From the Field: Collaborating to better serve Indigenous communities

About the speakers:

Moderator

Dianna Hunt, a senior editor at collaboration lead Indian Country Today, is a longtime editor and investigative reporter at news organizations large and small. As metro editor of the Houston Chronicle, she directed and edited the Pulitzer Prize-finalist breaking news coverage of Hurricane Harvey. She has also worked for the The Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and other newspapers in Texas and Louisiana.

Hunt served three terms on the board of Investigative Reporters & Editors and is currently on the board of the Fund for Investigative Journalism, which provides grants for investigative projects. She also has worked with the Investigative Editing Corps, providing investigative editing assistance for small newsrooms. She is of Cherokee Nation descent, and is a member of the Native American Journalists Association.

Panelists

Mario Koran, investigative reporter of Wisconsin Watch reports on education, immigration and issues affecting communities of color. Most recently, Koran was a 2021 Knight Wallace reporting fellow at the University of Michigan. Previously, Koran served as a west coast correspondent for the Guardian US and spent five years covering education for Voice of San Diego, where he was named the 2016 reporter of the year by the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. Since leaving an internship with Wisconsin Watch in 2013, Koran’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Appeal, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, among others.

Anne Thundercloud, a Ho-Chunk citizen and public relations consultant, spent more than 10 years working in public relations for the Ho-Chunk Nation’s government. Thundercloud wrote this piece in Madison Magazine on the need to bridge the disconnect between tribes and the rest of the public.