Staff

Jodi Rave Spotted Bear is the founder and director of the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, a 501-C-3 nonprofit organization with offices in Bismarck, N.D. and the Fort Berthold Reservation. Jodi spent 15 years reporting for the mainstream press. She’s been awarded prestigious Nieman and John S. Knight journalism fellowships at Harvard and Stanford, respectively. She also an MIT Knight Science Journalism Project fellow. Her writing is featured in “The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity,” published by Columbia University Press. Jodi currently serves as a Society of Professional Journalists at-large board member, an SPJ Foundation board member, and she chairs the SPJ Freedom of Information Committee. Jodi has won top journalism awards from mainstream and Native press organizations. She earned her journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Teresa Trumbly Lamsam, Ph.D., is an enrolled member of the Osage Nation. A seasoned journalist, she has served as executive editor of the Native Health News Alliance and taught journalism at several universities. Teresa’s work emphasizes trauma-informed journalism and cultural accuracy in reporting. As Director of Research and Strategic Initiatives for the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, she integrates her extensive research background with her commitment to Native voices and addressing community information needs.

Brian Bull is a proud member of the Nez Perce Tribe, and he’s also proud to have been a journalist for half of his life. His trail includes stints at National Public Radio, NPR affiliates including South Dakota Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Radio, KLCC in Eugene, Oregon, and substitute hosting for National Native News. His digital/print/photographic work has been featured in Indian Country Today, The Oregonian, and People Magazine. He’s also been a longtime mentor with NPR’s NextGen Radio Project, as well as a former Snowden Fellow mentor and journalism professor at the University of Oregon. Bull’s work has netted him more than a hundred accolades, include the Best Radio Journalist Award from the Indigenous Journalists Association in 2001, four national Edward R. Murrow awards from the RTDNA, Ohio AP’s Best Reporter Award in 2013, and a free bag of coffee for presenting at a local SPJ panel in 2018. He enjoys sharing the voices of underrepresented communities and occasionally wandering the forests, looking for Bigfoot. He has three kids, a wife, and five unruly cats who keep him in his place.

Bull is an alum of Macalester College, and recently finished his Masters Degree in American Journalism Online at New York University. He’s excited to be with Buffalo’s Fire, and will share Native/Indigenous stories from the Pacific Northwest where he’s based. This means he’ll always be two hours behind the rest of the staff, which is sort of the story of his life.

Erin Hoover Barnett is a nationally recognized journalist and veteran public sector communications leader.

During 17 years with The Oregonian newspaper in Portland, her work was twice nominated for a Pulitzer, the second time selected as a Pulitzer Finalist with co-author Steve Suo. Erin served with Jodi Rave Spotted Bear as a Nieman Journalism Fellow at Harvard University in 2003-04. A class trip led by Jodi to the Navajo and Hopi Reservations that spring kindled Erin’s desire to learn more.

From 2008 – 2025, she served as a communications leader, first at the state’s largest school district, Portland Public Schools, and then at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), the state’s academic medical center. Contributions included helping share out the launch and growth of the OHSU Northwest Native American Center of Excellence. Founded by Dr. Erik Brodt (Ojibwe), the Center has recruited the largest cohort of American Indian and Alaska Native students in a non-Native medical school in the country.

Born in Wisconsin, Erin traces her roots to North Dakota and Michigan. She graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota with a bachelor’s in political science. She joined Buffalo’s Fire in August 2025.

Tori Marlan is Buffalo Fire’s Guest Managing Editor. An award-winning journalist whose freelance work has been featured in a variety of newspapers, magazines and digital publications, she lives and works on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen people.

Previously, Tori was a staff reporter for the Chicago Reader, Capital Daily, and the Investigative Journalism Foundation. She has served as a judge for Canada’s National Magazine Awards and has mentored early-career reporters through the Canadian Association of Journalists.

Castle Fox serves as the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance/ Buffalo’s Fire Digital Content Manager. She was raised in Twin Buttes, N.D., located on the Fort Berthold Reservation. She belongs to the Knife Clan and is an enrolled citizen of the Mandan Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. For the last six years she’s worked as a customer service representative for a number of local businesses in the Bismarck-Mandan area.

Castle is looking forward to working with the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance and Buffalo’s Fire, the online news publication of IMFA, to be part of an uprising of independent Indigenous media for Indian Country.

She plans to remain with IMFA while currently furthering her education in business administration at the United Tribes Technical College. She’s devoted to her local community and hopes to help improve it for the future generations. She’s a lifelong resident of North Dakota. Since relocating from the Fort Berthold Reservation, she now lives in Bismarck, N.D. with her five family members. She’s caring and quick to help friends and relatives.

Daniela Aki (Hunkpapa Lakota and Mexican American) is the Bismarck Documenters Site Manager for Buffalo’s Fire. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration from United Tribes Technical College (UTTC) in Bismarck, ND, in 2023. She is currently working toward her MBA at Sitting Bull College, supporting the North Dakota Tribal College System (NDTCS), which poured a staggering $169.5 million into the North Dakota economy from 2022-2023.

Community support is her main passion, and she is excited to activate new, and current, Documenters in the area to civic engagement and their right to freedom of information. Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance provides the perfect platform for community outreach and Daniela knows her community will rise to the challenge of commitment to information-sharing among, and through, Indigenous communities, which often lack consistent access to dependable sources of information. Through Documenters, she envisions honest and reliable information to connect Indigenous populations, wherever they reside in North Dakota.

Pier Paolo is a journalist and technologist who has worked at the intersection of journalism, product design, UX and software development for over 20 years. He experiments with new workflows and storytelling formats to broaden reach and deepen engagement through content innovation, data and automation.

A native Italian, he has worked in New York as a foreign correspondent covering politics and finance. He has built content management systems and engineered AI‑driven solutions for journalism.

At the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance he is the Product & Audience Growth Lead and contributes to Buffalo’s Fire as a data journalist.

Jolan Kruse is investigating the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples in the Northern Plains. She is from the Chicago suburbs, but currently lives and works in Bismarck, North Dakota. Prior to joining Buffalo’s Fire, Jolan interned with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and WISN Channel 12 News, where she covered Milwaukee schools, breaking news and the local government. She also reported on criminal justice reform for the O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism.

Jolan was part of the Marquette University class of 2025, graduating with honors in journalism and social welfare and justice. She studied abroad in Cape Town, South Africa, immersing herself in the local community as a volunteer teacher for 4th grade English while taking classes at the University of Western Cape.

Jolan hopes to use her passion for social justice to bring awareness to the MMIP crisis while holding power structures to account. You can support her work with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America.

Gabrielle Nelson covers environment, agriculture and energy along the Missouri River. Before joining Buffalo’s Fire, she worked as an environmental reporting intern at the nonprofit publication Bridge Michigan, covering climate change, renewable energy and the Great Lakes. Gabrielle received a journalism degree from Michigan State University, where she worked as an entertainment editorial assistant and DJ for the college radio station Impact 89FM.

Originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan, she now lives and works in Bismarck, North Dakota.

At Buffalo’s Fire, Gabrielle hopes to combine her love of environmental journalism with narrative writing to tell stories that are important to North Dakota’s Native communities. You can support her work with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America.