By Michelle Tirado

Though most Americans get that the nation needs to switch to greener energy sources, too few may understand what it takes to make the switch. But as shown in Power Paths, a documentary that debuted on the PBS series Independent Lens on Nov. 3, 2009, several Indian tribes not only know what it takes, but they have made a lot of progress toward change.

Directed by Bo Boudart and narrated by Peter Coyote, the one-hour film examines the complex and often heated debates on energy that take place on Capitol Hill, in corporate boardrooms and in tribal communities. It also pays tribute to grassroots efforts to protect tribal lands, air and water — all considered sacred by Native American people — from the effects of mining and coal burning.

Power Paths puts much of the spotlight on the Hopi and Navajo reservations, which for decades played host to the Black Mesa mine. Once the world’s largest coal strip-mining complex, it was connected via a 273 mile-long pipeline to the Mohave Generating Station to supply some of the Southwest’s largest cities, such as Las Vegas and Los Angeles, with electricity.

Although the mine provided royalty payments to the tribes and jobs to tribal members for three decades, there were enormous negative impacts, including high cancer rates and severe environmental degradation. Then there was the irony: While energy from their lands was being consumed by power-hungry cities hundreds of miles away, nearly 20,000 Hopi and Navajo families lived without basic electricity.