MIAMI, Okla. – Through the documentary, “ᏗᏂᏠᎯ ᎤᏪᏯ (Meet Me at the Creek),” Cherokee Nation citizen Loren Waters worked alongside fellow citizen Rebecca Jim and others to document Tar Creek, a site of cultural and environmental importance, and the effects pollutants has had on it since 1979.
“I met Rebecca in 2021, and I got to learn more about her work through the L.E.A.D. (Local Environmental Action Demanded) Agency and how she’s dedicated her life to the citizens of Miami and the area to create a better life for the people that live there,” Waters said. “It really inspired me to want to tell a story about that place and about Rebecca’s vision for that place if the water was clean.”
Jim began working at Miami Public Schools in 1978, a year before the water was “ruined.”
“Just north of us (Miami) is one piece of the largest lead and zinc mining site in the world, and it’s attached to four other superfund sites that are in Kansas and Missouri. Our site is just named after the creek that runs through our superfund site, Tar Creek, and happens to run through this community, Miami, Oklahoma, which is tribal lands … before it crosses over and joins into the Neosho River and the other side of it is the Cherokee Nation,” Jim said. “All of that water coming out of the superfund site starting in 1979, has been seriously polluted with heavy metals.”
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s website, a superfund it a location where hazardous waste was and/or is dumped and is left in the open or improperly managed.
Through her work with the L.E.A.D. Agency, Jim has been advocating for the betterment of the site.
“I got here before the water was ruined and it was dangerous, and I just think it doesn’t have to be. It can be fixed. Regular people can’t do it, we have to continue to put the pressure on the only federal agency that can pick it up and make things better, the EPA,” Jim said. “I’ve gone … to the creek starting years and years ago with young people who loved the area and took me to their secret places, the places where they made little camps … and I saw those. Every watershed has special places and this place does, too. It just is dangerous now to play in.”
Jim said she is humbled from Waters’ efforts to put a spotlight on Tar Creek through the documentary.
“What Loren has done, it’s very humbling the story that she’s told. It’s humbling to be featured like that. She’s elevated our place, this place, this damaged place. She’s allowing people to see that it’s a cultural place that’s been damaged,” Jim said. “When the water and the soil is harmed, those things can harm us. So, what she’s done is imagine what it could be. I do like to say everybody can get a second chance and this little creek needs it real bad.”
Waters also pointed out the cultural damage that is being done due to the area being polluted.
“Some of the things that we depicted in the film that aren’t able to be practiced in that place are Cherokee basket weaving, gathering walnuts to dye the baskets, our traditional foods, being able to go to water for ceremony and just to create memories at the water,” Waters said. “I think that that’s one of the things that is most important as Cherokee people. We can’t do these things that make us who we are whenever this water is damaged.”
“ᏗᏂᏠᎯ ᎤᏪᏯ (Meet Me at the Creek)” premiered at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in February and will spend the rest of the year showing at festivals. The documentary will have its Tulsa screening at Circle Cinema at 5 p.m., April 14 with a reception beginning at 4 p.m.
For information on “ᏗᏂᏠᎯ ᎤᏪᏯ (Meet Me at the Creek),” visit lorenwaters.com/meet-me-at-the-creek.
For information on the Tulsa screening, visit circlecinema.org.
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