Original subtitles

NARRATOR: For centuries, Native Americans have kept alive

some of the oldest traditions on Earth.

Through oral history and sacred sites,

the story is told to Indigenous people for thousands of years.

NARRATOR: Their incredible history is carved into the landscape.

This is sensational. Look at that guy right there.

They represent those gods that came to Earth.

NARRATOR: And their sacred rituals display a reverence for the land

and for the ancestors from the stars.

They're the keepers of the upper world, which means space.

ALFREDO FIGUEROA: We don't use the word "gods."

We use the word "creator."

(speaks Native language)

NARRATOR: Do the stories of America's Indigenous people

reveal a long history of contact with otherworldly visitors?

JON DOVER: All Native American tribes have oral histories

that people came from the stars to visit them.

I know they're out there.

NARRATOR: There is a doorway

in the universe.

Beyond it is the promise of truth.

It demands we question everything

we have ever been taught.

The evidence is all around us.

The future is right before our eyes.

We are not alone.

We have never been alone.

Collinsville, Illinois.

15 miles east of St. Louis.

Towering over the flat local terrain is Monks Mound,

the remains of a massive earthen pyramid.

Built more than 1,000 years ago, it was the centerpiece

of the ancient Native American city of Cahokia.

Monks Mound is the largest building

of the ancient North America north of Mexico.

It was called that

because Trappist French monks lived nearby it.

It stands 100 feet tall today.

It was probably taller in its heyday.

It comprises of about 22 million cubic feet of dirt,

which was millions and millions

of buckets of dirt brought one at a time.

Its circumference on the bottom is larger

than the Temple of the Sun just north of Mexico City.

NARRATOR: Monks Mound and other ancient ruins across the Americas

offer clues about how Native people once lived

in vast, thriving communities.

Yet very little is known about the inhabitants of Cahokia

and many Native cultures

since most of their history and traditions

were passed down orally rather than through written records.

The Native Americans traditionally use

a oral tradition.

Everything is spoken.

The oral traditions actually go back thousands of years.

It's just the way it was.

And we've maintained that tradition even to this day.

(jangling)

NARRATOR: It is unknown what the Native Americans

who inhabited Cahokia called themselves.

Anthropologists refer to them as the Mississippians,

a name used to describe a wide variety of Native peoples

that lived east of the Mississippi in North America.

And although much about Cahokia remains a mystery,

what is known is that it thrived

centuries before Europeans ever stepped foot in the Americas,

as did countless other cities.

BARNHART: Around 1050,

the city swells to a population of 15,000,

and including the satellite communities around it,

almost 30,000.

There were a number of these cities

all around the eastern part of what's now the United States.

The general picture of Native America before European contact

is that it's some sort of just nomadic life,

that they were living in small bands and camps.

The truth is that there were thousands of people

living in the same place,

very much the way the Europeans were.

NARRATOR: Across North America,

vast differences existed between the Native peoples

in terms of language, customs and cultural practices.

Yet many tribes shared the tradition

of worshipping a powerful being known as the Bird Man.

(hawk cries)

When excavations were performed at Cahokia in the 20th century,

this motif was found to be abundant.

The most remarkable example

was connected to the burial of a man believed to have been

an early Cahokian ruler.

His body had been placed on an elevated platform

covered by a bed of more than 20,000 marine shell disc beads

arranged in the shape of a falcon,

with the bird's head appearing beneath

and beside the man's head

and its wings and tail beneath his arms and legs.

The Bird Man of Cahokia is a burial

that was found under a mound in the center of the city.

And it's called the Bird Man

because there's this arrangement of shells

that appear to be in the shape of a bird.

And it makes sense because we know that the Mississippians

had a supernatural being who may or may not be a god.

But he's a very powerful creature

that lives up in the sky.

We see depictions on also stone tablets.

JONATHAN YOUNG: Native people believed in the power deity called the Bird Man.

There are a number of depictions in the remains

of these cultures of this powerful creature

who could fly and could move among the different realms

and was essentially the ruling, uh, god of this reality.

