USU Student Media alum, Kate Peterson, wins Rocky Mountain Student Emmy
The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, along with a team of people including Shannon Erickson and Danny Piper, has been working on a project sharing stories about murals and artworks from the Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City.
A 20-minute documentary video was commissioned from Bluelight Media, the division of USU Student Media that focuses on video creation, graphic design and marketing and its 2024-25 video production manager Kate Peterson.
The documentary not only highlights the school, its creation and history but focuses primarily on the murals created by students that attended the school. Allan Houser, the art teacher who taught at the school for the first ten years of its existence, encouraged the students to paint murals highlighting their identity.
“He came to the school, and he was there for about 10 years, and he taught murals,” Erickson. “The things he told the kids to paint was their identity, their cultural identity … and he empowered the students with muralism, and it just took off. There were hundreds of murals.”
The school’s campus was demolished in early 2013, in part to make room for Utah State University’s Brigham City campus. At that time, an unnamed member of the community was able to save a few of the murals before they were destroyed. Erickson said the murals were previously stored in a garage on USU’s Brigham City campus, where they were routinely exposed to the elements.
When it came time to decide what to do with these murals, Katie Lee-Koven, executive director & chief curator of the museum was contacted. Working together with other employees at the museum and Native American panels and ultimately decided to add the murals to the NEHMA collection and restore them. Through fundraisers and grants, NEHMA acquired enough money to begin the restoration process.
Erickson then decided there should be a documentary to accompany the exhibition of the newly restored murals and worked with Bluelight Media, where Peterson was assigned to the project, to create the documentary.
The exhibition, titled “Repainting the I: The Intermountain Intertribal Indian School Murals” also recently won the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies Award for Exhibition Excellence, competing with over 500 other museums in the western United States. The exhibition includes a shortened version of the documentary Peterson created, the murals from the Intermountain Indian School and photographs taken by artist Sheila Nadimi as part of another show entitled “Eagle Village.”
Little did Peterson know this documentary project would not only be impactful on the community by sharing native voices in a way that allowed them to tell their own stories, but impactful to her own professional career as well.
“I happened to be in a documentary class at the same time we were finishing up the 20-minute documentary, and I got permission from Danny and Shannon to use the footage we had gathered to make a documentary for my class. I worked with my professor Brian Champagne to cut the documentary down to five minutes. He really liked it, and I felt good about it, so we sent it back to the museum, and they ended up displaying the five-minute documentary with the art inside the museum,” Peterson said. “With Brian, we submitted the shortened version to the Student Emmys.”
According to the rockymountainemmy.org, “The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences … recognizes excellence in television with the coveted Emmy Award for News, Sports, Daytime, Public Service and Technology.”
Student works were nominated for awards in these categories, and the 2025 Student Production Awards were announced in a ceremony in Arizona on Sept. 6.
Peterson discussed her experience finding out that her project won the Student Production Award for the college arts, entertainment and cultural affairs category.
“I watched the broadcast, and when they announced that I got it, I was with my mom and my sister at the time, and they screamed, and I started crying. Very unexpected but really exciting, and I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity because I think I was just in the right place at the right time,” Peterson said.
Peterson listed people who played an integral part in the making and the award-winning of the documentary: USU Student Media program coordinator John Zsiray, Erickson and Piper.
“My name is on the award, but I could not have done it without them, and I would not even be close to this situation if it wasn’t for those people,” Peterson said.
According to Peterson, this experience was influential in furthering her skills.
“I hope that that will make me a better worker in the future for whatever job I end up at,” Peterson said. “Having a Student Emmy on your resume is definitely not a sad thing. I guess it remains to be seen how it will help my career, but I’m definitely grateful for the people I was able to meet and interact with and learn from, and I’m grateful for the experience,” Peterson said.
Individuals interested in the five-minute documentary that Peterson, Piper and Erickson created together can view it at NEHMA, where it will be on display until Jan. 17.
“Repainting the I: The Intermountain Intertribal Indian School Murals” can also be viewed as a virtual exhibition at usu.edu/artmuseum/exhibitions/repainting-the-i.