Colleen Thurston (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma)
Colleen Thurston is a documentary storyteller and film curator from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Colleen has produced for the Smithsonian Channel, Vox, PBS, and federal, tribal, and non profit organizations. Her work has screened at international film festivals and broadcast nationwide. She has received support for her work from Firelight Media, the Sundance Institute, Patagonia, ITVS, the Redford Center and Creative Capital. In 2025 Colleen is premiering her first feature documentary, DROWNED LAND, which examines the cycle of displacement as it’s related to resource extraction in her tribe, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
Colleen is the project coordinator for the Indigenous video series, Native Lens on Rocky Mountain PBS, and is the senior programmer for Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. Colleen is the founder of the Indigenous Moving Image Archive and has curated film programs for institutions such as the Momentary (Bentonville, AR), UCLA Film and Television Archives and Vidiots (Los Angeles, CA), the Smithsonian’s Native Cinema Showcase (Santa Fe, NM) and the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.). Colleen is a 2024-25 International Documentary Association Fellow and a 2025-2027 Tulsa Artist Fellow.
Colleen Thurston's 'Drowned Land' brings fight to protect Kiamichi River into focus | KOSU-NPR