A benefit showing of “The Cherokee Word for Water,” followed by a question-and-answer session with the producers and possibly one of the actors via Skype, will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17, at Rolling Bay Presbyterian Church.

The film relates the story of Wilma Mankiller, the first modern female Chief of the Cherokee Nation, and is being shown to raise funds for the Water Protectors at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

“The Cherokee Word for Water” is based on the true story of the Bell Waterline Project. The film is set in the early 1980s in a rural Oklahoma Cherokee community where many houses lacked running water.

Led by Wilma Mankiller (played by Kimberly Guerrero) and Cherokee organizer Charlie Soap (played by Mo Brings Plenty), the community of volunteers built nearly 20 miles of waterline to save their community. The successful completion of the waterline, using the traditional concept of gadugi — working together to solve a problem — led to Mankiller’s election as chief, her and Plenty’s marriage and sparked a movement of similar self help projects across the Cherokee Nation and in Indian Country that continues to this day.

Members of the Standing Rock Sioux have been trying to stop an oil pipeline being constructed by Energy Transfer Partners that runs a short distance from their reservation across lands containing ancestral graves and artifacts.

The pipeline was originally planned for an area closer to Bismarck, North Dakota, but residents there voiced concerns for their drinking water in the event of a potential pipeline break and so the pipeline was moved south.

The Standing Rock Sioux have said that by crossing under the Missouri River, the pipeline will endanger drinking water for their reservation and for others downstream. They are being supported by many other American Indian tribes and nations, as well as by indigenous groups from South America and New Zealand, as well.

There is a suggested donation of between $10 and $50 for those attending, though event organizers said no one will be turned away. The money raised will be used for the legal defense of the more than 400 water protectors who have been arrested and also for supplies for the protest camps to equip them through the coming winter.