In 2018, Associate Professor, Kanina Holmes, brought 21 Carleton Journalism students to the Yukon for four weeks of experiential learning. You can see their work at www.storiesnorth.com. Photo by Kait Labbate.
Carleton Journalism students have won top honours at the Canadian Online Publishing Awards (COPA), with golds in three categories: best video, best article or series and best photo journalism.
These awards, given out at a dinner held in Toronto on Jan. 9, stem from the students’ work in 2018 with Stories North, an experiential learning and (re)conciliation reporting initiative created as a response to the calls to action in the final report of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Stories North was founded and continues to be run by Kanina Holmes, an associate professor with the School of Journalism.
“Stories North has been about educating the next generation of journalists by giving them a chance to work in a stunningly beautiful part of Canada’s North, taking the time to listen, reflect and to help shift narratives,” says Holmes.
“The strength of Stories North comes from the relationships we’ve built and continue to build, from open hearts and minds and a generosity of spirit on the part of the people we’ve met along our journey,” she says.
Raisa Patel (MJ 2019) and classmates visited Long Ago People’s Place, a re-creation of a traditional First Nations village in Champagne, Yukon. Photo by Kanina Holmes.
“To have this work be acknowledged with three Canadian Online Publishing Awards, is both an honour and an opportunity to continue sharing the lessons we’ve learned about history, culture, context and future paths for reporting with Indigenous communities.”
The award-winning video, Dear Dawson, was a collaboration by 21 journalism students, including fourth-year undergraduates and second-year MJs, who spent four weeks studying, reporting and travelling around the territory in July and August of 2018.
The short film was a love letter, privileging the voices of community members and exploring the relationships of people to place.
MJs (2019) Katherine Lissitsa and Levi Garber produced an in-depth story with members of Carcross/Tagish First Nation about women in the community who forage for herbs, plants and other natural-medicine ingredients, part of wider efforts toward recognizing and restoring cultural practices, traditional knowledge and community support.
Tlingit elder, Bessie Coolie with Julia Moran (BJ 2019) at a Whitehorse workshop on residential school survivors. Photo by Kanina Holmes.
This project won a COPA for best photo journalism in an online project by an academic institution. The story, Náakw: herbalism in bloom, can be found here.
“We’re both incredibly grateful for having had the opportunity to experience the Yukon, a place with scenery that is as beautiful as the people who live there,” said Garber. “One of these individuals was the wonderful Donna Wolfe – an environmental monitor and medicine maker who was kind to let us into her world. Capturing her character and the good she does for her community in a few frames was no easy feat, and so we are very humbled and happy to know that what we did capture had an impact.”
Other projects that were part of the photo-journalism entry included: Ronnie by Julia Moran (BJ 2019), Adam van der Zwan (MJ 2019) and Shanice Pereira (BJ 2019), Human Nature by Lauren Hicks (BJ 2020), Mitten Making, by Madeline Lines and a Kaska Healing Journey, by Adam van der Zwan (MJ 2019).
In the best article or series category, again in the very competitive academic institution category, Stories North won for the following projects:
- ‘What ties us together’: finding family across decades, by Isaac Würmann (BJ 2018)
- Re-catching culture: why traditional salmon harvesting is a struggle for Yukon First Nations, by Kiera Kowalski (BJ 2019) and Reina Cowan (BJ 2019)
- Healing people, healing the land: the stewards of Carcross/Tagish First Nation, by Lisa Johnson (MJ 2019) and Madeline Lines (BJ 2019).
- Náakw: herbalism in bloom, by Katherine Lissitsa and Levi Garber
A special moment at a pole-raising ceremony at Carcross/Tagish First Nation. Many of the students’ projects in 2018 focused on initiatives and events in this community. Photo by Kanina Holmes.
Stories North ran as a special topics (elective) field course for Carleton journalism students in the summer of 2017 and 2018 with funding from a Carleton University Teaching Award, a FutureFunder campaign, Teaching and Learning Carleton and the Discovery Centre (2017) and a generous grant from the Mastercard Foundation (2018).
In the summer of 2019, Stories North, working with Yukon College, hosted six Carleton journalism students and included field work in Old Crow, a Gwich’in community situated north of the Arctic Circle.
Professor Holmes is currently on leave and is based this year in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she edits Yukon, North of Ordinary Magazine and continues to build Stories North into a storytelling incubator with northern communities.
For more information, please visit: www.storiesnorth.com and https://vimeo.com/296998010
Contact: Kanina Holmes: kanina.holmes@carleton.ca
Thursday, January 16, 2020 in Journalism News
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