For years, residents of the Canadian hamlet of Fort Chipewyan, located just downriver from petroleum deposits called “oil sands,” have been plagued by rare forms of cancer. When officials denied a connection between the cancers and nearby industrial mining of the oil sands, First Nations elder François Paulette brought the issue all the way to the boardrooms of global oil companies. From New York to Copenhagen to Oslo to the oil sands themselves, this program takes viewers inside Paulette’s David-and-Goliath battle for the health and safety of his community. With the support of film director James Cameron, Paulette created a storm of controversy that eventually revealed a decade of incompetent pollution monitoring in Canada’s oil sands industry. (90 minutes)
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