Sand, Sand Everywhere
Do you often go to movie theaters and see things that happen just as they actually happened on the Expedition?...... Sometimes.
Spoiler Warning: Discussions of major plot points, character death, and world-building from the Book and 2021 movie Dune
From the window we watch them speed past. As we travel across the Western United States in a van on the Westminster Expedition. There have not been many instances but when they appear they are thoroughly enjoyed by me at least. Dunes (sand ones.) Our Expedition has been a fascinating experience that has taken us to many places, rainy, cold, grassy and, dry, a thoroughly rewarding adventure. but also an emotionally challenging and exhausting one. There are a lot of environmental problems, and thinking about them constantly can get depressing. So for a quick break from the intensity of our journey, a few weeks ago when we were in Palm Springs, a group of us went to see the new movie version of Dune. However, while watching it, it seemed that instead of an escape from our academic studies it was simply a more Syfy version of the important themes of the Expedition repeated back to us on the big screen. But with a much more intense soundtrack. (Sorry to my peers I love your music but hearing Han Zimmer loud enough that it vibrates in your bones is an experience that everyone should have (and one you will get if you see Dune in theaters))
“Similarities between the Expedition and Dune?” I hear you asking. Well, the film starts out with a monologue from the character of Chani describing her home, the desert planet Arrakis, and the subjugation of her people, the Fremen, under the Empire. She says as the music hums, “My planet Arrakis is so beautiful when the sun is low. Rolling over the sands, you can see the spice in the air. At nightfall, the spice harvesters land. They ravage our lands in front of our eyes. Their cruelty to our people is more than I can stand.” Right out of the gate Dune hits us with themes of conquest and colonialism. “Sit back and relax dear readers, because this is going to be another view of our story.”
The first third of Dune is for the most part uneventful, just our sad Victorian protagonist, Timothee Chalamet (Paul Atreides), walking around in the fog in oversized coats. It isn't until after our ghost boy makes it to Arrakis that things start to heat up (figuratively and literally because now they are in the desert).
The most glaring similarity between Expedition and the film Dune is of course the gigantic sand worms which we on the Expedition have already had our fair share of interactions with. Standing on rocks to hide from worms and running from them are just average and everyday things on the Westminster Expedition. We were privileged to perch on the very same rock that the actors in Tremors stood on, and while there, we taunted the giant sandworms because they could not reach us. Getting off the rock was a little more difficult but that is a story for another time.
Spice - That thing you put into your food.
On the Expedition, we have had a lot of experience with spice. Ella consistently puts entire bottles of cumin into the delicious lentil dish she makes. Puns aside, spice in Dune is a dust-like resource found in the desert that is essential for intergalactic space travel. It is somehow psychoactive in a way that allows the spaceship navigators to see into the future and get where they want to go. Mined in the deserts of Arrakis, it is a much-desired substance that can make one rich beyond measure (because with control of it you have control of all space travel) and one that is continually fought over.
Wow, I can't think of anything like that in our world, or can I? I know that oil is the one that comes to your mind but I’m going to shift it over to a different resource, copper. During our travels, we have come across a number of mining endeavors in different parts of the West. It’s like everywhere you look there is another mine. Copper as a resource is actually very important for our way of life, considering it is the thing that is keeping electricity flowing through our world. You charge your phone - copper - you turn on the lights - copper. Copper wiring is crucial for the functioning of our current (no pun intended) society and without it, we would all be screwed. It would be almost as bad as not having intergalactic space travel.
