Begay gives Native youth perspective for MTV project
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Armed with a mobile video camera on Super Tuesday, Christine Begay was out and about, interviewing students at the University of New Mexico and voters at polling places, and posting the live videos almost instantly to MTV’s ”Choose or Lose ’08” Web site.
Begay, 23, is a member of MTV’s ”Street Team ’08,” a group of 51 citizen journalists – one from every state and the District of Columbia – who were specially recruited through an extensive nationwide search to cover the 2008 elections from a youth perspective, utilizing mobile technology.
The Street Team members were plied with the latest equipment – mobile video cameras, laptops, editing software and cell phones – and charged with uncovering the untold political stories that matter most to young people in their respective states. Each member is to file weekly multi-media reports – short form videos, blogs, animation, photos and podcasts – that are distributed via www.Think.MTV.com and to more than 1,800 sites in the Associated Press Online Video Network.
The project is supported by a $700,000 Knight News Challenge grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Knight News Challenge, at www.newschallenge.org, is an annual worldwide competition awarding $5 million for innovative ideas that use digital media to inform and inspire communities. The foundation plans to invest at least $25 million over five years on bold community news experiments.
The MTV project came right on the heels of Begay’s graduation last spring, with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Fort Lewis in Durango, Colo., and a new full time job at the nonprofit American Indian Graduate Center, under director Phillip S. (Sam) Deloria.
Begay applied to become one of the MTV ”Street Team ’08” journalists in August. Notified in December that she had made the team, Begay joined the other 50 members in New York in January for a three-day ”Journalism Bootcamp” and an introduction to MTV executives and producers.
Each Street Team member had 15 seconds to introduce themselves. Begay used hers to provide her parents’ background: Her mother is Yankton Nakota and Arikara from Lake Andes, S. D. Her father is Dine’ from Fort Wingate, N. M.
”People were so interested in issues facing Indian country today and that one of the Street Team members is actually an American Indian. For me, that was my underlying hope in all of this – that I would be able to use the mainstream media to highlight a lot of issues in Indian country and especially in New Mexico,” Begay said.
She began to fulfill that hope with her first piece – an autobiographical blog entry that takes an honest look at her own life growing up as an American Indian in the border town of Gallup, N.M.
”Life in our family seemed completely normal, that is compared to the communities we grew up in,” she wrote. ”We have all seen poor neighborhoods, families living in poverty and struggling to raise their kids. Growing up in our communities was a different kind of poor. The kind of poor that reeks of dysfunction, alcoholism and racism. The racism came from communities, towns, governments and people who hated that we – I – was American Indian. The alcoholism was something that we saw on a daily basis, whether it was in my family or on the street. The dysfunction was not clearly evident to me until I realized that this was not the life for me … ”
Begay began to notice fellow community members who had succumbed to addiction, living on the streets in tattered clothing.
” … My mom would always tell us, ‘They were once your age and had dreams. They never dreamed that they would end up on the street like this.’ It was a harsh but all too normal reality for anyone who grows up in Gallup or one of the many other border towns in the country,” Begay wrote.
”I got a lot of private messages about that. People wanted to know what it was like growing up in a border town. Some people didn’t know what a border town is,” Begay said.
For her second piece, Begay did a video interview of former Miss New Mexico USA Onawa Lacy, who talked about racism and discrimination.
Her report on New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s withdrawal from the presidential race was scrapped because of ”technical difficulties,” with the video, Begay said, teaching her an important lesson about the need to always have a plan B.
”I wrote for a newspaper in college and the reason I applied for the MTV project is because I’m confident in my writing skill, but a big focus on MTV is the video media. That was definitely an obstacle for me, but now that we have all this great software, I’m eager to learn all about it,” Begay said.
Begay said she has found her peers to be very engaged and interested in the election and issues, but not in traditional media such as newspapers, networks or cable channels.
”The internet is huge. People of my generation who would never go to Fox or ABC or CNN are all over the Internet and this is definitely the push MTV is going for. There’s a lot of enthusiasm and interest in the big issues – the war in Iraq, the environment, immigration, especially here in New Mexico,” Begay said.
Begay can draw on her own life and circle of activist friends for stories, but she also intends to search out young people who are not involved.
”The ones who are doing things are the easiest to find, but the ones who don’t care – their opinions matter too. Why don’t they care?” Begay said.
The MTV project takes place around Begay’s full time job at the center, which she says fully supports her involvement in the project.
”For a lot of young American Indians, there’s not a lot of opportunities, so I’m excited about the opportunity. I’ve got to go out there and represent them and let them know the opportunities are out there. We just have to get involved,” Begay said.
Begay’s MTV page is at www.think.mtv.com/cmbegayNM.
