The Indigenous Journalists Association is proud to announce the recipients of our 2024-2025 graduate-level fellowship and scholarship.
To learn more about how to apply for these and other student programs, check out our website or contact Education Manager Sheena Roetman at sroetman@naja.com.
IJA-ASU-ICT Fellowship
Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Indigenous Journalists Association and ICT have partnered to provide a fellowship to support an Indigenous graduate student to complete a Cronkite master’s degree while producing journalism with colleagues at ICT.
Shondiin Mayo
Shondiin Mayo is a Koyukon Athabascan and Diné freelance multimedia journalist currently based in Fairbanks, Alaska. She graduated from Northern Arizona University (NAU) with a bachelor’s degree in Creative Media and Film, with a focus on Documentary. After to her undergraduate studies, Shondiin worked as a reporter and anchor at a local news station in Fairbanks, where she strived to bring attention to marginalized communities and issues in her broadcasts. Her work is centered around improving cross-cultural communication between Indigenous communities and mainstream media. Ultimately, Shondiin’s upbringing in a small, remote community in rural Alaska, which was only accessible by plane, boat, or snowmachine, motivates her to document her people’s traditional ways of living and their knowledge about the environment that surrounds villages in the Interior of Alaska.
IJA-NYU Scholarship
For the fourth year in a row, IJA and The New York University Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute partnered to provide a full-tuition scholarship to an Indigenous Journalists Association member admitted to a NYU Journalism graduate program in the fall of 2024.
Carrie Johnson
Carrie Johnson is an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation and a descendent of the Pawnee Nation. This past spring, she graduated from Austin College, a small, liberal arts college in Sherman, Texas with her Bachelor’s of Arts degree where she earned the 2023-2024 Outstanding Senior Award. During her senior year, she completed her book, “to tell, for the sake of the birds” – a hybrid collection of prose, poetry, creative nonfiction, and essays. It focuses on topics such as the forced removal of tribes from their original homelands to Oklahoma; federally run Indian Boarding Schools which sought to assimilate Native children into white society; and many other issues, movements, and details and was funded by the Mellon “Humanities for All Times” grant. Most recently, Carrie received the Dreamstarter Grant through Running Strong for American Indian Youth and will direct her documentary about Native American basketball called “A Breath on the Flames.”
Her experiences, among other things, include: being a fellow and mentor-in-training for the Indigenous Journalists Association; a mentee and mentor for NPR’s Next Generation Radio: Indigenous; an intern for Retro Report; an intern for the Chickasaw Press; co-lead for TEDxAustin College 2023; and the 2023 recipient of Underscore Indigenous Journalism Fellowship. Carrie plans to attend New York University in the fall for a Master’s in Journalism with a concentration in News and Documentary.
