Kristy Snell and Aleisha Teionerahtáthe Diabo

Tsi nahò:ten karihontáhkwen ne kaio’ténhsera

Kí:ken kaio’ténhsera karihwaka’én:ions ne karihwisá:kon-wateweiennón:ni ionterien’tatshenriéstha tsi iakohwe’nón:nis ne tiotenonhsate ronterihwaiénstha ne Kahnawà:ke thatinákere tánon ne tsi ionterihwaienstahkhwahkó:wa ronterihwaiénstha ne Tiohtià:ke thatinákere, ne ki’ ne ahonnón:ni orihwase’kéha tewaterihwarenià:ton ne CBC raotirihwà:ke. Tekarihwasniè:’on nen’ nè:’e ne tiorihowá:nen tsi Kahnawà:ke Survival School-Concordia University tehotirihwaienawà:kon, tsi nè:’e tewaterihwarenià:ton eniakoientehrhásten ne Kanien’kehá:ka nithotiién:sa tsi ronate’shén:naien ahotiió’ten tsi shakotirihonnién:ni ne iah-tehonnonkwehón:we tewaterihwarenià:ton ronteweiénstha ne ki’ tsi ní:tsi enhatirihwakwénienste tsi tenhonterihwarénia’te skátne ne Onkwehón:we tsi ratinakerénion. Tsi teiakorihwaienawà:kon ne tseià:ta ne òn:wak teiakotohétston ne Kahnawà:ke Survival School tánon karátie ne áhsen CBC nikaká:rake néne ronterihwaiénstha-rotíhson, kí:ken waterihwathró:ri kahiatónhsera watkèn:ses tsi ní:tsi tewaterihwarenià:ton aterihwaienstáhtshera enwá:ton enwátston ne sénha taiakowennakarè:niste ne Onkwehón:we nithotiién:sa, ne aiakonaktótha’se ne kanatakonhró:non ahatiká:raton, tánon ne aontken’sénion tsi nika’shátste ne oká:ra tsi teionkwà:nerenks.

Abstract translated by Karonhí:io Delaronde

Kawennakwe’ní:ios : tewaterihwarenià:ton aterihwaienstáhtshera, Onkwehonwehnéha tewaterihwarenià:ton, nithotiién:sa, sewanihnara’kenstákwen, Onkwehonwehnéha aterien’taráhtshera, tekaierón:tare tsi niiakorihò:ten

Abstract

This project explores a research-creation initiative bringing together high school students in Kahnawà:ke and university students in Montreal, to create original journalism for CBC. Engagement is central to the Kahnawà:ke Survival School-Concordia University collaboration, which introduces journalism to Kanien’kehà:ka youth as a potential career option while educating non-Indigenous journalism students on respectful reporting with Indigenous communities. Co-authored by a recent Kahnawà:ke Survival School graduate and accompanied by three student-created CBC stories, this article examines how journalism education can be used as a tool to amplify Indigenous youth voices, showcase community-led storytelling, and explore the power of story to unite us.

Keywords: journalism education, Indigenous journalism, youth, decolonization, Indigenous Knowledge, representation

Résumé

Ce projet explore une initiative de recherche-création qui réunit des élèves du secondaire de Kahnawà:ke et des étudiant.e.s universitaires à Montréal afin de produire du journalisme original pour CBC. L’engagement est au cœur de la collaboration entre la Kahnawà:ke Survival School et l’Université Concordia, qui présente le journalisme aux jeunes Kanien’kehà:ka comme une option de carrière potentielle, tout en sensibilisant les étudiant.e.s en journalisme non-autochtones aux pratiques de reportage respectueuses auprès des communautés autochtones. Coécrit par une récente diplômée de la Kahnawà:ke Survival School et accompagné de trois reportages produits par des étudiant.e.s pour CBC, cet article examine comment la formation en journalisme peut servir d’outil pour amplifier les voix des jeunes autochtones, mettre en valeur des récits portés par les communautés et explorer le pouvoir du récit comme force de rapprochement.

