Professor Lends Native Voice to New ABC Show

Excerpt from CSUSM NewsCenter:

When Joely Proudfit was a young professor at San Francisco State, she began teaching a class – a version of which she still teaches today – about American Indians in film and media.

Her lectures and the course material made clear that Proudfit, a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians, wasn’t happy about the state of affairs, which prompted her students to issue a challenge.

If you don’t like the way your people are being portrayed, why don’t you do something about it?

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What an exciting opportunity for both Professor Proudfit and ABC! ABC taking steps to more accurately depict female characters of Native descent is encouraging and hopeful for future relationships between the film and media industries and underrepresented communities. The journey to create works that can sufficiently elucidate the issues and attitudes of specific groups of peoples/communities succumbs to numerous issues and difficult conversations, as a result from creators lacking empathy. Having the enormous capacity to make radical changes, Professor Proudfit certainly understands the scope of the project she is involved in and the challenges that current and future generations will be tackling with film and media.

“I’m looking to change the narrative, and do it quickly,” Proudfit said. “So if that means putting cultural experts in a room with writers to elevate the story, I’ll try anything, any kind of approach.”

- Joely Proudfit