Film
They Carry Us With Them: Richard Silliboy | by Jeremy Seifert
Emergence Magazine
Emergence Magazine
  • 07:39

They Carry Us With Them: Richard Silliboy

by Jeremy Seifert

This film, part of our feature multimedia story “They Carry Us With Them: The Great Tree Migration”, profiles Richard Silliboy, a tribal elder and vice chief of the Aroostook Band of Mi’kmaqs, and a black ash basketmaker. As he weaves a potato basket at his home in Littleton, Maine, Richard contemplates the arrival of the emerald ash borer and the tenuous future of this ancient art.

Director

Jeremy Seifert is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. His feature films include The Devil We Know, GMO OMG, and DIVE! Living Off America’s Waste. His films for Emergence Magazine include The Church Forests of Ethiopia and On the Road with Thomas Merton.

Producer

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee is an author, Emmy- and Peabody Award–nominated filmmaker, and a Sufi teacher. He has directed more than twenty documentary films, including Taste of the Land, The Last Ice Age, Aloha Āina, The Nightingale’s Song, Earthrise, Sanctuaries of Silence, and Elemental, among others. His films have been screened at New York Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, and Hot Docs, exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum and London’s Barbican, and featured on PBS POV, National Geographic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Op-Docs. His first book, Remembering Earth: A Spiritual Ecology, is forthcoming from Shambhala in summer 2026. He is the founder, podcast host, and executive editor of Emergence Magazine.

Credits

Directed by Jeremy Seifert
Produced by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
Cinematography by Jeremy Seifert
Edited by Jeremy Seifert
Sound design and mix by Matthew Mikkelsen

They Carry Us With Them: The Great Tree Migration
Related Feature

They Carry Us With Them: The Great Tree Migration

an Emergence Magazine Production

Forests have been migrating in response to climate since time immemorial, but the twenty-first-century climate crisis has greatly diminished the ability of trees to move effectively. This multimedia feature explores four stories of tree migration in Maine and what is at stake as forests shift away from the ecological and human communities they have long inhabited.

Open story

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