TEACHING

Documentary Workshop Instructor + Consultant

Since time immemorial, Indigenous communities have served as spaces for social studies learning that is integrative, interactive, dynamic, and grounded in traditional knowledges and ways of knowing.  However, early in the history of settler-colonialism in the Americas, formal schooling endeavored to disrupt community-centered learning and force assimilation of Indigenous peoples into Euro-American society.  These assimilative approaches to schooling directly affected—and continue to affect—the social, physical, and cultural health of Indigenous communities while promoting false social studies discourses.  To reinvigorate traditional knowledges and ways of knowing within today’s global, technology-driven society, Indigenous leaders, social studies scholars, and multicultural educators encourage critical pedagogy that engages learners in the use, production, and dissemination of digital media.   

The Digital Storywork Partnership (DSP) engages Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth, elders, college students, faculty, community members, and professional filmmakers in collaborative research and multimedia storytelling.  In particular it is a collaborative and interdisciplinary project engaging Piikani (Blackfeet) & Apsalooke (Crow) community members, Blackfeet Community College (BCC) students and faculty, and Montana State University (MSU) students and faculty.*

I play a small part in this project as a Video Production Workshop Instructor, developing and teaching basic video production to college and high school students in the Piikani (Blackfeet) & Apsalooke (Crow) community. These workshops are intended to teach filmmaking skills, mentor individuals, provide resources to support the making of digital media that shares stories from their community, culture, and personal experiences. We hope that providing these skill sets will offer an invaluable avenue for empowering indigenous voices and preserving and evolving cultures for future generations.

Based on the work I was involved with in Montana, in 2018 I adapted the curriculum to conduct a short documentary production workshop with Tibetan refugees working in the non-profit sector in Dharamshala, India, the site of the Tibetan Government in Exile.

*project description by Christine Rogers Stanton, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2023. Madison McClintock