Description

The Documenters movement was launched by Luce Foundation grantee City Bureau in Chicago in 2018 in response to the collapse of local newspapers. Documenters are citizens who have been trained to report on public meetings in their own communities. Enormously consequential decisions are made at such meetings—about what will be built in a community, how funding will be spent, etc. But very few citizens participate in or even know about the meetings. Documenters chapters have opened across the country, but none in rural areas and none serving rural Indigenous communities. The Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance (IMFA) will remedy that situation, launching the first Indigenous Documenters chapter in Bismarck, North Dakota. The Documenters will cover Bismarck and the surrounding region, which includes the Standing Rock reservation. Luce funding will enable IMFA to hire staff to manage the program and to compensate the Documenters.