Unlike spice, copper is primarily found underground. And it is mined all across the West. On mountains, in forests next to lakes that then get polluted from mine tailings, on plateaus. You find spice (copper) and suddenly you are building your galactic empire in Butte, Montana. (Who in their right mind would ever move there?) Like Arrakis, Butte is a backwater desert planet no one should ever go to. And not many people did until copper was discovered beneath it in the 1870’s. After this lucky find, Butte became the biggest city in the West between San Francisco and the Mississippi. In its heyday in the late 1800’s, Butte single handedly produced 25% of the world’s copper (which is a lot of copper!) There are estimated to be 10,000 mine shafts and tunnels under the city. One thing they say about Butte is that it is a mile high (its altitude) and a mile deep because that’s how low the mines go. Immigrants flocked to the city and the individuals who controlled production became infamously wealthy. The Copper Kings, William A. Clark, Marcus Daly, and F. Augustus Heinze, were vicious and loaded. Much like the Harkonnens in the Duniverse who for a long time had a monopoly on spice production on Arrakis, the Copper Kings controlled much of the city. The Anaconda Copper company in particular was very powerful, controlling both mining and smelting of copper. The Harkonnens didn’t care about the planet or its inhabitants; they just wanted to extract the spice for the cheapest cost possible. In Butte, this led to the rise of unions and strikes, which quickly turned violent (and occasionally explosive.)
Now the extraction process of spice is not really described in Dune 2021 at least not scientifically or environmentally. Gleaned from the visuals, it looks like giant crawling machines suck up the top layer of sand off the desert floor, filter it through machinery to extract the spice from the sand, and then spew the sand back out into the atmosphere. But these processes are just guesswork and I have no historical information about methods of spice extraction on Arrakis. Therefore I cannot fully speak to the environmental consequences of spice extraction. In my defense, they were not really the focus of Dune. Dune was much more focused on our Victorian twink, Timothee Chalamet, running from giant sand worms and political genocide. The novel does not provide much more information either on the exact process.
However, this does not negate the damage done by the extraction of spice. The depletion of a resource in an unchecked and poorly managed system (which under the Harkonnens it probably was) will have detrimental effects on the surrounding ecosystems. Considering the hypothetical extraction methods, spice removal is probably going to make some sort of imbalance in the sand to spice ratio that is naturally occurring in the desert though further consequences of this imbalance are unknown. It will decimate the little mice populations that call their home the desert. And it definitely disrupts the giant sandworm habitat, considering that every time a spice harvester lands a sandworm comes to eat it.
The good news (maybe not exactly good news) is that we definitely know the extraction processes of copper and the environmental damage that mining has caused. Originally miners got copper by hammering stakes into the wall. One guy holds a stake, one guy has a hammer. They are in the dark with just a little candle so neither can really see. To aim, the one holding the stake puts their finger (fingernails reflect light) on the tip of the stake and then the other guy swings the hammer in the general direction indicated. (As a woman who has broken her thumb that sounds like a good way to lose a finger.) Add some technological advancements and now you’re using jackhammer mining--which tossed up toxic dust that the workers inhaled. Add water and now at least you’re not breathing so much toxic dust but you are polluting the aquifer. Those poor miners were breathing in toxic dust and losing fingers.
Speaking of worker safety, Dune didn’t have a lot of worker safety either. In the scene where our Victorian twink protagonist and his dad, Duke Leto Atreides, are touring their newly acquired facilities, the safety measures, i.e., getting your workers the heck out of there when a giant sandworm comes to eat them, failed. There did not appear to be an emergency evacuation plan or backup jet pack. If our dear Charlemagne (Chalamet) wasn’t there to save the spice workers the workers would have died. (He also gets caught in a spice storm and has visions of Zendaya letting us know that these miners also breathed a toxic if interesting dust.)
The devastating effects of mining in the West are also well documented and affect us every day. Mining practices release toxic minerals into the soil and water which often drain down into rivers or lakes. The beautiful Coeur d'Alene Lake in Idaho and the surrounding area are lead-filled and highly toxic. Mines as remote as the one in Holden Village in Washington can do serious damage to the environment. The mine tailings at Holden were bright orange and spread out across the mountains and before remediation, would blow toxic dust into the air (until we are all hallucinating about Zendaya).
