The early months of 2021 have failed to mark a transition from the divisiveness and turbulence of the prior year—and not solely due to the disturbing acts of violence in Washington D.C., on January 6th. Denial of democratic elections persist. Repressive violence by military juntas escalates daily. The global COVID-19 pandemic tragically claims more lives and spreads in under-resourced nations still ill-equipped to offer preventive equipment or enforce credible public health guidelines. Free, independent media is under threat world-wide as ever before.
Last month, the Skoll Foundation hosted the second iteration of its Racial Justice Town Hall series as part of the 23rd Sundance Film Festival, this year being one of its most diverse across race, ethnicity, gender, and nationality with 71 feature films, 50 shorts, four “indie” series, as well as 14 VR/AR offerings in the first virtual manifestation of the program.
“A Place in the Sun: De-Centering Whiteness in Public Imagination,” drew together three highly successful storytellers from across multiple genres for a wide-ranging conversation on inclusive narrative creation, agency in storytelling, and the trauma of being invisible in national myths. They included Princess Johnson, an Alaska Native and board member of Skoll grantee NDN Collective, who was a creator and producer of the hugely popular, PBS children’s television show, “Molly of Denali.” She was joined by Dr. Ariana Curtis, a Panamanian-American curator and urban anthropologist who is the Director of Content for “Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past” at the Smithsonian Institution. The third speaker was Charles D. King, Founder and CEO of the Hollywood production company, MACRO, whose latest film, Judas and the Black Messiah, was produced in association with Participant.
Storytelling has always been a key focus for the Skoll Foundation in partnership with social entrepreneurs, global changemakers, and frontline responders to the most pervasive social challenges. Long-time Skoll Foundation Awardees such as WITNESS, Equal Justice Initiative, Search for Common Ground, ICTJ and more recently, OCCRP, center historical memory and narrative shift in their mutual goal of ensuring collective and individual dignity for all individuals.
Fundamentally, all Skoll Awardees and grantees share that aim, across the organization’s systemic priorities. For example, recent grantee Data 4 Black Lives uses data science to strategically impact the lives of Black Americans at measurable levels. Indigenous American women lead IllumiNative with the aim of countering historically false and traumatizing narratives to ensure authentic depictions of the everyday lives of a richly diverse community. Nossas activates citizens to become more fully engaged in the civic and political systems which surround them.
In The White Album, Joan Didion’s storied collection of essays published in 1979, she observed that “We tell ourselves stories in order to live…We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices.” COVID-19, intractable conflicts, political divisiveness, state violence, profound food insecurity, inequitable education, and relentless climate change are existential threats—but only if we allow them to be.
Perhaps now more than ever the capacity to recognize our shared humanity in the narratives we hear and see is essential to successfully transforming unjust and inequitable systems which stifle, dehumanize, or render powerless.
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banner image (Kellie M. Simpson) National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Equal Justice Initiative, Montgomery, Alabama
