View the video of the event here
The Indian Child Welfare Act Reporting Symposium will feature Suzette Brewer (Cherokee), an award-winning writer who has extensively covered the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), environmental issues on Indian reservations, the opioid crisis, and violence against Native women and children, who will advise students and attendees about best practices when reporting on ICWA and other issues of sensitivity in Native communities.
The keynote address will be preceded by a welcoming reception with hors d’oeuvres. The keynote address will be followed by a panel discussion with local journalists and experts who will examine the issues and their importance to both Native and non-Native audiences.
The event will be preceded by a Videography Basics workshop lead by Cheyenne and Arapaho TV producer and host Darren Brown (Cochiti Pueblo / Choctaw). The workshop will teach the basics of shooting quality video for news packages that can be published to the web or social media. The workshop is free to NAJA members.
About Suzette Brewer: Brewer is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and an award-winning writer specializing in several areas of federal Indian law, including the Indian Child Welfare Act, environmental issues on Indian reservations, the opioid crisis, and violence against Native women and children. She has written for The Dallas Morning News, The Denver Post, the Denver Business Journal, among others. Her published books include Real Indians: Portraits of Contemporary Native Americans and America’s Tribal Colleges; Sovereign: An Oral History of Indian Gaming in America. She is the 2015 recipient of the NAJA Richard LaCourse-Gannett Foundation Al Neuharth Investigative Journalism Award for her work on the Indian Child Welfare Act. She is also a 2018 John Jay/Tow Juvenile Justice Reporting Fellow.