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Fortunate To Get A Grant From The Norwegian Journalism Union

CAIRNS ETANHAN WOTANIN



 

 

This week the CAIRNS team presented in Rapid City to the Department of Justice’s District of South Dakota U.S. Attorney’s office staff. The talk focused on the four exhibits that CAIRNS has curated. The latest one is the Takuwe exhibition about the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre.

In addition, CAIRNS hosted a reporter from Norway who is in South Dakota to study American Indian issues. She agreed to write a brief explanation of her research:

My name is Anne Siri Renaa and I’m a Norwegian magazine reporter.

I was fortunate to get a grant from the Norwegian Journalism Union to come to the United States of America for one month to study Native American people’s rights and to improve my English. An independent study arrangement through South Dakota State University has allowed me to travel across the state to meet a variety of interesting people; politicians, academics and activists. My main focus has been interviewing Native American women activists, whom I think deserve more attention in modern history.

For example, Sarah Sunshine Manning is one of the interesting women that I have been fortunate to interview. She is a young educator and independent journalist that reported for Indian Country Media Network during the Standing Rock protests. She is a citizen of the Shoshoni Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in Idaho and Nevada, and a resident of the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota. As a journalist, it was interesting that she strives to go behind the stereotypes of American Indians and her efforts give me new tools for my reporting on both here and at home.

Hopefully my research will lead to a series of articles and maybe a photo exhibition in Norway. Many of my ancestors emigrated from Norway in the late 1800s and early 1900s to South Dakota in search of better life opportunities over here. People from my great grandparent’s generation left their little town in the middle of Norway to settle on what actually was Native American land. To some extent we have knowledge about these Norwegians that came here to farm, and why they decided to cross the Atlantic Ocean by ship. However, most people don’t know anything about the Native American part of this history. I’ll try to show some of this history through my articles, but even more I hope to show all the positive Native American activism that is taking place here now.

I learned about CAIRNS before I left Norway. The organization has helped me to find a focus for my project and has put me in touch with key persons. CAIRNS also facilitated a stay in the Pine Ridge Reservation. I would say that I got my main training on Native American history and contemporary issues from CAIRNS.

As a journalist, I mainly report on/about labor issues, social issues and human rights issues. I’ve also reported from Sápmi, the Indigenous lands in parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Historically the Samis have suffered from some of the same federal policies and procedures that Native Americans dealt with here in the U.S.; land was taken from them, children were sent to boarding schools and many people lost their Native language. Now there seems to be a new and positive awareness in Norwegian society about the Sami people. I hope that the same awareness is arising here, on this land.

Wopila tanka!

Center for American Indian Research and Native Studies CAIRNS is an Indian-controlled nonprofit research and education center founded in 2004 and located in the Lacreek District of Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

*The Center for American Indian Research and Native Studies is an Indian-controlled nonprofit research and education center founded in 2004 and located in the Lacreek District of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

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