Digital video leading to preserving more tribal history, events (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Digital video leading to preserving more tribal history, events

BY KATE LECHNIR
Spooner Advocate
Last Updated: Wednesday, June 07th, 2006 12:59:44 PM
http://www.spooneradvocate.com/placed/index.php?sect_rank=1&story_id=220570

Her name is Hsuan-Yun Pi, an incredibly knowledgeable doctoral student
in the ever-evolving digital video communications field. Her recent
visits to the St. Croix Reservation at Hertel and the Lac Courte
Oreilles Ojibwa Community College (LCOOCC) in Hayward gave the students
and community members there hands-on practice with the latest equipment
and spurred digitally preserving the two tribes’ history, activities
and events.

Her trip to Indian Country had been arranged by Susan Gooding, a Native
American Studies adjunct professor at LCO College and doctoral
candidate at the University of Chicago. The project was funded by
Richard Barrows, dean in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

For the past year, Gooding has been involved in efforts to bring
indigenous people together to document and archive, via digital video,
their histories and stories. A group of interested students and
teachers from LCO Ojibwa Community College and from the St. Croix
Reservation, where the college has an outreach site, participated in a
hands-on workshop with Hsuan-Yun Pi and her graduate campus advisor
from the UW-Madison, Patty Loew.

The group was instantly transported to the cutting edge of the new
digital video technology. At the meeting, a demonstration of a
sophisticated editing system called “Vegas” convinced the group that
digital video editing tools, once reserved for big-budget, professional
productions, are now affordable and practical for individuals to use.
Plans were made for Hsuan to return to Indian Country to assist both
LCO and St. Croix with specific digital video projects.

The first project was the digital recording and editing of an original
play, Post, written by LCO College instructor Patrick Shield’s English
Composition classes. The play was performed by LCO College students,
faculty, staff and the Makwa (Ojibwe for “bear”) Drama Club.

The play depicts the building of the Winter Dam in the 1920s and the
destruction of the LCO community of Post. Students from the college’s
main campus in Hayward and Todd Cutler, a student from the outreach
site on the St. Croix Reservation, taped the play using the UW’s
high-end cameras.
The goal is to preserve the historically accurate performance and to
provide copies of the performance for sale to help raise much-needed
funding for future Makwa Drama Club productions.

During one of Hsuan-Yun Pi’s visits to the St. Croix Reservation,
T.R.A.I.L.S. (Traditions Respecting American Indian Life Styles)
coordinator Mark Soulier and his daughter, Nichole Soulier, the Danbury
youth director for the St. Croix Tribe, set up a workshop to teach
youths how to shoot and edit digital video.

The youths experimented with the cameras, recording interviews and
basically shooting, “from the hip,” images that were of interest to
them. The group listened as Hsuan instructed them on the capabilities
of the new equipment. The group also watched a series of captivating
music and dramatic vignettes produced by youths from other Indian
Reservations.

Soulier and graduating high school senior Josh Merrill worked with Hsuan
to actually produce an edited collage of the St. Croix T.R.A.I.L.S.
Dance Troupe. Soulier intends to transfer some 18 years worth of
historic T.R.A.I.L.S. footage to a digital format for historic
preservation. It will be an ongoing project as he sorts through photos,
VHS tapes, and various other visual and audio formats.

As an example of the historic importance of the project, Soulier found a
VHS tape of Chief Archie Mosay and other elders who have since passed
on. Tracking down the original footage, transferring it to a digital
format, and archiving both the original footage and the digital
rendition is of great importance to St. Croix historic preservation,
tribal members have noted.

It is said that timing is everything. It was during one of Hsuan’s
visits to the St. Croix Reservation that the maple sugar was flowing in
the sugar bush. That meant that everyone from the youngest HeadStart
children to the elders were busy tapping, collecting, boiling, canning
and eating the delicious fruits of their labor.

St. Croix Education and Youth Director Brooke Mosay Ammann and LCOOCC
Ojibwe language instructor Fancis Songetay captured every step of the
process on digital video. The finished product will be an Ojibwe
language teaching tool centered on the activities of the St. Croix
Sugar Bush, a project destined for archival preservation and the
bestseller list in Indian Country.

Hsuan-Yun Pi’s visits to the LCO and St. Croix reservations are seen by
many as a great gift. Through the generosity of Gooding, Loew and the
UW-Madison, a talented and dedicated student, Hsuan-Yun Pi has
demonstrated the knowledge and tools necessary for Native Americans on
the two reservations to archive their precious histories, tell their
own stories, and turn their youth on to the incredible art of making
movies.

Hsuan-Yun Pi said she is looking forward to future visits to Indian
Country to witness the blossoming of the seeds she planted there. And
for years to come, long after she has completed her graduate degree at
the UW–Madison, people in Indian Country will be watching for the name
Hsun-Yun Pi as the credits roll on the big screen.