Fort McKay First Nation, a reservation in northern Canada, is home to nearly 400 Cree, Dene and other indigenous people. In the 1950s and ‘60s, petroleum operations started to surround the community, extracting oil from the nearby tar sands.

David Ritsher
Senior Editor, TV and Documentaries
David Ritsher is the senior editor for TV and documentaries for Reveal. He has produced and edited award-winning investigative documentaries for over 15 years, on subjects ranging from loose nukes in Russia to Latino gangs in Northern California. His work has appeared on FRONTLINE, PBS NewsHour, ABC News, National Geographic, Discovery, KQED and other national broadcast outlets. Before joining CIR, David was the coordinating producer for FRONTLINE/World for over six broadcast seasons and championed much of its experimentation with video on the web.
Plowing Through Sacred Sites
In the middle of the night in fall 2013, California Department of Transportation workers dug into the earth to construct a new highway bypass in Willits. According to federal law, the local Pomo people had a right to send tribal monitors there, but they allegedly were barred from the nighttime construction.
One Year at Standing Rock
One year later, one of the first people to set up camp at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation reflects on the protests and how the movement has changed the course of her life.
The Land Beneath the Lake
A woman remembers what life was like before her family was relocated from its ancestral home and her tribe from its most fertile farmland.
How America’s tallest dam nearly overflowed
After the water in Lake Oroville reached the highest level since 1985, officials released more water from the dam through its main spillway. But a massive sinkhole split the spillway, prompting the evacuation of 180,000 in nearby communities. We built a 3D flyover of the time and charts to show what lead up to these events,
Why North Dakota’s oil fields are so deadly for workers
On average, someone in North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields dies every six weeks. Reveal reporter Jennifer Gollan examines how energy producers have managed to avoid responsibility for worker injuries and deaths.
Video: Sterilized Behind Bars
Elective sterilizations have been restricted in state prisons since 1994. But between 2006 and 2010, more than 100 women were sterilized at state prisons. While some women opted for the surgery, other have claimed they were pressured. Corey G. Johnson from The Center for Investigative Reporting and Ana Kasparian from The Young Turks speak […]
Who Took Down Stockton?
Since 2010, 33 municipalities across the country have filed for bankruptcy. Not since the Great Depression have so many cities been so broke. No other place in the U.S. has borne the brunt more than the Central Valley city of Stockton, Calif. – the largest city in American history to file for bankruptcy. Now, the […]
Behind the Story: Nostalgia for the Light
Director Patricio Guzmán – famed for his political documentaries “The Battle of Chile” and “The Pinochet Case” – talks about his latest film, “Nostalgia for the Light.” The film played at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 2011. Guzmán traveled 10,000 feet above sea level to the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert in Chile, where astronomers from all […]