The next time you speak......

[Mark Hart <hart6@popgun.llnl.gov>]

The next time you begin to speak before a public audience and see people
looking at you with skepticism or suspicion and can't understand why, I
recommend you stop by your local video store and rent the movie RAVENHAWK,
Columbia Tristar Home Video, 1995 Raven Hawk Productions Inc., a Ron
Samuels Production. This movie goes beyond ATOMIC DOG.

Think of Ward Valley, Sierra Blanca, nuclear power, uranium mining, and
processing operations when you read this summary of the movie script.

The movie starts with 4 men traveling in a car at night.  One is on a cell
phone talking to a U.S. Senator discussing appropriations for "the plant"
being sited on a Shoshone Indian reservation.  The Senator wants all
obstacles removed to siting the plant or the appropriations (and his
kickbacks) will be lost.

The four men arrive at the reservation in darkness.  They meet a local
sheriff and bribe him for his cooperation in silence.  The four men consist
of a marine scientist, two engineers and Mr. Thorne.  These four men break
into the house of the leader of the Shoshone tribal council.  As the tribal
leader is beaten, he screams "Your offer is sacrilege! You're trying to
murder our land!".  They kill him, his medicine woman wife, and frame their
12 year old daughter for the murder of her parents.  She is convicted and
sent to an asylum.  Twelve years later she (Rhiya Shadowfeather) is being
transferred to a prison and escapes, allowing her opportunity for
vengeance.

She appropriates a horse and rides off into an area posted as a "Dedicated
Wilderness, Entry Prohibited Without Permit".  What does she find there?
The Thorne Consolidated "facility" built on the reservation.  (It is
actually the impressive, 3 stack coal fired Navajo Generating plant outside
Page, AZ.)  Rhiya rides her horse at the base of the stacks and is
discovered.  She is chased by men in jeeps and on motorcycles, and escapes
on her horse.

Rhiya takes a diving lesson at the Glen Canyon reservoir.  Her marine
scientist instructor, making a pass, eventually is hit and killed by his
boat and is scalped.  One down.

Rhiya climbs down on a bridge structure where an inspection engineer is
trying to cover up a fault in the structure.  She releases the seat rope
and the inspection engineer falls to the bottom of the canyon.  Two down.

Rhiya visits an Indian man and his dying wife at their home.  As they look
out the front door, over the desert, at "the plant", the man states  "Not
much of anything around here until they built that damned plant.  You saw
the land, nothing is growing right.  It's supposed to get rid of toxic
waste.  What you're looking at is a god damned political land mine.  Nobody
wanted it, but the Feds and EPA don't have any jurisdiction on Indian land.
Thorne cronies stood to make millions if they could push it through.  They
had to get approval of the Tribal Council.  No way was your dad going to go
for that.  That's why they murdered him and your mom."

Thorne brings three men in by helicopter to hunt Rhiya down.  One
ex-military, another urban hit-man, the third Australian Aborigine.  She
dispatches them in due course.

The other engineer working for Thorne picks up a shotgun, hops on a
motorcycle and goes after Rhiya who is on horseback.  She wrestles him on a
cliff.  He looses.  Three down.

Rhiya finds Thorne at his house, in his office, waiting with his shotgun.
He states "Your mother was crazy.  She kept saying the land was sacred.
Land isn't sacred, it's wealth!  If it wasn't for me you'd be another
ignorant Indian squatting in a mud hut.  Because of me, you're not."  At
his point Rhiya wrestles away the shotgun and knocks Thorne to the ground.
Poised to kill him, she is stopped by a Federal Marshall arriving at the
scene.

The Federal Marshall was introduced earlier in the movie as half-Indian.
The Federal Marshall handcuffs Rhiya outside the office while he talks to
Thorne.

The Marshall asks, "Having some problems down at the plant Thorne?"

Thorne replies,  "Just some minor matters.  It's pretty irrelevant."

********************************************************************
The Federal Marshall responds,  "I think the prospects of nuclear radiation
spilling into the Colorado River, the water supply for the Western United
States, to be quite relevant."
********************************************************************

Thorne proceeds to offer to write a check to the Marshall to buy his
cooperation.

The Federal Marshall proceeds to shoot Thorne in the forehead.

The movie ends with a black screen and white lettering:

SIX MONTHS AFTER RHIYA SHADOWFEATHER'S RETURN TO THE RESERVATION, A JOINT
CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE OVERTURNED OPERATIONAL LICENSING OF THE THORNE
CONSOLIDATED FACILITY.

THREE MONTHS LATER, THE PLANT WAS DISMANTLED BUT FBI INVESTIGATIONS
EXONERATED THE PUBLIC OFFICIALS INVOLVED.

TO THIS DAY, LOCAL GOVERNMENTS SEEK TO CIRCUMVENT FEDERAL LAWS BY
EXPLOITING LAND UNDER CONTROL OF THE INDIAN NATIONS.  NUCLEAR WASTE
DISPOSAL LOOMS AS ONE OF THE MOST FRIGHTENING EXAMPLES.


The screen credits come up with:  "Special thanks to the Glen Canyon
National Recreation Area, Navajo Nation & Navajo Nation Film Office, Salt
River Project/Navajo Generating Plant"

The long list of screen credits ends, almost everyone would have turned off
their video/left the room before seeing the following:

********************************************************************
"The characters and events depicted in this motion picture are fictitious.
Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental."
********************************************************************

A few observations and comments.

RAVENHAWK may not be a big renter, but you cannot underestimate the affect
of few dozen, well placed copies of this video, on the indigenous people of
North America and Australia.  If you watch the video, you'll see many more
undercurrents than addressed in this script summary.

The movie was well done.  There was real money behind its production.
Perhaps more than can be anticipated in sales.  You'll recognize many of
the actors.  "Q" from Star Trek, the government regulator from Ghost
Busters etc.

It is sad (if not amusing) to note that the coal fired power plant in
Arizona didn't have any problem contributing to a movie that smeared
activities associated with the nuclear industry.

It is also interesting to note that the movie transitioned the problem from
a "facility" to a "plant to get rid of toxic waste"  and finished at the
end with problems at the plant having "prospects of nuclear radiation
spilling into the Colorado River, the water supply for the Western United
States".

What do you think the message is here?  And why is the message being given?





Mark M. Hart
LLNL/L-125, P.O. Box 808
Livermore, CA  94551
925 423-4770  fax 9762


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