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