Lac Courte Oreilles, Wisconsin (Akiing)

Her name is Hsuan-Yun Pi – an incredibly knowledgeable doctoral student in the ever-evolving digital video communications field. Her first visit to Indian Country was to the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College in Hayward. The trip had been arranged by Susan Gooding, a Native American Studies adjunct professor at LCO College and doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago. The project was funded by Richard Barrows, Dean in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin Madison.

For the past year, Gooding has been involved in efforts to bring Indigenous people together to document and archive, via digital video, their histories and stories. A group of interested students and teachers from LCO Ojibwa Community College and from the St. Croix Reservation where the college has an outreach site, participated in a hands-on workshop with Hsuan-Yun Pi and her graduate campus advisor from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Patty Loew, Ojibwe.

The group was instantly transported to the cutting edge of the new digital video technology. At this meeting, a demonstration of a sophisticated editing system called “Vegas,” convinced the group that digital video editing tools, once reserved for big budget, professional productions, are now affordable and practical for individuals to use. Plans were made for Hsuan to return to Indian Country to assist both LCO and St. Croix with specific digital video projects.

The first project was the digital recording and editing of an original play written by LCO College instructor Patrick Shield’s English Composition classes. Titled Post, the play was performed by LCO college students, faculty, staff and the Makwa (Bear) Drama Club. The play depicts the building of the Winter Dam in the 1920s and the destruction of the LCO community of Post. Students from the College’s main campus in Hayward and Todd Cutler, a student from the outreach site on the St. Croix Reservation, taped the play using the University of Wisconsin’s high end cameras. The goal is to preserve the historically accurate performance and to provide copies of the performance for sale to help raise much needed funding for future Makwa Drama Club productions.

During one of Hsuan-Yun Pi’s visits to the St. Croix reservation, T.R.A.I.L.S. (Traditions Respecting American Indian Life Styles) coordinator Mark Soulier and his daughter, Nichole Soulier, the Danbury Youth Director for the St. Croix Tribe, set up a workshop to teach youth how to shoot and edit digital video.

The youth experimented with the cameras, recording interviews, and basically shooting “from the hip,” images that were of interest to them. The group listened as Hsuan instructed them on the capabilities of the new equipment. The group also watched a series of captivating music and dramatic vignettes produced by youth from other reservations.

Mark Soulier and graduating high school senior Josh Merrill worked with Hsuan to actually produce an edited collage of the St. Croix T.R.A.I.L.S. Dance Troupe. Soulier intends to transfer some 18 years worth of historic T.R.A.I.L.S. footage to a digital format for historic preservation. This will be an ongoing project as he sorts through photos, VHS tapes, and various other visual and audio formats.

As an example of the historic importance of this project, Soulier found a VHS tape of Chief Archie Mosay and other elders who have since passed on. Tracking down the original footage, transferring it to a digital format, and archiving both the original footage and the digital rendition is of great importance to St. Croix Historic Preservation.

They say that timing is everything. It was during one of Hsuan’s visits to the St. Croix Reservation that the maple sugar was flowing in the sugar bush. This meant that everyone from the youngest HeadStart children to the elders were busy tapping, collecting, boiling, canning and eating the delicious fruits of their labor. St. Croix Education and Youth Director Brooke Mosay Ammann, and LCOOCC Ojibwe Language Instructor Fancis Songetay captured every step of the process on digital video. The finished product will be an Ojibwe Language teaching tool centered on the activities of the St. Croix Sugar Bush, a project destined for archival preservation and the best seller list in Indian Country.

Hsuan-Yun Pi’s visits to the LCO and St. Croix reservations were seen by many as a great gift. Through the generosity of Susan Gooding, Patty Loew and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a talented and dedicated student, Hsuan-Yun Pi, has brought the knowledge and tools necessary for Native Americans on these two reservations to archive their precious histories, tell their own stories, and turn their youth on to the incredible art of making movies.

Hsuan-Yun Pi is looking forward to future visits to Indian Country – to witness the blossoming of the seeds she planted here. And for years to come, long after she has completed her Graduate Degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, people in Indian Country will be watching for the name Hsun-Yun Pi as the credits roll on the Big Screen.