Last fall, I spoke to a group of Grade 7 students at Riverside Education Centre in Milford about my career as a journalist and writer. Their teacher invited me because she wanted to get them excited about writing and expressing themselves on paper. She also wanted to identify me as a possible role model to several Mi’kmaq students in her English classes.
Since the middle school is close to my home community of Indian Brook, all of those Mi’kmaq students were from Indian Brook as well. In preparation for the presentation, I reflected on my 18-year career as a journalist and how I got my start in this profession. What I came to realize is that, for whatever reason, I really didn’t receive any encouragement from my teachers to pursue a career in journalism. The encouragement came from other sources.
She didn’t know it at the time, but my mother began to steer me toward journalism when I was only 13 years old. She insisted that I read the daily newspaper either before or after school. She wanted to make sure that I read something on a regular basis. As per her wishes, I read this newspaper every morning before classes began at high school. And the more I read the newspaper, the more I became interested in events happening in the world. I began to watch the evening and late-night news. The newspaper and television newscasts became a part of my daily routine.
I didn’t start to think about journalism as a career until a month before I graduated from high school back in 1987. A classmate encouraged me to apply for one of several summer job openings at the Micmac News, a monthly publication that reported on aboriginal issues in Nova Scotia. I applied for the job and got it a few days before I graduated.
I had a blast that summer. Every morning, I would place my notepad and 35-millimetre camera in my backpack and cycle around my home community looking for interesting people to talk to for my news stories. At the end of each week, I handed in my stories, with pictures to go with them. I even took part in the layout of the newspaper during deadline week.
Everything I’ve done after that summer has been aimed at becoming a journalist, which includes going to university and earning a journalism degree. But I have to admit that it’s been a lonely journey. At journalism school, I was the only aboriginal in a class of 60 students. Up until the past six or seven years, I was the only aboriginal journalist working in mainstream media in Nova Scotia.
While there are other aboriginal journalists working in Canada, very few of them work in media outlets across Atlantic Canada. And that bothers me. I’m not sure why so few aboriginal people in this region see journalism as a career. Maybe it’s because they don’t see themselves reflected in the news on a regular basis. Perhaps journalism schools aren’t doing enough to recruit more aboriginal students. Or maybe they don’t think a career in journalism is attainable. I don’t know.
I have many aboriginal friends who’ve pursued higher learning in other disciplines, such as law, commerce or social work. But I don’t know anyone else in this province, other than my co-worker at the Halifax News Bureau of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, who has pursued a journalism career in mainstream media.
I’ve devoted most of my career to covering aboriginal issues that, up until a few years ago, very few journalists were covering. But in 18 years in this business, I haven’t seen a significant increase in the number of aboriginal journalists in this region filing news stories on a regular basis in the mainstream media.
I have discovered that while writing takes dedication and skill, it is not rocket science. Mostly, it takes a desire to tell a story and the rest follows from there. There are many stories out there that could and should be told – and some that need to be told – from aboriginal communities that just need a voice.
These days, more mainstream media outlets are beginning to realize the importance of having a more diverse workforce in their newsrooms. Canadian cities are becoming more diverse, and print and broadcast media outlets are recognizing the need to attract readers, listeners and viewers from those communities.
I hope that with my talk to these 13-year-olds about my experience as a writer and journalist, I’ve sparked some interest in those Mi’kmaq students to consider journalism as a career.
Maureen Googoo is a Mi’kmaq journalist based in Halifax.
