Grist staff to be recognized during 2025 Indigenous Media Awards Banquet Aug. 15
The Indigenous Journalists Association (IJA) has selected Grist as the recipient of the 2025 Richard LaCourse Award for Investigative Journalism, which honors groundbreaking work by journalists who serve as community watchdogs using innovative storytelling and reporting tools. Special consideration is given to journalism that helps Indigenous communities understand and address pressing issues.
The 2025 Special Awards Selection Committee selected Grist for its “Misplaced Trust” investigation series, which revealed how land-grant universities continue to profit from more than 8.3 million acres of land taken from 123 Indigenous nations. This deeply reported series traced the legacy and ongoing impacts of these land transfers, exposing how universities have benefited financially while tribes were dispossessed and excluded from decision-making.
Led by Indigenous and allied journalists, “Misplaced Trust” combined archival research, data analysis and on-the-ground reporting to illuminate the historical and contemporary consequences of land expropriation. The series has fueled national conversations about restitution, university accountability and Indigenous sovereignty.
Grist is an independent, nonprofit media organization dedicated to climate justice, sustainability and solutions-driven reporting. Its Indigenous affairs coverage centers Native perspectives and leadership in addressing environmental and systemic injustices.
Grist will be honored during the 2025 Indigenous Media Awards Banquet on Friday, Aug. 15, during the 2025 Indigenous Media Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The IJA Special Awards Committee is composed of current and former IJA board members and past awardees.
The “Misplaced Trust” Team
Tristan Ahtone is a member of the Kiowa Tribe and is Editor at Large at Grist. He previously served as Editor in Chief at the Texas Observer and Indigenous Affairs editor at High Country News. He has reported for Al Jazeera America, PBS NewsHour, Indian Country Today, and NPR, to name a few. Ahtone’s stories have won multiple honors, including a George Polk Award, a National Magazine Award nomination, and investigative awards from the Gannett Foundation, the Native American Journalists Association, and IRE: Investigative Reporters and Editors. A past president of the Indigenous Journalists Association, Ahtone is a 2017 Nieman Fellow.
Clayton Aldern is an environmental journalist and data scientist who reports on climate change, environmental justice, and brain health. A senior data reporter at Grist and research affiliate at the University of Washington’s Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology, he has contributed to reporting teams that have won a national Edward R. Murrow Award, multiple Online Journalism Awards, multiple Sigma Awards, and the Nina Mason Pulliam Award for Outstanding Environmental Reporting. His work has appeared in The Guardian, The Economist, The Atlantic, Aeon, and other publications. He is the author of The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains and co-author, with Gregg Colburn, of Homelessness is a Housing Problem.
Robert Lee is an Associate Professor of History and Fellow of Selwyn College at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the relationship between Indigenous dispossession and US state formation in the nineteenth-century American West.
Maria Parazo Rose is a journalist, researcher, and cartographer who covers Indigenous sovereignty, land use and rights, and the impacts of climate change on tribal communities. She graduated with a master’s degree from MIT’s Science Writing program, and her investigative reporting is informed by her scientific training, data and mapping skills, and nonprofit work in migration and displacement. Currently, she’s a Nova Media Fellow, reporting on how land dispossession threatens the health of tribal communities, especially in the context of climate change. Her work can be found in publications like Grist, Popular Science, NPR, and High Country News, among others.
An Garagiola, Bois Forte Band of Chippewa, MPP is a mother, PhD candidate, researcher, and writer born and raised in the Twin Cities. An’s dissertation focuses on the intersection of Indigenous research sovereignty and policy. She serves as the Research Scientist in the Office of American Indian Health at MDH, where she works to Indigenize wellness research, identify sources of holistic well-being, and influence systems change through a cultural framework. As a mixed-race Anishinaabekwe of Ojibwe and European descent, An’s work blossoms from relational and place-based roots. An was UMN’s coordinator for The TRUTH Project and co-author on Misplaced Trust, where her research unearthed Minnesota’s system of land speculation and wealth transfer from Native Nations that continues to impact American Indian wellness. She is passionate about designing plans that help systems become more equitable, sustainable, and accessible for people who institutions continue to marginalize.
Audrianna Goodwin is a citizen of the Red Lake Nation and is dedicated to reclaiming Indigenous Ways of Knowing by leveraging Western tools to assess and measure impacts while simultaneously re-infusing lifeways that have gone through a process of rejuvenation from generation to generation in our communities. She has a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and currently serves as the Tiwahe Specialist for the Red Lake Nation and is an advisory board member with MMIW218, and Ganawenindidaa – Let’s Take Care of Each Other.
Dr. Amanda R. Tachine is Navajo from Ganado, Arizona. She is Náneesht’ézhí Táchii’nii (Zuni Red Running into Water), born for Tł’ízí łání (Many Goats). She is an Assistant Professor in Educational Studies at the University of Oregon. Amanda’s research explores the relationship between systemic and structural histories of settler colonialism and the ongoing erasure of Indigenous presence and belonging in college settings using qualitative Indigenous methodologies. She is the author of the award-winning book Native Presence and Sovereignty in College and co-editor of Weaving an Otherwise: In-relations Methodological Practice. She has published in the Journal of Higher Education, Qualitative Inquiry, International Review of Qualitative Research, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, and other scholarly outlets. Her work has also been published in Marvel and Grist! She has also published thought pieces in the Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, The Hill, Teen Vogue, Indian Country Today, Inside Higher Ed, and Navajo Times, where she advances ideas regarding discriminatory actions, educational policies, and inspirational movements.
