Staff
Jodi Rave Spotted Bear is the founder-director of the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, a 501-C-3 nonprofit organization, located on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. The organization publishes on Buffalo’s Fire, an independent digital news site. Buffalosfire.com is the first Native American news site to become a member of The Trust Project, an international consortium of news organizations dedicated to integrity, transparency and accountability in the news industry. The project assists the public in making informed news choices within a free and responsible press.
Jodi is an award-winning journalist and opinion writer whose recognition and awards arise from the mainstream, military, university journalism programs as well as the Native American Journalists Association. She was selected in 2021 as a Bush Fellow for leadership, a recognition of her decades-long commitment to journalism and her vision for well-informed Indigenous communities. In 2021, Jodi was also named a John S. Knight Community Impact Fellow of Stanford University.
After reporting for daily newspapers for nearly 15 years., she returned to her ancestral homelands of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. She served as the executive director of the Fort Berthold Communications Director — overseeing the Three Affiliated Tribes newspaper and radio station – before starting a non-profit dedicated to Freedom of Information and open records. She also enjoyed being a Native American Studies instructor at the Nueta, Hidatsa and Sahnish College in New Town, N.D. where she taught courses on the media and tribal governance.
Prior to that, she worked more than a decade as national reporter on American Indian issues for Lee Newspapers. She was based at the Lincoln Journal Star in Nebraska and the Missoulian in Montana. Jodi has been awarded a number of fellowships, including an MIT Knight Science Journalism fellowship in 2021-2021. In 2003, she received a Nieman Fellowship for journalists at Harvard University.
She is also the recipient of national awards and honors for news and opinion writing, including the Society of Professional Journalists Pacific Northwest, Native American Journalists Association, Montana Newspaper Association, Columbia University School of Journalism and the University of Nebraska. She was also awarded the Paul D. Savanuck Military Journalist of the Year in 1999. Her writing is featured in “The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity,” published by Columbia University Press.
Jodi is Mandan-Hidatsa and Lakota. She lives in Bismarck, N.D. with her husband and daughter.
Adrianna Adame
Indigenous Democracy News Beat/Report for America Corps Member
adrianna@imfreedomalliance.org
Adrianna Adame — enrolled Chippewa Cree, Rocky Boy’s Reservation in Montana — is a Report for America corps member covering Indigenous Democracy across the state of North Dakota for Buffalo’s
Fire. While in Bismarck, she will be reporting on voting rights, tribal council, school board and rural co-op meetings, tribal college stories and K-12 education. Prior to joining Buffalo’s Fire, Adame graduated with her Masters in Journalism from Syracuse University’s S.I. School of Public Communication, where she was a Newhouse Minority Fellow and intern at Syracuse.com.
In Syracuse, she reported on stories from underrepresented communities in Central New York, as well as arts and entertainment. Adame has also contributed and written for local and editorial sites such as
POPSUGAR, the Stand, NPR Next Gen and Flique Editorial. Throughout her
undergrad years, she also held the positions of Managing and News Editor for The Cougar Chronicle, California State San Marcos’ student newspaper, where she lead, edited, reported and most importantly, first became passionate about journalism. Since her days at The Cougar Chronicle, she’s has been determined to work in local journalism, primarily focusing on diverse communities. Adame is Mexican American and a proud member of the Chippewa Cree Tribe of Rocky Boy, Montana.
Talli Nauman is co-founder and director of the international bilingual media project Journalism to Raise Environmental Awareness, initiated with a MacArthur grant in 1994. She is the Contributing Editor at Buffalo’s Fire-Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance and at The Esperanza Project.
She is the Editor of her own publication Meloncoyote, a bilingual newsletter that teams prize-winning environmental journalists and aspiring youth in training sessions to advance media coverage of sustainability issues in Northwest Mexico and Southwest U.S.A. She served as Society of Environmental Journalists Diversity Associate, co-authoring the organization’s Guide to Diversity in Environmental Reporting. She wrote the first guide to Environmental Journalism in Latin America and the Caribbean, originally published in 2018.
Her experience encompasses 45 years in major media outlets in the Americas, including The Guardian, Reuters, Los Angeles Times Syndicate, UPI, and AP in Los Angeles and Mexico City.
She has an MA in International Journalism from University of Southern California and a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard-Radcliffe.
“I feel that I have a better understanding going into a interview or researching for a story involving
Castle Fox serves as the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance administrative assistant. 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.
In spring 2024, she plans to remain with IMFA while 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.
Annie High Elk, community engagement coordinator for the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, is looking forward to working with at least 20 local residents in and around Burleigh and Morton counties to become paid notetakers at local meetings.
If you are interested in becoming a notetaker, please send a message to email above.
“I am a straight shooter, writing from the heart, focused upon my readers, which are largely fellow tribal members or those of good heart who have an interest in Indians,” Clara says. “I”m no expert, but have ‘lived it’ from the bottom to the top.”
Clara is a member of the Northern Cheyenne Nation and has expertise in covering Great Plains tribes.
She is a former instructor in Native American Studies, and she was the first woman elected as vice president of her tribe. She was also a former staffer to a U.S. Senator.