Keep Tobacco Sacred

Keep Tobacco Sacred follows Indigenous elders, researchers, and young people, tracing how colonial violence attempted to destroy cultural practices—and how reclamation is material, intergenerational, and urgent. Tobacco was not born a commodity—it was stolen and transformed. It also wasn't always called Tobacco. Asemaa, Čhaŋšáša, and Tabako are just a few names for the medicine Indigenous communities have long used for prayer, reciprocity, and connection. Keep Tobacco Sacred documents the violent corporate theft that formed the cash engine for Colonization, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and America's First Great Enterprise—the 400-year-old commercial tobacco industry. Director: Lincoln Mondy Host: CoCo Villaluz Director of Photography and Editor: Hassan Hassan Illustrator: Sela Zenash Original Music by Mervel LaRose and Mike Thunder