The W.M. Keck Foundation has awarded a $250,000 grant to CSU San Marcos to develop a program on American Indian digital media and culture, it was announced Friday.
The funding from the award will support a joint project between the California Indian Culture & Sovereignty Center and the Video in the Community program titled The American Indian Digital Media & Culture Project. Professors Joely Proudfit and Kristine Diekman will work together on this three-year project.
This is the first grant that CSUSM has been awarded from the Keck Foundation.
“The overall goals are to create an international model for the presentation of tribal cultural knowledge through the delivery of interdisciplinary undergraduate media arts based projects; and to provide tribal community members, students and faculty the instruction, support and resources needed to create community responsive media projects,” Proudfit said.
Part of the program’s concept is to bridge the gap of a larger conversation happening in Hollywood, a lack of diversity – extending further than black and white – and the inclusion of American Indians and Indigenous people in the national narrative.