-(hawk cries) -NARRATOR: Various descriptions of the Bird Man

can be found from one tradition to the next,

and some also feature a similar celestial being

called the thunderbird.

The thunderbird, uh, in Zuni

is described as a being that came from the sky

that could create lightning.

It could create a lot of noise.

And it was represented

as a being with wings made out of knives.

Now, the thunderbird could have been a vehicle.

But way back then, the Indians had no other reference.

So they just said... (stammers) it is a bird.

(bird cries)

One could argue that this is a representation

of misunderstood technology

that could illustrate some type of a flying craft.

Because if you don't have the terminology for a plane,

well, of course you're gonna call it a bird.

I mean, pilots even today call their planes birds.

MAHOOTY: The Mound Builders, I believe, were those Indian tribes

that had contact with the extraterrestrials,

the teachers.

The star ancestors taught the American Indians

about where they came from,

their different star system, constellations,

and how they're supposed to carry out their rituals,

by referring to their star system,

whether it be Pleiades,

whether it be the Milky Way,

whether it be the Big Dipper.

We don't use the word "gods."

We use the word "creator."

(speaks Native language)

He who has no name and has all the names.

He's the eye that oversees everybody.

PATTI ROBLES: The creation story, if you understand it correctly,

we are all from the cosmos.

Our ancestors were extraterrestrial.

The story is told to Indigenous people

for thousands of years

through oral history

and through the petroglyphs and pictographs

and the sacred sites that continue to be part

of our Native cultural traditions.

DOVER: In talking about star people,

all Native American tribes have these, uh, traditional

oral histories that people came from the stars to visit them.

And it's universal, all across the United States,

that these gods, as we call them today,

came to Earth and visited to provide knowledge.

The Cherokee talked about, uh, the star seeds

and the people coming from the sky.

The Zunis and the Hopis talk about the star people coming,

and the Mississippi mound people had the Bird Man culture.

So, here we have these cultures,

and their legends and lores are about

star ancestors coming down,

giving them information, showing them science and medicine.

TSOUKALOS: Native American people have been very clear

when they speak of celestial beings that imparted knowledge.

And if you compare that to the ancient astronaut theory,

that's exactly what it talks about,

that the knowledge was imparted by beings who visited us.

NARRATOR: Could the stories of the Bird Men and star people

provide an oral history of alien visitation

among early Native American tribes?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,

and propose that, while the Indigenous communities

kept no written records,

a historical account of exactly what they encountered

can be found carved into the landscape

at an ancient petroglyph site in Arizona.

NARRATOR: In the American Southwest

is a region known as the Four Corners,

where the boundaries of Arizona, New Mexico,

Colorado and Utah meet.

Most of this region belongs

to semiautonomous Native American nations,

including the Navajo,

Hopi, Zuni,

Ute and dozens of other Native American peoples.

They are all thought to be descendants

of people frequently called the Ancestral Pueblo, or Anasazi.

DOVER: The Anasazi, or the old ones,

as we like to refer to them,

were here in the Four Corners region,

uh, for thousands of years.

And they suddenly, around 1070 AD, just up and disappear.

Their cities are abandoned,

their structures, everything.

Pottery is left.

They don't know what happened to them.

NARRATOR: Archaeological evidence shows that, between 1275 and 1300 AD,

the Pueblo people stopped building entirely

and the land was left empty.

DOVER: They were a people that inhabited

this Four Corners region for thousands of years.

It's still a mystery today,

and it's one of the big mysteries

in the American Southwest.

NARRATOR: Similar to the Mississippian tribes to the east,

the Pueblo nations

also described contact with visitors from the stars

and performed rituals

to connect with sky beings called the kachina.

There were objects-- we call them dolls--

but they were sacred objects that would be similar

to the costumes worn by the dancers and imagined to be

the appearance of these celestial beings.

DOVER: If you look at the kachinas,

there are so many different types--

different headdresses, different feathers on them,

different ways of painting them

to distinguish them one from another.

