KSUT's Tami Graham interviewed award-winning documentary filmmaker Colleen Thurston about her film Abundance, which screens at the 2022 Durango Independent Film Festival (DIFF). Abundance takes place in the food desert of northeastern Oklahoma, as two Quapaw Nation citizens are transforming their community via food sovereignty initiatives. This film is part of DIFF's "Affecting Change Native Cinema Program".
Thurston teaches documentary studies and film production at the University of Oklahoma’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. As an Indigenous non-fiction storyteller, her films explore the relationships between humans and the natural world, focusing on Native stories and perspectives. Her work has screened at international film festivals, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian’s Native Cinema Showcase and the Smithsonian Institution.
For tickets, screening times and more information visit DurangoFilm.org.
Colleen Thurston also recently joined the Native Lens team, with KSUT and Rocky Mountain PBS. Native Lens is an initiative inviting Native and Indigenous storytellers to share their own mini-documentaries. The goal is that by distributing firsthand Native perspectives through the media, the visibility of tribal communities will increase as Native voices are amplified.