Hello everyone! We are almost halfway through this internship, and I feel like I am learning more every day. This week we focused on photography and documentation of Native stories. We met with Videographer and Editor Carey Harrison who gave us advice on how to take photos when we are on site and how to choose the right shots. I’m sure our photos will look better with this advice. We plan to mainly use these photos for our StoryMaps and share them with you here.
For work this week I mainly focused on accumulating resources for my StoryMap on Ocmulgee. Since I am a student, I have access to databases and have been looking at papers and research about and surrounding the Ocmulgee mounds. The Ocmulgee mounds are the ancestral homeland of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. They were built during the Early Mississippian period and remain one of the largest Mississippian-period sites in the Southeast. It was the largest archaeological excavation in the Southeast during the 1930s, when it was excavated by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).
We also met Clifton Chippewa and Robert C. Wilson from Studio of the Americas at Tyler Perry Studios. We talked about how to tell stories, and it really inspired me on how I want to frame the narrative of the StoryMaps. They also told us about how they offer opportunities for young native people to get into the film industry with them, which was great to learn about, and something we plan on emphasizing in this project.
For next week I plan to outline my StoryMap of Ocmulgee so that I am really committed to a good narrative. I know that these StoryMaps will probably be used by teachers and educators around the state, and I know how important it is to engage people with an interesting narrative. I am looking forward to the coming weeks. Be on the lookout for more progress on the project. We plan to outline our StoryMaps very soon.