Unlocking Silent Histories: Critical Media Productions by Maya Youth

• In Event: Critical Imagination: Creativity, Curiosity, and Critical Pedagogy in Diverse Teaching-Learning Contexts

Abstract

This presentation centers on the engagement of Indigenous youth in the art of documentary filmmaking and the development of a program, Unlocking Silent Histories, in which these middle and high school-aged adolescents participate. Unlocking Silent Histories is an organization that invites youth from indigenous heritage to use video as a way to become critical consumers and producers of media. The youth begin by analyzing how they are represented in the media and then create evidence-based documentaries to produce images from a local perspective. Finally, they share these videos with their communities (a film showcase) and learn about communities other than their own as they dialogue with Indigenous youth (through an online platform) from around the world. During the process they learn to become writers, researchers, and directors of digital media productions. The purpose of the presentation is to demonstrate the unfolding process in order to bring to light indigenous knowledge and ways of learning and their imaginative potential vis-a-vis critical pedagogy and youth-created documentary.

Together, with two groups of Maya youth from different towns in Guatemala, we tell the story of the first iteration of Unlocking Silent Histories. We provide an account of taking a critical pedagogy approach (Freire, 1970), while at the same time highlighting the complexities associated with doing this work. The account creates a case and framework for doing critical pedagogy on the ground and with youth having a significant voice in their learning. It explores the relationship between theory and practice in communities that are often disconnected from the larger educational discourse.

The process of participation within Unlocking Silent Histories has many facets. Working alone or in a team, participants begin to undergo a series of different practices to complete their stories. These include identifying a topic of interest, writing a story, developing interview questions, engaging in conversations with members of their community, learning video techniques, and editing their films. This, however, is not a linear progression. Instead it is an embryonic one. Youth take different paths toward accomplishing their end and need different supports to achieve the organization’s goal of cultivating critical inquiry.

The research asserts that practices around media consumption and production highlights and illustrates cultural ways of knowing. This comes not only through capturing community ideas, beliefs, and histories, but also examining how youth learn over the course of their participation in Unlocking Silent Histories. The presentation does not simply show the development of youths’ movie making and technology skills. It illustrates how the youth employ critical community analysis when applying social, political, and historical lenses to their past and present situations. The productions and its process assist us in gaining insight into youths’ “reading of the world” in order to inform culturally and socially just learning opportunities derived from real world community connections.

Authors

• Donna DeGennaro, Unlocking Silent Histories

• Carmen Tzoc Portillo, Unlocking Silent Histories

• Carlos Vasquez, Unlocking Silent Histories