Intergenerational Native Digital Storytelling, builds on, and expands the reach of, our recently completed three-year NEH project Footprints of the Ancestors: Intergenerational Learning of Hopi History and Culture, whose main goal was to use traditional and scholarly knowledge to educate Hopi youth in the broad humanities areas of history and culture. To accomplish our goal, we emphasized three primary activities:
1) We traced the footprints of Hopi ancestors as we visited places of cultural significance at archaeological sites across the American Southwest. Learning activities for Hopi youth provided opportunities for Hopi elders and archaeologists to share their knowledge and facilitate an exchange of ideas.
2) The Hopi youth participated in service-learning projects in modern Hopi villages that helped them take responsibility and give back to their communities.
3) The youth created DVDs, a website (http://www4.nau.edu/footprints/), and a museum exhibit, communicating the Hopi youth’s perspective on the theme for each venue. The project resulted in the production of four films: Navajo National Monument, Homolovi State Park, Chaco Culture National Historic Park, and Mesa Verde National Park.
The capstone experience for the Footprints of the Ancestors Project was the production of a museum exhibit that presents the youth’s perspective on Hopi culture and history. The exhibit coincided with The Museum of Northern Arizona’s (MNA) annual Hopi Festival that was held during the weekend of July 4th, 2010 and ran through December 2010. The public benefited from engaging with Hopi culture and history by exploring the exhibit, panel discussions, presentations, and film screenings associated with the exhibit. The public received a deeper insight into the hearts, minds, and traditional viewpoints of today’s Hopi youth and elders. Our successful Footprints of the Ancestors Project provides a firm foundation to expand our reach with our proposed Native Intergenerational Digital Storytelling Project.
