On February 22nd at 2:35pm EST at the Our Language Rights Canada Conference (register here) on Canadian Language Advocacy Day, journalists from New Canadian Media, will be presenting the panel "The Stories We Tell" on the topic of immigrant journalism in Canada. They state that "The goal of this panel is to explore how surviving colonization impacts the stories we write, the places we are published, and our recognition within the journalism industry". Get to know the amazing panelists that will be presenting on LAD23:
Aaron Hemens is a photo-journalist currently based in Kelowna, B.C. as a reporter with IndigiNews. As a non-Indigenous storyteller, the bulk of his work is learning and putting into practice respectful journalism that honours Indigenous voices, stories, teachings, place-names and protocols.
“I've undergone trauma-informed reporting, and unlearned traditional approaches to journalism that are harmful to Indigenous communities,” he said. “Decolonizing journalism is something I'm constantly learning through the Indigenous women that I work with, and I'm looking forward to sharing my experiences and the lessons that I've learned with you all.”
Dominique Gené is a Haitian-born freelance writer and journalist living in Ottawa, CA. She covers news and feature stories on student activism – including human rights, disability rights and other social justice.
She became the co-news editor of The Charlatan in May 2022, and interned as a student researcher at Carleton University in 2021.
Check out some of Gené’s unique reporting on diaspora communities with NCM here. She is finishing her studies in journalism and the humanities.
Susan Jose is our latest addition to NCM and is a freelance journalist with a background in broadcast and digital news. As a communications consultant, she has worked closely with creative teams at brands such as YouTube and currently lives in Toronto.
Jose worked closely with diaspora channels on YouTube to push regional content creators into the platform’s mainstream ecosystem. She says there is a contentious paradigm about language – “it can connect and it can act as a barrier.”
Kaitlyn Smith will be acting as the panel moderator. They hover between the world of projects and editorial writing and hope to be a newsroom editor some day.
A second-generation, mixed-race and non-conforming journalist, they cover news relevant to newcomers and refugees about diversity programming and funding; climate change; federal and Statistics Canada announcements; and other trending diaspora conversations.
They spent a year and a half attending and documenting Indigenous land title claims in Ontario, practicing informed consent and experimenting with what it means to decolonize the camera lens.