New-U participants at NAJA

Check out veteran American Indian journalist Jodi Rave’s take on journalists as entrepreneurs, featuring the New-U project she and I participated in at the Native American Journalists Association convention in St. Paul last week.

Jesse and I spent Sunday night and all day Monday at the Fond du Lac reservation near Duluth for a lacrosse camp put on by the Minnesota Swarm, the Native American Law Enforcement Summit and the Fond du Lac Band of Ojibwe. I was there to write about the camp and to take some pictures for The Circle newspaper and several other native publications on behalf of the Swarm. Jesse was there to hang out with the other native youth and her favorite all time lax player, the great Travis Hill. We had to rush back to The Cities late Monday afternoon, me for a school board meeting and Jesse for lacrosse playoffs (Eastview B beat Burnsville 6-4 to start the tourney — go, Lightning!)

Below are some pix from the camp. I’ll post links to the story when it’s done.

About 150 native journalists, multimedia artists and entrepreneurs gathered in St. Paul for the annual Native American Journalists Association Conference. It was fun to see old friends and colleagues, but bittersweet to see how shrunken the organization has become over the past four or five years. I participated in a pilot program funded by the Ford Foundation through Unity: Journalists of Color to promote entrepreneurship among people of color. I was paired with native radio legend John Gregg, who is working to start a radio station in Sisseton, SD. Also met some other really smart, entrepreneurial native people who are starting businesses or nonprofits, including Rose High Bear, Deb Krol and Priscilla Wolfe. Joining me as mentors and faculty in the program were Rod Colon, Jodi Rave, Julie Sandidge, Doug Mitchell and Alli Joseph. Read more about the program and its participants here.

During the weeklong NAJA conference (hey, did I mention that we designed the conference logo?), we celebrated the life of our friend Minnie Two Shoes with her family, visited, laughed and told stories into the early morning hours.

Take a look at the videos below to see what the student journalists produced at the conference, as well as coverage of some of the speakers at the gathering from Paul DeMain’s Indian Country TV.

The final cut of the student project at the conference

Ojibwe writer and language teacher Jim Northrup speaks on the Power of Words

Michael Burgess, former executive director of NAJA and current chairman of the Comanche tribe, addresses the conference attendees

Photo courtesy of Nerf

The N-Strike Stampede Blaster, the first fully automatic dart gun, is just what I need to survive the zombie apocalypse. See it in action here. Coooool.