Midland School DEIJ
Film Festival Spotlights
Historically Marginalized People
November’s Event Themed Around
National Native American Heritage Month
and the Chumash
By Rebecca Horrigan | November 21, 2024
Read more of our 2024 Schools of Thought stories here.
Viewing a text as a mirror, where readers see their own lives reflected as a window to another’s experience, and as a sliding glass door, one that can transport them to another world with newfound empathy, is an educational framework created by Rudine Sims Bishop, and one that Midland School, a nature-based boarding school in Los Olivos, champions.
It informs the school’s literature selections and also inspires the multiple DEIJ Film Festivals it holds each year, which spotlight the narratives of historically marginalized people. These festivals offer students the opportunity to engage with different perspectives, and the ability to see themselves in the curriculum.
Students and faculty view films in small groups and hold subsequent activities and discussions to further their learning. For this November’s DEIJ Film Festival, they are selecting films that represent indigenous people’s histories, cultures, and experiences.
Ellie Moore, Dean of Academics, shared with us the details of this event.
Who came up with the idea for the DEIJ Film Festival, and why did you decide to host it? Though Midland has intentionally engaged with DEIJ work long before the term was coined, I started leading it here at Midland about seven years ago. What began as an all-school screening and discussion in conjunction with MLK Day blossomed into a series of DEIJ Film Festivals held throughout the year and co-led by faculty and students.
We decided it would be an excellent way to offer a common “text” with which we could discuss challenging topics — from homelessness to gender equality to environmental and racial justice — outside of the traditional classroom. It enabled us to have these dialogues with mixed grade levels and identities, which have led to the richness of the reflections and conversations.
What are a few notable films that will be screened this November? This fall’s DEIJ Film Festival is themed around National Native American Heritage Month. As such, all films will elevate the identities, experiences, cultures, and histories of Native peoples around the world. As a school that sits on historically Chumash land, it is crucial to us that we honor the first peoples of this land by helping our students connect with these stories.
Our Midland 101 classes and our U.S. History/American Literature classes delve most deeply into indigenous peoples’ history and wisdom. We also strive to both illuminate the historical injustices that indigenous peoples have endured in this land we now call America, and work to not simply focus on stories of trauma, but rather on resilience and the vibrant cultures that are still very much alive and well today.
Whether they are studying the Chumash ethnobotanical uses of local plants, discussing cultural syncretism and “double consciousness” through the lens of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, or unpacking the history of tribal sovereignty in U.S. History, Midland students dig into a myriad of indigenous histories and cultures with depth and nuance.
Sometimes the films chosen are part of our curriculum already, and sometimes they are just part of exploration. Dawnland is a film that I show in my Honors U.S. History class. I also show Reservation Dogs, which has been groundbreaking in that it features an all-indigenous cast, indigenous filmmakers, and it uses humor to disrupt stereotypes. A few of the other films we will be showing are Standing Above the Clouds and Smoke Signals.
What type of research goes into making your picks? Typically, the film fests have been student-generated and faculty-supported. I lead lunch meetings and the students come together to choose films. Sometimes they’re themed, such as for Women’s History Month, and sometimes they’re simply grounded in the effort to elevate the experiences of historically marginalized peoples and/or to highlight issues of social justice.
When selecting these films, it’s also important that they are not just trauma narratives, but stories of hope, joy, and resilience. We also have a number of student-led affinity clubs, such as our Asian American Alliance, Queercus (our LGBTQ+ alliance), and LatinX, who have led discussions as well. We strive to host about one Film Festival per term, and we have five terms a year. There are typically between seven and nine films for each event.
What do you hope the students get out of this festival?
It’s important to us that when students graduate, they are able to engage with the complexity of social justice issues in order to enrich their communities. We’re hoping that the students are inspired enough to continue to ask complicating questions and that they leave with more curiosity than answers. We want students to have the skills they need to wrestle with nuance.
Students aren’t just doing this for the first time. These are the same skills that they are practicing in all of their classes. I’m hopeful that all of these experiences give students the opportunity not only to raise their own awareness and consciousness, but also to catalyze their own future work as changemakers for a more inclusive, just, and equitable world for all.
That work has to start here. One of the reasons I love working at Midland is that because it’s such a small community, there’s no anonymity, which I think is really healthy. Being in a tiny school like Midland, we all get real leadership opportunities to make a positive change. Whether it’s through our student jobs program, out on the farm, caretaking our Midland herd, or simply working together in classes, Midland students finish every day understanding that it matters what we do.
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