Cultural Enrichment
FSU professor helps diverse people tell their stories story by STEVE BORNHOFT
Y For over 20 years, Dr. Kristin Dowell (above) has helped facilitate the work of Indigenous filmmakers who want to tell stories in ways that honor their cultures and ancestors. Among those filmmakers is Billy Luther. Dowell uses his 2007 documentary Miss Navajo, which follows Miss Navajo Nation contestant Crystal Frazier (next page), as a teaching tool in her classrooms.
82 March-April 2024 TALLAHASSEEMAGA ZINE.COM
oung women who participate as contestants in the Miss Navajo Nation pageant must demonstrate proficiency at butchering a sheep. The activity is among those presented in a documentary that invites a not-so-flattering comparison to far less culturally rich mainstream beauty contests. Miss Navajo was directed by Billy Luther, whom Dr. Kristin Dowell, a professor in the Department of Art History at Florida State University, met when both were interning in New York at the Film and Video center at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. “The Miss Navajo competition is an event that represents the strong role that Navajo women play in maintaining Navajo culture,” Dowell wrote in a review of Luther’s film that assessed its value as a teaching
» photos by THE WORKMANS tool. “What clearly emerges from the voices of the women in the video who have participated in the competition is their pride in the opportunity to represent the Navajo Nation.” Dowell notes the significance of sheep to the Navajo people, explaining that they are considered a form of wealth and were traditionally owned by the women of the clan. The documentary’s opening scene focuses on Miss Navajo contestant Crystal Frazier as she undergoes questioning by former pageant winners, who speak in Navajo. It is a test for which Crystal, lacking fluency in her heritage language, is unprepared. Luther’s project incorporated Dowell’s principal passions — for culture, for language and for film as an impactful storytelling medium. For more than 20 years, Dowell has worked to facilitate the work of