And that tells me

that there were a lot of different types of beings

that were interacting with early Natives,

much more than we even, uh, think.

TSOUKALOS: The kachinas were their first teachers,

the ones that imparted the knowledge.

The Hopi are very clear in suggesting

that the kachinas were physical beings.

MAHOOTY: The kachina is a representation

of the actual gods that used to come into the villages eons ago.

Some of them are warriors.

Most of them are priesthood-type kachinas,

and they come from different parts--

in my opinion, different parts of the universe.

But they actually have certain places on this planet

that they call it home.

Ours is west of here,

and of course a lot of other pueblos

have their own specific place.

And even to this day, some of them are here.

NARRATOR: The story of strange humanoid beings assisting Native peoples

has been recounted for centuries among the Pueblo nations.

Not only is it a central part of their oral traditions,

these encounters were so significant

they were carved in stone.

DOVER: I believe that these visitations have been documented

in pictographs and petroglyphs.

They're not art, actually, for art's sake.

The petroglyphs have been done this way

for basically thousands of years.

NARRATOR: Do petroglyphs found throughout North America

tell a story of ancient extraterrestrial contact?

In July 2021,

ancient astronaut theorists Giorgio Tsoukalos

and William Henry traveled

to Rock Art Ranch in Winslow, Arizona,

to investigate one of North America's

most extensive collections of petroglyphs.

Joining them is esteemed Navajo Tribal Ranger Jon Dover.

It's so great to meet you because 31 years,

you've been a Tribal Navajo Ranger, is that correct?

Yes, uh, I started in 1980,

uh, to 2011.

And, uh, worked, uh, most of, uh,

-the reservation up there, 27,000 square miles. -Wow.

This ranch is very unique

because there is so much archaeology here.

Well, we're sure excited to be here to get eyes on it with you.

-Okay, well, let's go take a look. -All right.

NARRATOR: Rock Art Ranch's 5,000 acres are home to nearly

3,000 ancient petroglyphs, and on nearly every panel

are figures that the Navajo identify as star people.

This is sensational.

Look at that guy right there.

-They call that the birthing mother, right? -That's right.

Very fascinating because I'm looking at that

and immediately my mind goes around the world.

Absolutely.

-TSOUKALOS: This is a depiction of a mother goddess. -Yep.

TSOUKALOS: It's like those big giant statues

-that were found over in Europe... -Right.

...but it also reminds me of Dogu statues of Japan.

-HENRY: Yeah. -And also, the Wandjinas.

-HENRY: Right. -Very similar.

NARRATOR: In the Northwest Kimberly region of Australia,

ancient cave art depicts beings called the Wandjina,

the sky heroes of one of Australia's Indigenous clans.

The stories behind the Wandjinas goes

that they descended from the sky

and gave knowledge

and jumpstarted civilization in Australia

thousands and thousands of years ago.

And the Wandjinas are incredible

because they have these gigantic heads

and these long bodies

and these arms.

It seems as if they're inside

some sort of a pressurized suit.

There are similar figures all around the world--

big bulbous heads, big bodies

floating up in the sky.

In Japan we have the same things,

in Africa...

in Europe...

in North and South America.

So my suggestion is that the extraterrestrials

that came to Earth thousands and thousands of years ago

didn't just visit Australia.

They visited each and every continent on Earth.

And that is why we have the similar motifs.

Look at the concentric rings up there.

That's the portal symbol. There's two of them.

And there's guys around the portal,

-on the lower one. Yeah. -Interesting, yeah.

Tell me, Jon, petroglyphs are regarded

as picture books that tell a story all at once.

That's right, and also en-en...

-enmeshed in all this are religious symbols. -Mm-hmm.

Things that tell you something about how they worshipped.

-Pictures of gods. -Mm-hmm.

TSOUKALOS: And when you say

-"gods..." -Gods, right.

...what, in your culture...

-what does that mean? -It could be anything from

somebody coming to them

and meeting with them and imparting knowledge.

