For Immediate Release: Thursday, October 29, 2026
Contact:
Jennifer Ekstrom, Kootenai River Campaign Lead, (208) 318-5812
New film Shared Waters: Ktunaxa and the Coal Mines comes to Sandpoint
Film highlights historic opportunity to resolve international coal mine pollution dispute
Sandpoint, ID — The Idaho Conservation League’s new documentary film, Shared Waters: Ktunaxa and the Coal Mines, will show at the Panida Theater in Sandpoint on Wednesday, November 11 at 6 p.m. The event will include a discussion and audience Q&A with Kootenai Tribe of Idaho Vice Chairman Gary Aitken Jr., film director Jennifer Ekstrom, and cinematographer Jimmy Matlosz.
Shared Waters: Ktunaxa and the Coal Mines is a 43-minute documentary film that reveals the far-reaching impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining in British Columbia’s Elk Valley. The lucrative metallurgical coal industry has polluted water in B.C., Montana, and Idaho for decades, threatening the cultural resources of the transboundary Ktunaxa Nation, including the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho. Idaho’s Kootenai River is impaired with too much selenium due to pollution from these mines. As the problem reaches the international stage through investigation under the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909, regulators face a pivotal choice: continue to prioritize industry, or rise to hold polluters accountable and protect the water, people, and future of this watershed.
Gary Aitken Jr., Vice Chairman of the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, leads the story and is joined by other Ktunaxa leaders as well as scientific and policy experts. Together, they are seeking solutions at the speed and scale necessary, while new mines and mine expansions that risk locking in decades of pollution are quickly moving through permitting processes.
“Shared Waters amplifies a powerful Indigenous vision for justice, accountability, and restoration,” said film director Jennifer Ekstrom. “The unprecedented indigenous leadership of the Boundary Waters Treaty investigation gives us hope for accountability for the coal industry in British Columbia.”
Buy tickets online at the Panida Theater, and learn more at sharedwatersfilm.org
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