My heritage is Choctaw/Scottish/English. Presently I'm a graduate student working towards an MFA (Masters in Fine Arts) in Motion Pictures and Television at the Academy of Art University, San Francisco, California. My focus is documentary film and this particular film, Return to the Sacred, is my thesis film project.

I have a Bachelor's of Science in Animal Science from Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, Colorado. That degree was focused on equine reproduction and clinical research. I left much of that behind when I relocated to New York City in 1985.   While in New York I began writing in earnest and was published both in the New York Times as well as overseas in a South African agricultural journal. I also began documentary photography, covering the social protests of the Northeastern U.S. in the 1990's and into the new millennia.

September 11, 2001, changed my life as much as anyone else's and I swore that from that point forward, I would strive that each day of my life would mean something, and that I would make more time to spend in personal relationships as opposed to just focusing on work. With that in mind, I headed for graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, in 2002, leaving behind New York City after 17 years.

The University of Wisconsin was meant to be a career building experience but economically it was more like one of the worst financial meltdowns I'd ever possibly imagined. The multitude of computer skills I had from New York were way beyond midwestern comprehension and the fact I dared not sit still, shut up and hang my head in submission to others just shook the core of the patriarchal culture in Madison. Life there was difficult, indeed.

The highlight of my time in Madison was WORT-FM, a well-respected and nationally known community radio station. There I joined the science radio collective, Perpetual Notion Machine, and began producing science radio shows on subjects as diverse as genetically engineered potatoes to the native history of Madison - a city which was traditionally known as De Jope before it was overrun by occupying forces of the U.S. military and renamed  Madison around 1836.

In 2003, facing economic ruin, I accepted a teaching position overseas in Korea and headed off for a new chapter in my life that was unlike anything I'd ever imagined. Living as an expat was an exhilarating experience and expanded my goals further than ever. I published opinion pieces in the English daily, the Korea Times, as well as had a major exhibition of photographs taken during a trek through China and Vietnam. This photographic exhibition was a huge accomplishment in the fact that I was both a foreigner and female, both of which are regarded as of a lesser status in Korea.

In 2006, I fulfilled a lifelong dream of seeing Africa when I flew to South Africa and traveled extensively for 6 weeks. There I befriended a group of San people (commonly referred to as Bushmen) and we discussed making a film together in the future. From South Africa I went north to the Middle East to attend an international conference in Amman, Jordan. There, I photographed life in refugee camps and listened to their stories of living in an occupied country. A Kurdish journalist who was also attending the conference told me of the Kurdish struggle to maintain their traditional ways while caught in border disputes between Iraq and Turkey, denied their right to self-determination, the same as many other indigenous groups world-wide face each and every day.

I returned to the U.S. in the summer of 2009 and relocated in the San Francisco area to complete my MFA. Presently I work at the California Film Institute in San Rafael, attend classes at AAU and am actively engaged in pre-development of various documentary projects as well as working on original scripts and adaptation of stories for film.

It is both a blessing and a hindrance to be of mixed ancestry but having been active in native issues for a number of years, I have the ability to walk in both worlds and now, through the imagery of film, to share this knowledge with a broader audience.

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