{"id":163165,"date":"2025-09-17T12:46:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T12:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/163165\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T12:46:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T12:46:09","slug":"robert-redfords-advocacy-for-environmental-and-indigenous-causes-praised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/163165\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Redford’s advocacy for environmental and Indigenous causes praised"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Lorie Lee Sekayumptewa, a former administrator with the Navajo Nation Film Office, remembers seeing Robert Redford<\/a> at traditional cultural dances at the Hopi village of Hotevilla in New Mexico. It was more than 30 years ago and he was serving as executive producer of the 1991 release \u201cThe Dark Wind,\u201d a drama about Navajo life.<\/p>\n

Redford stood out for his Hollywood looks and for his un-Hollywood behavior, from his earnest desire to learn more about the tribe\u2019s spiritual knowledge to his visits to the Navajo Nation, where Sekayumptewa\u2019s father served as the dean of students at the tribal college and would show Redford\u2019s movies at the student union building.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven at home, he would bring that camera and film home to us, put up a sheet and we would invite our neighbors and the kids and we would all be there in our living room, watching these movies,\u201d the 54-year-old Sekayumptewa, who is Navajo, Hopi and Sac and Fox Nation, said of Redford.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were all fans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Redford,<\/a> who died Tuesday at age 89, was hardly the only liberal activist to emerge out of Hollywood, but few matched his knowledge and focus, his humility and dedication. Fellow actors and leaders of the causes he fought for spoke of his unusually deep legacy, his fight for Native Americans and the environment that began at the height of his stardom.<\/p>\n

In the mid-1970s, around the same time he was appearing in such blockbusters as \u201cThe Sting\u201d and \u201cThe Way We Were,\u201d he immersed himself in the emerging environmental movement. He successfully opposed a power plant being built in his adopted state, Utah, and lobbied for the landmark bills the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. He also joined the board of the non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council, where he remained a guiding force up to his death.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis legacy was extraordinary,\u201d says NRDC CEO and President Manish Bapna. \u201cOne of the things that was most extraordinary about him was that he understood the power of storytelling. He could talk about climate change and the toll it was inflicting on people and communities \u2014 the fisherman coping with rising seas, a family fleeing for their lives from a raging wildfire. He would record messages, give talks or speak in front of Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bapna last saw Redford a few months ago, when they dined in New York City.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe chose his words carefully, and every word he said was profound. He said we must continue to find ways to tell stories that reach people,\u201d Bapna said.<\/p>\n

Redford had a longtime affinity for the environment. After growing up in Southern California in the 1930s and \u201840s, he was disheartened to see Los Angeles transform after World War II into a mecca of pollution and traffic jams. In the early 1960s, when he came upon Provo Canyon, Utah, during a cross-country motorcycle trip, he was so awed and invigorated by the landscape that he eventually settled in the area.<\/p>\n

Entertainers over time have come to identify and, be identified with, a given cause: Harry Belafonte<\/a> and civil rights, Paul Newman<\/a> and nuclear disarmament, Jane Fonda<\/a> and the Vietnam War. Redford, as much as anyone, helped make the environment an issue for the Hollywood elite, whether for Fonda or Julia Louis-Dreyfus<\/a> or Leonardo DiCaprio<\/a>, a fellow NRDC board member who called Redford\u2019s death \u201ca huge loss to our community\u201d and cited his legacy an actor and activist.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore so than anything, he was a staunch environmental leader,\u201d DiCaprio said Monday.<\/p>\n

In 2013, Redford joined with then-Gov. Bill Richardson to create the Foundation to Protect New Mexico Wildlife to fight efforts by a Roswell, New Mexico, company and others to slaughter horses. The following year, the foundation reached an agreement with the Navajo Nation to manage thousands of wild horses on the reservation and keep the animals from being sent to slaughter houses.<\/p>\n

For Redford, the wild horse was representative of the American West. His advocacy also was channeled through the nonprofit group Return to Freedom, Wild Horse Conservation. The group posted on social media<\/a> Tuesday that they were heartbroken.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have all lost an irreplaceable artist, activist and environmentalist,\u201d said Neda DeMayo, founder of RTF. \u201cRobert Redford was and is an iconic and inspiring human being forever interwoven with the beauty and majesty of the West. I feel very grateful to have known him and to have had his support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Redford\u2019s activism extended to some of his film projects, whether the probes of the political system in \u201cAll the President\u2019s Men\u201d and \u201cThe Candidate\u201d or the drama \u201cThe Milagro Beanfield War,\u201d in which a local resident fights a real estate mogul for control of his land. His final work was \u201cDark Winds,\u201d an AMC show that premiered in 2022 and is based, like \u201cThe Dark Wind,\u201d on the fiction of Tony Hillerman.<\/a><\/p>\n

John Wirth, the series showrunner, said that \u201cDark Winds\u201d wouldn\u2019t exist without Redford, who served as an executive producer and appeared in a short cameo that aired earlier this year. The show, Wirth said, gives audiences a look into the Navajo community, with actors and writers largely holding Native identities.<\/p>\n

Redford \u201cendeavored to give people a shot at making art, you know, where they maybe hadn\u2019t had the ability to have access to mainstream media.\u201d<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Itzel Luna in Los Angeles; and Sian Watson in London contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Lorie Lee Sekayumptewa, a former administrator with the Navajo Nation Film Office, remembers seeing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[17235,98895,7569,1687,1685,88,793,46777,24550,98899,98894,2942,3031,98898,97992,3828,2005,1999,3833,3509,97885,98896,98897,795,3325,3324],"class_list":{"0":"post-163165","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-activism","9":"tag-bill-richardson","10":"tag-celebrity-deaths","11":"tag-climate","12":"tag-climate-and-environment","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-general-news","15":"tag-indigenous-people","16":"tag-jane-fonda","17":"tag-john-wirth","18":"tag-julia-louis-dreyfus","19":"tag-leonardo-dicaprio","20":"tag-los-angeles","21":"tag-manish-bapna","22":"tag-natural-resources-defense-council","23":"tag-new-mexico","24":"tag-new-york","25":"tag-new-york-city","26":"tag-nm-state-wire","27":"tag-notable-deaths","28":"tag-robert-redford","29":"tag-roswell","30":"tag-tony-hillerman","31":"tag-u-s-news","32":"tag-ut-state-wire","33":"tag-utah"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}