BEN WEST
Rena Flying Coyote Collective Founder & CEO | Cheyenne
Ben West is a filmmaker who has worked with companies such as Carsey-Werner Mandabach, Telenova Productions, Mandalay Pictures, and outlets such as the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. West was born and raised in Washington, D.C. and Albuquerque, NM, and is an alumnus of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California. His last film, Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film Finalist and one of The Washington Post’s Best Films of 2023, Imagining The Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting, is available on Amazon Prime and AppleTV. He is currently co-directing and producing Loyal To The Soil, a film about Native American Military Service. West serves as Executive Director/CEO of Rena Flying Coyote Collective. RFCC, named after his paternal great-grandmother, is a non-profit organization dedicated to telling the stories of Indigenous Peoples through Film, Television, and the Arts. Most recently, he has been invited to join The Pacific Council on International Policy, and was awarded a Fellowship to the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival by the Aspen Institute. Ben is a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, and has chosen to focus much of his life’s work on Native Peoples.

Statement of Interest -

I am interested in joining the Pacific Council on International Policy because I have a lifelong interest in policy as it pertains to Native American Peoples and their sovereignty. As a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, and the son of a lifelong diplomat and U.S. Ambassador to Oceans, Fisheries, and Space, I have always been fascinated with the intersection of policy as it pertains to sovereign nations, both within and outside of the United States.