Director: Jayasri Majumdar Hart
Producer: Jayasri Majumdar Hart
Language: English
Length: 57 minutes
Year Filmed: 1998
Location: USA

Roots in the Sand is a multi-generational portrait of pioneering Punjabi-Mexican families who settled in Southern California's Imperial Valley a century ago. Through the use of (lost and) found footage, archival and family photographs, personal and public documents, Hart tells the touching and inspirational story of a community that grew out of a struggle for economic survival in the face of prejudice. By 1910, close to 5,000 men from Punjab found jobs in the American West. These men had journeyed across the ocean, not to settle in this country, but to earn money enough to return to their home country. However, poor wages, and working conditions convinced them to pool their resources, lease land, and grow their own crops with water from the Colorado River to irrigate the desert—a way of farming familiar to them from their homeland.

As the men prospered, they wanted to marry and settle down, though immigration laws forbade land ownership and bringing brides from India. So the men turned to the Mexican women working in the fields who, much like the women back home, covered their heads and bodies from the blazing sun, and often had similar family values, resulting in the earliest cross-cultural weddings born out of necessity. The film documents the stories of Punjabi-Mexican families' resourcefulness narrated with affection and pride by their children and grandchildren.