The first thing J. Carlos Peinado tells his students is that every good story begins with a story.

“Before they even pick up a camera,” says Peinado, “my students take a class where we explore the nature of storytelling. Stories are all around us, and it’s important that someone from the American Indian community be on the front side of the telling.”

Peinado (Mandan/Hidatsa) chairs the New Media Arts Department at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA, Santa Fe, NM). He lives what he teaches. Before coming to IAIA, he worked as a professional filmmaker, most recently training his lens on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, where he spent much of his childhood.

In his critically acclaimed documentary, Waterbuster, Peinado explores what happened in the aftermath of the construction of the Garrison Dam by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the years following World War II. Although the dam succeeded in delivering electricity to the Midwest, the achievement came at a high cost to residents of Fort Berthold, many of whom were displaced after tribal lands were bisected by the resulting 200-mile long reservoir.

Peinado sees his experiences, both living at Fort Berthold and later, as a prep and college student on the East Coast, as beneficial to teaching American Indian students.

“Many of my students share the same background as me. My job is to give them the opportunity to see beyond the borders of the reservation, what mom and dad and grandpa did. I’ve seen the mountain, what it looks like on the other side. The job of a teacher is to open up a student’s eyes to the possibilities, to believe in them.”

In Peinado’s case, the other side of the mountain ends with an enviable descent: Waterbuster not only toured the prestigious film circuits, it landed on air as a nationally televised PBS event. Peinado says he can bring his experience to his students: how to create a film from concept to distribution.

ALL MIXED UP. Carlos Peinado and student Rory Erler Wakemup discuss how to use the school's new sound mixing board. Photo by Janet Freeman

Peinado hopes that his students realize that they, too, can achieve similar success. These days, his mission is to turn IAIA’s film program into one of the best in the nation. Already, he has revamped the curriculum – a critical first step; Peinado is the fourth department chair in as many years – and has met great success acquiring state-of-the-art equipment for his students.

Peinado, who has begun to see the fruits of his labor, says that guests visiting from some of the country’s top film schools have expressed envy at the computers, cameras, and mixers available to IAIA students. For Peinado, the move was critical.

“They [students] know if they have access to the best equipment, they can make the best film. This is important, because many of them want to take their skills back to their community, to become a voice.”

Peinado acknowledges, however, that once students graduate from IAIA, they might lose access to high-end equipment. If that happens, they will still benefit from the technical and critical thinking skills honed while at IAIA. In his view, “tools are just tools.” What matters is the individual’s resourcefulness.

Here again is something Peinado knows about: In the late ’70s, his mother was asked by Fort Berthold’s tribal chair to build a 100,000-watt radio station. An English teacher who knew nothing of electronics, she scrambled to learn all she could about how to build a radio station. Her eventual success was an important milestone for the Three Affiliated Tribes, whose members, geographically divided for nearly 20 years, were able to communicate freely with one another.

This episode left an indelible imprint on Peinado, manifesting years later in the values he imparts daily as an educator. In a program where so much of what gets accomplished depends on technology, he views his tools of the trade as just instruments for building community.

And the community is growing. In just two years, enrollment in the film program has skyrocketed from 18 to 73.

Although rightfully proud of this impressive surge, Peinado’s eye is already on a new project; in this case, a technological acquisition sure to inspire fresh meaning to the term “new media” arts. Like most great stories, this one starts with a chance encounter. It was 2008, and Peinado was attending an educators’ conference at the University of New Mexico (UNM, Albuquerque, NM). There he met Dave Binney, a member of UNM’s faculty, who offered to show him the school’s dome facility. “What’s a dome?” asked Peinado. “You just have to see it,” replied Binney.

Curious, Peinado and a few colleagues followed Binney to UNM’s arts lab. As everyone took seats, the lights were dimmed, the surround sound activated, and, according to Peinado, “the most amazing” moving images were projected onto the dome above them.

“I could feel my brain cooking,” he jokes.

Quick to see the possibilities for the dome beyond its standard use as a planetarium, Peinado was equally adept at contextualizing his admiration: He envisioned it as a fantastic storytelling device, a “virtual kiva,” whose possibilities he immediately sought to bring to IAIA.

“The circle is such an iconic form in American Indian folklore; it’s in our cultural DNA to use this shape as a storytelling device. Our students will create content in this space in ways that the Western mind has never thought of.”

Such innovation is a hallmark of Peinado’s tenure, and it is reflected in the dome currently being installed at IAIA. Unlike its predecessors, this dome will raise and lower 16 feet and pivot 90 degrees. When not in use for motion picture imaging, the dome can be used for IMAX films or astronomy classes. Since the dome can fully retract into the ceiling, the space can also be transformed into a multi-purpose production room.

Remarkably, no other dome in the world can articulate and be tucked away in this manner. But trying to give Peinado credit for his achievement is difficult – he quickly deflects the conversation to what he hopes the dome will accomplish beyond the walls of the classroom, which is to attract scientists and researchers from all over the state. An important step, he says, to ensuring IAIA’s New Media Arts Department will experience continued success no matter who sits at the helm.

“If I do my job right,” he says with a wry smile, “I’ll make myself obsolete.”

With construction underway to build classroom and lab space to house the dome – an effort also notable for its eco-friendly, LEED Silver stamp – Peinado, along with his colleagues, are now turning attention to the other program of IAIA’s New Media Arts Department, Graphic Interactive Design.

As he did with filmmaking, Peinado is currently poring over the curriculum for what he terms its “narrative thread,” in the hopes of fine-tuning that which came before him. As was the case with the filmmaking program, Peinado sees lots of opportunity for innovation.

Recently he received a call from a software firm in New York City asking if he had any interest in their software, a cutting-edge motion capture program that allows users to participate in their street clothes rather than industry-standard leotards. Immediately, Peinado saw the possibilities.

“How many people do we lose each year in our communities who know a certain gesture, a dance, a way of moving through a sacred space? If I can bring grandma in, and she’s the last one who knows how to do this movement, and we don’t have to zip her up in a black leotard with silver balls…imagine it! Sure, we can use the program for animation purposes, but here we have a chance to do something even more important – cultural preservation.”

Although IAIA already has the studio space to run such a program, securing funding is another matter. While most other tribal colleges are eligible to receive grant money from the National Science Foundation, IAIA has no computer science program so it is not eligible. Peinado hopes that will change soon as the school develops its scientific curriculum and programs. The possibility of pairing humanities with science excites Peinado, who sees it as a creative way to address many problems facing Indian Country.

“Philips Exeter, Dartmouth,” says Peinado, speaking of his own academic career, “they don’t need me. IAIA needs me. I understand these students at a very deep level, including their challenges. I want to share my experiences with them, my exposure to the rest of the world. I want them to see the mountain and know they can cross it.”

Janet Freeman is an independent writer and photographer living in Santa Fe, NM. She has a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Writing from George Mason University and can be found on the web at: janetfreeman.com.