Thanks to Dakota County and Fraidy Cats for their support.
West St. Paul resident Leya Hale, a documentary producer at Twin Cities PBS, was one of the 30 people selected this year to receive the Bush Fellowship, which grants her $150,000 to support her leadership plans.
What is the fellowship: The Bush Fellowship is a grant open to individuals in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and the 23 Native nations that share that land. It is an application process that involves extensive interviews with over 1,000 applicants and selects 30 individuals. The fellowship supports local leaders, enabling them to continue creating a positive impact on their communities.
“When I did get that final notification that I had been selected, there were definitely feelings of joy and excitement,” Hale said. “[And] just feeling humbled by it as well.”
Who is she: Leya Hale is a Native American documentary filmmaker and producer based in West St. Paul. She works at Twin Cities PBS, where she’s spent over 13 years telling stories that center on Indigenous voices, resilience, and culture, and has won multiple regional Emmy awards. Hale’s most popular works are the feature films The People’s Protectors and Bring Her Home, both of which won a regional Emmy award and are distributed by PBS.
“I try to produce character-driven stories to help audiences emotionally understand what people are going through and the issues that they’re facing,” Hale said.
What Does Hale Want to Accomplish With the Fellowship
Hale is rethinking how Native stories are made. Her goal is to indigenize the filmmaking process by encouraging young Native storytellers to enter the film field and become educated about it.
- Build a model that centers on Native language, values, and protocol.
- Create a teaching tool to mentor emerging Indigenous storytellers.
- Shift filmmaking from extractive to community-rooted.
“In the Western film-making process, sometimes it can be extractive, when somebody doesn’t connect to a story or a community, and then you’re kind of coming in … taking a story, and then you leave,” Hale said. “I want to teach [people] to incorporate your own cultural knowledge and value systems.”
Hale’s Background: Leya Hale grew up in the Native community of Los Angeles, where early exposure to film sets through her mother and cultural performances with her family created her passion for storytelling. She studied radio-TV-film at Cal State Fullerton and earned a graduate degree in American Indian Studies from the University of South Dakota before joining Twin Cities PBS.
Fun Fact: The last West St. Paul resident to win the Bush Fellowship was Maureen Ramirez in 2014.
Like knowing what’s happening in your community? Support neighborhood news by joining now.
(Photo credit: Leya Hale)
