Kim Wheeler, an Indigenous Journalist, was working as a producer on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) radio show Unreserved for three years when she was overlooked for a promotion as senior producer on the series.
The show, which describes itself as being “radio space for Indigenous community, culture, and conversation."
Instead, a non-Indigenous person was hired to fill that role.
"I had already been working on the show for three years, with 23 or 24 years of journalism under my belt," Wheeler said about the incident that ultimately led to her leaving Unreserved.
According to Wheeler, the company had several Indigenous journalists apply for the position, but not a single one was interviewed.
“What does that say about CBC’s commitment to retaining, training, and promoting Indigenous journalists into management positions?,” she said.
Wheeler said this lack of diversity in the newsroom can influence if the media chooses to cover Indigenous stories or not. Journalism scholars call this process of selecting what to cover gatekeeping.
“If the decision makers are all, you know, especially in the media, we know the majority of them are white males, they’re afraid to give up their power,” Wheeler said.
With Native Americans making up only 0.25% of the newsroom’s workforce in the United States, there are very few people in a position to tell these stories.
This is the least amount of representation in the workforce than any other historically underrepresented groups; Black Americans make up 7.12%, Hispanic 7.36%, Asian 5.14%, Middle Eastern/North African 0.45%.
“When the Indigenous space is so small, and they give it to a non-Indigenous person to run? In my opinion, that’s just not right,” she said.
Wheeler said that, overall, men are more likely to get ahead in newsrooms.
“When you’re a strong Indigenous, challenging woman, you get labeled as that,” she said. “You get labeled as challenging and difficult.”
Not only is there a lack of representation of Indigenous people in the newsroom, there is also a lack of trust towards the media from Indigenous people that could be contributing to the minimal news coverage.
Mary Kathryn Nagle, an attorney and partner with Pipestem Law, a firm that specializes in protecting the sovereign rights of tribal governments, said trust issues emerge because of insensitivity of journalists when reporting on Indigenous stories.
“They [journalists] are disrespectful, they treat their deceased loved one like a commodity. They want them to sign contracts giving them copyrights to their loved one’s photos, diary entries, journal entries, and it's just crazy,"Nagle said about an incident her client had had with journalists."
“So yeah, of course Native people aren’t going to trust people [journalists],”
Wheeler said cultural sensitivity training for journalists, especially non-Indigenous ones, is important for curbing this problem.
“We can investigate and do all the reports we want, but until there’s buy in from the general public, how do we change people’s empathy?,” Wheeler said.
Although movements like Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) and the Standing Rock water protectors from 2016 have been bringing Native stories to the attention of the public, they still aren’t able to gain the public outcry and media recognition as other social movements.
According to research completed by the non-profit organization Illuminative, the success of the Standing Rock movement can be attributed to making it appeal to the masses.
The Mni Wiconi / Water is Life message, which was used by the Standing Rock movement, began trending on social media in 2016. Former Standing Rock Chairman David Archambault spoke with Illuminative and credited their success to the simplicity of the phrases.
“It’s real simple.… Water Is Life” is “a phrase that anyone can relate to, anyone can be a part of. And then the other thing is the word Standing Rock — not the word, but the two words, Standing Rock. Now let’s put stand with Standing Rock or standing with Standing Rock. Those are simple phrases that people can identify with, “Archambault said.
While the general public was able to relate to the messaging of Standing Rock, not all Indigenous stories have been able to gain similar traction with the public and media.
Sheila North, an Indigenous Journalist and documentary-filmmaker, said she believes that most non-Indigenous people have been taught not to care about Indigenous people and their stories, a problem that has been around since European settlement was established in North America.
Wheeler said the majority of Indigenous stories being published in the mainstream media are more light entertainment, or stories of culture and art, rather than serious matters that are afflicting Indian Country.
Over the past 40 years, over 2,300 Native American women and children have gone missing or have been murdered. A majority of these cases still remain unsolved.
“When one of our women goes missing, how do we get hundreds of people in the streets or in the woods combing the area for them, when a non-Indigenous person or white woman goes missing, people come out and want to search for them?” Wheeler said.
Initiative taken by law enforcement can be minimal when it comes to investigating these cases and often leads to them being misclassified as a suicide or runaway, and mislabeling the victims or missing person as non-Indigenous.
North said this “willful ignorance and disregard [by law enforcement] are part of the problem that lead to unsolved cases and perpetuates the mistrust between Indigenous people and the police.”
Because of this disregard by some law enforcement, the data simply is not concrete enough to gain the public’s concern, nor the media’s interest.
“Most media won’t take issues seriously if they don’t see the government or agencies like the police taking it seriously,” North said.
In a report completed on 105 cases of MMIW earlier this year, researchers found some startling numbers when it comes to the scarce data on which? crisis.
After a review of 105 cases of MMIW, research found that 62% of the cases were never included in an official missing persons database, 74% had no public documentation on manner of death, and 56% don’t mention or make public the victim’s tribal affiliation.
Not only is there a disregard for Indigenous cases by law enforcement, but Native Americans are killed at a higher rate by police than any other minority, according to a CNN review of data from the Centers for Disease Control.
On August 23, a crowd of onlookers witnessed and recorded the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Officers shot Blake several times within point blank range leaving him paralyzed, sparking public outcry and protests in Kenosha and across the country.
On that same day Brandon Laducer, a citizen of the Turtle Mountain tribe in North Dakota, was shot and killed by police. No protests followed this police involved shooting, and the story has yet to make national headlines.
The killing of Laducer sparked an FBI investigation, making public information on the details of what happened sparse.
Stephania Laducer, an aunt of Laducer , told Native News Online that “nothing is being shared with the family since the FBI has been involved, which makes us left completely in the dark."
North said that, unfortunately, this lack of empathy from the public and media coverage may come down to the absence of video evidence that other police involved shootings are able to obtain.
A December 2019 through December 2020 search of the international news database, Factiva, resulted in the following number of documents per keyword(s): “Black Lives Matter” had 3,158 documents, “Native American” 953 documents, “Indigenous” 1,122 documents, and “Missing” and “Indigenous” had 36 documents.
“Having access to a camera and social media is changing the conversation in support of individuals hurt by crime, and those meant to protect them,” North said.
To change the atmosphere of violence against Indigenous people, North said “We need our political leaders to initiate a change in attitudes by creating and enforcing policies, laws that impose stiff penalties,” when it comes to violent crimes against Indigenous people, and specifically women and girls.
In order for policy makers and politicians to make these bold changes, it will take pressure and awareness from the larger public,North said.
“Allyship should be promoted and encouraged,” she said.
If you are interested in learning more about violence against Indigenous women and children, or are looking for ways to help, please visit the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center at https://www.niwrc.org/.
To learn more about the erasure of Native stories in the media please visit https://illuminatives.org/about-us/.
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