'Our own voice': Organization supporting Indigenous journalists launches in Canada
5 longtime Indigenous storytellers establish Indigenous Media Association of Canada
Five veteran Indigenous journalists have launched a new organization dedicated to supporting and representing fellow First Nations, Metis and Inuit storytellers.
The Indigenous Media Association of Canada, or IMAC, will represent Indigenous journalists and media at the federal level, push for better coverage of Indigenous communities by mainstream media and advocate for the implementation of UNDRIP Article 16, the organization said in a news release.
The section states that Indigenous peoples have the right to establish their own media in their own languages and to have access to all forms of non-Indigenous media without discrimination.
IMAC said it also wants to make media careers more sustainable for Indigenous storytellers.
Founding member and secretary Eden Fineday said that while there are organizations out there that support journalists in general, an Indigenous-led and focused association is necessary.
"Often, we are invited to a seat at other people's tables, and we appreciate that. But we needed to build our own table in our own way because we have such unique needs and we're such a small group," she told Stephen Quinn, the host of CBC's The Early Edition.
"We wanted to; we needed to advocate for ourselves with our own voice."
Fineday, publisher of Indigenous media outlet IndigiNews, will lead the association with the help of fellow journalists Francine Compton, Kerry Benjoe, Maureen Googoo and Katherine Ross.
According to a 2024 survey from the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), which supports journalists in Canada of all backgrounds, about 3.5 per cent identify as Indigenous. The 2021 Canadian census found that Indigenous people made up about five per cent of the country's total population.
Candis Callison, a University of B.C. associate professor and the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous journalism, media, and public discourse, said that while the CAJ certainly offers support, a network of Indigenous journalists was sorely lacking in Canada's media landscape — that is, until now.
"Since the pandemic, when we've had what has broadly been considered a reckoning for journalism, as many Black and Indigenous and other people of colour who work in journalism have spoken out, and they continue to speak out," said Callison, a Tahltan journalist.
In recent years, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of colour) journalists have publicly shared stories about hateful and racist language and actions in newsrooms, in the field and online.
"Having an association like this that is really focused on Indigenous journalists and on Indigenous stories and on Indigenous communities will hopefully address some of that," Callison said.
Callison said the stories Indigenous journalists often tell, or at least want to tell, differ greatly from those of their non-Indigenous counterparts.
For her book Reckoning: Journalism's Limits and Possibilities, co-authored with Mary Lynn Young, she spoke with Indigenous-identifying journalists in Canada and the U.S. and says she found that legacy or mainstream media, a product of colonialism, often doesn't acknowledge the relationship Indigenous communities have to land, water, animals and plants.
"To me, those are really key differences in how Indigenous journalists do their work."
For that reason, this organization is necessary to help lift up that work, she said.
"Indigenous people have not been well represented by media, both historically and currently, on a number of issues, and yet Indigenous people continue to be front page news on a lot of different kinds of stories.
"I think imagining the future is something ... that's really exciting."
With files from The Early Edition and Courtney Dickson