Apply for a Pathways Fellowship
Ten week internship will be onsite at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona
Applications are now being accepted for a paid Summer/Fall 2022 Audiovisual Collection Intern at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona. This internship is a part of the IMLS-funded Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) Pathways Fellowship Program. The Navajo Nation Museum is pleased to serve as a host site for one individual – ideally a Navajo person – for the Program.
The goal of this internship and the AMIA Pathways program is to support and mentor the professional journeys of individuals from traditionally underrepresented communities to find their learning objectives and help guide their development; especially if interested in discovering professional pathways in the field of archives, libraries or museums with an emphasis in audiovisual heritage (film, video, audio). The Pathways fellowship encompasses this paid internship opportunity, mentorship pairings, professional development (webinar curriculum specific to audiovisual skill development, etc), cohort building, networking, and an alumni program.
For more information about the Pathways Fellowship see: https://amianet.org/about/amia-pathways/apply-for-a-pathways-fellowship/ or email: pathways@weareamia.org.
To be considered for the internship, applicants must apply for both the internship (info below) and separately to the Fellowship Program.
The Navajo Nation Museum is a tribally funded and owned museum. It is located on the Navajo Nation in Window Rock, Arizona. It is the second oldest tribal museum in the country established in 1961. Since then it has grown and moved three times. The collection is made up of photographs, fine art, some audiovisual recordings (oral histories and Navajo language versions of feature films), as well as historic Navajo material. It is a rural museum and has a grassroots approach, solving problems collectively. To date, the Museum has collected more than 20,000 artifacts. Currently it has a staff of seven people – both curatorial and administrative – it is run by passionate, creative, personable, diy problem-solvers who care deeply about Navajo people’s history, present and future.
Museums are known for keeping cultural knowledge alive and culture is embedded in language. In order to reach a broader community, the Navajo Nation Museum more recently has been known for its pioneering work in dubbing motion pictures into the Navajo language, dubbing Star Wars and Finding Nemo into the Navajo language in 2014 and 2017, and working on more to come. They are also working on a CARES grant-funded Navajo Language project, focused on the cosmology and mythology of the Coyote stories (parables) – turning them into animations for the Navajo community. The Museum is responsible for many pioneering efforts that began as slim-chance ideas that have big impacts on Navajo and Native people, such as Benally/AiWeiWei project, and working with the National Archives to bring the original 1868 Navajo Treaty to the museum for display in 2018.
The museum is excited about participating in the IMLS-funded AMIA Pathways project, because they are thinking about ways to lay the groundwork for care of audiovisual materials (audio and video). Longterm, the museum is aspiring to bring its collection management system up-to-date with digital systems.
The AMIA fellow/paid Audiovisual Collection Assessment Intern for the Navajo Nation Museum will be a part of envisioning and organizing a small and growing collection of audiovisual (av) materials including but not limited to: Navajo language versions of major films, and oral histories recorded on various audio formats. With guidance from the Museum and AMIA and training materials from AMIA, the intern will have the ability to work in two important areas: 1) working with Navajo Language films and 2) beginning a collection assessment of av heritage materials. The intern will be supervised by Manuelito Wheeler, Museum Director.
As the first person to focus on av materials at the Museum, the intern will contribute significantly to the creation, management, and distribution of the museum’s analog and digital collection. The current cataloging system is dated but effective. The museum is seeking applicants who exhibit vision on problem-solving and/or on how to update archiving, cataloging and data management systems. The role will include some training on care and handling of audio and video and how to inventory, catalog and manage them.
The intern will also gain an understanding about the realities, excitement, and empowerment of working in a tribal museum! If you are a self-starter who flourishes in creative environments and you’d be interested in engaging in philosophical discussions about museums, tribal museums, and cultural heritage preservation and celebration, we’d love you to consider applying!
With mentorship and guidance from AMIA mentors, the intern will have the opportunity to be involved in any of the following:
Ten week internship will be onsite at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona
July-Sept 2022
COVID-19 Vaccine Requirements: All academic appointees (interns and fellows) must be fully vaccinated for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) with a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized (or, for international remote interns, a WHO-recommended) COVID-19 vaccine or have an approved Reasonable Accommodation granting an exemption from vaccine requirements. Please see additional information regarding reasonable accommodations here.