#NarrativeBack is a trauma-informed media toolkit created by syilx storyteller Kelsie Kilawna, in partnership with MakeWay and IndigiNews. Graphic provided by Kelsie Kilawna

This past August, as catastrophic wildfires were impacting communities throughout syilx and Secwépemc territories, syilx storyteller Kelsie Kilawna felt called to do something. 

As she watched the blazes burn through her homelands, Kilawna was concerned that the media was adding to the trauma being experienced by her kin.

When the White Rock Lake fire impacted her community of Okanagan Indian Band (OKIB) in 2021, she remembers journalists knocking on people’s doors at the time, ignoring protocol and their requests for privacy.

Kilawna is an IndigiNews contributor and cultural collaborator at the philanthropic foundation MakeWay. Drawing from her own lived experiences and through consulting with communities who were impacted by fires this year, Kilawna acted quickly to put together a media resource tool kit for both reporters and Indigenous communities to follow. 

The resource kit, titled #NarrativeBack, gives a community agency and power over how — and if — they want such stories to be told in the media. It consists of templates that communities can use if they want to reach out to media for coverage, and also features a guide for reporters on how to conduct themselves when covering a wildfire in an Indigenous community.

As Kilawna explains in an interview with IndigiNews reporter Aaron Hemens, the #NarrativeBack kit works to empower Indigenous communities impacted by wildfires, by giving them the power to decide who, what and how a journalist shares their story. In other words, it’s about Indigenous people being respected and reclaiming the narrative.

Kilawna’s #NarrativeBack media resource kit, created in collaboration with MakeWay and IndigiNews, is free for all Indigenous communities to use. 

It can be accessed here. 

The following Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

Aaron: You worked on this media resource kit at the height of some terrible wildfires. Can you take me through that — what prompted you to put the kit together? 

Kelsie: Through my work with MakeWay, I was reaching out to communities. We were all sort of reaching out to our communities, like my own homelands, because we were impacted a lot by the fires. 

And I know through the experience of having the fire go through my community, what it felt like to have so many journalists knocking at our door — especially at the height of what was going on — and trying to be extractive or predatory in their practice. And literally just ignoring our requests for them to step back for a moment. We had a lot of that sort of disaster tourism and journalism happening at the time. 

I felt like watching all of these fires [this year] happening in my homeland nations — the Secwépemc and syilx homelands —  I just felt like I had to do something. In our teachings, we have a responsibility to speak to the work that we’re doing. And so that means holding your sector accountable, or holding your industry accountable. Because a lot of times, people care more about having our trauma in the daily news cycle versus caring about who we are as human beings. 

I asked my workplace — we all had a meeting about how we can support communities right now. 

After speaking to some of the communities who were evacuated, or who had fires moved through their community, I talked to my workplace, and I just said, ‘This is a need that I’m hearing. This is a skill that I have and a resource that we can provide.’ That’s when I reached out to IndigiNews and I asked if they wanted to partner on this media kit. 

The media kit would make communities aware of their rights in media, and also their response and media’s responsibilities towards the communities. But also that communities are allowed to tell reporters how they should be treated — everybody is allowed to set their boundaries. Media is not void of responsibility when it comes to caretaking people’s well being. 

It was really important that I make sure that we can provide as much as possible, so that’s why I started writing the media kit — really just having Indigenous people be respected in storytelling and reclaiming the narrative. 

I just started writing — I started thinking about it from my own lived experience. I really rooted my work in the teachings that I have about how we caretake trauma, and to safeguard communities from being over exploited by predatory journalism, or by just journalism in general. Really empowering communities to know that they are allowed to tell people how to treat them, we are still allowed to have boundaries and we’re still allowed to have agency over our narrative.

That was like my whole purpose of wanting to put it out, was to safeguard community and to give community something to work with that was very tangible and easy to use in these kinds of times, when thinking about media kits is the last thing on anyone’s mind. It was just a resource that I felt best positioned to provide. 

A: What did consultation with communities look like when you’re putting the kit together? How did you figure out what their needs were and what they wanted to see? 

K: I was consulting directly with the communities who were impacted, and listening to what they were saying that they were experiencing with media. Hearing sort of the need that they had directly of like, ‘We want to put something out but we don’t have the time, we don’t have the resources.’ One of the communities I was speaking to had one person on the whole entire team that was able to do some remote work. And so they just were not in the position to best answer questions, or to do any of those sorts of communication outputs. That’s when I kept hearing it over and over in this consultation process. I knew these are the things that are highly needed right now. 

And also from our community, we have quite well developed standards of media working with us – or I guess, best practices. I started sort of pulling from what we do as well; we have protocol here of how we engage with our people, and so I started putting in as much as I could for folks to use that felt useful.

A: I’m curious to hear about the main concerns that communities were bringing up about media coverage. Would you be able to share what they were saying, some of those concerns?

K: It was just a lot of journalists not respecting the fact that the community was actively going through a crisis, and then showing up at whatever the front line looks like in wherever communities, because it looks different everywhere. Showing up to the frontlines and trying to get interviews with just anybody who will talk to them. Going on to members’ Facebook pages, and just pulling from people’s personal experiences that they’re sharing on their personal social media. 

I think that’s a boundary that a lot of people don’t think about, is that social media — yes, while it is still publicly available, in technicality, it’s legal to do that — it’s completely disrespectful. There’s so much context that goes behind that — these people are speaking to certain audiences, they’re speaking to their family, they’re speaking to very personal circles. Whereas journalists will go in and extract those traumatic posts, and then use it in their story or headline without any consent, or with the person even knowing. 

