Staff to be recognized during 2021 National Native Media Awards virtual ceremony Oct. 28
OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma — The Native American Journalists Association (NAJA) named High Country News (HCN) as one of three recipients for the 2021 Richard LaCourse Award for Investigative Journalism, which recognizes groundbreaking work by journalists that creatively use digital tools in the role of community watchdog. The award includes a $500 cash prize for the individual or team selected.
The HCN staff was nominated and selected for reporting on the ‘Land-Grab Universities’ series, which revealed how land taken from tribal nations was turned into seed money for higher education in the United States.
The HCN team included Tristan Ahtone (Kiowa), Kalen Goodluck (Diné/Navajo, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Tsimshian tribes, Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota) and Robert Lee with contributions from Margaret Wickens Pearce (Citizen Band Potawatomi) and Geoff McGhee.
The High Country News team will be recognized alongside Mary Annette Pember (Red Cliff Ojibwe) and APTN Investigates during the 2021 National Native Media Awards virtual ceremony on Oct. 28 at 3 p.m. CT via Zoom. Registration is available here.
“The selection committee was very impressed by these three entries,” NAJA Vice President Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton said. “All three were deeply researched and are leaving long-lasting imprints on Indian Country. Rather than single just one out from a particularly strong class of entrants, we agreed it was best to honor all three.”
The High Country News Team
| Tristan Ahtone Ahtone is a member of the Kiowa Tribe and serves as editor-in-chief at the Texas Observer. He has reported for multiple outlets including PBS NewsHour, National Native News, NPR, Al Jazeera America and High Country News, where he served as Indigenous Affairs editor. |  |
| Kalen Goodluck Goodluck (Diné/Navajo, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Tsimshian tribes, Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota) is a photographer and investigative journalist from and currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He covers Indigenous Affairs, public health, law enforcement and extremism. |  |
| Robert Lee Lee is a Lecturer in American History and a Fellow of Selwyn College at the University of Cambridge. He’s a former Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. |  |
| Geoff McGhee McGhee is a Seattle-based data and multimedia journalist. A veteran of The New York Times, ABCNews.com and France’s Le Monde, he also worked for nine years on interactive explanations of public policy and environmental issues at Stanford University. |  |
| Margaret Wickens Pearce Margaret Wickens Pearce is Citizen Band Potawatomi and a cartographer whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Before dedicating herself to cartographic design full-time, she was a faculty member at Humboldt State University, Ohio University, and the University of Kansas, with a Ph.D. in geography from Clark University. |  |
Other contributors included: Cody Leff, Katherine Lanpher and Taryn Salinas.
About NAJA
The Native American Journalists Association serves more than 900 members, including media professionals working in tribal, freelance, independent and mainstream news outlets, as well as academia and students covering Indigenous communities and representing tribal nations from across North America. For more information, visit: www.naja.com.