The Return of Navajo Boy

The Return of Navajo Boy released in 2000 is a documentary film produced by Jeff Spitz and Bennie Klain about the Cly family, Navajo who live on their reservation. Through them, the film explores several longstanding issues among the Navajo and their relations with the United States government and corporations environmental racism, white supremacy, media and political representation, offreservation adoption, and denial of reparations for environmental illnesses due to uranium mining in Monument Valley, Utah, which was unregulated for decades. Bill Kennedy served as the films executive producer his late father had produced and directed the earlier silent film The Navajo Boy 1950s, which featured the Cly family.

The producers wanted to tell the full story of the Cly family, who were residents of the Navajo Nation in Monument Valley, Utah. They had earlier been the subjects in the silent film The Navajo Boy. Through their story, the director and family intended to explore many of the issues with which the Navajo Nation has had to struggle since the early 20th century land use and environmental contamination, offreservation adoptions, health education, enforcement of treaty rights, relations with the United States government.Much of the story in the 2000 film is told by the chief subject, Elsie Mae Cly Begay, the oldest of the children shown in The Navajo Boy. She is the oldest living Cly featured in the 2000 film. Her mother Happy Cly died of lung cancer, which the family believed was caused by environmental contamination from unregulated uranium mining on the reservation. Elise Mae Begay has lost two sons, one to lung cancer and the other to a tumor, whose deaths she attributes to uranium contamination near the house where they lived when her sons were children. Constructed in part of contaminated rock, the structure was torn down in 2001. ........

Source: Wikipedia