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Archives Spring 2001

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Filmstrip of Malinda Maynor
FILMMAKER TURNED GRADUATE STUDENT

Malinda Maynor Seeks New Approaches to Storytelling

Royster Fellow Malinda Maynor had a successful career as a documentary filmmaker before she ever crossed the threshold of Hamilton Hall, home of the University’s history department. Her films, which explore Native American issues such as cultural identity and heritage, have captured the attention of the independent film community. Two of her documentaries, “Real Indian” and “Sounds of Faith,” were shown at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. Her third, “In the Light of Reverence,” will air on the PBS independent film series P.O.V. (Point of View) later this year.

Considering her accomplished film work, Maynor’s return to academia might seem surprising. But for Maynor, her master’s and doctoral degrees in history continue the work she has already done in film. “A documentary, and history in general, can work to resolve issues that usually split people apart,” she said.

Maynor is a Lumbee Indian, born in Robeson County, N.C., and reared in Durham. Understanding and resolving these divisive issues is not just an academic endeavor for her, but also a personal one.

Maynor returned to school partly to find a more flexible medium than film to explore Native American issues and to present history in different ways. “When you make a film, you have to work within a very conflict-driven, oppositional style of story telling,” Maynor said. “I don’t think that conflict is the only way to tell stories. The Lumbee story, in particular, is one that doesn’t really become illuminated when you look at it from that oppositional perspective.”

Maynor said she hopes graduate school will help her find a different framework for her stories so she can write about history in ways that stay true to multiple points of view.

Photo of Malinda Maynor
Photo by Rich Fowler

Maynor largely credits the multi-year Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster, Jr. Fellowship, which funds her five-year program, for bringing her to the University and enabling her to pursue her degrees in a supportive environment. “The fellowship offers a unique opportunity to do work that I love and support myself doing it,” she said. “The support means I’ll be able to make a coherent narrative of my research.”

In addition to the Royster Fellowship, Maynor said history professors Theda Perdue and Michael Green also attracted her to the University. “They are the best people working in Native American history,” Maynor said. “You’re not going to find anybody who is doing better work or who is better to work with.”

Maynor also chose to come to Chapel Hill because it is close to the resources she needs for her research, especially the Lumbee community. “I felt I could do Lumbee history here without being isolated.”

While Maynor is still in the early stages of considering her thesis, she knows that issues of place, already important in her films, will also be part of her academic research. “I wonder if Americans’ relationships to place — the feelings we have about home places, about work places, about sacred places, about the natural environment — motivate individual decisions as much as policy, economics or ideology seem to,” she said.

Specifically, Maynor wants to study the Lumbee migration from Robeson County to Georgia in the 1880s. A small portion of the Lumbee tribe moved with the turpentine industry to other states after the eastern North Carolina pine forests became too thin to support the industry. Over the next 40 years, some Lumbee families moved back and forth between Georgia and Robeson County, but in the 1920s, the Lumbees returned to Robeson County for good. “It’s interesting that the Lumbees were driven by economics to move to Georgia,” Maynor said, “but they weren’t so driven that they were going to lose touch with where they came from.” The cultural value, she explained, was maintaining the relationship to the tribe and to the home, not pursuing money.

While Maynor said scholars have sometimes presented Native Americans, including Lumbees, in misleading or distorted ways, she does not see her mission as correcting misperceptions — she used her films to tell the real story. Now she wants to learn what happened in the past, discover how people thought at the time and express who the Lumbees are. “I want to listen more to what my relatives have taught me about who I am and what it means to be who I am and what our tribe means,” Maynor said. “My goal is to convey that apart from what all the people who aren’t Lumbees have put on us.”

In addition to working on her thesis, studying for exams and putting the finishing touches on her film “In the Light of Reverence,” Maynor coordinates the Lumbee River Fund, an archive-building project at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. “The goal of the project is to create a place to do research in Robeson County for Lumbees and for scholars and students who do research on Lumbees,” Maynor said.

By collecting art, artifacts, photos, documents and other Lumbee materials, Maynor says she hopes the project will draw researchers and students, giving them the opportunity to talk with Lumbees directly about Lumbee issues. “This will give people a chance to see what the community is like before they draw conclusions.” As one of its first projects, the Lumbee River Fund organized a photo exhibit in February of the history of UNC-Pembroke, which started as a school for Native Americans.

Maynor left the film industry to communicate Native American history through different media, such as the Lumbee River Fund project, but she holds on to the possibility of filming more documentaries. She sees herself teaching and making films or following the more traditional model of teaching and researching in the future. But for now, Maynor concentrates on her history studies and looks forward to her thesis and dissertation research. “The chance to work on a project, do the research, do the writing, get the critiques and revise is an incredible opportunity that you can’t get anywhere else but graduate school.”

- Elizabeth Spainhour

 

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