2015 Navajo Oral History Project begins in about 30 days

Eleven students from the Mass Communication Department at Winona State University are getting close to wrapping up their spring semester and then will embark on a summer journalism effort known as the Navajo Oral History Project.

The WSU students will travel to the Navajo Nation where they will stay for three weeks. The WSU students will be put into small teams with students from Diné College of the Navajo Nation. The college student groups will provide a service project for a Navajo elder, and then will interview the elder three times. Students will research the elder, and interview them, plus audio record, video record and photograph the interviews. Then, students will transcribe the interviews, write scripts proofread, edit and produce documentary films focused on the lives of the elders.

This is the sixth year of the Navajo Oral History Project.

At the end of summer, the finished documentary films will be archived at the Navajo Nation Museum and Library, the Libraries at both Winona State University and Diné College, and, perhaps most impressively, at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian.

See the previous Blog entry (dated Feb. 27, 2015) for a list of the WSU students participating in this project.  As the class gets started in May, the rest of the class will be introduced here on the blog, along with photos.

This blog, MassCommuniMania.blogspot.com, will be updated regularly during the operation of the project, starting in Mid-May 2015. The blog will feature articles about each day's activities and will include photographs of the students doing their journalism work-- and having fun-- while on the Navajo Nation.  Often the articles and photographs will be by the student journalists involved in the project.

Feel free to share this blog address with family, friends and anyone who might be interested in following the activities of this important journalism education project.