ICT teams up with Marquette University to expand Indigenous journalism in Great Lakes region

ICT, the nonprofit multimedia outlet that covers Indigenous communities across the country, opened a bureau at Marquette University this month to expand its coverage of the Great Lakes region.

Announced in October, the partnership with the Milwaukee university’s Diederich College of Communication gives ICT’s reporters access to facilities including broadcast equipment and a podcast studio. Students in the school’s journalism program also get the opportunity to learn about reporting on Indigenous communities from professionals. 

Conversations between Marquette and IndiJ Public Media, which operates ICT, began about a year ago, according to Patrick Johnson, an assistant professor of journalism at Marquette and the point person for the burgeoning partnership.The relationship came to fruition through IndiJ’s former CEO, Karen Michel, who is Ho-Chunk and a graduate of Marquette.

The College of Communication already houses the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, with which ICT has made a separate agreement to share office space in Madison, Wis. Adding ICT to Diederich’s experiential learning opportunities is part of a curricular redesign of the journalism program emphasizing service journalism, according to Johnson.

“ICT is an exemplar of serving a need of a community and finding the right connections to do so, and I implore more journalism schools to think really critically about those kinds of connections,” he said. “These kinds of opportunities and connections are going to benefit our students and create a much stronger pipeline to serve.”

Indij Public Media CEO Katie Oyan, a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation, said Marquette’s emphasis on journalism committed to truth and serving communities made the school a good fit for ICT’s bureau. Oyan said the program is part of a larger goal to expand ICT’s geographic footprint, even with funding limitations.

“Given the times we’re in right now in terms of philanthropic giving, we are still hopeful, and we still want to press for being able to grow our footprint,” she said. 

Amelia Schafer, who is of Wampanoag and Montauk-Brothertown Indian Nation descent, was selected as ICT’s new North Central reporter when the bureau was announced. She spent early January in Milwaukee touring the campus, learning about the community and house hunting when she could.

“ICT is super thrilled to be bringing more Indigenous reporting to this region and [is] really hoping to connect with people and make a difference,” she said.

Schafer won’t be in Milwaukee full-time until May, when she will start reporting on business, casinos in the region, and missing and murdered Indigenous women. Until then, she will cover the region from South Dakota and visit when possible.

As part of the program, an undergraduate journalism student at Marquette will intern with ICT. Nareh Vartanian, a senior journalism student, will intern with Schafer this semester. Vartanian, who hasn’t covered Indigenous communities before, said she has enjoyed learning about different tribes in the area and that she hopes to contribute to ICT’s social media presence.

“Once I heard about the concept of doing this, I felt excited about it because I’m Armenian and I feel some kinsmanship when it comes to displacement and a discouragement to practice your culture,” she said.

IndiJ’s Oyan said she hopes to see ICT’s coverage grow in Alaska, California and Oklahoma. She also intends to work on building partnerships with tribal radio stations to provide free content amid funding cuts.

“We want to be everywhere, one of these days,” she said.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the Diederich College of Communication as the Diederich School of Communication.