I was a student of Duncan McCue’s Reporting in Indigenous Communities class–Canada’s first professional journalism course dedicated to improving the quality of First Nations and Indigenous representation in the news media. More info and a guide for reporters on the RIIC.ca website below
Stories witnessed in indigenous communities
My first documentary project launched at the Global Reporting Program focused on illegal logging. Wood sold in the Global North is often stolen from the very people who had sustainably managed those forests for thousands of years. On our reporting trips, we sought out the Baka people of the Congo River basin, the Dayak tribes of the island of Borneo, the Guajajara and Ka’apor tribal communities in the Amazon River delta, and the Udege indigenous people on the coast of the Sea of Japan. I would also be remiss if I didn’t at this point fulfill my obligation to Skwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (The Squamish Nation) to bear witness to their ongoing fight to preserve their traditional forests from wood poachers and the encroachment of commercial logging.
The Squamish Nation’s non-violent, cross-cultural environmental movement known as Uts’am Witness won precedents for BC tribes that ensured their sovereignty over land use decisions in their traditional territories. My reporting of the movement taught me about the Indigenous principle of witnessing. And ever since, the social role of the ceremonial witness became my new central metaphor for the role of journalists in multicultural societies.
The ethics and practices of witnessing vary among the oral cultures of First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. But, in general, witnesses accept a sacred social duty to serve as keepers of the story when an event of historic significance occurs. Formally, ceremonial witnesses hold the stories and take care that these stories remain accurate and complete records. Most importantly, witnesses must share the story with their own people when they return home. Reporters ask for permission to be told the stories that make the “first draft of history.” We must therefore uphold our obligation to serve as trusted witnesses to those events, just as our source is discharging their witness duty by entrusting the story to a reporter.