Boots Kennedye

Charles "Boots" Kennedye is an Oklahoma City based filmmaker and member of the Kiowa Tribe. He spent 10 years serving as documentary producer for the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority before joining the Vision Maker Media team in 2014. He has won many awards for his work, including eight Heartland Emmy Awards and five National Educational Television Association Awards including (2008) "Best-of-the-Best." Kennedye has been awarded the CPB/PBS Producers Workshop scholarship and the CPB INPUT Producer Fellowship. His contributions are seen across many of OETA's major projects including, a 100-part Oklahoma story collective, Centennial Stories (2007), Oklahoma WWII Stories (2008), The People, Oklahoma Tribes (2009), and The State of Sequoyah (2011). Later he partnered with Rocky Mountain PBS to film and produce Urban Rez (2012) and again with Red Power Energy (2015). Other collaborations include: Words from A Bear (2017) (Director Photography), a VMM co-production with American Masters, Redemption Story (2017) (Producer), chosen for the PBS Online Film Festival, and And We Walked, the Ponca Long Walk (2018) (Photographer), a co-production with Nebraska Educational Television. Kennedyes' commitment to Indigenous Storytelling led him to Vision Maker Media where he served as Producer for Growing Native; a four part documentary series that showcases contemporary Native American stories while celebrating traditional pathways. In 2018, Kennedye began production on his first independent documentary, Valley of Thundering Water, which explores the status of wild horse populations on tribal lands.