Spring 2019: CDS Names Indigenous Filmmaker Myron Lehman Brady Visiting Professor

Note: Myron Dewey (1972–2021) was Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor at Duke University

and the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill in Spring 2019; he was based at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies. In “Remembering Myron Dewey,” CDS undergraduate education director Chris Sims remarks, “Myron posed questions of his students and colleagues that asked us to re-think fundamental assumptions about our relationships to land, education, and to creation itself.”

The Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University is honored to announce that indigenous filmmaker, organizer, and renowned educator Myron Dewey will be the Spring 2019 Lehman Brady Visiting Professor. The visiting joint chair professorship in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke University and the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill is administered by the Center for Documentary Studies. Dewey will teach a new course at CDS/Duke and UNC: Media and Indigenous Experiences is open to undergraduate and graduate students.

Dewey is most well-known for his pioneering use of drone camera footage as a tool of resistance in the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) protests on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in 2016, and for the documentary film Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock(2017), which he co-directed with Josh Fox and James Spione.

"Professor Dewey’s experience and knowledge around environmental and indigenous issues will bring a fresh perspective to CDS’s focus on documentary practice and social justice, said Christopher Sims, undergraduate education director at CDS and former Lehman Brady Professor. Elizabeth Engelhardt, chair of the Department of American Studies at UNC, adds, “Professor Dewey will energize our students, faculty, and community members, bringing together in new and exciting ways American Studies’ existing strengths in American Indian and Indigenous Studies, critical race studies, and documentary ways of knowing.”

Myron Dewey is a professor, historical trauma trainer, youth media trainer, and award-winning filmmaker, journalist, and digital storyteller. He is the founder of Digital Smoke Signals, a social media production company that aims to give a platform to indigenous voices in media. Dewey’s drone footage of the Standing Rock movement marks him as one of the most important journalistic voices working on environmental and indigenous issues today. Through both Digital Smoke Signals and his own media work, Dewey seeks to bridge the digital divide throughout Indian Country and to indigenize media with core indigenous cultural values, work that he has pursued for more than twenty years.

More information on Myron Dewey.