Mots clés : formation en journalisme, journalisme autochtone, décolonisation, connaissances autochtones, jeunesse, représentation

Bridging communities through engaged journalism and storytelling: The Concordia University-Kahnawà:ke Survival School collaboration

Kristy Snell and Aleisha Teionerahtáthe Diabo

 

Introduction

In a warmly-lit Grade 11 classroom in Kahnawà:ke, two groups of students settle down to work. They scrape chairs across the floor and flip open laptops at tables placed in a large U-shape. Purple and white flags representing the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and Two-Row Wampum hang on the wall, beside a poster showing men wearing traditional feathered headpieces known as Kastowas. There is some chatter, but the students quickly get down to business. This isn’t just a high school classroom; it’s also a working newsroom and the students are on a deadline.

The KSS Newsroom project launched in Fall 2022 as a partnership between Concordia University’s Department of Journalism, Kahnawà:ke Survival School (a secondary school in nearby Kahnawà:ke), and CBC Montreal. The aim of this Indigenous-led project is to introduce journalism to Kanien’kehá:ka youth as a potential career option, while educating non-Indigenous journalism students on the importance of respectful practices and relationships in working with Indigenous communities. The Concordia journalism students work with KSS students—usually in Grade 11—over several weeks as they produce audio and video stories about their community, for publication or broadcast by CBC. Working in collaboration, the two groups of students have also produced six digital stories for the CBC Montreal website. However, it is the short, 2-3 minute stories for broadcast or podcast which have proven optimal in this context as they are relatively simple to produce but provide a substantial pedagogical impact. This article features three stories created through the collaboration: one digital, one audio, and one video, all produced by Kahnawà:ke youth, supported by Concordia journalism students.

Indigenous representation in journalism education

Indigenous students have long been under-represented in Canadian journalism programs, even in recent years. Snell and Roley (2024) found that between 2017 and 2022, just over 3.2% of students enrolled in journalism programs and about 2% of graduates self-identified as Indigenous, compared to 5% of the overall population (Statistics Canada, 2022). Based on this, in order for journalism programs to match population share, they would have to start graduating nearly twice as many Indigenous students as they have been. This figure also mirrors the Canadian Association of Journalists’ 2024 Diversity Survey, which found that Indigenous journalists constituted about 3.5% of journalists in participating newsrooms nation-wide (CAJ, 2025).

Many Indigenous journalism students and former students also report a lack of Indigenous faculty and content in their programs (Snell & Roley, 2024). An informal survey of major journalism program websites—including those at Carleton University, Toronto Metropolitan University, Concordia University, the University of British Columbia, and University of King’s College—found that in the decade following the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) into the impacts of residential institutions, all have added Indigenous faculty and content. However, not all programs have responded in full to TRC Call to Action 86, which calls on Canadian journalism programs to ensure that all students are taught about the history and experiences of Indigenous Peoples in Canada (TRC, 2015).

It is against this backdrop that the KSS Newsroom project was born, prompted by three guiding questions: 1) How do we give our Concordia journalism students more experience working with Indigenous communities? 2) How do we invite more Indigenous youth to consider careers in journalism? And, 3) how can we do this in a meaningful way?

What developed was a collaborative, community-engaged initiative exploring new approaches to journalism pedagogy, decolonizing journalism, and Indigenous youth empowerment through storytelling.

Storywork and relational methodologies

McCue (2023) discusses  core  elements of  engaged journalism—relational  accountability and community-centered  storytelling—and the importance of reciprocity when reporting in Indigenous communities. Napoli (2019) also touches on responsibility to our ancestors and our ethical obligations as researchers, underscoring the relationality and collective approach to research—particularly when it comes to diverse views: “From an ethical perspective, I ask that we all remember to slow down and pay attention to what arrives for us when we meet with others on the borders of worldviews and cross-cultural understanding” (p. 82).

The storywork undertaken by the students reflects Archibald’s (2008) discussion of how life-experience stories can teach about topics ranging from culture and nature, to history and relationships. Archibald also frames the project’s approach to youth narrative sovereignty by treating stories and their creation not just as products or outputs, but as living teachings.

