NativeTruth Film Project
Project Coordinator: Terresa White, 503.416.3272,
Project Specialist: Nichole Hildebrandt, 503.416.3285,
Self-expression through filmmaking
Commercial tobacco prevention through youth activism
The Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board empowered youth from three Pacific Northwest Tribes to provide vocal leadership regarding the truth about tobacco use in their communities. With training, networking, and activism opportunities, this project countered the tobacco industry’s misuse of Native images targeting American Indians. Youth Filmmakers and Community Mentors engaged in review and discussion of counter-marketing media and participated in friendship building, leadership, and networking activities. Youth participated in peer group decision making to conceptualize and develop their prevention messages. The NativeTruth Film Project partner, Northwest Film Center, provided intensive video production and editing training, film-making mentorship, and guidance throughout the project.
Youth participants became literate media consumers and active producers of counter-marketing media relevant to their communities. They became agents of social change!
The NativeTruth Film Project DVD contains three short films and public service announcements with prevention-oriented messages about the effects of smoking among American Indians in three Northwest Tribes. Produced by American Indian youth from Yakama Nation, Spokane Tribe, and Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, the prevention topics include: the harmful chemicals used in manufacturing cigarettes, secondhand smoke in the workplace, inter-generational views on smoking, the significance of Tribal teens as non-smoking role models, and the difference between sacred tobacco use and commercial tobacco use. Made on location in the teens’ Tribal communities, the films include interviews with parents, community leaders and Tribal community members.
Suitable for grades 6 up.
Total Running Time: 28 minutes
Contact: Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board, http://www.npaihb.org, 503-228-4185
Northwest Film Center, http://www.nwfilm.org, 503.221.1156
PROJECT RATIONALE
Nationally, American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth (12-17) have the greatest cigarette smoking prevalence of any of six major racial or ethnic populations studied—at 23.1%, compared to 14.9% for white youth and 6.5% for black youth. Smoking among AI/AN youth in Washington is higher than in the general state population in almost all grade groups. High smoking rates continue into adulthood, as AI/AN adults also have the highest prevalence across all racial and ethnic groups, amounting, from 2003-2005, to nearly 37% of AI/ANs in Washington and in 2006 36% of AI/ANs in Idaho. It can be surmised that the Native youth prevalence disparity is at least as large as the adult disparity in both states. Potential contributors to this disparity include: ethnic targeting by tobacco companies, limited access to tobacco prevention and control funding, a lack of tobacco policies or inappropriate and/or un-enforced policies, as well as an enduring relationship with traditional tobacco that clashes with current mainstream anti-tobacco campaigns.
The voices of Native youth are underrepresented in popular media. Likewise, the stories of their unique relationships to tobacco and the cultural realities affecting the disproportionately high rates of commercial tobacco use in their communities have not been told in popular tobacco prevention film media.