I think that in any realm — whether it be digital and online, or in person — our people deserve respect, and they deserve to be honoured in the time of these trauma ceremonies that we’re going through, these grief ceremonies. The parts of this experience is us moving through these changes of our homelands, with deep respect for the work that’s happening with the fire. 

There’s so many nuances and layers of spirituality and of our cultural teachings that are embedded into a wildfire, or into any climate related disaster that’s happening and ongoing. And so with ceremony, there comes protocol, and so many times you see media breaching those protocols, just because of the predatory behavior.

A: For you, how was that for you putting this kit together, but also dealing with the realities of these terrible wildfires affecting your homelands?

K: I think I felt better positioned because it wasn’t in my community. Yes, it was my homeland, but it wasn’t in my community. So it felt like much more of a calling to action for me, and something that I could do to support our different neighbouring communities throughout syilx and Secwépemc Nations, and it was how I could help. 

I actually felt much better in terms of providing this resource and being able to put it together because it wasn’t on my back door. I had the privilege of being able to be able to process thought in a really good way where I can provide something. 

When it was happening in my community, it was so stressful and you just didn’t know what tomorrow would bring. And because I know that feeling, then I had the self location and I had the responsibility to speak on it and to do something about it. So using that responsibility and grounding myself through ceremony to keep writing, was sort of how I got through it in a way that protected me.

A: I know the kit is made specifically for wildfires. But do you think this could be applied to any sort of climate-related issue?

K: Yeah, we actually talked about that. It can definitely be used for any climate related disaster or event. And we’re changing the title. Well, the title of it is, #NarrativeBack. It’s a trauma informed media kit for any sort of crisis, really, that goes through communities. 

Because in the moment of crisis, we don’t have the ability to think in that way, to have foresight — we’re thinking about what’s going on right now when we’re in survival mode, and how we’re going to support our people through those times. 

This is something that’s just tangible and it’s put together. It’s a fill-in-the-blanks for any community to use. Both IndigiNews and MakeWay have agreed to not have any sort of acknowledgement for the use of it — it’s just for communities to copy and paste, put it into their own little logo, their own branding, and to use on their own. They don’t need any permission from either MakeWay or IndigiNews to use it. 

We wanted to make it really user friendly and for anything that they might have come through their community, where they need media to basically, in a sense, behave.

A: How would you like to see this media kit impact any coverage going forward?

K: I think that when we have something that we put out as Indigenous people — we put out our protocol and we put out actions that we need to have happen — it lessens the ignorance that we see in media. Because then there is something — when people are like, ‘I don’t know how to do that.’ Well, there’s literally a kit, there are literally resources that tell you how to conduct yourself in community in a good way. 

I think the more that we have out there on how to be a good guest on our homelands, the less room there is for ignorance, and then the more we can hold industry accountable. And then the greater chances of us taking back our narratives, and us being able to shape our narrative for once.

I think that’s what I hope to see; is that we have much more Indigenous-powered narratives, a lot more trauma-informed care going into our stories. And when we’re in the motion of moving through crisis — especially something like a wildfire — that there’s certain parts of the story that are necessary in the moment. There is a place for daily news in the moment — however, there is not a place or time for them to go into the community, to go into situations and to be a predator to our vulnerability, and to use that to create a story so that there’s more clicks, or there’s more engagement. 

I think that what I would like to see is differentiated and stopped; is in the moment, crisis story reporting, because there just isn’t space for that at the moment. And people should be the ones going to media to say, ‘I want to share this story,’ versus them always reaching out and being like, ‘I want to tell this story,’ or, ‘How are you feeling?,’ or, ‘Anyone who’s experiencing this fire message me.’ Those kinds of things are just really damaging because you’re playing on people’s vulnerability.

A: I like that section you added, the template for communities if they want to reach out to media. I like that you added that in there to give them that agency or the opportunities for if they want coverage.

K: Exactly! I want people to feel empowered to tell their story when they want to tell it, when they’re ready to. And then for media to sit back a little bit and to take a moment to think about what they’re doing. I think for communities to be empowered to reach out and share what story they want and when, is taking the narrative back.

A: How are you feeling now that the kit is out there now in the world?

K: I feel really good. And again, I feel like it adds weight to journalists, in a sense. Because now there is something that they can use, that can be a resource for them, where they will be held accountable. 

If a community copies, pastes and puts this out, then there is accountability behind that. There is respect and protocol that needs to be followed. I’m hoping that when this is utilized in whatever way that might look like — because people might chop it up and use it for their own thing, and that’s totally cool. That’s okay, that’s what it’s there for. I just want to see our people be harmed less — that’s my hope of all of this. 

Even if one person benefits from this, I will feel so happy for that. Personally, that will feel really good for me; to know that I’ve supported and protected at least one of our people. That, to me, is my end goal.

A: That’s everything I really want to ask you. Is there anything you’d like to add? Or anything I missed or any final comments?

K: I think the only thing, which I already captured, was that any community or any Indigenous-based organization, or group of people, or even grassroots people, anyone — any Indigenous person can have access and use this in any way that they feel, without giving us any credit.

I just really want to make sure that those teachings remain humble, that these belong to everybody. And we all deserve to be treated as human. So this belongs to everyone, and I want to make sure that all indigenous people know that they can access it in any way they want to use it.

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