A View from the Communities

In April 2009, the Native Voices Program began facilitating magazine and newspaper reporting about traditional indigenous communities, climate change, and adaptation strategies worldwide. Supported by the indigenous-focused Christensen Fund, Native Voices commissions articles with newspapers and magazines, including selecting writers, arranging access to sources, and coordinating visits to chosen sites. Sites are selected by a range of criteria, from story quality and reliability of sources to ease of access and availability of interpreters. Reporting assignments are made regularly. We also welcome proposals from writers. Apart from publication in print, results are posted with Project Word and with an international multimedia collaboration, Conversations with the Earth, which amplifies indigenous voices on climate change.

To learn more about how to become involved, writers should go to for writers, editors to for editors. To apply, writers should go to writers' guidelines.

Climate change articles should focus on ground observations of select communities and their adaptations strategies. Depending on the site, a story might involve the impacts not of global warming itself but of measures to mitigate global warming, such as plantations for biofuel (which often displace tribes from their traditional territory).

Selected writers receive story-development expenses (but only expenses—pay comes from publications), logistical and developmental editing to strengthen proposal and pieces, and, in some cases, a photographer. We provide entrée to magazines or newspapers where necessary. Appropriate editors receive a query or full article, possibly with photographs.

Because of the investment involved, we select writers carefully. Since the focus involves cultural disruption and adaptation strategies as well as narrative complexity, we can only consider candidates with extensive reporting experience, long-form narrative skills, and a facility with indigenous culture and traditional practices.

Qualifications for climate change project:

• 3–5 years' experience writing for 75k-circulation newspapers or major magazines
• Experience in long-form feature writing or narrative journalism
• Background working with ecology and biocultural relationships
• Extensive experience working in, living with, or reporting on indigenous communities
• Background in cultural anthropology, ethnobotany, or related fields a plus.

For more information, see writers' guidelines.