My Reporting
I’ve reported for Native News Online and The Times-Delphic, Drake University’s student newspaper, and I currently work as the TD’s News Editor.
At Native News Online
At this Native American niche publication, I reported on a wide variety of subjects that impact Indigenous peoples in the U.S. and Canada, from a reckoning over boarding schools created to assimilate Indigenous peoples to the barriers between Native Hawaiians and homeownership to controversy over a community sweat lodge. Below are a few of the articles that I wrote for NNO with a little additional information.
Over the summer, I reported on a reckoning that followed the detection of unmarked graves at Canadian residential schools created to assimilate Indigenous peoples. After completing my internship, I decided to localize the issue to Drake University through an article that covered experiences of the Meskwaki people at boarding schools in the U.S. By localizing the issue and providing background information about the school systems and the reckoning that began this summer, I hoped to bring attention to an issue that I believe is known to too few people in the Drake community. The article was published in The Times-Delphic and republished by Native News Online.
A Proposed Federal Law Could Lower the Barrier Between Native Hawaiians and Homeownership
I wrote an in-depth article about various barriers between Native Hawaiians and land that was promised to be returned to them in 1920, including a blood quantum rule. Photo by Donna Sterling, one of my sources for the story.
“Surviving Kuper Island Residential School: ‘I Hear Little Children Screaming in My Head’
I wrote an article that was republished in Yahoo News about an interview with residential school survivor Eddy Charlie, who told me about the overwhelming abuse and cultural oppression he experienced at the Kuper Island Residential School.
RoseAnne Archibald Elected National Chief of Assembly of First Nations, First Woman to Hold Role
I covered the Assembly of First Nations’ 2021 National Chief Elections and 42nd General Assembly, which included five rounds of runoff voting and a decision to go to the International Criminal Court to seek accountability for the management of the Candian residential school system.
Native Coalition Partners With Israeli Company to Bring Clean Water to Rural Navajo Community
I wrote a detailed article about the use of an innovative new technology to bring a new water source to a rural Navajo community that needed it, as well as the partners who made it happen.
Reporting and Editing at The Times-Delphic
As The Times-Delphic’s News Editor during Drake’s “Next Great Era”
As The Times-Delphic’s News Editor, I am leading my News team to cover what the Drake administration is calling Drake’s “Next Great Era”: a $225 million fundraising campaign that aims to make ambitious investments in service learning experiences, enable students to undertake projects to address issues in rural communities and more. We are currently working on a series of follow-up stories to my first article that will, like this article, provide concrete details about the campaign’s goals that haven’t yet been published by Drake.
Frequent reporting on COVID-19 for Drake University’s student-run newspaper
During my time as a Staff Writer and later News Editor of The Times-Delphic, I wrote 6 stories related to COVID-19 cases, testing and vaccinations and the pandemic’s impact on the Drake community, including the front-page story of our biggest edition of the year in 2021. This experience, which bears similarities to beat writing, gave me background knowledge and a source network that I have been able to draw on when reporting on COVID-19 at Drake. I’ve also written other stories on a wide variety of topics for the TD, from a $225 million fundraising campaign to a podcast about U.S.-China relations to a string of catalytic converter thefts. Additionally, I wrote the majority of a Native News Online story that provided a nationwide update on the pandemic under the Delta variant and how different tribes and organizations were responding.
