Canada has about one fifth of the world’s drinking water, with less than half of one percent of the world’s population. So much water. Why then are there boil alerts in some communities, where the water is consider unfit to drink? Why have these warnings continued over many years? And why are so many of these communities indigenous? So asks a woman named Layla Staats. Layla travels across North America searching for these answers even as she explores her own connection with water and her indigenous heritage. On the way she encounters indigenous activists like Autumn Peltier and witnesses some of the most horrendous examples of ecological violations, contaminations and desecrations in Wet’suwet’en, Grassy Narrows, and the Navajo Nation. Will these boil alerts ever cease?

Boil Alert is also the name of a new documentary directed by Stevie Salas and James Burns. Stevie is a world-famous musician, called one of the 50 best guitarists of all time, and a producer of music, film, and TV shows. He composed the score for Bill and Red’s Excellent Adventure and as a director is best known for the doc RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World.

I spoke with Stevie and James in Austin via Zoom.

Boil Alert is having its world premiere at TIFF on September 15th, 2023.

On the “Boil Alert” Red Carpet

The TIFF premiere for “Boil Alert” was a who’s who of Indigenous A-listers… click on the thumbnails below to launch a gallery.

Photographs by Jeff Harris