And in the case of the Navajo,

that's what the Yeibichai represent.

In the case of the Hopis, the kachinas represent those gods...

-HENRY: Right. -...that came to Earth

to give them knowledge.

And could one make the argument that these may have been

visitations by flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials

-in ancient times? -Oh, definitely.

From what we understand, there's many different

races of alien

that are coming to-to this world.

-That's amazing. -In the case of some tribes

down in Southern Arizona, you even have

a mountain range called the Estrella Mountains.

In the language of the people in that area, "Estrella"

means "stargate."

HENRY: Absolutely. Estrella-- star people.

Am I correct to assume that this is only the tip of the iceberg,

and that there are so many more

panels like this that the world doesn't even know about?

On the Navajo reservation alone,

there are 300,000 sites that are recorded.

I mean, we're talking at least 4000 BC,

-right? -That's right.

Well, this is great, but I'm just looking on the other side,

and there is more. I mean, there's more everywhere.

So let's go check out the other ones,

-as well. -Sure thing.

NARRATOR: Giorgio Tsoukalos and William Henry

have been granted special access

to Rock Art Ranch in Winslow, Arizona,

where Navajo Tribal elder Jon Dover is guiding them

through the ancient petroglyph panels.

-Wow. -Look at this.

I mean, look at the hollow body with the star inside.

-HENRY: Mm-hmm. -One hand pointing to the sky,

the other down to Earth.

And just beneath that,

look at-- that is a Grey alien.

TSOUKALOS: That triangular head, very strange.

HENRY: That is a-- Yeah, it is.

DOVER: You have all kinds

of different types of figures,

-different representations of gods. -Right.

I mean, what we have to fill in with our imagination

is that these beings off the wall, 3D,

-walking amongst the people. -(laughs) Yeah.

-They're interacting with these beings. -Right.

We don't know if it's the same time.

-Right. -Or could be different times.

HENRY: That's mind-blowing.

I'm so intrigued by that double helix up there, too,

beside the trapezoidal figure.

-I mean... -TSOUKALOS: Mm-hmm, as if to indicate,

because of the creature on the left, DNA,

-you know, had something to do with this. -Right.

-That's right. -Giorgio, uh, when you see

-the guy with the trapezoidal body... -Mm-hmm.

...and you see the curvy lines on the body,

-that always symbolizes, like, vibration. -Okay.

The-the Anunnaki wore cloaks that had those kind of

-curvy lines all over. -Right.

And so here we have a clear, clear symbolic connection

with-with the Anunnaki on this figure.

The Anunnaki were powerful deities worshipped more than

5,000 years ago by the ancient Sumerians who inhabited

Mesopotamia, an area that is now modern-day Iraq.

According to the Sumerian writings, the Anunnaki

descended upon a mountain, shining like the sun,

and shared profound wisdom with the human race.

Look at all the different types

of beings here, and then all the way across there,

y-you've still got even more variety.

I mean, this is almost like a meeting place

of all these different worlds and different beings.

So, you know, you have giants, you have little people.

And the giants and the little people are talked about

in the other world that they came from

before they came to this world.

So, and this is the same with Sego Canyon up in Utah.

You have these massive,

massive carvings and petroglyphs.

So the fact that we have these virtually identical motifs,

to me, suggests they were all taught by the same teachers.

And the guy here with the horns,

which could be rays, right next to the Grey alien.

He's got horns or rays coming off of his head.

-We see that at Valcamonica in Italy. -TSOUKALOS: Yes, you do.

HENRY: You see it all kinds of different places, but then

pointing to the idea these could be luminous

or radiant beings that they're portraying.

TSOUKALOS: And seeing creatures here

-having, for example, three fingers... -HENRY: Mm-hmm.

You know, as far as I know, uh, except for a couple of reptiles,

there aren't any three-fingered creatures.

-Yeah. -You know? So, and especially nothing humanoid.

-Right. -So, again, our ancestors

had impeccable powers of observation.

