From storytakers to storytellers: reciprocity, reconciliation and rethinking journalism

Aphrodite Salas and Luca Caruso-Moro show local residents their mobile journalism recording equipment during a visit to Inukjuak. (Photo by Lina Forero)

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From their first meeting, Inukjuak community partner Eric Atagotaaluk said Aphrodite Salas and her team were clear about one thing: the documentary would share Inukjuak’s climate journey from the community’s perspective.

Salas, an Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism at Concordia University, and a team of journalism students recently completed a second documentary focusing on the Innavik Hydro project in Inukjuak. Their approach and the film, ᑰᒃ ᑰᑦᑐᖅ — The Flowing River, build on earlier work, including Innavik: Leading the way to a clean energy future, Simeonie Nalukturuk: in his own words, and From Shore to Sky: A Reconciliation Story.

Across these projects, Salas’ method is grounded in reconciliation and informed by Call to Action 86 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which calls upon Canadian journalism programs and media schools to require all students to receive education on the history of Indigenous peoples.

In practice, that commitment translates into a collaborative journalism model shaped by consent, long-term relationship-building and shared agency over how stories are told.

Redefining who controls the story

“For so long, Indigenous communities have had stories taken,” explained Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism at Concordia University, Kristy Snell.

Snell’s research and teaching focus on the decolonization of journalism practice and Indigenous education. In her undergraduate elective on Indigenous journalism, she uses Salas’ first climate documentary on Innavik as a counterpoint to the stereotypes that often dominate coverage of Indigenous communities.

In the course, Snell uses examples of journalism to highlight the negative stereotypes, tropes, and cliches that often appear in the reporting of Indigenous stories. She then shows the class Salas’ documentary as a contrast to the sea of negativity.

“Aphrodite’s focus is more on the community moving forward and really taking control of its resources and developing,” said Snell. “You see Indigenous people doing science, and most of the voices are Indigenous.”

By hearing community members share their own stories, the documentary effectively frames the community’s perspective at its centre.

“I think it just really is an example of how you can choose to tell stories,” Snell emphasized. “It’s not to say that there aren’t issues or concerns or things that communities want to deal with, but it’s just how we frame them, it’s how we choose to frame them that makes such a difference in the telling of the story.”

In Snell’s opinion, taking a collaborative approach to journalism by working with communities, considering their priorities, and ensuring consent and agency are all essential when sharing Indigenous stories.

“You don’t want to just come in and be extractive and take that thing that you want for you,” she explained. “You know the story that you want to tell, you want to ensure that the community you’re working with has agency and that they have a say in the process.”

In quoting her colleague, journalist and Associate Professor at Carleton University, Duncan McCue, Snell stated, “You want to be a storyteller, not a storytaker.”

As a non-Indigenous journalist, Salas emphasized that she makes a further distinction between being a storyteller and sharing stories with permission.

“I’m not a storyteller, I share stories with permission,” she explained. “That’s how I see it because I don’t even want to be called a storyteller of their stories, it’s not what I feel I am.”

Building trust before the camera turns on

When taking a collaborative approach to covering Indigenous stories, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes to ensure the process is inclusive, open and transparent.

Building relationships and trust with the community before filming was integral to making the documentaries, and it came organically.

For the first documentary on the Innavik Hydro project, Salas, the journalism students, and the community partners held numerous virtual meetings in the lead-up to their visit to the community.

Atagotaaluk stated that these conversations helped community members become more open throughout the process. They felt less skeptical about whether the story would be covered accurately.

“I think it allowed us to be a lot more open to them and to their questions and go a little deeper in what we would have shared if we had not been introduced beforehand,” he explained. “At the end of the day, when they came, we felt very comfortable responding to all their questions; it made it a lot easier.”

He added that they immediately understood that the team wouldn’t be coming to the community solely to take a few pictures of the project and discuss the facts.

“It was very collaborative and very open,” he said.

A watershed moment in listening

As soon as Salas and her team arrived in Inukjuak for their first trip in 2021, one of the team members — Concordia University graduate and CBC North reporter Virginie Ann — recalled being greeted by very unique weather. A blizzard was moving in, and Atagotaaluk said he was surprised they had landed at all.

“It felt like we were in another dimension, it was just so beautiful and rough,” said Ann. “I think it all hit us that we were somewhere else and that we were going to learn so much by being there all together for an amount of time that would allow us to connect.”

No matter the level of preparation, the most valuable lessons often come when least expected.

It was during that first visit that Salas and Concordia graduate and CTV News journalist Luca Caruso-Moro interviewed former Inukjuak mayor Simeonie Nalukturuk for the first documentary. It was an interview that Salas described as a watershed moment in her understanding of deep listening.

Salas explained that after asking one question, she realized it wouldn’t be a typical interview.

“It was like as soon as he started talking, I realized, okay, this is actually not an interview, I’m not going to be asking questions, I’m going to listen,” she recalled.

