A ‘great gift’ to the Osage Nation

Multimedia skills being used on a Native American reservation…?

That is a foreign concept to all but maybe 10 tribes of the hundreds that exist in America. And only two tribes have independent news organizations with functioning Web sites -- the Navajo Nation and the Cherokee Nation. That isn’t enough.

I don’t know if the multimedia instructors and adjunct faculty at the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute know of the great gift they gave to the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. Currently, the Osage Nation tribal government communicates with its members through a monthly newsletter. Tribal citizens demand this newsletter and defend it when it is threatened. Just think of the service a multimedia news site would bring to the tribe.

Showing the some 16,000 tribal members worldwide the Soundslides and video segments I am now capable of producing will change our culture. It will be a communications step forward in our tribal history that I think everyone is ready for.

I have to thank the following Freedom Forum leaders, staff and instructors: Jack Marsh, Karen Catone, Val Hoeppner, Danese Kenon, Anne Medley, Michelle Hedenskoog and Angie McDade, along with the fellow students I worked with and learned from (if I left anyone out, my apologies). The instructors broke down the tasks to the basics and ethics of what we wanted to accomplish with Soundslides and video. Doing so made it easy to learn the skills. Yes, it was a six-day explosion of multimedia, but I gleaned as much from the sessions as possible.

It helped that the experience was hands-on. From the beginning, the instructors put a camera and video camera in our hands and let us loose. We learned on the fly as well as from instruction.

What produces a warm feeling is that the instructors are on call for when I might need them, and I am looking forward to using my new skills. It was a real privilege.