Colleen Thurston

Colleen Thurston is an award-winning media producer and documentary filmmaker from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is an Assistant Professor of Journalism and teaches documentary studies and film production. As an Indigenous non-fiction storyteller, her films explore the relationships between humans and the natural world and focus on Native stories and perspectives. She holds an MFA from Montana State University’s Science and Natural History Filmmaking program, where she also earned a graduate certificate in American Indian Studies. Her BA in Media Arts and Anthropology is from the University of Arizona. Colleen has produced work for the Smithsonian Channel, Vox, illumiNATIVE and museums, public television stations, and federal and tribal organizations. She produced and directed short documentaries for four seasons of the Cherokee Nation’s series, “Osiyo, Voices of the Cherokee People,” earning two Emmy awards for her work on the series.

She is currently in production on her first feature documentary Drowned Land which explores water rights and the history of resource exploitation in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Drowned Land is supported by ITVS, Vision Maker Media, Firelight Media, Nia Tero and the Redford Center. With a background in film programming, Colleen also curates film and storytelling events independently and in conjunction with partnering organizations, with an emphasis on Indigenous storytelling. Currently the co-Executive Director of the Fayetteville Film Festival, she previously held positions as the Film Programming Assistant at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and was the founding Director of Programming of the Tulsa American Film Festival.   Colleen is a 2019-2021 Firelight Media Documentary Lab Fellow, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation and a seventh generation Oklahoman.