Join Desert Historic Theatre for a special screening of The Caldera, an observational documentary following a rural Oregon–Nevada border community as it confronts the development of one of the world’s largest known lithium deposits.

Set against the sweeping backdrop of the McDermitt Caldera — sagebrush steppe, working ranches, and the ancestral lands of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe — the film captures a community at the crossroads of energy transition, land, and identity.

For rural communities across Eastern Oregon, the questions this film raises hit close to home: how do we weigh economic opportunity against the land and ways of life we’ve stewarded for generations? What does it mean to have a voice in decisions shaping our region’s future?

Stay after the film for a facilitated community discussion, where the group will dig into these questions together. Participating in the discussion will be:

• Nick Wilkinson. Nick Wilkinson’s family has been running cattle in the McDermitt region since 1876. He’s the fourth generation on that ground, his son is the fifth, and his grandsons are the sixth.

• Thierry Veyrié. Cultural and Heritage Director for the Burns Paiute Tribe – Is actively working on cultural studies with the mining proponent Jindalee.

• Christian Hagen. Christian Hagen runs the Hagen Lab at Oregon State’s Hagen Lab and recently completed a ten-year study on how sage grouse recovered after the Holloway Fire which burned nearly half a million acres of the Trout Creek Mountains.