BNSF News

Son of BNSF Employee and Former Miss Navajo Releases Film on Navajo Nation Pageant

2007-11-12

It's more than just looking pretty and writer/director Billy Luther plans to share it with the rest of the world at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

Luther, 30, son of BNSF employee Sarah Johnson, supervisor, yard standards, Fort Worth, just wrapped up filming his first feature-length film tentatively titled "Miss Navajo," a documentary on the Miss Navajo Nation Pageant.

The film will air Tuesday, Nov. 13, on PBS. (Please check your local listings for times.)

Luther and his crew spent the last year filming the annual pageant and interviewing former title holders. The idea came from a conversation with his mother who was Miss Navajo 1966 and is the chair of BNSF’s Council of Native Americans.

"I realized these ladies had so much experience that I couldn't focus on just one," Luther said, so he expanded the film’s focus to include every former Miss Navajo.

"I wanted to get an inside on Navajo youth and their relationships with their families, mothers, and grandmothers," Luther said.

The Miss Navajo Nation Pageant draws interest world-wide as the contest itself requires contestants to demonstrate their traditional and cultural skills. Pageant events have included sheep butchering and fry-bread making, as well as weaving and interviews entirely in Navajo.

Luther, who is Navajo, Hopi and Laguna, said language was a connecting point he had with this year's contestants.

"I realize how important it is to learn that language," he said. "The most important thing is to get that language and soon and fast."

Luther has spent the past several years working in Los Angeles and New York in the film industry.

Although filming is completed, Luther said they will also include animation to address Changing Woman and Navajo philosophy.

He hopes to include his film in the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where he worked for six years.

Source: Independent Web Edition, Gallup, N.M.

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