The Colorado News Collaborative and Colorado Media Project co-led a series of conversations throughout the Summer and Fall of 2022 with Indigenous leaders, journalists and storytellers across Colorado to identify best practices, practical supports, structural changes, and potential projects that can lead local newsrooms to center the stories, experiences and news and information needs of Indigenous Coloradans. These conversations took place with the support of Osage Nation citizen Tara McLain Manthey, a former journalist and Colorado-based nonprofit consultant, and the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration of public media stations serving Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

Much like the Black, Latinx and Asian, South Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander working groups, the goal was to come up with recommendations for concrete projects or system improvements that COLab (with its 180+ newsroom members) and CMP can help implement.

Initially, two affinity groups of Indigenous community members came together through three separate sessions to explore how local news coverage reflects, respects and reaches diverse Indigenous communities in Colorado. The first group included leaders of Indigenous-led and -serving community organizations who have a deep understanding of the barriers community members face to well-being. The second was a space for Indigenous journalists, communicators and storytellers with experience working in local media and communications. Each group met separately and then they came together for a third joint session. 

A second phase of the project took place engage voices from Colorado’s Southwest Indigenous communities and tribes and include their perspectives.