Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River needs to come down.
It has been her cause, her defining purpose, for more than three decades. The anger that drives her is like fuel. She has used it to produce a book, 35 years in the making, that’s part river history, love story, political polemic and personal narrative of her pre-dam trips down the Glen, which corkscrews across 170 miles of southern Utah into Arizona.
All My Rivers Are Gone (1998, Johnson Books, Boulder, Colorado) veers from heartfelt and well-written descriptions of a mystical place now gone, and the awakening its beauty engendered in her, to maddeningly emotional screeds about whoever or whatever aggravates her, especially those behind the dam’s construction.
“Humans have a genetic mania to destroy all the sanctuaries that feed their souls,” Lee writes. “I don’t want to be part of the human race when I see pimps in government and the whores who do their bidding. I’d rather be a coyote.”
This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2015.
More anti-development junk!! Where would we be if these lunatics were loose 100 years ago? Sacrifices must be made for the mutual good of the country and sometimes these sacrifices are difficult, but in the end we all benefit.
America became grate because the balance between what must be done to provide for the needs of many and the desire of a few to save something. In the past, reason prevailed, today passion prevails and important projects are stopped. Future generations will suffer because of this shortsightedness, not the crazies that halted needed progress.
They will, I hope, be sharing eco-stories in infernal Hell, which they will have earned for their foul deeds on earth. They are not heroes!
You had me at “America became grate.”
And then sealed the deal with “foul deeds.”
In Hamlet’s book who says this quotation, “Foul deeds will rise though all the earth o’erhelm them, to men’s eyes”?
Hamlet had the saim shortcomings?
Bye Gad, sir, you are a character.
Peabo,
Thank you for the grammatical assistance. Auto correct often zaps me, as I did the comment in Word then copy/paste to the site, because of the intermittent internet connection in the Santiago airport.
Nonetheless, my points stand as my considered belief.
So Biz Boy, what exactly are these “needs” of the many? Do these needs include bacon wrapped pizzas and enough junk food to make approx 2/3 of Americans overweight or obese? Oh, and btw, by some estimates as much as 40% of food in America is tossed out. Do these “needs” include gas guzzling SUVs that get a mere 12-18 gallons per mile? Oh, how about the need to have new electronics every year when millions of tons of electronic waste is being produced each and every year in America alone? Your thinking is governed by ideology, platitudes and propaganda, and is conspicuously lacking in facts. Try harder.
I know propaganda when I read it sir. And you are a profundity of the highest order.
Man made global warming can be reversed in your world, can’t it?
I see your point about wanting the dam removed and the Colorado River and Glenn Canyon restored back before 1956. But look at the positive things the dam generated like cheap electricity, jobs building the dam and all the employment from Lake Powel. Also the millions of people that got to enjoy the beauty of the southwest by boat, they got to see the side canyons less a few hundred feet. In the last 60years without the dam only a few thousand people would have seen Glen Canyon not the millions that vacation on Lake Powell. Maybe because of the dam being built you and the others hired to document the Archeology sites got to see Glenn Canyon, just a thought.
Nice acs.
Lupe Rodarte,
You seem like a concerned person, and, in part, I agree with your points. However, let me suggest that you be concerned about those about those who have nothing and not those of us, including myself, who have what you believe to be too much. I do this in my own simple way.
For more than 30 years I have helped lift people from deep poverty by being a part of a team to build dams for irrigation and electrical generation. The deference in their lives is astounding. I also help develop gas and oil fields for struggling countries, assuring those nearby benefit as well. Importantly, I have been involved in the responsible development of more than a dozen copper mines around the world. Seeing the differences these projects make in lives of thousands is rewarding beyond belief, as I always return to see how things have turned out.
To be sure some benefit more than others. Those with drive, intelligence and education always come out with more, just as we see in the US. Nonetheless, many, many more have their lives improved in so many ways.
Now worry less about the over-consumption in the US and help those who have not.
Bisbee boy you out the sorry excuse for a living organism I’ve encountered on the web in a long time. You’ll be burning in Hell with the Koch brothers, scumbag.
Freebird, you’re not helping your cause by spewing half-baked insults. It doesn’t make you look good.
I see valid points in the posts from Lupe and Bisbee, although “They will, I hope, be sharing eco-stories in infernal Hell” can hardly be called a “considered” belief.
Looks like the Shills are evolving.
RACIST
The truth is, it doesn’t matter whether constructing this dam was right or wrong, because it already happened. It is not something that can be undone, so we may as well take the benefits the dam brings and be grateful for them. But in another light it is important to question this decision. It is important to recognize what can be lost when we seek to control nature. When future such projects arise, we need to reflect on stories like this one, and ask ourselves if the benefits truly outweigh the sacrifice. Not, I admit, an easy decision. As for blazing this as anti-development: maybe it is. But someone has to be. If everyone just says “Develop, develop develop!” we will overwhelm this planet’s resources in the blink of an eye. A diversity of opinions is actually for the best.
COULD-A, WOULD-A, SHOULD-A…………and for goodness sakes don’t EVER go near there!!
As one who walked the walls and canyons prior to the dam, enjoyed the free running water, etc etc etc,
beware of your government, the lobbyist, the corporate dick tutorship that follows and continue planting tree spikes, pulling survey stakes and burning blowing subterfuge we enjoy as free americans. Vote Trump so we can take this shithouse down.
Didn’t Sen Barry Goldwater, a huge proponent of the dam say before he died, “What in the world were we thinking”? Google it…
Long live the Monkey Wrench Gang.
Well they may be getting their wish for the return of glen canyon of old with the drying up of lake powell. Unfortunately there were many paleo indian sites which were filled in and destroyed forever with the filling of the lake originally. What a shame the loss of it all.