Jodi Rave Spotted Bear

Journalist & Media Entrepreneur

Jodi Rave Spotted Bear is a journalist and media entrepreneur. She’s now a MacDowell Colony fellow working on a creative non-fiction book about freedom of information, the oil industry and the cultural impact on the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. Jodi has won awards from mainstream, military, university and Native press associations during nearly 15 years of reporting for daily newspapers. She spent more than a decade reporting on American Indian issues before returning to the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota where she founded the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, a nonprofit media organization that aims to strengthen independent media in Native communities. She’s an advisory board member for the Red Press Initiative of the Native American Journalists Association, a groundbreaking survey on press freedom in Indian Country. In support of independent media, the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance recently launched a video news pilot the organizations online news site at buffalosfire.com. Jodi is a Harvard Nieman Fellow and a Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution fellow.