Moana Maniapoto in Gothenburg with Tristan Ahtone, an Indigenous Journalists Association board member and editor-at-large at independent media organisation Grist. Photo / Supplied
Moana Maniapoto in Gothenburg with Tristan Ahtone, an Indigenous Journalists Association board member and editor-at-large at independent media organisation Grist. Photo / Supplied
OPINION
Te Ao with Moana host Moana Maniapoto was the sole New Zealand representative at the 13th Global Investigative Journalists Conference in Gothenburg. Here’s an edited version of her travels.
Mamma mia! … security was tight.
Sweden is a country on a high terrorism alert. In fact, as the four-day conference concluded, some delegates were messaging from outside Gothenburg Airport while a bomb squad scoured the terminal. Thankfully, it didn’t transpire to anything.
Given the 13th Global Investigative Journalists Conference (GIJC) was, apparently, the biggest-ever gathering of watchdog journalists, podcast producers and documentary directors on record, bag checks were compulsory outside the venue.
The Committee to Protect Journalists wrote in September that more journalists are killed each year uncovering corruption and politics, as are covering wars. That was before the most recent violent escalation in the Palestinian occupied territories. As of December 8, the committee had recorded 63 reported deaths (the most since counting first began), three missing and 19 arrested by Israel.
As the sole participant from Aotearoa New Zealand, I was invited to join 2137 reporters and editors from 132 countries in Gothenburg. Impostor syndrome is a thing. And I was soaking in it.
Moana Maniapoto during the Indigenous Journalists Association workshop on day one of the 13th Global Investigative Journalists Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, in September. Photo / Heino Ollin
Offered a fellowship from the Indigenous Journalists Association (IJA) by associate director Francine Compton (Sandy Bay Ojibway), I came clean. Made sense … she being an investigative type and I barely having come to terms with being described as a journalist.
I’m the host, a reporter and associate producer of Te Ao with Moana (TAWM), the weekly current affairs series on Whakaata Māori. My son, Hikurangi Kimiora Jackson, is our producer. We’ve just wrapped our fourth full season and were finalists at the NZTV Awards this month. I’m also a trustee and writer for the online Māori and Pasifika platform E-Tangata led by seasoned journalists Tapu Misa and Gary Wilson.
As for the “investigative” bit? That’s more relevant to Cameron Bennett, one of our TAWM producers. Then there’s Paula Penfold, Toby Longbottom and the rest of the award-winning team at Stuff Circuit. I recalled that time long ago when the legendary Pat Booth delivered a guest lecture to a star-struck group of Auckland University first-year law students, including myself.
Author and journalist Nicky Hager. Photo / Mark Mitchell
In August, I reached out to Nicky Hager who had attended the GIJC a few times. A recipient of an ONZM in this year’s King’s Birthday Honours, Hager was the first NZ journalist to receive a citation that specifically referenced his investigative work. He urged me to go, introduced me to his mates by email beforehand and provided sage advice.
“It is huge. Don’t try to go to every workshop,” he said. “Talk to people over a coffee or wine. Make a couple of new friends and it will be worth it.”
Compton asked me to chair a panel that featured Tuhi Martukaw (Pinuyumayan) from Taiwan, Brittany Guyot (Denesuline) from APTN Investigates in Canada, and Tristan Ahtone (Kiowa), an editor-at-large at Grist.
Ahtone described a two-year investigation called Land Grab Universities. He and Robert Lee (a history lecturer) revealed the extent, scale and impact of land taken illegally, and often violently, from native communities on which some of America’s most prestigious universities have been built — “a massive wealth transfer masquerading as a donation”, wrote Ahtone.
The Morrill Act was passed by President Abraham Lincoln and turned “land expropriated from tribal nations into seed money for higher education … nearly 11 million acres”.
Some universities acknowledge they are beneficiaries of that dispossession. Even today, indigenous people are pretty much conspicuous by their absence. While there are few indigenous governors, educators, students and mentions across the curriculum, on Morrill Act lands, there stand “churches, schools, bars, baseball diamonds, parking lots, hiking trails, billboards, restaurants, vineyards …”.
That’s colonisation for you
Despite coming from Hawaii, the US, Canada, Taiwan, Nepal, Sami, Colombia and Aotearoa, our small cohort of indigenous journalists discovered much in common.
Brittany Guyot described how her investigation for APTN Canada revealed the names of about 100 alleged abusers in Manitoba residential schools. Nuns and priests from two Catholic orders ran institutions purposefully designed to assimilate Inuit, Metis and First Nations children. Lawsuits filed in the late 1990s and early 2000s were dropped when the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement was finalised.
The abusers were rarely punished while the intergenerational trauma was clearly visible during Guyot’s interviews with survivors — echoes of New Zealand’s ill-named State Care system now the subject of a royal commission of inquiry.
Dev Kumar Sunuwar, a co-founder of Indigenous Television in Nepal, described the pressure and dangers placed on indigenous peoples in the face of a state determined to build hydro-power plants on native lands. Tuhi Martukaw shared similar stories she had witnessed in the Philippines.
We also explored the struggle to attract interest in indigenous stories inside mainstream newsrooms; the push to grow numbers and capability of indigenous reporters; one-dimensional misrepresentation and sheer invisibility of diverse native voices; the under-resourcing of independent indigenous newsrooms; as well as a lack of time and mentoring to develop investigative skills.
I mentioned how NZ media company Stuff, following the lead of National Geographic and others, ran an audit of its own portrayal and representation of Māori across 160 years. Admitting itself to be racist and blinkered, Stuff issued an apology to Māori.
Te Rito graduates in NZME news teams (from left): Alka Prasad, business reporter; Kahumako Rameka, youth specialist reporter; Raphael Franks, live news reporter; Bonnie Jansen, sports reporter; Te Kakenga Kawiti-Bishari, news reporter Whanganui; Candice Luke, news reporter; Mihingarangi Satele, youth specialist reporter. Image / NZ Herald
I also reflected on the Public Interest Journalism Fund, a strategy to support roles, projects and industry development throughout the Covid-19 downturn. That fund helped stimulate a more-diverse cohort into our newsrooms while nudging platforms into considering actions to bring Te Tiriti to life. Watching these fresh young Te Rito cadets being mentored by Whakaata Māori, Newshub and NZME teams was exciting. Watching the upturn in regional reporting was just as exciting.
On November 27, the day he was sworn in as New Zealand’s new Deputy Prime Minister, Winston Peters suggested the $55 million fund was “bribery” to “state-funded media”.