“It took a lot in that moment to do that, to release the power of the journalist and the expectation that this was going to be a question-answer situation, and instead, I really understood in that moment that that would be an incorrect way of approaching this exchange.”

Mayor Nalukturuk continued to share his story for approximately 20 minutes, after which they left. It wasn’t until months later, while working on a final cut of the documentary, that they found out he had passed away.

“When that happened, I felt very wrong about the way the documentary was,” recalled Salas.

During their time together, Nalukturuk had shared details about three major traumas that the village had suffered: the forced relocation of people to the north, the residential schools and the killing of their qimmit, Inuit sled dogs. But only a few short clips had made it into the climate documentary.

“That was his message, and I had cut it up and put it in the climate documentary to really neutralize a lot of that, which is what Western journalists do,” she said. “That’s what we do, that’s what we’ve done, and that was the problem from the beginning.”

Instead, they decided to keep the 20-minute interview intact and create a separate documentary, Simeonie Nalukturuk: In His Own Words, as a tribute to the mayor.

Atagotaaluk shared that he felt the tribute was very touching for the community and that Salas and her team were very fortunate to have met the mayor when they did.

“In the end, I think it was really the strongest journalism because it was true to the message. It was true to their reality. It was true to what the community wanted to talk about,” explained Salas. “It’s really interesting in retrospect, but it’s also reflective of how these lessons come.”

It was a lesson that later informed the next documentary in the practice and length of the interviews.

Slowing down the process

After working on Salas’s various projects, Ann said she has taken away many valuable lessons that have helped inform her practice throughout her career.

She explained that working on these documentaries taught her patience and an understanding of the rhythm of reporting on Indigenous stories.

“It’s 100 per cent their stories,” she stressed. “You have to respect that in a very different way than traditional journalism teaches you to do things.”

Rather than being a casual observer, Ann said you have to involve yourself and your soul in a way that perhaps you wouldn’t do in Western journalistic practice.

She added that it is a much slower process that calls for a lot of empathy and building bonds, which may go against what you believe you’re supposed to do as a journalist.

While filming in the community, Ann recalled taking time to have tea with community members, visiting the radio station, hanging out and having a few jam sessions.

“Building trust with your sources so that they don’t feel like they were just a story,” she stressed.

Accountability after publication

Collaboration can often mean slowing down the pace and rhythm of reporting to ensure a story is shared the right way.

The typical daily news cycle consists of fast-paced deadlines that journalists often scramble to meet. When sharing Indigenous stories and collaborating with those whose stories are being told, the mindset shifts from meeting a deadline to meeting people where they are, when they’re ready.

As a journalist, Ann explained that taking a more collaborative approach “teaches you a lot about being patient and accepting that it doesn’t happen whenever you want it to happen.”

“At the end of the day, this is not about you,” she stressed. “And if the person doesn’t want to go there and talk about that, you cannot force someone to meet you there if they’re not ready.”

The impacts of colonization and resulting intergenerational trauma are present and rooted in Indigenous communities across Canada.

Collaborating with the Inukjuak community meant having discussions before interviews to better understand the history that led to where they are now.

In conversations leading up to their visit in 2021, Ann recalled learning that years ago, the community’s sled dogs had all been killed by the RCMP and Quebec provincial police.

“That was something that we had learned about prior to heading there,” she said. “But reading about history is so different than when you’re in the place where it happened.”

Making their stories heard

Researching and preparing a story is an important journalistic practice, but the sustained collaboration from start to finish distinguishes this project from traditional journalism.

Journalists are often taught not to show their work, especially the finished product, to those they have interviewed prior to publication. To the contrary, Salas believes that “if you’ve done your job properly, when you show your work, there shouldn’t be a problem.

“The amount of communication, preparation and thought that it takes to produce something means that you’re doing it right,” she emphasized. “You’re giving the community the chance to see it and provide input if they think that you’ve misrepresented them in some way.”

Unlike many stories drawn from Indigenous communities, Ann expressed her hope that the collaborative approach to creating these documentaries would contribute to reconciliation and help rebuild trust in the media.

She emphasized her belief that all participants in this project belong to a generation of journalists who create work in diverse ways.

In turn, Atagotaaluk expressed his belief that the collaborative approach fostered a sense of pride within the community.

“I think it gave us a lot more pride since they were collaborating with us on the final product of the documentary, which led to a second documentary,” he explained.

He added that Salas and her team’s decision to create a second climate documentary focusing on the post-construction phase of the Innavik Hydro project demonstrates their desire to capture the community’s plans for the future.

“Our story got to be heard,” he said. “There’s not a lot of positive stories that come out of our region.

“This is one positive story where a community decided to do something to make a difference in their community, and for Aphrodite and her team deciding to come and cover this story with a lengthy documentary, allows for our story to be heard around the world, which we don’t get to have often.”

In the process, the act of journalism itself became part of the story — not as extraction, but as exchange.