The mines beneath Butte are all but invisible and now abandoned to the ages. But the Berkeley Pit, the largest superfund site in the United States, is a scar left over from Butte’s days of glory and a warning of what mining will do to the land. According to the EPA, the superfund site covers 5097 acres and is 1780 feet deep. The problem is that the toxic pit continually fills with water which picks up the high levels of arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals left by the mining. If this water ever reaches the river all of the water going to Butte will be polluted. The pit is graced with loud blaring horns going off every ten minutes to stop birds from landing on its surface (This was installed after multiple flocks of geese landed in the water and immediately died.) Caused by pit mining, the Pit’s toxic water sits hauntingly above the city, a warning, one that has not been heeded as pit mining continues to this day, notably at the Kennecott mine in the Salt Lake Valley near Magna. It is bigger now than the Berkeley Pit ever was.
Palm trees and Terraforming - the trees are on fire, the trees are on fire but we don’t have no water so I guess they are going to burn
We were driving out of the Alabama Hills when we first saw them as we were coming through a canyon. We pressed our faces to the window and Kara exclaimed “Palm trees!” It was the first time we had seen them on our journey but by the time we reached Palm Springs they were everywhere. Left, right, up, everywhere. Dune only had 20 palm trees so obviously we’re winning.
The Dune palm trees were important not for their numbers, however, but for what they meant ecologically. In a brief scene in the garden, a groundskeeper explained to our Victorian ghost boy (Chalamet) after he was surprised at the palm trees' survival on Arrakis that the palm trees were not indigenous, and should be dead. I cannot even name the number of non-native species that we have encountered across our travels. Cheatgrass and reed canary grass are both invasive species that compete with native grasses and can be harmful to the environments that they dominate (especially riparian systems). But there are so many others--cows, trees, flowers, bugs, white people. Non-native and invasive species are everywhere. The palm trees in Dune didn’t do as much damage as the aforementioned species. But they definitely did some. As the groundskeeper explained, the palm trees wouldn’t have survived the climate without care and a lot of precious water. The gardener told him that each tree took enough water every day to support 5 people, a huge extravagance in a desert (not unlike our beautifully green lawns.) Water in Dune is the most precious thing on Arrakis to the Fremen, not the spice, (that’s only good for having visions of Zendaya) and the most limited. Their culture is focused on protecting their very scarce water so spending it on palm trees is an outrageous affront to everything they value.
Though we haven’t run across prioritizing the allocation of water to sacred trees over human lives yet, throughout the Expedition we have talked extensively about water. Water in the desert is a miraculous resource; it is life. And, water use in the West is out of control. Unlike the Fremen, Westerners squander their water with little thought. In the West, we act like we can do whatever we want with our water, including raising cattle and water-intensive crops, not to mention golf courses and residential lawns.
By this point in the movie, I was pretty sure my attendance at this film was some sort of cruel trick of fate because point for point it was pretty much covering everything our trip has taught me. Societies need to be careful with their water use. As a rule of thumb and with considerably more palm trees and invasive species than Dune I would say we have not done this.
Later in the film when our slender Victorian goth boy and his mother, Lady Jessica, (not to mention Jason Momoa) are running for their lives, they hide out in an old “research facility” that is offhandedly mentioned to be old technology used to drag up water from underground aquifers to flood the desert and make it inhabitable for settlers. After spice was found the empire realized that they needed the desert and the project was abandoned, left only for a great escape sequence and epic death scene for Jason Momoa.
Oh boy, have we done loads of that (not the Jason Momoa death scene). Westerners are trying to change their environment to make it fit their idea of what a good place to live would be. The history of the West could be described as showing up in the desert and pretending that we are not actually in a desert. The rivers in the West are dammed to irrigate foreign plants that are used to feed foreign animals. LA has stolen water from the Owens Valley killing the Owens Lake, something that is also being mirrored in the Great Salt Lake. The plant life and bird populations have suffered severely (Owens Lake being a major stop on the Pacific flyway) and at the same time now LA depends on the water that they are taking from that area and if the water were to be shut off it would not be the people in power who would suffer. The Colorado River is another body of water used so heavily that it dries up in Mexico before ever reaching its outlet to the sea. Much of Arizona draws its water from underground aquifers that are not being replenished--when they are gone so is Arizona. White settlers have tried to shape this landscape into something that it is not meant to be.
