Orenda-Millennium

Photo: Leslie King

Imagine...
A world where young people are helped to fulfill their unique potential.

Imagine...
A world where elders are heard and respected for their wisdom and life experience.

Imagine...
A world where poverty, environmental destruction, prejudice, and war are replaced by shared abundance, responsible Earth stewardship, brotherhood, and peace.

Photo: Leslie King

Orenda Healing International’s

Four Corners Media Project is making this happen.

You can help!

We have just completed Phase I of our 3-phase Four Corners Media Project, based in Shiprock, New Mexico. This program, with a seed grant from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California, is reconnecting Navajo (Diné) adolescents with Navajo elders by teaching the teens filmmaking so that they can film their interviews with parents, grandparents, and Navajo teachers and healers. In addition to promoting intergenerational communication and reconnection, the Four Corners Media Project may help preserve the Navajo language and culture, and thus save for future generations the wisdom of the Diné Beauty Way. We plan to implement Phase II in summer 2009. Details of the project background are available at www.orenda-arts.org/4Corners.pdf.

Meanwhile,

A project like the Four Corners Media Project is incredibly complex and requires the collaboration of several good partners. At present count our partners include:

Orenda Healing International (project direction, liaison for participating groups/individuals, research)
Shiprock Associated Schools, Inc. (media arts faculty, Navajo students)
James Perry, (Navajo cultural consultant and community liaison in Shiprock, NM)
Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (seed grant, graduate student research opportunities, development of related programs)
Santa Fe Community College (filmmaking courses, some equipment and facilities, and the Planetarium, whose Director hopes to provide astronomical information pertinent to Crow CanyonÕs archaeological component)
Institute of American Indian Arts (housing in Santa Fe, possible scholarships for Navajo students)
Center for Cultural Conservancy (consultation on Native American customs and practices and their cultural and legal ramifications
Crow Canyon Archaeological Center (archaeological and historical background of the Four Corners area, present day native ecology, and summer internships for interested Navajo students)
John Fox & the Institute for Poetic Medicine (liaison with Canyon de Chelly Navajo)
Jon and Lupita McClanahan’s Footpath Journeys in Canyon de Chelly (contact with Navajo elders, the land, and the Diné way of life)

Related to this project, we are designing Turtle Island Publications, a website devoted to promoting the art, films, and writings of talented young artists, filmmakers, and authors, and will post updates on the progress of this project.

Additional individuals and organizations have expressed their interest in the Four Corners Media Project as it develops. Several of these may be able to provide part of the funding necessary to complete our work. However, as in all such projects, funding needs tend to expand along with the project’s components.

If you would like to participate in our program to support a new generation of brilliant and creative young Native American people and help to preserve a language and culture whose wisdom can benefit all of us on this planet, please contact us for additional information and suggestions of how you can help:

Valentine McKay-Riddell, Ph.D.
Founding & Executive Director
Orenda Healing International
California Office
1911 B Berryman St.
Berkeley, CA 94709
(510) 558-3324
wholebeing@orenda-arts.org

or

Photo: Courtesy James Perry