Drowned Land (2025) Movie Drinking Game
Take a Drink: for water
Take a Drink: for every mention of a past crime against humanity
Take a Drink: for every courtroom appearance
Do a Shot: for each new dam project
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
The Indigenous Rights movement seems to increasingly have become intertwined with the question of Water Rights in recent years, with flashpoints like the Keystone Oil Pipeline protests hinging on what it would do to local water tables relied upon by Native Americans.
Drowned Land is a personal tale of a predominantly Native American community’s fight to preserve the Kiamichi River of Oklahoma from developers who seek to dam its already dwindling waters.
A Toast
Director Colleen Thurston kicks things off with a striking beginning where she inverts her camera as it glides above the Kiamichi and overlayed text lays out the shameful history of the 1830 Indian Removal Act. This is far from the only beautiful cinematography of the lush natural surroundings of the Oklahoma home that her Choctaw ancestors have resided in since then.
Thurston is more specifically from Tulsa, with its dual histories of further racial violence- the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and the murderous treatment of newly rich Osage people after oil is discovered, documented in the book and film Killers of the Flower Moon. All of this history informs these people’s intense disinterest in any further displacement or degradation of the lands that were promised them in perpetuity.
Thurston’s grandfather’s experience is a complex one in this context, though. Of Choctaw heritage, he was able to leave the reservation by joining the Army Corps of Engineers, then returned to his community and built a dam that once again displaced large numbers of his brethren in the name of flood control. She doesn’t shy from presenting all sides, but shows the ways in which a predominantly white government continues to belittle and ignore the perspective and needs of her people.
Beer Two
This documentary doesn’t quite strike the perfect balance between the personal and the political- it feels like the latter could have used even more focus, especially as time and events begin to pass more quickly towards the end of the film.
Verdict
Drowned Land demonstrates how history informs a continued struggle by Oklahoman Native Americans to defend their land and water rights.
