How the media can build trust in Indigenous communities

If journalists want to build trust in an Indigenous community, they're going to have to sit down and take the time to earn it.

That's what award-winning CBC journalist Duncan McCue tells his journalism students — and gets them to do.

McCue says his students learn much more in Indigenous communities where they work to build those relationships than in his classroom. Haley Lewis is one of his students.

She found out first hand how hard it can be to get a story in a First Nations community, but insists the time spent getting it was worth it in the end.

"It took a lot of time and just a lot of working on relationships before we were really able to get the story," she says.

McCue says deadlines journalists are on can be "brutal" and don't help the relationship between Indigenous communities and the media, especially when reporters are parachuting into a community.

What does help is sitting down, explaining who you are, where you come from, and showing respect, he says. "It does take time."