Things like trees and grass do not belong in the desert. Neither do cows and the hay and alfalfa that is grown and irrigated to feed them. It is foolish of our society to unthinkingly pursue a way of life that worked in Europe and our eastern seaboard without considering what works here. Sacred or not, non-native trees and grass, not to mention the cows, do not belong in the desert, and if we continue to cling to them while in the middle of a serious drought and with a changing climate, we may well be putting ourselves in a position where sacred palm trees and cows that do not belong get priority over the things that do.
Fortunately for the Duniverse, the water guzzling sacred palm trees burned down later in the film. (Cows and cheatgrass are not so easily disposed of.)
Fremen riding gigantic sandworms - This one I think should be pretty self explanatory
We in American society often idealize the West as something wild and unfathomable, something that was untouched by man before settlers arrived, that is just waiting for us to conquer it. This is not true. Indigenous peoples have been living here and interacting with the natural environment since time immemorial. And they understand it a lot better than we do. They definitely aren’t bringing in non-indigenous palm trees. Home turf advantage is nothing to scoff at. In Dune the Fremen clearly understand their own territory better than the white people trying to extract resources from their planet. The parallels with our own world are undeniable--the indigenous people of the West have a much better understanding of how to live here than the imported Europeans. I would argue that this is also true in the United States.
The Fremen have invented attire that recycles the water lost through perspiration and allows the wearer to survive in the desert. They live in caves that protect moisture and never waste a drop. In a very brief scene, our twink Charlemagne is researching the Fremen and learns in rapid succession first, about the sand dance which is a way to walk across the desert using irregular step patterns so that you don't attract a gigantic sandworm to your location and get chomped Tremors style. And second, that the Fremen have been training the plants to grow in ways that make them survive the desert so that they can be used as a resource. Two little throw away tidbits that are later implemented by our dark haired ghost boy to cross the desert with his mother safely and locate Fremen settlements.
The subtlety of this information is appropriate. The movie doesn't come right out and say that the Fremen clearly know what they are doing. That idea comes later at the end when you see Fremen riding on the backs of giant sand worms like they are pool noodles. But it does express their superior knowledge of the landscape from years of interacting with it and their continued presence on Arrakis which has allowed them to shape the flora and fauna around them in significant ways.
In July of this year, the Bootleg fire burned so large and so hot in the Klamath Basin that it started making its own weather. When it approached a research facility however it slowed down enough that firefighters were able to save the facility. No one expected this. Only they clearly did since the research facility had been as part of an experiment letting the Klamath tribe perform traditional burning to keep the fire danger under control. Surprise, surprise, this process worked marvelously keeping the fire at bay and keeping the brush in check. Here’s another surprise (it shouldn’t be). Indigenous people have been managing the West for a really long time. Though giant worms weren't one of the things that they were dealing with (we all know those were imported for the filming of Tremors), they adapted to the land and adapted the land to themselves in a sustainable way.
Galactic empires coming in and decimating the natural ecosystem and existing population so that they can have control of resources is, unfortunately, a story that we all know--one that echoes across popular media, across the West, and across the entire world. It is a shame because the knowledge that indigenous peoples have is not only useful but also beautiful and unique. And could be seriously helping us as we move into an uncertain future. Also riding giant sandworms is dope as heck and I want to be a part of it.
The people on Dune, like the people of the desert Southwest, face the same big question--” How can and should we live in an environment with limited water and a delicate ecosystem?” Should we extract any resource we want, regardless of the impact? Should we work to change the ecosystem to match some idea we have of a world that is comfortable for our traditional lifestyle and allow us to grow uncontrollably? Should we ignore the wisdom of indigenous peoples who have lived in the environment for thousands of years? The same answer can be given to both those who want to control Dune and to the European/American inhabitants of the West--NO! The answer is no, don't do these things if you want to survive.
I hope that this has been informative, not only in explaining the movie, Dune, and some of its underlying themes but also of the sorts of things that we are learning about on our Expedition. I will end with the last line of the film as our favorite Victorian twink, Chalamet, put it so eloquently, “Our path leads into the desert.”