That's all they did all day.

They, they observed.

And so your estimation then, too,

is that this was not a bunch of kids,

you know, on a Saturday night not knowing what to do.

Absolutely not.

These were people that came here with a purpose...

-HENRY: Mm-hmm. -...and the purpose was to put

their history on the wall

showing where they came from, where they were going.

Jon, this is incredible,

and what I love the most is the access.

I mean, I've never been face-to-face like this.

There's a lot of places nobody's allowed to go

except for archaeologists, medicine men,

-and Rangers. -HENRY: It's spectacular. It's one thing to see

images in a book or on a... online,

but to-to come face-to-face with it, feel the energy,

see it, spectacular.

I came away with this deep sense

that this is meant for us to discover

throughout the ages, that it was super important to the ancients

to record this information,

to tell us that these beings were here.

They had a hand in our evolution

and they're probably still visiting us today.

TSOUKALOS: What I think is important in this whole thing is that

Jon said these are our stories of the star people.

And when First Nation cultures say

that someone visited from the sky and imparted knowledge,

I think it's time that we start to listen.

NARRATOR: Do the petroglyphs at Rock Art Ranch provide

an historical record of extraterrestrial visitation

in North America?

And if so, why does there seem to be such a strong

connection between Native Americans

and otherworldly beings?

Perhaps further clues can be found within oral traditions

that describe strange beings known as...

the ant men.

NARRATOR: In the desolate high desert of the American Southwest

stand the ruins of the most important ceremonial site

of the ancient Pueblo people.

Constructed around 900 AD,

the central feature of this vast complex

is the Great Kiva.

A kiva is basically,

um, a Native American version of a church.

It is a circular structure.

Chaco Canyon has

an absolutely giant one that's located there.

When you enter one you're literally entering another world

to commune with the gods from before.

In ancient Pueblo culture,

every place you went had a small kiva of some kind.

But they would get together

maybe eight or nine different kivas,

small ones, into a larger great kiva,

and the great kivas were huge.

When the Spanish came in in the 1600s,

they took their church and interposed it

on top of the kiva.

So everywhere in these Hopi villages,

in the Pueblo villages that you see a Catholic church,

it's usually on the high point of land

where the kiva was destroyed and the church

was built over the top of it.

NARRATOR: Every kiva includes a feature called a sipapu.

In some kivas, the sipapu is a small hole

in the subterranean wall.

In kivas that are enclosed,

it is often represented by a hole in the roof.

In both cases, it is the most important part of the structure,

symbolizing the entrance to a subterranean world.

All of the Pueblos share a story

in which humankind began under the earth.

And we slowly, over generations, crawled up

and out of a hole called sipapu.

And the kivas have this little hole in it symbolizing that.

NARRATOR: The descendants of the Ancestral Pueblo

share the belief that Earth was populated

three separate times before the era of modern humans,

with each previous age

ending in a devastating cataclysm.

HENRY: The Pueblo Indians believe that

there in fact were three worlds, or epochs, before ours.

And they were all destroyed.

The first by fire, the second by ice,

and the third by water.

In each instance, they tell us that it was due

to mistreatment of the Earth, and so that tells us

that there could have been previous examples of humanity

that were destroyed who knows how long ago.

CHILDRESS: We're living now in the fourth world.

And the Zunis and Hopis believe

our fourth world will also end in a cataclysm.

HENRY: Their prophecy says that there would be a,

a gourd of ashes that would come from the sky.

That's interpreted as nuclear warfare.

TSOUKALOS: The Hopi suggest that there were previous worlds

or civilizations before, and this is interesting because

there are other cultures, ancient cultures,

around the world, who speak of similar stories.

HENRY: The Kabbalah teaches that there were previous

advanced human civilizations.

A number of them.

The Hindus teach about the Yugas,

where civilization advances

to a very high place and then descends and then re-ascends.

It, too, is divided into four different ages.

So all of these traditions corresponds directly

with what the Native American tradition is teaching.

