The people will always be there

7 MINUTES

Explore the rugged beauty of Nine Mile Canyon, the world’s longest art gallery

The misleadingly named Nine Mile Canyon runs some 40 miles across a remote stretch of eastern Utah. Driving through, you could easily mistake it for just another scenic yet unassuming stretch of rugged Western terrain. But get close to its craggy surfaces and you’ll soon understand why Nine Mile Canyon has been called ‘the world’s longest art gallery’. Its rock surfaces are adorned with some 10,000 Native American petroglyphs and pictographs spread across roughly 1,000 distinct sites.

But, as The People Will Always Be There explores, nearby natural gas development threatens these centuries-old images, as proposed improvements to the local road portend more trucks, more dust and more erosion. Directed by the Utah filmmaker Dane Christensen, the short documentary is composed of sweeping drone shots and close-ups of rock art. The film’s narrator, the local Zuni elder and ancestral farmer Jim Enote, argues that these images – sacred to local Native Americans, and part of the shared cultural heritage of all of humanity – deserve the same respect and reverence accorded to non-Native holy sites, burial grounds and celebrated artworks.

Video by RadioWest Films

Director: Dane Christensen

Explore more

An Aboriginal painter depicts scenes from her youth in this beautiful short

A film by Grace Kemarre Robinya and Jonathan Daw

Woman in a white dress standing in front of a geometric quilt in a garden setting with trees in the background.

Beauty is woven into everyday life for the quilters of the American West

A film by Carly Jakins and Jared Jakins

Black and white photo of a hand holding a scallop shell. The background is blurred and the shell shows detailed texture.

A poetic, sea-soaked tribute to the ‘cockle women’ of Wales

Directed by Lily Tiger

Two silhouetted people stand against a dramatic orange and purple sunset sky.

In the outback, a town of two awaits visitors to their emergency airport

Directed by Yannick Jamey

A large flock of birds fills the sky at dusk over a car park, where people with binoculars observe them from beside their vehicles.
PLACE

A makeshift community of people and migratory birds converge on a strip mall

Directed by Henry Davis

A rake with a wooden handle rakes through sand dunes, its trail mixing with shadows from a line of multicoloured flags.

An artist captures the joys of solitude amid a month living in a beach shack

Directed by Lynne Sachs

A knitted grey toy mouse holds a needle and repairs its own dress. Three balls of yarn lie nearby, alongside a small blue open book.

A whimsical ode to the reparative power of knitting, rendered in wool

Directed by Samantha Moore

A cluttered room filled with stacks of books and papers, with a ginger cat lounging on a yellow chair in the centre.
PLACE

The clutter of a used bookshop forms an evocative metaphor for memory

Directed by Diego Quinderé de Carvalho