A Team that Brings Native Documentaries to Life

Colleen Thurston is a Choctaw filmmaker, educator and film curator from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Grounding her filmmaking practice in place-based narratives and Indigenous world views, her work has screened at international film festivals and broadcast nationwide. She has created film and video work for the Smithsonian Channel, Vox, and museums, public television, and federal and tribal organizations and been supported by Firelight Media, the Sundance Institute, Patagonia, the Ford Foundation, the Redford Center, Creative Capital and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship.

In addition to her work with Native Lens, Colleen is a programmer for Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, MountainFilm and Indian Territory Film Festival. She has curated film programs for institutions such as the Momentary (Bentonville, AR), the Smithsonian’s Native Cinema Showcase (Santa Fe, NM), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), UCLA Film and Television Archives and Vidiots (Los Angeles, CA) and numerous film festivals. Deeply committed to the next generation of filmmakers, Colleen has held positions as Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas and the University of Oklahoma, teaching documentary production and film studies. She resides in Tulsa in the Cherokee Nation where she spends her free time watching movies, gardening, tap dancing, and learning the Choctaw language.

Charine Pilar Gonzales is a Tewa filmmaker from San Ildefonso Pueblo and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her recent work includes the short experimental doc This Land Carries Us (2025) featured in the Tewa Nangeh / Tewa Country exhibit at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. PoWohGeh Speaks (2025) is the first feature film created entirely in the Tewa language, created in partnership with her Pueblo de San Ildefonso. Her narrative short film River Bank (Pō-Kehgeh) (2023) and short doc Our Quiyo: Maria Martinez (2022) have screened internationally, including Māoriland Film Festival, Future of Film is Female, SFiFF, etc. She co-produced Winding Path (Sundance 2024) and serves as associate producer on the upcoming Boardwalk Pictures series, People of the West.

Charine is producer for Native Lens, a collaborative series between KSUT Tribal Radio and RMPBS. She will graduate with an MFA in Creative Writing (Screenwriting) from IAIA in 202, where she earned a BFA in Cinematic Arts. She also has a BA in English – Communications from Fort Lewis College. Charine is a 2026 imagineNATIVE Screenwriting Shorts Lab Fellow, a 2025 Stowe Story Lab New Voices New Mexico Fellow, and a 2024 Sundance Institute Indigenous Program Native Lab Fellow. She was also recently selected for the inaugural Netflix / Stagecoach Director’s Shadow Masterclass in Albuquerque. Represented by Rain Management Group, she lives in Santa Fe with family and her chunky orange tabby cat, Cheddar.

Crystal is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and graduated from Fort Lewis College. She was a reporter for Global Press Journal and Navajo Times. She aims to create a national audience for Tribal Radio by managing the website and social media platform. Besides geeking out in the digital world, she is a happy mother of three children.

Colten is a Diné filmmaker from the Four Corners and has worked in the motion picture industry for a decade for such companies as ESPN, ABC, Hallmark, and his work has featured at the FilmQuest, Nashville, and Ouray Film Festivals. In addition to his work in film and television, Colten has mentored students at the college and high-school level interested in working in film and TV. He has worked for years training and running workshops about film lighting, camera operation, non-fiction storytelling, and screenwriting for youths and young adults. He loves physical media, talking about movies, excursions into the desert, and traveling with his spouse.

Carol has spent the last forty-five years making documentaries for television. Her films have garnered Emmy Awards, Humanitas Prizes, The Writers Guild of America Award, and many more. She has produced for every major broadcast and cable network including PBS, National Geographic, Discovery, and NBC. Carol also teaches documentary filmmaking at Fort Lewis College in Durango. Over 40% of the students are Native American/Indigenous and have faced particularly difficult challenges during the pandemic. This was part of the inspiration to create Native Lens.

In her role at KSUT, Tami successfully raised over $2.5 million, resulting in the radio station moving into a new 5,000 square foot multimedia facility.   Prior to that role, Tami was a nonprofit consultant, professional mediator and facilitator over the course of 15+ years.  In 1996, Tami was awarded Woman of the Year at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado for her leadership as Station Manager of KDUR Community Radio.

Alex Forsett is 3rd-generation Coloradan, Advisory Board Member of the CMU Tech Digital Filmmaking Program and Exofficio board member of KAFM Community Radio where he hosts a weekly electronic music program called the Electric Desert. In 2023, Alex was named one of Current Magazine’s Rising Stars of Public Media. Alex has supported Native Lens since its inception in 2020.

Sheila is a Southern Ute Tribal member from Ignacio, CO and Station Manager of KSUT Tribal Radio. In the spring of 2000, she started as a weekly on-air host of  the “Native Morning Show” – utilizing the airwaves as an outreach tool for her position as Environmental Specialist of the Southern Ute Tribe. Sheila currently provides oversight of all Tribal Radio activities and has provided input for media projects including as co-producer of “Native Braids” & Media Trainer for the Public Relations Department of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.

Tanaya Winder is a poet, vocalist, writer, educator, and motivational speaker from the Southern Ute, Duckwater Shoshone, and Pyramid Lake Paiute Nations. She received a BA in English from Stanford University and after completing her MFA in creative writing from the University of New Mexico, she co-founded As/Us: A Space for Women of the World, a literary magazine publishing works by Indigenous women and women of color. In 2015, she co-founded the Sing Our Rivers Red traveling earring exhibit to raise awareness about murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls. Her advocacy also includes working with Native youth and reservation communities as the Director of the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Upward Bound program, which serves approximately 103 Native youth from across the country. She is a 2016 National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development “40 Under 40” list of emerging American Indian leaders recipient and a 2017 First Peoples Fund Artists in Business Leadership fellows. Her debut poetry collection Words Like Love was published in 2015 and her chapbook Why Storms are Named After People and Bullets Remain Nameless was released in 2017. She believes in creating the spaces that are needed in this world and so she founded an Indigenous artists management company and collective called Dream Warriors, where they can uplift and empower others. Learn more about her work at www.tanayawinder.com and on YouTube.