In Papua New Guinea, a Chinese government owned mine has violently relocated villagers, built a new pipeline and refinery on contested clan land, and is dumping mining waste into the sea. In Alberta, First Nations people suffer from rare cancers as their traditional hunting grounds are stripmined to unearth the world's third-largest oil reserve.

In Ethiopia's Gamo Highlands, the benefits of traditional stewardship are confirmed even as elders witness the decline of spiritual practices that have long protected their natural surroundings and religious tensions erupt into a riot. In the Peruvian Andes, the Q'ero are driven from their ritual site by intolerant Catholics as Q'eros potato farmers face a more ominous foe: climate change.