Cultivating Leaders. Preserving Heritage
Accelerating Digital Equity and Reclaiming Indigenous Culture through Film.
Indigenous Youth-Produced films Inspire Community-Led Action
Through video ethnography, we cultivate youth leaders inspired to tell their story and create change in their communities.
Film Workshops By Youth, For Youth
We are on a mission to create the largest video library of Indigenous-owned content in the world.
Take Action and Get Involved
Your help and generosity will go towards providing film workshops and production equipment to Indigenous youth worldwide.
OUR WORK
Indigenous youth are among 476 million Indigenous people across 90+ countries who are underrepresented in the digital landscape. We are on a mission to change that.
Unlocking Silent Histories accelerates digital equity by equipping youth with the skills and equipment needed to produce documentaries from their perspective. Through the video ethnography process, our students draw on community assets to tell their stories, creating films that fundamentally alter institutional structures, while unveiling historical and contemporary wisdom. Our goal is to cultivate indigenous youth leaders and provide global access to traditional knowledge and problem-solving approaches that contribute to sustainable community-led actions.
Let’s build leadership from within!
Challenging Systematic Misrepresentation
There are reasons to silence Indigenous voices, from running pipelines through watersheds and sacred lands to growing poppy for opium or cutting up mountains for minerals to deforestation and over-harvesting fisheries. Power cannot be left out of this discussion. USH makes available digital tools to increase voice, opening up possibilities for the protection of Indigenous life FOR and BY Indigenous youth.
Watch to learn more about our work on the ground.
Purpose and Impact
⫷ Racial and Digital Equity ⫸
Unlocking Silent Histories (USH) accelerates digital equity among Indigenous youth worldwide, who produce video ethnographies that capture and share ancestral heritage and initiate community-led action.
⫷ Youth Voice and Leadership ⫸
Unlocking Silent Histories worldwide, Indigenous youth leaders produce video ethnographies that capture ancestral heritage, preserve language, and initiate community-led action, exposing levers of change!
⫷ Indigenous Reclamation and Revitalization ⫸
Eternally becoming, we commit to transforming global education and development in ways that lessen foreign colonizing influences and support the reclamation of native peoples’ language, culture, and lands.
⫷ Social and Environmental Impact ⫸
There are reasons to silence Indigenous voices, from running pipelines through watersheds and sacred lands to growing poppy for opium or cutting up mountains for minerals to deforestation and overharvesting fisheries.
OUR GOALS
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Leaders Born.
Leaders Bring Change. USH creates self-starters with leadership as well as organizational and analytical skills that seed from film making, and grow to understand their communities.
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Films Produced.
Films Spotlight Voice. Leaders culturally and linguistically adapt USH’s curriculum to teach local youth to capture ancestral wisdom, identify community issues, and initiate action.
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Communities Linked.
Communities take action. Position local community leaders is how we want to grow community. From within, with voices, opinions, etc from those inside the communities.
There are many different customs that Indigenous peoples have to share. We don’t lack knowledge, we lack opportunity; and with the support of others, we can do anything we imagine.
USHYouth Leader (2015)
Help Us Amplify Indigenous Voice
Your kind and generous donations will go towards funding production equipment, filmmaking workshops, student leader stipends, IT infrastructure, research, and sustainable community projects.