NARRATOR: Could the Native American tradition

describing previous ages of humankind be true?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,

and suggest that these stories

also contain evidence of extraterrestrial intervention.

The Hopis of Northern Arizona have a very curious myth

of surviving the third of the cataclysms

by going underground and living with what they call the ant men.

HENRY: The stories the Hopi tell us that the ant people rescued them

from cataclysm by taking them underground, literally,

and helping the Hopi to survive underground,

and then once it was safe to return to the surface

of the Earth, the Hopi were taken up through the sipapu

by the ant people and repopulated the Earth.

But in all instances, the ant people are described

as having a special relationship with the Hopi,

and also of having a connection with the star realms.

NARRATOR: Despite their name, ant men are described not as insects

but rather as small humanoid figures.

The reason they call these creatures "ant men"

is that they lived under the earth,

and they would emerge much like ants crawling out of a hive.

So they called them ant men, but what they were,

were extraterrestrials.

They were entering our world through the portal.

CHILDRESS: The ant men were underground dwellers who

had a high technology and looked very similar

apparently to what we would call Grey aliens.

So this is something of a mystery,

of-of who these ant men were.

Many Hopis and the Zunis have similar belief that,

yes, the ant men were extraterrestrials.

MAHOOTY: There were beings that are

of extraterrestrial origin

that were... were part of that whole

emergence mythology.

The entrance to the fourth world.

Could it be that the story of the ant men

is a genuine account

of extraterrestrials helping humanity survive

a global cataclysm?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,

and suggest further clues can be found

by comparing the Native American traditions

to accounts of a legendary lost continent

called Atlantis.

NARRATOR: In his famous dialogues, Timaeus and Critias,

the Greek philosopher Plato writes

about a lost continent

that existed 9,000 years before his time

and was home to a highly advanced civilization.

Called Atlantis, it was founded by the Greek god Poseidon,

and the inhabitants possessed sophisticated technology.

But Atlantis was ultimately destroyed

by a terrible cataclysm, and according to some researchers,

the story of its destruction is strikingly similar

to Native American traditions detailing the end

of the third world.

HENRY: The Hopi and other Pueblo Indians tell us

that their devastating cataclysm

was due to human greed and wandering away

from the-the spiritual truths of our creator.

What's interesting about this is that this idea

is echoed in Plato's story of the destruction of Atlantis.

The Atlanteans were also created by gods.

As soon as humanity wandered off into materialism,

that's when Atlantis was destroyed by water.

A perfect correspondence with what the Hopi said

happened at the end of the third world.

NARRATOR: Could there be a connection

between the ancient Greek tale of Atlantis

and Native American origin stories?

Ancient astronaut theorists suggest

another story told by early Native Americans

bears striking similarities to Atlantis--

the legend of the lost city of Aztlán, which appears

in the traditions of the Aztecs

and numerous Native American groups

throughout the Southwest.

...of the Hopis, so we have all these oral histories also...

There's debate among scholars as to exactly

what Aztlán looked like.

And we know that the Aztecs say

that their capital of Tenochtitlán

was made in the image of Aztlán.

And from that capital,

we get a backwards projection that their origin place

is an island surrounded by water.

They actually built Tenochtitlán up

into the lake and put causeways out

so that it looks very much like Atlantis.

NARRATOR: According to the Aztecs,

the god Huitzilopochtli was the founder of Tenochtitlán,

which as far as ancient astronaut theorists

are concerned, provides yet another intriguing connection

to Plato's description of Atlantis.

Tenochtitlán was a place made artificially.

Compare it to Atlantis.

In both cases, a god was the ruler of it.

In Atlantis, we have Poseidon.

Now, Poseidon was an extraterrestrial.

Not everyone should have access to Atlantis.

The same thing in Aztlán or Tenochtitlán.

They wanted to be separated.

They had a certain technology there which was

a hidden technology, and it was not for the general public.

See, it's the same thing.

