Shekóli (“hello” in Oneida) and yaw^ko (“thank you”) for reading the First Nations Wisconsin newsletter.
It’s been another great year on this beat covering news from Indian Country in Wisconsin.
When I started this beat more than four years ago it was the first of its kind for Gannett — the owner of this newspaper — in Wisconsin, and some editors were unsure if I’d be able to find enough stories. Now, I am sometimes so overwhelmed with stories that I’m happy when colleagues offer to take some off my plate.
This year, my colleagues and I have also won several awards for Indigenous news reporting.
Reporters Caitlyn Looby, Madeline Heim and I won first place in the Milwaukee Press Club Awards for our series of reports looking at how Indigenous wisdom and traditional ecological knowledge can help navigate climate change.
That series also won second place from the National Headliner Awards for environmental reporting.
A story by reporters Kelly Meyerhoffer, Sarah Volpenhein and I looking into whether a UW-Milwaukee professor who claimed to be Indigenous was real or a pretender won first place from the Indigenous Journalists’ Association for news story.