Ecological Storytelling: Indigenous-Led Filmmaking and Intergenerational Knowledge Transmission in Outer Island Micronesian Communities

Everyone is welcome to join us for the next edition of the Institute for Community Engaged Research’s Starting the Conversation Speaker Series.

These talks are informal gatherings where a speaker shares some aspect of their community-engaged research, as a way to engage with others interested in learning from their experience.

This session will feature Kelsey C. Doyle.

Everyone is welcome to attend either in person or via Zoom. To join this session via Zoom, please e-mail icer.ok@ubc.ca

Abstract

Participatory filmmaking has long been a tool for social change. In the Outer Island communities of the Yap, Federated States of Micronesia, Ulithian youth are migrating from their homes and cultivating diasporic online spaces. Because sharing knowledge with youth is essential, the Yap Outer Island communities are interested in how Indigenous-led participatory filmmaking can document and adapt traditional intergenerational knowledge transmission to new visual mediums and platforms at the community’s request. Kelsey Doyle will discuss the project’s co-design phase of her community-led research process. This talk will emphasize the politics and ethics of engagement in visual storytelling, including consent and representation in visual anthropology. Her presentation has been approved by the communities of Ulithi for sharing with the ICER audience.

About Kelsey C. Doyle

Kelsey C. Doyle is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and visual anthropologist whose work focuses on social change and cultural survivance. Her doctoral research examines participatory filmmaking to challenge extractive colonial research practices. She is a recipient of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, the Wenner-Gren Fieldwork Award, the UBC Public Scholars Initiative Award, and ICER Award in 2025.