Last ITV Class - Field Work next week

Students in the 2015 Navajo Oral History Project met via Interactive Television for the fourth and final time this week on Thursday, May 21, prior to  beginning field work on the Navajo Nation next week. During this ITV class, the students worked in small groups to present research projects they put together this week.

The student research projects focused on major attributes of life and culture on the Navajo Nation, including: governance, demographics, justice, education, healthcare, tourism, economics, workforce, and Navajo customs, relationships and taboos.















Above photo of Prof. Tom Grier int he ITV Classroom by Jake Hilsabeck.

After the presentations, and at the end of the ITV class period, the students grabbed their camping gear and some luggage and helped load the van. Professor Tom Grier and program consultant Chops Hancock finished loading the gear and rearranging it in the van so they could actually see while driving, and began the long trek across the country, expecting to meet the students in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this weekend.


"Snackies" for the road trip; photo by Chops Hancock.

The van was packed almost to the ceiling.


Above two photos by Chops Hancock.

While driving across the country, Grier likes to take the backroads and take photos of county courthouses. He spends a few minutes in each county seat town, finds the courthouse, takes images from different angles, and moves on. He posts the images to Google Earth. To date, Grier has more than a thousand images on Google Earth, which have received more than 1.4 million views.
Above two photos by Chops Hancock.

Tribal College Journal features the Navajo Oral History Project

The Spring 2014 edition of The Tribal College Journal, "the scholarly voice and vision of American Indian higher education," featured an article written by Dr. Tom Grier that focused on the first five years of the Navajo Oral History Project.

The article features several photographs by Winona State University alumni who were student participants in the NOH project over the years. It also includes links to five documentary films created by WSU students in collaboration with students of Diné College, the tribal college of the Navajo Nation.

In the article, Grier, a professor of Mass Communication at Winona State University, traces the multi-year process of gaining approvals from a variety of Navajo Nation officials before the project could begin. Then he describes the five-years of field work he led along with Dr. Miranda Haskie, a professor of Social and Behavioral Science at Diné College. In the third, fourth and fifth years of the project, Haskie and Grier relied heavily on support and help from Robbie Christiano a graduate student and Winona State alumnus.

The Navajo Oral History project completed its fifth year in summer 2013. The leadership team is now working to renew agreements between the two partner higher education institutions and expects the program to begin a second five-year term in summer 2015.

You can read the full text of the article and follow the links to the films through the Tribal College Journal's web site:

http://www.tribalcollegejournal.org/archives/28112.