On behalf of the telecommunications department one Ball State University graduate student will travel to Australia to pave the way for a three-way partnership.
Dan Hottle will be in the "land down under" from July 7 to July 25. While there he will attempt to live with Aboriginal tribes to make a documentary of an Australian Aboriginal school. He also will start the ties between Ball State University and the Nicholson Performing Arts Academy in the Indianapolis Public School system. He also will begin the process of starting an immersion program between Ball State's Australia Center and the TCOM department.
Nancy B. Carlson, associate professor in the TCOM department, said she applied for the $9,000 grant from the 2008 International Programs Endowment Fund to fund the trip and begin the three-way partnership.
"What Dan is doing on behalf of the department is exploring relationships with a IPS magnet school of the arts," Carlson said. "We're exploring the possibility of setting up an immersion program in Australia. He's doing the exploration. This is a three-way partnership with an Aboriginal school in Australia, a magnet school in fine arts with a focus on dance and then students at Ball State."
According to the endowment fund's description, it is "in accordance with the goals of Ball State's Strategic Plan for providing students and faculty international experiences that will enhance learning and promote a climate that values diversity."
The fund "supports the internationalization of curriculum through the creation of overseas study programs [including preliminary site visits], international enhancement of on-campus course content, design of electronically-delivered courses or modules for overseas consumption, recruitment of international students, promotion of international internships and study abroad, and improving faculty competence in foreign languages," according to the description.
Carlson said the department always asked for money because it was interested in international programs. She said usually the department worked with China, but Hottle's interest was Aboriginal Australia.
"We listened to him, and we said 'If you'll go do it, we'll write the grant,'" Carlson said. "Dan is doing the pilot look-see."
His project will develop a three-way academic, artistic and technology-based partnership between Ball State, IPS' Nicholson academy and the indigenous population of Western Australia's Kimberley Region.
Specifically, the project will be established through a collaborative partnership with the Wulungarra, Yakanarra and Kulkarriya Community Schools of Fitzroy Crossing, Western Australia.
James Coffin, Director of the Center for International Programs, is out of the country until July 14 and could not be reached for comment.
Because of Hottle's experience overseas, Carlson said, she did not have to give him advice about how to do film work in other countries, especially since he had been to more countries than she has.
"The advice I gave him was the importance of developing the relationship with the school over there and the school in Indianapolis to make that three-legged stool of a project," Carlson said. "Ball State is a leg, Australia is a leg, and the performing arts school in Indy is a leg."
Hottle said he came to Ball State because he was a filmmaker. He said he has traveled throughout the world and has been to Australia three times. He also was a journalist in the military for 20 years in Afghanistan and other countries.
"People do tourist-y stuff but never really take the time to go off the beaten path and learn of the history themselves," he said.
Hottle said he was happy to continue the university's focus of cultural immersion.
"If I could expand those buzz words [of cultural immersion] with the grant, it made it more attractive [to do], but I liked it because of the work with IPS," he said.
Nicholson school dance instructor, Amanda Stover, will travel with Hottle as part of the partnership.
Hottle said she would be studying the Aboriginal dance they learned while in Australia and would take it back to her students at the academy.
Hottle said one thing he was most worried about was being adopted into an Aboriginal tribe.
"It's not easy because of their cultural sensitivity," he said. "[It's similar to] you couldn't just walk into a Navejo tribe asking questions and breaking out a camera. They're fighting years of oppression and stereotypes.
"They're portrayed in an old traditional way only about how poor they are, their alcoholism and drug abuse. So I have to go in knowing their sensitivities but show traditional aspects and marry it with modern day Aboriginal life."
Carlson said the importance of the trip was not the hour to one-and-one-half-hour-long documentary Hottle was making, but developing long-term relationships with the Indianapolis and Aboriginal school.
"Long after Dan gets his master's degree we'll probably be in a relationship with the school," she said. "[The visit and documentary] needs to not be personality-based, but meet the mission of the university, the mission of IPF and the mission of the Aboriginal school so you don't build a project built on the personality of the people involved. Dan's going to graduate. He's a student. So we set the project up to be a long-term experience."
Hottle said besides being adopted into an Aboriginal tribe, he was worried he would not get everything he needed to do completed before his trip finished. He said before he went to Australia he had to get permission from the elders of the tribe he hoped to live with. Once he got their permission he had to show the Australian government proof of the elders' acceptance.
"The biggest obstacle is to get in with them and show them I'm there for their interest," Hottle said. "It's a culture based on family and blood and the close emotional ties with the land. They don't like to be questioned, so I don't know how I'll do interviews. I'll probably mostly just sit and listen and marry the modern with the traditional."
Before he left he also tried to line up as many outside sources as he could for interviews. To cope with the language barrier, he also has acquired a guide to take him and Stover into the Aboriginal tribe, he said.
Putting everything he needed to do into perspective, he said, he did not think he would get the documentary completed before his trip finished. Because of that he said he would try to go on another trip, and that his graduate studies gave him two years to be able to go back and complete his work.
He said to have the full effect of being with the Aboriginals, he also would have to eat kangaroo meat, grubs, berries and small animals.
"We're going to do it," he said.
Carlson said once Hottle returned, she and the department would review what he discovered on his "fact-finding" trip. She said they would review what he collected for his documentary and see what potential there was for an immersion project between the TCOM department and the Australia Center. Once that was determined, she said the department could begin looking at the cost of taking a group of students to the country.
"[We'll] look closely at the Australia Center and work with them and see if they're interested in having an Aboriginal school being a partner, and then we will work inside Ball State across college boundaries and across departmental boundaries to work with theater and dance or [elementary education] or other departments that might be interested in developing an immersive program at that school," Carlson said. "There are relationships to forge.
"We want to capitalize on all the good work the Australia Center's done. They haven't done an Aboriginal program and much in film. We want to add to an already good program. Dan's trip is a pilot look-see to travel to a state in Australia and see what we can put together."
Hottle said he had always been an explorer so the biggest thing he hoped to gain was to bring back a visual experience to share with other people whether it was friends and family or Ball State students so they know what was out there in the world.
He said after he finished his documentary he would be interested in it becoming a full-length documentary that he could eventually submit to film festivals.
Carlson said she and the department supported Hottle and thought it was great he was willing to begin the path for the three-way partnership.
"He's got the passion, and the one with the passion is the one who ought to go," she said. "He's so familiar with traveling, we don't worry about Dan Hottle. If he can dodge bullets and land mines in Afghanistan, he can travel for Ball State in Australia."
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