Mill Creek Restoration Project

The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon wanted to produce a high-quality documentary video that covered the restoration project of Mill Creek and highlighted the importance of this creek’s vitality for the wild chinook salmon and summer steelhead in Central Oregon. The target audience was the community of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and funders. Wahoo Films examined the restoration effort to include the value of restoring Mill Creek as a nursery for young salmon and as a key place to protect in order to ensure the tribes’ cultural heritage and dependence on salmon. To tell this story, we captured interviews with tribal members and the Warm Springs Fisheries Department as well as restoration construction, planting, tribal fishing, and underwater and aerial footage.

A highlight of the project was that our director and camera operator, Michelle, became the first non-native invited onto a fishing platform. In order to increase community involvement, we worked with the local radio station, KWSO, to utilize local musicians to compose the music for the videos. For distribution, we helped the video get accepted into numerous film festivals throughout the NW and air on Oregon Public Broadcasting (a PBS affiliate). KWSO also distributed DVDs to every household within Warm Springs.