TSOUKALOS: The fact that we have stories

that are not just similar but identical

leads me to think that perhaps

these ancient cultures were visited

by the same extraterrestrials.

NARRATOR: While mainstream academics

consider the stories of these lost civilizations

and their destruction to be mythological,

the recent discovery of vast sunken landmasses

such as Doggerland,

located just east of the British Isles in 2012,

and Zealandia, found near New Zealand in 2017,

may offer proof that a catastrophic water event

did, in fact, change the face of the Earth.

CHILDRESS: So here we have authentic legends

of lost lands that were destroyed in cataclysms.

Mainstream historians, you know, still

pretty much reject this, feel that it's all myths.

But it would seem really that all kinds

of civilizations could have come and gone on our planet.

We know that there are over 200

known submerged cities in the Mediterranean.

There's just so much on our planet

that we have yet to find out.

YOUNG: In the Native American Indigenous teaching,

there are cycles of destruction and rebirth.

The interesting part is that this is parallel

to other great world teachings.

In the story of Noah,

the sons of God came down to Earth.

And they were teaching the humans evil ways,

and God decided to intervene

and brought this great flood.

In the story of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian legend,

the council of gods brought the flood.

The Inca god Viracocha created the great flood.

HENRY: So all of these traditions

correspond directly with the Hopi four worlds tradition

about previous civilizations

destroyed by the gods.

The story is always the same.

This speaks to the idea

of extraterrestrial intervention in human affairs.

ROBLES: I believe there are ancient civilizations

that some people refuse to write about.

But ancient civilizations are

coming to surface because the time has come

to tell the truth about human origin.

NARRATOR: Could it be that Native American stories

of star people and of lost civilizations

so closely resembles other ancient traditions

from around the globe because they all encountered

the same otherworldly visitors?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and suggest

the Native Americans' knowledge of star people

comes not only from the distant past

but from the extraterrestrial activity

that occurs over Native lands even today.

NARRATOR: According to Zuni elder Clifford Mahooty,

above this steep mesa on the Zuni Reservation,

strange lights are seen in the sky nearly every night.

The UFO activity here is very, very,

uh, prevalent because

of the religious system

that we practice every day.

So all around the whole Zuni reservation

you can look up in the sky and they're up there.

And they're not stars. They're not planets.

There's a lot of our people

that, here in Zuni, have seen them.

TSOUKALOS: When you talk to many Native Americans,

they'll tell you that UFO sightings are common

on their Native lands.

And you have to ask, why is that?

Is it because they have had these traditions

of the star people and the star ancestors?

Maybe places like the Zuni territory and Hopi mesas

have been visited for thousands of years.

NARRATOR: Today, more UFO incidents

are being reported and captured on camera than ever before.

But while this recent activity

has captured the public's imagination

and inspired sensational headlines,

for many Native Americans, it is nothing out of the ordinary.

In my time working as a Navajo Ranger,

we had incidences of, uh, UFOs

coming and going all the time.

When we talk to people, they tell us,

"Oh, yeah, they're here all the time."

So they just accept it.

And as such, with the knowledge

that I have and the experiences I've had,

I know they're out there-- I've seen them

numerous, numerous times.

And, uh, it's just a fact of life.

ROBLES: We must reestablish

the connection between our star ancestors

by educating and creating an awareness among the,

the humans on Earth.

We have to establish

an urgency protecting the sacred sites

and telling the story of what they mean.

This is the history of the world.

We are star beings.

MAHOOTY: As far as being connected with the star elders,

they gave us this knowledge, and ours

is a direct relationship with the...

entities throughout the universe.

NARRATOR: Could contact with star people

as described in the ancient sacred traditions

still be happening in Native American communities today?

And if so, might it be the beginning

of the next Earth cycle?

And a profound new chapter in the human story?

Perhaps as we learn the truth

about the mysterious objects in the sky,

we will discover that the star ancestors

are not merely ancient figures carved on rocks

but an extraterrestrial presence

that has been guiding us all along.

CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY A+E NETWORKS