This research collaboration is additionally informed by scholars such as: Absolon (2022), who writes that “relationally based (re)search methodologies build in room for gathering, connecting, sharing stories, visiting, and fostering mutual connections to grow and heal together” (p. 93); Johnston et al.(2018), who assert that “entering into research is entering into relationship” (p. 19); and Kovach (2018), who writes that “relationship is how we do Indigenous methodologies” (p. 397). Together, these perspectives support our slower, relationship-based approach to this project, focusing on collaboration and centering priorities and voices in the community.

Pedagogical framework and project design

For the Concordia students, the KSS Newsroom project begins with an intensive six-week preparation process before they can start work at the high school in Kahnawà:ke. They reflect on their own positionality, critically examine media coverage of Indigenous stories, and read parts of the TRC final report. They get to know Kahnawà:ke media, spend time learning about the school and its history, and spend a class reviewing writing for broadcast and learning how the mentorship process will work. This training aims to give non-Indigenous students the cultural and relational understanding they need to engage respectfully with the community. Evaluation is simple and the project is pass-fail; to ensure they don’t push the pace or narrative in any direction, Concordia mentors are not evaluated on the story itself.

On the first day that the two groups of students are brought together, there is a brief introduction and welcome, and then they are given space to form teams as they please. They work together for between four and six class sessions, depending on the KSS teacher’s wishes, and the curriculum is developed to meet the priorities and structure of each class. The process is the opposite of the traditional extractive approach to journalism, where reporters parachute into a community to cover a story with little connection or context, often causing harm through their approach and reporting. Here, the focus is on hyper-local collaborative storytelling created with intent and care over time in the community, led by teenagers who live in it. What is unique about this project is that it positions both sets of students as experts, with Concordia students contributing technical and editorial knowledge, and the KSS students bringing deep expertise about their community and culture.

Throughout the process, teamwork is central. The stories the students produce serve not only as a pedagogical outcome but also as a vehicle for engagement, connection, and empowerment. Everyone learns from each other, but at all times, the agency of the younger students is paramount.

The KSS Newsroom at work: Co-authored reflections

To illustrate how the collaboration functions in practice, I invited a Kahnawá:ke Survival School graduate who participated in the KSS Newsroom project in 2025 to co-author this article. Aleisha Teionerahtáthe Diabo created two stories: an audio piece for CBC Radio produced in class, and a video story for CBC Television (included with this article), produced during a week-long workshop.

As oral storytelling and conversation are at the heart of this project, we have chosen to structure the section that follows as a dialogue. This allows us to better reflect on the process, the decision-making, and what it felt like to create the stories.

Diabo: When I first started this project, I wasn’t interested at first. I thought it was going to be a long process and I was going to be given a worksheet and told to write something. I started to become interested the more I engaged with the story, and I started to grow more excited to complete the project.

Snell: This is part of the challenge at first, when we’re introducing the project: getting the  KSS  kids  to  understand  what  we’re actually trying to do. Most have heard about it, but things are still a bit abstract because they don’t really know much about radio or TV news. Sometimes I’ll go do a short presentation beforehand or their teacher will explain things and play some older stories, but we want things to happen organically through teamwork so we don’t go into a lot of detail about the process. We don’t do any ice-breakers or anything that might make the students uncomfortable; once they’ve randomly created their teams, they just launch into it. My students usually start by asking questions to get to know the younger students, asking about their interests and activities, before shifting to things they might want people outside Kahnawà:ke to know. It always amazes me how quickly they connect.

Diabo: When the Concordia students came, I was a little scared because there were so many people in the classroom and I didn’t know how the process would work. I had three mentors and I felt a little overwhelmed at first because I had three people asking me different questions at the same time. It was a little confusing. I was there putting my ideas into the project; helping out with information about the community, and developing my story.

