Participants in the Exposures program met on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota for a two-week program this month. Photo from Facebook
Exposures Cross Cultural youth arts program wraps up 14th summer program on Pine Ridge
16 students, seven states, two reservations
Tom Crash
LCT Correspondent
PINE RIDGE – “We only had two weeks when we normally have three, but this group really came together quickly and started working right away on their projects," said John Willis, Exposures director who just finished his 14th summer cross-cultural program.
"We had students from New York City, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, Arizona and South Dakota including students from both the Navajo Nation and the Oglala Lakota Nation,” Willis said. “We want to use photography and art as a common language connecting youth from diverse cultures.” Students from across the country came to Pine Ridge to share, to learn and to work together. Some students had no real experience with a camera, others have worked with cameras at their school or participated in the Exposures online program. The overall group split up into work groups, picked a project to work on and went out to interview community people and take photographs to illustrate their multimedia stories. Over the two weeks students worked out of Red Cloud School while staying at the Oglala Lakota College nursing dorm in Pine Ridge.
A photo by Textli Gallegos, one of the Exposures participants, at a rodeo in Interior, South Dakota. Photo from Facebook
All of the work was geared to a final presentation on Friday evening at Sacred Heart Church hall in Pine Ridge. Students made their presentations, then food was served to everyone who came to share in the student’s work. Projects chosen by the students included: Land and Nature, Food, Four traditional Lakota values, Education and Mitakuye Oyasin/we are all related. “We have been excited to be involved with the Exposures Program, we were able to bring three students to participate,” said Laura Gonzales who directs the Las Fotos Project in the Los Angeles, California, area that uses photography and mentors to help young women learn to express themselves. "This has been a great experience, all of us have learned so much about each other as well as ourselves.” Students participating this year included Lane and Darien Young Man Afraid of His Horses from Pine Ridge; Imani Clifford, Taylani Jackson, Nael Rahman and Damien Pizarro from New York City; Dilan Estrada from Providence, Rhode Island; Leah Silver and Serena Pellerin from Vermont; Eliot Hartman-Russell from Massachusetts; Guadaloupe Sanchez, Textli Gallegos and Katherine Mateos from the Los Angeles area; Kristen Store and Bryanni Trsi from the Navajo Nation; and Tatiana Griffin from Connecticut.
Students visited KILI Radio to talk about their work and their experiences on Pine Ridge.
Instructors included Gonzalez from Las Fotos Project; Victoria Davis and Zach Stephens from the Insight Photography Project in Vermont; Tim Casey, teacher at Bart College and high school in New York City; Greg Hayes, a teacher in Portland, Oregon; and John Willis, a professor at Marlboro College in Vermont. “This was my third year being involved with Exposures, it was a great two weeks, we shared a lot, we learned from each other,” said Lane Young Man Afraid of His Horses, who will be a sophomore at OLC this fall. "This program really made this summer worthwhile," he said. "It was special.” Find the award-winning Lakota Country Times on the Internet, Facebook and Twitter.
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