Teaching people to tell their own story
by Esther J. Cepeda
Washington Post Writers Group Columnist
CHICAGO — When journalists get the opportunity to share and collaborate with those they report on — to give something back rather than simply taking their photos or their statements — it can be life-changing.
On May 1-2, an inaugural regional conference focused on poverty gathered a group of journalists to train residents of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation on media literacy, multimedia skills and entrepreneurial journalism. In most cases, the reporters, who were members of the group UNITY: Journalists for Diversity, traveled to the homeland of the Oglala Sioux Tribe at their own expense and on their personal time.
If this community rings vaguely familiar, it may be because 57 children from Pine Ridge’s American Horse School made headlines in January after asking local police to investigate an incident in which they were harassed at a Rapid City minor league hockey game. They said a group of men sprayed beer and yelled racial slurs at the kids, some as young as 9.
More recently, the young adults of Pine Ridge made the front page of The New York Times because a shocking number of them have committed or attempted suicide.
“As an organization, we decided we’re not going to resorts anymore, we’re going to focus on poverty and go to those who have been forgotten,” said UNITY President Russell Contreras, a reporter for The Associated Press. “The event was designed to teach the people there to tell their own story through social media, through investigative journalism and to take steps to empower themselves through research and access to public information.”
I knew nothing about this when I saw Lalo Alcaraz’s online campaign (GoFundMe.com) asking for donations for “airfare and cartooning supplies for the almost 60 native students from American Horse School signed up for the workshop” he’d be conducting alongside fellow cartoonist Ricardo Cate, who creates “Without Reservations.”
This past weekend, beautiful pictures of Pine Ridge and the people attending the workshops quickly started popping up all over my social media networks.
In the midst of the solemn black-and-white images of Wounded Knee, the Oglala Lakota College Historical Center and children with fresh pens and sketch books, there was Alcaraz, creator of the comic strip “La Cucaracha,” editor-in-chief of Pocho.com and all-around Latino icon, sitting in a blue kindergarten chair in a newly built youth center with reservation dogs lapping at his feet.
“Oh my goodness, they ran the place,” said Alcaraz, laughing at my notice of several pictures that included free-roaming dogs. “The dogs would come in off the street. They just sauntered in, hung out, got some attention and split.”
Alcaraz had many reflections about his short time on the reservation that will inspire his social commentary just as the experience will improve the reporting of all the journalists in attendance.
“There’s just so much, I’m still coming down from it, but — and I’m not trying to be hokey or corny — like it was mind altering or spirit altering,” Alcaraz told me. “It was very eye-opening to me, how similar it was — yes, there’s 80 percent unemployment and high poverty, but to me it was like any poor little barrio in California or New Mexico.
“They were sweet people, they were like ‘please come back’ and it was beautiful. I’m still high from it, though I feel like we didn’t do enough. We’re going to go back in the fall and this time get some stories out of the older kids. We really want to target the seventh- and eighth-graders because it’s the older ones who probably felt the brunt of the hockey incident and they are the next generation. We need to at least make them visible to the rest of the country, help them tell their story, and show them that they can publicize what’s going on in their homeland and not do it in a poverty porn way.”
Poverty is incredibly difficult to report on and connect with. That there are journalists steeping themselves in those difficult stories to bring the rest of us more authentic truths is good for us all.
Esther Cepeda’s email address is [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter, @estherjcepeda. (c) 2015, Washington Post Writers Group