100 Years: One Woman’s Fight for Justice

Melinda Janko (2016, U.S., 76 min.) + post-film discussion

When you’ve been fighting for 100 years, despair is not an option. Melinda Janko’s 100 Years: One Woman’s Fight for Justice offers a spirited portrait of Elouise Cobell, treasurer of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. In her work, Cobell uncovers a history of massive fraud and mismanagement by the federal government of billions of dollars of mineral rights supposedly held in trust and managed by the government on behalf of Native Americans. What follows is the largest class action lawsuit against the federal government in history. And despite being unquestionably in the right and despite winning case after case, somehow justice never gets any closer. Through multiple presidential administrations, Cobell soldiers onward, fighting a government determined to deny indigenous peoples a share of the profits from the natural resources that have been ripped from their lands.

A major question of environmental justice and a question about fundamental values and commitments, this is a fight worth fighting. But is it one Cobell can win in time? An absolute MUST SEE film that will leave you inspired by Cobell’s response and ready to climb through your screen and man the barricades with her against injustice.