Kelly Moneymaker is a Native American Creative Media Producer (film + sound + music) from Fairbanks, Alaska. Kelly’s mission is to authentically represent other storytellers by facilitating transparency through the lens of her American Samoan genealogy and birth-adoptive Inupiat identity.

Kelly has a BA in Creative Media Production and an MA in Creative Enterprise from Massey University (Wellington, NZ), which focused on Indigenous research frameworks and methodologies for creative technology. Kelly's multicultural roots have inspired her passion for Indigenous storytelling and the environment, which led to her directing the Award-winning documentary VAKA. The short student film premiered at the UNFCCC COP25 in Madrid, representing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade New Zealand (MFAT) and the Ministry of Climate Oceans Resilience and Environment Tokelau (MiCORE). VAKA garnered several awards including Best Documentary Short at the Toronto International Women Film Festival, New York Indie Shorts (Best Student Female Director, Best Sound Design), Best Cinematography (Australian Environmental Film Festival) and was chosen as one of the Top 10 films of 2019 for the UNFCCC’s Climate Crisis Film Festival.

Her current project, Drum Song: The Rhythm of Life, is about Indigenous climate adaptation in her homeland of Alaska. It is being co-created with rural Native communities and Arctic researchers. Kelly says, "It has been an honor and privilege to return to my homeland and learn from the co-creators of Drum Song: The Rhythm of Life. Each stage of the research and filmmaking process has been and will continue to be led and approved by the local Indigenous communities who’ve co-created it so we may “lift the diversity of our voices and resound together.”

Kelly says, "Expanding my storytelling scope from music to filmmaking has been a natural exploration since I grew up watching documentaries with my dad during the dark and cold winters in Fairbanks".