Budding filmmakers debut oral histories
By Cindy Yurth
Tséyi' Bureau
TSAILE, Ariz., Oct. 24, 2011
Learning someone's life story is an intimate process, so it wasn't terribly surprising when some of the young filmmakers who had been recording oral histories of Diné elders broke down as they described the experience Oct. 10 at the premiere of the 2011 Navajo Oral History Documentary Project.
What was surprising was that the Diné College kids, whom you would think had heard it all before, teared up just as much as the Anglo students who had traveled from Winona State University in Minnesota to collaborate on the films - and bragged just as much about having "earned a grandma," although presumably they have Diné grandparents of their own.
"Every one of the Diné College students said, 'I learned so much about my own culture,'" said Tom Grier, the Winona State University mass communications professor who pioneered the oral history project three years ago along with Miranda Haskie, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at Diné College.
Two of the four elders who were interviewed on video for the project showed up to watch the end product.
Mitzie Begay, who recently retired as cultural liaison for Tséhootsoo' Medical Center in Fort Defiance, said she was leery at first to tell her story on camera.
"I really didn't know what it was about," she said. "I told them they could come to my house and explain it to me."
That was all it took.
"These students are really beautiful people," said the elder with a smile. "They put their whole heart, their whole mind into it."
Begay was the only woman in this year's batch of oral history subject. Also on record now are former state senator Jack C. Jackson Sr., Navajo Code Talker Association President Keith Little and longtime Navajo Nation Council employee Harold Morgan.
Bradley Shreve, a history professor at Diné College and chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, said the documentaries - copies of which will be donated to the college, the Navajo Nation Museum and the Navajo Nation Library - make a significant contribution to Navajo history, along with the ones filmed in the two previous years.
"For too long, Navajo history and culture have been told through non-Navajo voices," Shreve said. "This is something that changes that."
All four documentaries feature the elders telling their stories in the first person, alternating with scenes of the places and events they describe.
Because of the vastness of the reservation, this took some legwork.
When Jackson described procuring funding for Indian Wells Elementary School, Haskie urged the former senator's young biographers to see the school for themselves and film it.
"I said, 'It's just over the hill - let's go!'" she recalled.
The bilagáanas were surprised to discover that, in Diné Bikéyah, "over the hill" can mean two-and-a-half hours away.
In exchange for allowing the students into their lives, the elders were asked to dream up service projects for the young folks. For the student journalists, these were sometimes just as good an insight into the character they were chronicling as listening to their stories.
Diné student Trevor Foster was getting a kick out of watching his bilagáana partners try to brand calves at Jackson's place when Jackson addressed him sternly in Navajo.
"He said, 'Put down that camera and get to work!'" Foster recalled. "He didn't like it that I wasn't doing my share."
Over the years, plenty of people have been making good money telling Navajo stories, but Grier didn't want this project to be about that.
"We want this to be a classy, above-board project," he declared. "No one's making any money off of these. We give these to the Navajo Nation."
You can, however, purchase a DVD of the videos for $20 - all of which will go into a scholarship fund for Diné College students.
To order: Contact Thomas E. Grier via e-mail at tgrier@winona.edu.