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FILMMAKER TURNED GRADUATE STUDENT
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Malinda Maynor Seeks New Approaches to Storytelling Royster
Fellow Malinda Maynor had a successful career as a documentary filmmaker
before she ever crossed the threshold of Hamilton Hall, home of the Universitys
history department. Her films, which explore Native American issues such
as cultural identity and heritage, have captured the attention of the
independent film community. Two of her documentaries, Real Indian
and Sounds of Faith, were shown at the prestigious Sundance
Film Festival. Her third, In the Light of Reverence, will
air on the PBS independent film series P.O.V. (Point of View) later this
year. Considering her accomplished
film work, Maynors return to academia might seem surprising. But
for Maynor, her masters and doctoral degrees in history continue
the work she has already done in film. A documentary, and history
in general, can work to resolve issues that usually split people apart,
she said. Maynor is a Lumbee Indian,
born in Robeson County, N.C., and reared in Durham. Understanding and
resolving these divisive issues is not just an academic endeavor for her,
but also a personal one. Maynor returned to school partly
to find a more flexible medium than film to explore Native American issues
and to present history in different ways. When you make a film,
you have to work within a very conflict-driven, oppositional style of
story telling, Maynor said. I dont think that conflict
is the only way to tell stories. The Lumbee story, in particular, is one
that doesnt really become illuminated when you look at it from that
oppositional perspective. Maynor said she hopes graduate
school will help her find a different framework for her stories so she
can write about history in ways that stay true to multiple points of view.
Maynor largely credits the
multi-year Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster, Jr. Fellowship, which funds
her five-year program, for bringing her to the University and enabling
her to pursue her degrees in a supportive environment. The fellowship
offers a unique opportunity to do work that I love and support myself
doing it, she said. The support means Ill be able to
make a coherent narrative of my research. In addition to the Royster
Fellowship, Maynor said history professors Theda Perdue and Michael Green
also attracted her to the University. They are the best people working
in Native American history, Maynor said. Youre not going
to find anybody who is doing better work or who is better to work with. Maynor also chose to come to
Chapel Hill because it is close to the resources she needs for her research,
especially the Lumbee community. I felt I could do Lumbee history
here without being isolated. While Maynor is still in the
early stages of considering her thesis, she knows that issues of place,
already important in her films, will also be part of her academic research.
I wonder if Americans relationships to place the feelings
we have about home places, about work places, about sacred places, about
the natural environment motivate individual decisions as much as
policy, economics or ideology seem to, she said. Specifically, Maynor wants
to study the Lumbee migration from Robeson County to Georgia in the 1880s.
A small portion of the Lumbee tribe moved with the turpentine industry
to other states after the eastern North Carolina pine forests became too
thin to support the industry. Over the next 40 years, some Lumbee families
moved back and forth between Georgia and Robeson County, but in the 1920s,
the Lumbees returned to Robeson County for good. Its interesting
that the Lumbees were driven by economics to move to Georgia, Maynor
said, but they werent so driven that they were going to lose
touch with where they came from. The cultural value, she explained,
was maintaining the relationship to the tribe and to the home, not pursuing
money. While Maynor said scholars
have sometimes presented Native Americans, including Lumbees, in misleading
or distorted ways, she does not see her mission as correcting misperceptions
she used her films to tell the real story. Now she wants to learn
what happened in the past, discover how people thought at the time and
express who the Lumbees are. I want to listen more to what my relatives
have taught me about who I am and what it means to be who I am and what
our tribe means, Maynor said. My goal is to convey that apart
from what all the people who arent Lumbees have put on us. In addition to working on her
thesis, studying for exams and putting the finishing touches on her film
In the Light of Reverence, Maynor coordinates the Lumbee River
Fund, an archive-building project at the University of North Carolina
at Pembroke. The goal of the project is to create a place to do
research in Robeson County for Lumbees and for scholars and students who
do research on Lumbees, Maynor said. By collecting art, artifacts,
photos, documents and other Lumbee materials, Maynor says she hopes the
project will draw researchers and students, giving them the opportunity
to talk with Lumbees directly about Lumbee issues. This will give
people a chance to see what the community is like before they draw conclusions.
As one of its first projects, the Lumbee River Fund organized a photo
exhibit in February of the history of UNC-Pembroke, which started as a
school for Native Americans. Maynor left the film industry
to communicate Native American history through different media, such as
the Lumbee River Fund project, but she holds on to the possibility of
filming more documentaries. She sees herself teaching and making films
or following the more traditional model of teaching and researching in
the future. But for now, Maynor concentrates on her history studies and
looks forward to her thesis and dissertation research. The chance
to work on a project, do the research, do the writing, get the critiques
and revise is an incredible opportunity that you cant get anywhere
else but graduate school.
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