Phase I
The Native Intergenerational Digital Storytelling Project will have three phases (over four years) that incorporate several major activities. Phase I is already in process (funded separately as seed money through the John and Sophie Ottens Foundation). Phase I activities will:
• Recruit, form, and train a Native Youth and Elder Leadership Council. The purpose of the Native Youth and Elder Leadership Council is to help develop the long-term project and serve as peer mentors for the second through fourth year participants of the project. The Council will include two high school-aged youth and two elders from Hopi, Zuni, Diné, Yavapai-Apache, and Hualapai (total of 20 Council members). We are currently working with our project team and tribal partners to form the Leadership Council.
• Hold a Native Food Leadership Council Retreat at the 2011 Society for Applied Anthropology’s Traditional Food Summit in Seattle (http://www.sfaa.net/sfaa2011/2011foodsummit.html). The retreat’s educational theme will concentrate on Native American diet and traditional lifestyles. Utilizing the themes of food, nutrition, and diet, other topics such as language, environment, and community will be explored as well. The Traditional Foods Summit will stimulate essential dialogue, interaction, and collaboration among participants that will ultimately assist the Leadership Council in producing their digital stories.
• Conduct a Native Digital Storytelling Workshop. In August 2011, the Leadership Council will build on their experiences at the Traditional Foods Summit by participating in a Youth and Elder Leadership Workshop on the San Juan River. The workshop will focus on developing digital stories and planning for the proposed Phase II of the project.
The Native Youth and Elder Leadership Council will serve as leaders and peer mentors during the proposed 2nd through 4th years of the overall Intergenerational Native Digital Storytelling Project.
Phase II
Funding is requested from NEH for Phases II and III. During Phase II (years two and three) the project team will work with five regional tribes in the American Southwest (Hopi, Yavapai-Apache, Dine, Zuni, and Hualapai) to produce the digital stories. The work with each group will include visits to places of special cultural meaning where youth can acquire information from the elders about the deep meanings of the place and listen to stories pertinent to the place (e.g., Basso 1996; see Venue Descriptions below). Together our team will examine places, artifacts, and objects of daily use to elicit their stories. We will also visit tribal museums and cultural centers with youth and elders to discuss artifacts and other items of traditional or cultural importance. These visits will result in the creation of a short digital story about the historical and cultural significance of a place, object, or artifact. Depending on the setting, oral history from the elders about significant places will elicit stories about objects; while, objects and artifacts might help tell the story about a particular place or moment in history. Our history, humanities, anthropology, and archaeology scholars will facilitate these discussions using historical, archaeological, oral history, literature, and archival data. Elders will share the oral history of objects and places to the youth who then together develop digital stories that will be broadly disseminated to the wider public. The story will be guided by elders and embody the story behind the place or object and what it means to the youth who is developing the story. Together they will collaborate to make their “movie” from these interactions, interviews, oral histories, and archival data.
The moviemaking takes place during a retreat. Stories are shared where participants encourage the development of the story. The written story is narrated and combined with interview footage and oral history. Guided by the Humanities Team, Native youth will interview the elders using video. Lastly, the intergenerational team will bring together images (contemporary and archival), narrative, interview footage, and music into video editing software to form a very personal and revealing story of history and culture told through modern technological methods. Following the production of the digital stories we will facilitate a screening of the stories and discussions about them to foster inter-cultural relationships. Beginning with the first workshops, a website, Facebook, and YouTube will share the project, its goals and purpose, and the collected stories from each Nation.
Phase III
Phase III, the final year, will culminate in a Native Digital Storytelling Summit open to Native American Nations all across the country to view the results of the previous three years’ work. The stories collected from the six Nations will be shown in a storytelling festival. Native Americans involved in storytelling, either digital or traditional, will be invited to share experiences and give presentations. Breakout sessions may be designed to present alternative methods of storytelling and to “train the trainers” in digital storytelling techniques. The summit will be hosted at the High Country Conference Center at NAU in Flagstaff, Arizona. Flagstaff’s proximity to some of the richest cultural and natural diversity in the Nation makes it an ideal location for the summit. The potential for trips, tours, and activities include cultural experiences with local groups such as Navajo, Hopi, Yavapai-Apache, and Hualapai. Activities can also occur at nearby places of historical and cultural significance like the Museum of Northern Arizona, Wupatki National Monument, Sunset Crater National Monument, Montezuma’s Well, Homolovi State Park, Walnut Canyon National Monument, Grand Canyon National Park, and Coconino National Forest.
By sharing digital stories and best digital storytelling practices between Native American Nations, the project benefits from a cross-tribal dialogue that will be informed by the web-based project and through social networking dialogue. The public at large benefits from these discussions through immersion learning, intergenerational relationships, and youth multimedia product development that promote the learning of Native American history and culture.
An important element in the project is that of developing community leadership. Youth will be learning from the elders and humanities scholars. Being exposed to other indigenous nations, and working with people from diverse cultures, giving voice to important issues, and helping to deal with societal problems, as well as fostering a continuance of tradition, language, and culture. Sharing stories enables them to cut across cultural and geographic space and to unite oral, written, and technological literacies. Through the application of technology to address real life issues, youth not only develop competencies for school and work but creativity and teamwork, while gaining invaluable cultural knowledge. Importantly, the youth’s learning is grounded in humanities scholarship and data that informs their digital stories.
