EDITOR'S NOTE: This story appeared in the print edition of Arizona Highways in May 2015. Some of the details may have changed since then.
In a classroom at STAR School on the southwest corner of the Navajo Nation, frustration is mounting. Three students are working with teacher Rachel Tso, director of the school’s media-arts program, to figure out how to operate a new drone, called a “quadcopter,” which requires complicated computer calibrations to fly.
In just three days it will be STAR’s September 2014 Harvest Festival, when the students will be tasked with operating the quadcopter and attached GoPro camera to get aerial shots of the event for a documentary film they’re making about food sovereignty on the Navajo Nation. But so far, they can’t get the remote-controlled, four-propeller contraption off the ground.
A seventh-grader named Josh is searching for information on Tso’s laptop while an eighth-grader named Maddie sifts through just-opened packaging in search of a missing manual. Seventh-grader Jacalyn experiments with the quadcopter’s remote control.
“See if you can find any calibration videos on YouTube,” Tso advises Josh.
But the laptop, which is hooked up to Tso’s solar-powered computer bag, is running out of battery life, and the students are running out of class time. Compared with other charter schools in Northern Arizona, STAR (Service to All Relations) is unique for its commitment to serving Native American students, its complete reliance on solar power and its award-winning documentary-filmmaking program headed by Tso.
Since Tso, 43, joined the STAR faculty in 2009 to start the school’s place-based media-arts curriculum, she has guided students in producing professional-quality documentaries about Southwestern Native American culture that have been shown at national and international film festivals. Nitsidigo’i’, a documentary made by STAR seventh- and eighth-graders about kindergarten students learning to make the Navajo heritage food called kneel-down bread, won the grand prize in the 2010 Arizona Student Film Festival. And another documentary, about STAR’s use of solar and wind energy, earned the same prize in the 2011 festival.
While STAR students relied on one laptop for editing and three cameras for filming to create their award-winning documentaries, competing schools from wealthy areas in Phoenix and Tucson had far better equipment. But Tso says they didn’t have the compelling connection to culture and the land that her students did.
“I tell my students they can make a film just with their phone,” Tso says. “I want them to know that they have the power and the technology to tell their own story. When they get to screen their films at these big festivals and have complete strangers look to them as authority figures, the kids stand tall. It is very empowering for them.”
A $2,000 grant from First Nations Development Institute for the making of the current documentary on food sovereignty allowed STAR to buy the quadcopter and expand into aerial photography. It was the first new-equipment purchase for the media-arts program in six years.
Unable to get the quadcopter to fly, Josh gingerly sets the device back in the box as if he is handling a bird’s nest full of eggs. Maddie blows air from a rubber bulb to clean the GoPro before packing it away.
“I know you are disappointed, Josh,” reassures Tso, “but we will figure it out before the festival. I promise.”
Tso is not just teaching Native American students about filmmaking. She is also showing them how to succeed in life and connect with their culture and landscape. But even though Tso has devoted her career to helping Native youths value their traditions, she is a member of the Navajo community only through marriage — she grew up in the suburbs of Florida.
Tso first came to the Navajo Nation in 1992 as a college student (with the maiden name of Cox) from Antioch University in Ohio. She had signed on to do field-based cross-cultural research on Navajo-Hopi relations. After driving across the country alone, she arrived at a remote area on Black Mesa, only to find out that her lodging arrangements had fallen through. She was taken in by a Navajo woman named Jenny Manybeads, who was 107 and spoke no English.
Tso spent three months living with Manybeads in her dirt-floor hogan. Rather than feeling like an alien in the rustic environment, Tso developed an intense connection to the place. She also became smitten with Manybeads’ great-grandson, Francis Tso, who spoke English and helped her navigate the cultural and language barriers.
“Every time Francis came riding up on his horse to check on me, my heart would go pitter-patter,” she recalls.
When Tso returned to Antioch to complete her studies in environmental communication and documentary filmmaking, she realized she was a different person. “I had intense culture shock going back to my own culture,” she says. “I just wanted to return to the ‘rez.’ ”
Over the next three years, Tso completed her bachelor’s degree at Antioch. For her senior project, she made a documentary film about Jenny Manybeads and the 28 generations in her family who had lived in the area impacted by the Navajo-Hopi land dispute. In 1995, she married Francis Tso and returned to Black Mesa, where she again lived in a dirt-floor hogan. The couple eventually moved to Flagstaff to allow Rachel to pursue graduate degrees in education at Northern Arizona University.
Her master’s thesis explored the importance of place-based media-arts education by chronicling the positive documentary experience of her eldest daughter, Camille Manybeads Tso. The award-winning In the Footsteps of Yellow Woman, made by Camille in 2009 when she was in eighth grade, traced her family history and the life of her great-great-great-grandmother Yellow Woman, who survived the Navajo Long Walk of 1864-68.
“Having kids involved in filmmaking is one of the main things we do here,” says STAR director and school co-founder Mark Sorensen. “Everyone has a story to tell, but kids on the ‘rez’ often don’t get that chance. Rachel has a wonderful gift of not only empowering kids to tell their story through film, but of also giving them the freedom to learn how to do things on their own while under her guidance.”
After more research and practice, Tso’s students master the quadcopter and use it to film the Harvest Festival. On October 27, the student body gathers in the circular outdoor assembly area for the final footage needed to complete the food-sovereignty documentary. Josh holds the remote control while Maddie uses an iPad to monitor the camera feed.
Tso stands behind them, only to observe. “You guys are on your own now,” she says.
There is a palpable tension in the crowd, which may have something to do with thoughts of the quadcopter crashing down on the audience. Josh moves a toggle, and the quadcopter lifts off from the middle of the circle. As it rockets 100 feet into the air, all 130 students look up at the camera and wave. The aerial view takes in the small, off-the-grid STAR campus, as well as surrounding cinder hills and Strawberry Crater. Then, with a surgeon’s precision, Josh steers the quadcopter to the ground as the students cheer. He is beaming and looks back at Tso.
“Yes! You did it!” she says, fist-pumping the sky.