September 2006

Carol Kalafatic (Quechua/Spanish/Croatian) is a community development and international policy consultant whose focus is on indigenous peoples, food and agriculture. She has worked with tribes and Native villages in the U.S. and Latin America and recently was the coordinating lead author of a policy development paper for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). For eight years Kalafatic coordinated the UN Liaison Office and the Right to Food Program of the International Indian Treaty Council. She served as coordinator of the Indigenous Peoples' Caucus of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) and has worked with Mayan organizations in Guatemala to coordinate the global Indigenous Peoples' Consultation on the Right to Food and Food Security. She produced the first "Indigenous Peoples' Bulletin on the Right to Food" in 2004. For six years Kalafatic was the Film and Video Center's Latin American Program coordinator, and produced the 2002 NMAI national video tour Ojo del Condor/Eye of the Condor. She is currently editing an internet "book" on Alaska Native traditional healing.

"I try and keep any type of judgements I might have about the videos in the context of 'What access do the local people there—the media makers—-have to other ways of seeing, other ways of thinking?' I look for something that speaks from direct experience…that expresses something that no other filmmaker could express or no other people could express."

Image credit: Carol Kalafatic - photograph by Tim Warner