Ava Hamilton, an Arapaho Filmmaker and President of the Native American Producers Alliance, will give the Keynote Address at the 2010 Annual Meetings. Her talk will be on Saturday, April 24th, 11:45 am to 12:30 pm in Room 640 of the Tivoli Student Union Building. The topic is "Telling Our Stories Through Film."
Hamilton grew up on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming and now lives in Boulder. She attended Southwestern State University in Oklahoma
and the University of Colorado, Boulder, and trained
at the Anthropology Film Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Her directing credits include Everything Has a Spirit (1992), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won best documentary at the 1994 American
Indian Film and Video Competition. The film deals with issues such as
access to and protection of sacred rites
and the use of peyote in the Native American Church. More recently she directed Indians for Indians: A Radio Program (2005), a profile of the oldest continuous Native radio program in
the United States.
Hamilton is critical of non-Native filmmakers who appropriate Native stories, and of traditional depictions of Native Americans in film. She is a strong advocate of Native Americans telling their own stories through film and other media, and maintaining control over their oral histories and intellectual property.