Snell: It’s often kind of surprising how many of the KSS students know what they want to do right away. They come in with a very clear vision for what they want to do and it’s just a matter of helping them shape it as a piece of journalism. We’ve had stories about everything from historical events to sports teams, the legacy of intergenerational trauma, community myths and legends, graduation outfits, culture—things like keeping the language alive, and the importance of bead-work in the community.

Diabo: Beading is mesmerizing to look at and I want more people to understand what it represents and where it derives from. It is such an important cultural tradition in our community and it’s very widespread. I want people to know more about the importance of it, to give them more of an Indigenous perspective on it. So it would be an educational story to share with whoever watches the news.

Snell: This is where the KSS students kind of switch into expert mode, once they have their ideas, because they’re the ones who know the community. They know who they’ll need to interview and what they want CBC audiences to learn.

Diabo: I one hundred per cent felt that I owned my story. My mentors helped with creating the foundation of the story using my ideas, and I had a lot of input from the two interviewees. I spoke to people who do beadwork and let them voice their perspectives and put them into my story.

Snell: KSS students do their own interviews, although my students help them come up with a list of questions and practice recording using their phones. If it’s video, my students will help a lot with camera work, but the younger students book their own interviews and they ask the questions.

Diabo: I was surprised at how difficult it is to set up an appointment for interviews and work around people’s schedules; that part was really hard. Doing those interviews, I learned how to come up with questions and how to hold cameras, which angles to show to do the interviews. The hardest part was focusing on how to respond to the answers and knowing what to say and ask.

Snell: The Concordia students help with the video interviews because they’re recorded during a week-long workshop, so they’re out shooting in pairs. But with the audio interviews, often the KSS students have to do them outside of class time which means doing it solo without their mentors. This can make things a bit challenging because sometimes you’ll have one of the teams running a little behind when it comes to meeting the deadline. It’s like in any newsroom.

It also means that sometimes the sound quality can vary. We had one young student do an incredible interview about intergenerational trauma and I think they did it near a hallway because you could hear kids chatting away in the background. Or they’ll do it near the school cafeteria and you can hear plates and silverware clanking. But I think that’s part of the charm, in a way—these are kids and it’s raw sometimes. Often they’re talking to their teachers and wrestling coaches and the person who runs the craft store. The only difference is now they’re journalists working on a story.

Diabo: Sometimes the interviews are challenging because often you know the person, and it makes it hard to focus because you are laughing with them most of the time. Once we finished the interview we would go through the transcript and highlight information and clips we needed. After gathering the clips we wrote the script around them and focused on how the story was going to come about. My Concordia mentors helped me put my thoughts into words, and helped me make a story with that. And I find it incredible that we were able to make my idea into a physical story.

Snell: My students are taught to guide the writing process using a series of prompts and by asking questions: “Should we maybe put a fact before this line or do you want it later? Do you think a clip might work here? What do you like better?” It’s totally intuitive because it’s like a choose-your-own-adventure with the younger students deciding where to go.

Diabo: I loved them so much. You could just chat with anybody. Even if I or even if my mentor didn’t have an answer to something, we could go and ask other Concordia mentors. They were just overall awesome.

Snell: Once the stories are written, the KSS students come to Concordia to voice them. It’s fun because everyone is excited and they get to see what the journalism program is about and to realize that they can do cool things in this space. They practice reading the script beforehand and then go into the studio. Sometimes they’re alone, or some want their mentors or classmates with them. The only thing we tell them is to speak clearly and to speak up a little; I want them to sound like themselves without worrying about it. It’s all new and can be a little intimidating at first.

Diabo: It took me a bunch of retakes since I genuinely did not like the way I sounded on the recording. I felt really supported but I think I had to take off the headphones because I couldn’t stand hearing myself. When it came on the TV, my grandma pulled me into the room to watch it and I was just cringing to hear my voice. I am proud to hear myself on the TV, but I still don’t like hearing it.

