New program launched to help Indigenous journalists build careers in the industry

Media producer Jolene Banning hopes the new Indigenous Reporters Network will help bring more First Nations people into journalism so their voices will be the ones telling the stories of their people. – Photo by Leigh Nunan

By Colin Graf

TORONTO – Two Canadian organizations are launching a new program to bring Indigenous journalists together to develop their skills, participate in professional development, and build new connections with peers across the country.

The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) and Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) have created the Indigenous Reporters Network to help First Nations reporters and editors at all stages of their careers to network and build connections.

“We’re building an institutionalized set of opportunities for Indigenous Journalists to network with each other and with mainstream Canadian journalists,” says JHR  Executive Director Rachel Pulfer.

The Indigenous Reporters Network will bring together Indigenous journalists, both emerging and established, to build online and offline communities within the CAJ.

“There is a shortage of Indigenous journalists in the industry, and this initiative creates an opportunity for emerging journalists to launch a career, or for established Indigenous journalists to hone their skills,” says Karyn Pugliese, past president of the CAJ. “Having more Indigenous journalists in the industry will be key to meeting media goals for reconciliation.”

“In 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) laid bare the critical role media has to play in advancing our country’s long-term goals of reconciliation,” says CAJ president Brent Jolly.  “The creation of the Indigenous Reporters Network gets us one step closer to achieving those goals because it will help increase access to jobs, professional development opportunities, and leadership positions for Indigenous journalists.”

Since 2013, JHR has operated the multi-award-winning Indigenous Reporters Program to increase the quality and quantity of Indigenous stories and voices in Canadian media. The program has provided training to 2,500 people, including Indigenous journalists, non-Indigenous journalists learning best practices for covering Indigenous stories, along with Indigenous adults and youth interested in journalism. The program has provided professional training, financial support, mentored internships, and scholarships to Indigenous youth or “folks transitioning into journalism,” explains Pulfer.

While the original Program will be continuing, the JHR director says the new Network will “embed Indigenous journalists in a professional network of 900 plus” members in the CAJ, Canada’s national body for the profession.

By joining the new program, interested youth and working journalists will have their CAJ membership fees covered for two years. They will also gain access to professional development events as well as networking opportunities that will enable aspiring reporters to get a start and help create more pathways to advancement for those already working in the field, explains Pulfer.

The original JHR reporters’ program has been “absolutely a huge help for a lot of people,” says Tanya Talaga, the award-winning journalist and author from Fort William First Nation who shed light on the deaths of First Nations high school students in Thunder Bay as a reporter with the Toronto Star.

“Our youth are full of stories they have been waiting to tell for too long.”

The program has helped break down systemic barriers in education and lack of opportunity, she tells.

“JHR has helped erase those barriers and open doors in newsrooms, too.”

Jolene Banning, a producer with Talaga’s media production company Makwa Creative, credits the original JHR program with advancing her career in journalism a few years ago.

“It has been an amazing support in helping get my foot in the door,” with learning opportunities, connections, and mentoring, she relates. The mentors with the Indigenous Reporters Program have been “amazing” at “meeting people where they’re at”, visiting fly-in communities in the north “where they don’t even have a high school” to talk about journalism and help people with the media projects they wanted to do, whether podcasts, newspapers or connecting with mainstream media, Banning recalls.

Eventually, the program came to her community of Fort William First Nation, and she learned how to make a story pitch to editors, and how to interpret editorial feedback.

“We’re really starting to hear now what’s needed is leadership training so they (Indigenous journalists) can advance,” says Pulfer.

She has been told they are frustrated from being “pigeon-holed as the Indigenous reporter, covering Indigenous things”  or not being mentored into a role where they could take on a leadership position.

The need to promote Indigenous voices in Canadian media is immediate, Banning and others say.

“Stories that don’t take into account our history, the truth of what has happened, are often quite harmful and hurtful,” she says.

Media still often portray Indigenous people as “drunk, murdered or missing, or dancing,” she says.

“That’s about it. These institutions need to make room for us,” she adds.

The lack of Indigenous people in reporting first hit Pulfer in 2012, as the Idle No More movement gathered momentum. Neither those reporting on the stories nor the people being interviewed seemed to be Indigenous.

She was puzzled, so Journalists for Human Rights did a study of Canadian media content from 2010 to 2013 that “confirmed the anecdotal sense that Indigenous people are just completely absent from these stories.”

That study led to the first Indigenous Reporters’ Program. Pulfer repeats the often-quoted saying that “journalists write the first draft of history”, so “where better to start than by nurturing and supporting Indigenous journalists to ensure their perspectives and their understanding of this history” are recorded.

The need for these changes is accelerating now following the discovery of many unmarked graves at former Indian Residential Schools sites, she adds.

“This is finally convincing Canadians there is a real problem here that has been whitewashed out of our textbooks.”

Funding for the Indigenous Reporters Network is being provided by the RBC Foundation’s Future Launch program.