Docuseries gives Indigenous people power to tell stories their own way
Donald Prince remembers what his father taught him about hunting, trapping, running boats and storytelling as he grew up in Fort St. James: “My Dad would always say as Indian people when we do something, we do it for a reason. It's the same with storytelling. It's always for a reason.”
That lesson was a guiding principle for Prince as he worked with journalists from the Global Reporting Centre at UBC to share his story in Turning Points, a documentary short series on alcohol use in Indigenous communities in the Northwest Territories.
Prince was able to craft his story through an innovative collaborative approach to journalistic storytelling developed by the Global Reporting Centre, which shared editorial control — including approval over the final cut — with the subjects of the documentary.
Peter Klein, executive director and founder of the centre, calls the approach “empowerment journalism,” a method that allows the story subjects also be the storytellers — something particularly important in marginalized communities where stories are often reported by outsiders with little or no connection to the culture.
“To me the greatest benefit was seeing the storytellers respond in such a positive way. So many of them had personally had experience with outsider journalists coming in, not with any ill intention of exploitation, but ultimately making them feel a bit used.
“They loved the process, they knew they could walk away, they could kill the story at any point, with no recourse at all,” said Klein. “The process was part of the journalism.”
For the Centre team, that process included having a research coordinator move to Yellowknife to work with community members, and a production process that took three years — a luxury that Klein admits most news organizations don't have.
For Prince, the process meant seven or eight revisions his seven-minute segment. “Lots of people have come up north and gotten our points of view and then them put it into the western way, a non-understanding way,” said Prince. “They take what they don't understand and put their own understanding on it.”
A member of the Dene nation, Prince shares his experience of alcoholism and recovery freely, but he's careful, too. Not because he wants to hide anything, but because he is mindful of its impact.
“There should be a meaning to every story, not just for shock value,” said Prince. “While doing this documentary, there were a couple of things I took out because they were a little too violent and graphic and I thought what is the value of that? What I want to convey is that change is possible no matter where you come from.”
Klein said the project was conceived by his deputy director, Britney Denison, who wanted to look at the issue of alcohol in Indigenous communities, but recognized how difficult it would be, as outsiders, “to get the story right.”
When Klein and Denison consulted with community leaders in Yellowknife, they heard frustration about journalists “popping in, doing their little story and leaving.”
“We asked ourselves, what if we broke the rules?” said Klein.
In traditional reporting, the journalist's job is to gather information and report the “truth,” independent of outside review or censorship. Giving a source pre-approval over story content would be a serious breach of ethics and possibly a firing offence for most journalists.
But parachuting into a community from which much has already been taken — land, children, totem poles — to take stories, would arguably be an even greater ethical breach, said Klein. With community consultation, a collaborative process was developed.
“Transparency fixes most ethical problems in journalism,” said Klein.
The result is nuanced, moving, and hopeful.
For Prince, telling his own story has been key to his recovery. His turning point, after 30 years in and out of jail, homelessness, despair and disconnection from his community, began with a counsellor at Alouette Correctional Centre in B.C.
“He said, I don't care what you did. What happened to you?”
Prince began telling his story to that counsellor, and writing poems. “I knew I wanted to change.”
Now a drug and alcohol counsellor, Prince came on board to consult and decided to share his own story in the film, with a purpose: “If I could help anyone by doing this film, that is what I want. I could tell stories about all the bad things I've done, but I can also talk about the way I felt when I was at my lowest time, and how I got out of that. The point is: how can I help?”
The series is being broadcast on PBS NewsHour's weekend edition.