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Jenni: Tsanavi, congratulations on making it through grad school. It’s brave of you to pursue a career in journalism in these times. Why journalism? Tsanavi: In public school, you're not educated on a lot of Native history and so going to Haskell University, it really opened my eyes. I was just stunned at learning the things that I never even knew, growing up - and so it really shocked me. I also took a reporting class at Haskell and we learned about covering our tribal nations, and more generally how we don't have a voice or a platform as much as the rest of people in the press and so that's why I wanted to be a journalist. I was able to tell stories that affect my community but also enlighten my community and educate them on what's happening and what has happened. J: Yes. As Indigenous journalists, I think we’re realizing we’re also absentee educators, too. What other challenges are most top of mind for you as you start your career? T: There’s always been this huge financial concern, and a lot of people are questioning where they're getting their news and who's funding it. And for myself, coming into the industry, it's hard because being a Native person and wanting to pursue Native issues, it's not seen as objective, right? There's like this question of whether or not I can be objective. But then, on the flip side of that, if you get a Non-Native reporter covering these issues, it's seen more like less advocacy, right? That's frustrating to me because Native people already have this inherent knowledge. J: These editorial dilemmas I understand became a central issue during your last year at Berkeley. What happened? T: I'm pretty sure this was one of the most diverse classes that Berkeley has had, recently, and so you had a lot of people from different backgrounds, a lot of people with strong opinions. I think there were a lot of students who felt jaded going into a program and not having any supervisors that really understood them, whether that be the challenges of telling their own stories, or by being really seen by staff and faculty that didn’t represent them. It was pretty positive in the sense that people were able to vocalize all of these concerns and so being able to hold people accountable, and being able to question the industry editorially - that was empowering for me.
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