Indigenous youth: Nurturing the next generation

Award-winning investigative journalist Angela Sterritt is host of Land Back, a six-part CBC British Columbia original podcast that uncovers land theft in Canada and looks at how Indigenous people are taking it back.

As a multi-platform reporter, host, and producer of more than a decade, Sterritt is known for her impactful journalism on the tensions between Indigenous people and institutions in Canada.

Sterritt’s work has received many accolades including a Canadian Screen Award for Best Local Reporter of the Year in Canada for her coverage of an Indigenous man and his then-12-year-old granddaughter who were arrested while trying to open a bank account at BMO. In 2017, Sterritt accepted the Investigative Award of the Year from Canadian Journalists for Free Expression for coverage of missing and murdered Indigenous women. In 2020, Sterritt was named in Vancouver Magazine’s Power 50 list of the city’s most influential people.

Sterritt is also an educator, having taught journalism at the UBC Graduate School of Journalism, and Western University’s Master of Media in Journalism and Communication program. She is the author of Unbroken: My Fight for Survival, Hope, and Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls.

In 2015, Sterritt was awarded a Southam Fellowship at Massey College/University of Toronto. Before becoming a journalist, Sterritt graduated with a political science degree at UBC.

Sterritt is Gitxsan, a member of the Gitanmaax First Nation in northwestern British Columbia, on her paternal side. Her mother was from Newfoundland with Irish and English ancestry. She is the proud mother of a son.

Dr. Andrea Reid is a citizen of the Nisga’a Nation, a descendant of the Gisk’aast (Killerwhale) clan, with her paternal family coming from Gingolx. She was raised, however, on Epekwitk (Prince Edward Island) by her mother and brothers, and now lives in the Nass River Valley, home of her Nation, in Gitlaxt’aamiks. As an Indigenous fisheries scientist, Dr. Reid joined the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at UBC in 2021. She has launched and now leads the Centre for Indigenous Fisheries, committed to research and teaching approaches that are intergenerational, land-based, and profoundly relational.

Dave Robinson is an Algonquin artist from the Timiskaming First Nation. Robinson is a UBC NITEP (UBC’s Indigenous Teacher Education Program) graduate, a certified teacher, and a UBC Experimental Medicine PhD candidate under the supervision of Dr. Darren Warburton. Currently he works as an Indigenous Enhancement teacher for the Vancouver School Board (VSB). In 2021, he mentored students in an Indigenous-directed studies course at Britannia Secondary School in Vancouver, as part of the VSB’s Treasure Boxes Project. The enrolled students earn high school credits towards social studies, math, and science by learning carving practices on sculptured logs. Robinson’s sculpture style can be understood by the way he considers time, space, and ways in which the sculpture form is created. Although Robinson’s contemporary sculptures bring to mind visionary sculptors Constantin Brancusi, Henry Moore, and traditional First Nations carvers, Robinson’s work is not fashioned directly after their works. However, Robinson’s sculptures share a way of exemplifying the simple forms that reflect archetypal representations of their subject matter.

Dr. Amber Shilling is Anishinaabekwe from Mnjikaning First Nation. She completed her PhD at UBC, in which she explored how urban Indigenous youth utilize technology to engage with culture, language, and identity. Her research demonstrates that youth are incredibly skilled, knowledgeable of risks in the digital age, and are enthusiastic contributors to the development of cultural resources. Dr. Shilling is highly skilled in the areas of Indigenizing, decolonizing, and grappling with the complexities of truth and reconciling.