Snell: With the video stories, the teams edit at Concordia with the support of a CBC video journalist who can help troubleshoot. I mostly edit the audio stories, although I have a CBC colleague who jumps in to help when there’s a lot to do. I’d love it if the KSS students could be there for all the editing, but we always run out of time. But they write instructions for sound effects and music on their scripts, and I follow their notes as closely as possible. I want them to feel ownership of their stories and to be proud.

Diabo: At the end of the TV workshop when we were all watching it on the big screen, it felt amazing that I created that. And seeing it on the news for thousands to watch—my entire family and community saw it. They were surprised to see the finished story. It felt very heartfelt, I’m glad to be able to have made my mark in the community as someone who talked about beadwork on the news—that’s what I’m known for, now.

Outcomes

Canadian journalism has always struggled with unbalanced coverage of Indigenous-related stories, traditionally framing them through the lens of deficit and victimhood, rather than community and empowerment. The KSS Newsroom project counters that by prioritizing the perspectives and priorities of the students in Kahnawà:ke, showing how relational, community-based journalism education can produce more authentic and relevant stories.

The project was developed to address the question of Indigenous underrepresentation in journalism programs and efforts to decolonize journalism pedagogy and practices. It allows us to examine the effectiveness of experience-based, community-centred projects on engagement, learning outcomes, and career aspirations for Indigenous youth, and to develop a framework for decolonizing journalism education, integrating practices to help promote a more inclusive and welcoming media industry.

The project is small in scale, reflexive, and driven entirely by young people; but that is also its strength. By centering Indigenous youth as journalists rather than subjects, it aims to create a pathway to post-secondary education – and subsequently, newsrooms. It also empowers them to create and share stories which might not otherwise be heard, using their voices to introduce audiences to stories about their community. At the same time, it equips non-Indigenous storytellers with cultural and relational awareness, reminds them that the younger students are also mentors in this space, and sets them up for more accurate and ethical reporting in their future careers.

As the dialogue above illustrates, the pedagogical value of this research-creation project isn’t just in the stories that are produced. Rather, it’s in the process of producing the stories together. It’s about Concordia students who had never been to a First Nation, seeing a photo wall of graduates in traditional outfits or hearing the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen thanks-giving address over the school intercom. And it’s the fun stuff: giggling as they record footsteps in the snow for sound effects, supporting teammates as they record in a radio studio for the first time, and dancing together in a university hallway for a TikTok dance video.

In collaborating to produce these short pieces of hyper-local journalism, the KSS students exercise narrative sovereignty and take ownership of how their community is represented in the media. They come to see journalism as something they can succeed at, and the university as a friendly and welcoming space. Concordia students, meanwhile, get to know the community better and learn the importance of telling Indigenous stories with contextual knowledge, responsibility, and care.

Together, they create stories that become the vehicle for a multitude of transformative outcomes that can only be developed through connection and relationships. More than anything else, this project is about learning from each other, and the power of story to connect us.

Audio: Kahnawà:ke Survival School wrestling tradition, by Rayanna Dailleboust.

Digital: Kanien’kéha teacher has dedicated his career to keeping his heritage language alive, by Zye Rashontiiostha Mayo, with photos by Zye Mayo.

Video: Aleisha Teionerahtáthe Diabo reports on beading traditions in Kahnawà:ke (2025).

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Kristy Snell is an Associate Professor in the Journalism department at Concordia University. She holds an MEd specializing in Indigenous Education from UBC, and her work focuses on decolonizing journalism/practice and experiential pedagogy. She is a member of Standing Buffalo Dakota Nation. Email: kristy.snell@concordia.ca

Aleisha Teionerahtáthe Diabo is an accounting student set to graduate this year from Nova Career Centre in Chateauguay. She has produced two stories for CBC through the KSS Newsroom Project. She is Wolf Clan from Kahnawà:ke.

Note:  Ethics approval was granted by the Research Ethics Committees at Concordia University (Protocol 30019490) and Kahnawà:ke Education Center (KEC). This manuscript was provided to two specialists affiliated with KEC for review prior to submission. Co-author Aleisha Teionerahtáthe Diabo’s scholarly contribution to this article was voluntary, but she received a small honorarium for her research support work.