JHR’s Growing Indigenous Storytellers Fellowship (GISF) fellows, Veronica Blackhawk and Angela Belleau, were recently interviewed by APTN News about their experiences as emerging journalists and the powerful projects they produced in their time in the newsroom.
Veronica contributed to more than 25 stories for APTN’s daily news programs and created a five-part series titled Face Value, which explores Indigenous identity, lineage and kinship in music. The project continues the conversation sparked by coverage of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s identity. “All my non-Indigenous allies [in the music industry] have been able to take away something from that and are using it as an educational resource,” they told APTN News. “That means a lot to me.”
Andrea worked with APTN Investigates on ‘Sacrifice Zones’, an hour-long feature exploring the lack of Indigenous inclusion in conversations around plastic pollution that ran as part of APTN’s special programming on National Indigenous Peoples Day. Angela described the experience as transformative. “It changed the way I saw journalism, the news, and my future as well,” she said.
Watch the full interview here:
The Growing Indigenous Storytellers Fellowship is an initiative for emerging Indigenous journalists, jointly launched by Journalists for Human Rights, the Indigenous Journalists Association (IJA) and APTN News, with support from the Google News Initiative. Fellows have the opportunity to work at APTN News for a period of six months, and connect with a wider network at IJA’s 2025 Indigenous Media Conference. In addition, the program offers a series of workshops and lectures with incredible guest speakers for both the fellows and the broader journalism community.
