2025 | USA | 99’

In 1982, six rural communities across the United States were notified that all of the nation’s nuclear waste might be buried beneath them forever.

Faced with a mandate to isolate the waste for 10,000 years, the Department of Energy mapped, analyzed, and assembled its assessments, while the unsuspecting stewards of sacrificial territory found themselves fighting for their homes, health, history and dignity. In the end, one site was chosen: a desert ridge in Nevada called Yucca Mountain, on the unceded lands of the Western Shoshone. After decades of controversy, construction at Yucca Mountain was halted, and to this day, no permanent solution has been devised for America’s 90,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.

Against the impassive logic of government analysis and archives, TO USE A MOUNTAIN assembles a people’s history of resistance and stewardship through a visceral journey across the landscapes, ecologies, and personal histories of the candidate sites. There, communities stand in stark contrast to the cold, silent machinery of bureaucracy, in a meditation on the timeless struggle between power and place. Through the stories of farmers, miners, citizen scientists, Native American leaders, and activists, the film presents a meditation on resistance, memory, and the timeless struggle between power and place. 

Peace activists standing at the entry to the Nevada National Security Site, formerly Nevada Test Site.