The Going Green project ran through 2009 and 2010, offering sound filmmaking skills to young, motivated leaders. By encouraging youth and community to create work based on their research, their experiences and those of their families, local youth and indigenous community investigated the impacts of environmental concerns and the possibilities of new solutions to these issues.

The overwhelming amount of corporate, profit-driven and lowest-common-denominator media has displaced traditional forms of storytelling and information dissemination. Today, rather than learning about the world outside their front doors, many youth are immersed in Hollywood and TV fantasy. For minorities, as numerous studies have shown, the caricatures presented by today’s industrial-entertainment complex can be particularly destructive. We believe the best way to learn to deconstruct media is to create it. By encouraging promising, emergent leaders to use digital tools to tell their own stories, we also taught them how to navigate the oft-treacherous mainstream media.

By supporting the use of video to democratize storytelling, the Going Green project explored how the media landscape is changing, as the traditional media gate-keepers (print, radio, and television) are being challenged by the rise of the amateur content creator. The goal of the Going Green project was to announce an environmentally active presence to local communities and to make important information about regional issues surrounding energy production accessible to the general public and native communities. The Going Green project promoted participation in advocating for and engaging in social transformation while giving voice to the thoughts, stories and opinions of often marginalized or disenfranchised communities.

This program served as an expanded community-oriented, collaborative media project, intended as a tool for indigenous and intergenerational leadership, professional development and the advancement of eco-media initiatives.

Program Director, Lea Rekow

Instructors: Phillip Celander, Chris Kientz [Cherokee], creator of the Raven Tales series.

PROJECT SPONSORS

The Stranahan Foundation

National Endowment for the Arts

The George and Fay Young Foundation

Brickhouse Productions

William Conway

Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian

The Flip Video Spotlight

Enacted through the Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe

About the Black Sheep Art Collective

Communal living is not a new concept for many indigenous peoples. Not only is this way of life accepted as normal by Native Americans, it is not uncommon to find a six-member family in a one-bedroom house on the reservation. This surely affects the behavior of an individual and how one operates among others. As most of us in Black Sheep Art Collective have been raised in such conditions, we find it comfortable to eat, breathe, paint, and live next to each other. We have become an art clan, so to speak. We draw inspiration from life-way themes including culture and tradition and from the challenges we face: food insecurity, loss of language, inadequate housing, environmental racism, dramatic climate change, and water rights issues. We incorporated these themes into a recreation of living space: a home built with repurposed materials within the Muñoz Waxman Gallery. The liv¬ing room acted as a community space for workshops, screenings and musical performances. Last but not least, we lived in the space we built. As we built the space we filmed it in time lapse photography, video taped our experience, recorded our workshops, and edited the material into a promotional piece to be distributed in our community.

Interviews

• Art Grine, Renewable Energy Technology Professional
  

• Brendon Miller, Green Economy Manager, NM Economic Development Dept.

• Craig O’Hare, Special Assistant for Clean Energy, NM Energy and Natural Resources Dept.

• Laura Sanchez, Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council

• Troy Carpenter, Wind Technology Instructor, Mesalands Community College

• Cy Wagoner, Diné, Black Sheep Art Collective

• Jacob Fragua, Walatowa, Black Sheep Art Collective