Rhiannon Russell

#IdleNoMore

#IdleNoMore

Our reporter's 53-day notebook of how journalists covered the biggest transnational Aboriginal movement this country has ever seen.

By Rhiannon Russell Waubgeshig Rice pulls his van over and darts onto the street, video camera hoisted on his shoulder. Dressed in a CBC/Radio-Canada coat and heavy-duty boots, he’s covering the second national day of action for Idle No More, an indigenous rights movement. It’s a miserable day for a protest: below zero, snow swirling in […]

 Marta Iwanek

Northern Revival

Northern Revival

Wanted: Reporter determined to show the South the new North. Enter Paul Watson, the Toronto Star and the cash to get the job done

Paul Watson wends his rented car along the picturesque Alaska Highway. Past Carcross, he keeps heading south on a road that hugs a towering mountain to the right with blue snow-capped mountains across a grey lake to the left. The rain gently pitter-patters and the windshield wipers do not change their slow, steady pace. Country […]

 Dan David

Dances with Journalists

Dances with Journalists

A Mohawk writer on media racism

“And everyone laughed. It was so preposterous, as if I said to you that the world is flat. People don’t realize how unanimous and overwhelming the conventional wisdom was.” – Michele Landsberg, recalling an incident in the 1950s as a first-year student at the University of Toronto. She had told a group of students that […]

 Daniel Tatroff

The Native People’s Choice

The Native People’s Choice

The student's in Western's native journalism program face a dilemma: jump into the mainstream or devote their talents to the community

The Program in Journalism for Native People at the University of Western Ontario changed Juanita Rennie’s life. The intense, 12-month course prepared her and six other graduates of PJNP’s first class for entry-level media positions. Rennie, then a 40-year-old mother of six and grandmother to three, graduated in 1981 knowing exactly what to do next: […]