America Meditating
Joanelle Romero is an award-winning director and producer of film, television, and other media — she was the only American Indian director, producer, writer to make The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science’s Documentary Branch determined primary shortlist in 2000.
Joanelle has a long and impressive career as an actor, starring in the first Contemporary American Indian Women’s Story, “A Girl Called Hatter Fox” to the Sundance award-winning film and cult classic George Harrison feature film “Pow Wow Highway.”
In 1991, Michael Jackson helped launch Joanelle’s production company, Red Nation Films and became the leading force in making the company known to the world. Red Nation Films is now an award-winning company in producing American Indian documentaries and independent films. Lacking media outlets to broadcast Native American content, in 2006, Joanelle founded the first American Indian Television channel, Red Nation Television Channel.
My Friend Michael Jackson - In Loving Memory
On June 25th 2009, I was packing and moving out of a house we had lived in for 6 years and an acquaintance phoned me and said Michael Jackson is dead, turn on the TV.
I dropped the phone, turned on the television and there it all was, I fainted, no one was home with me. I woke and cried and cried and I am still crying. My heart is so broken; you see Michael was a friend and he believed in me. I’ve known Michael since I was 10 years old, we went to school together at Gardner Street school off of Sunset Blvd, we were in the 6th grade together. I was always invited to go to his house to play, he would swing me in this big tree swing and we would speak of our dreams. Michael asked me to go steady on the steps of Gardener Street school.
Two weeks before school ended my mother sent me to live with my dad in NM. I never got to say goodbye to Michael.
