Elevate Native Voices: Journalism faculty takes career-focused media workshop on the highway

As an award-winning photojournalist whose work is often featured within the New York Times, NPR and the Wall Street Journal, Reynolds School of Journalism Lecturer of Media Production Alejandra Rubio has all the time been involved in images and blended media.

But it’s Rubio’s upbringing in Camp Verde, a rural river valley in northern Arizona, as a member of the Yavapai-Apache Nation that has impressed her to share her work together with her group, and in flip, uplifting their tales and voices.

This summer season, Rubio traveled dwelling to Camp Verde to steer a first-of-its-kind journalism workshop on the reservation, entitled “Elevating Native American Voices in Journalism and Media.” Over the course of the week, contributors discovered in regards to the highly effective historical past of Native Americans in media, developed their very own tales about points affecting their group, and acquired hands-on steerage from Rubio and Richard Bednarski, the Reynolds School’s expertise supervisor.

During the workshop, Rubio introduced a lecture in regards to the historical past of Native American photographers and journalists, highlighting folks like Benjamin Haldane, a member of the Tsimshian tribe, who was the primary Native American to open a portrait studio in 1899. Rubio additionally explored this historical past of Native newspapers, just like the Cherokee Phoenix, printed for the primary time in English and Cherokee in 1828.

“I wanted to share this history with other Native Americans and tribes and hopefully get more Native American voices in newspapers, and more reporters and journalists and photographers,” stated Rubio. “I just wanted to encourage more people to get into that line of work and bring back our newspaper.”

Currently, the Yavapai-Apache Nation’s newspaper shouldn’t be working, however Rubio hopes workshops like hers will assist encourage extra members to get entangled with native information.

“Hopefully I can take [the workshop] to other tribes throughout the United States and recruit students to our school and get more Native journalists and photographers out there in the media,” stated Rubio. “That way we can actually preserve our own cultural history.”

While Rubio and the scholars labored on their tales, Bednarski documented the entire expertise and has produced a brief documentary, “Elevate Native Voices,” to assist present how the workshop might be useful in different communities.

“As the first of many workshops like this that the Reynolds School will host, I wanted to document the experience,” Bednarski stated. “It’s going to be a great tool to showcase the importance of Indigenous storytelling.”

Rubio hopes to carry this workshop to Native American communities in Northern Nevada and throughout the nation.