Podcasting Protocols & Pathways: land acknowledgment in outlining a process for
decolonial reflexivity and audio stewardship
Meg Wilcox, Mount Royal University
Kyle Napier, University of Alberta
ABSTRACT
As journalists and media-makers in Canada work toward reconciliation with Indigenous peoples,
there has been increased discussion on how to work respectfully with Indigenous communities,
stories and knowledge. However, for podcasters and audio journalists, there are still limited
resources on guidelines and best practices on working in these contexts. This article describes
and considers several resources which foster decolonial frameworks for mediamaking: OnScreen Protocols & Pathways: A Media Production Guide to Working with First Nations, Métis
and Inuit Communities, Cultures, Concepts and Stories, published by imagineNATIVE (2019);
broader Indigenous methodological frameworks by Margaret Kovach (2021), and Linda Tuhiwai
Smith (2021); and a question sheet for critical reflexivity in academic work with Indigenous
communities, developed by Dr. Candace Kaleimamoowahinekapu Galla (2021). The authors
then discuss their experience working on the Canadian Mountain Podcast — a series that
shares mountain-related research from academic and Indigenous perspectives — and the steps
the team took to decolonize their methods and work respectfully with different forms of
knowledge. Finally, this article looks at the team’s use of developing land acknowledgements
and how this practice provided a space for them to reflect on their journalistic practices and
adjust their processes as audio stewards to better align with the values of respect,
responsibility, consent and reciprocity.
KEYWORDS
Podcasting, indigenous, land acknowledgment, decolonizing, collaboration
© Wilcox, Meg and Napier, Kyle (2024). The definitive, peer reviewed and edited version of this
article is published in Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, 22:1,
pp. 57–74, https://doi.org/10.1386/rjao_00090_1]

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POSITIONALITY STATEMENT
As Margaret Kovach writes, by situating ourselves in our positionalities, we are able to more
clearly speak from our own personal contexts (2021: 137). The following positionality
statements provide the fundamental contexts from our perspective as authors and mediamakers, as we situate ourselves from the lands upon which we write from, and the audiences
for which we are writing for.
Meg Wilcox
I am based in Mohkintsis, also known as Calgary, Canada — however, I was born and raised in
Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc territory in British Columbia, situated within the unceded ancestral
lands of the Secwépemc Nation. As a settler, I am a visitor in my current home in more ways
than one, and am committed to learning from and working respectfully with the Niitsitapi, îyârhe
Nakoda, Tsuut’ina and Métis Peoples who have stewarded this land for centuries. As a
journalist, I believe in uncovering the truth about the world around us, and this means continuing
to learn about Canada’s history with Indigenous peoples, as well as to learn about Indigenous
peoples, culture and practices today, and to share and incorporate this knowledge into my work
as appropriate. This belief in better understanding our world is driven by a desire to improve it,
by challenging our institutions and creating a more just society — which I also aim to do as a
professor, working with future journalists and storytellers as they navigate their way as mediamakers who will challenge and change the world on their terms. As a white, cisgender woman, I
acknowledge the limitations that come with my personal experience, and am committed to
prioritizing an intersectional approach and using my skills as a communications professional to
seek out alternate views and perspectives in my work.
Kyle Napier
I am a Métis scholar and media-maker, from Tthebacha (Fort Smith, NWT), Lenape-Hoking
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), and Moh’kinstsis (Calgary, Alberta) — now currently living and
writing from Kue Nedhe (Edmonton, Alberta). As a Métis with both Dene and nêhiyaw ancestry,
I seek to re-root myself in the language, lands, and laws of my lineage. As a media-maker, I
realize the roles of communication in public change, and the risks and disservices media play in
sharing perspectives which are not theirs. I am a post-secondary instructor of four years,
regularly teaching at the University of Victoria, the University of Alberta, and NorQuest College. I
have taught at Mount Royal University, and have joined land camps at the Dechinta Centre for
Research and Learning as a guest lecturer. The majority of my students are Indigenous, or new
Canadians. As an instructor working within onto-epistemological pluralism, I seek to address
global perspectives on Indigenous reclamation of lands, language, and laws. The rematriative
stewardship of sacred, secret, or sensitive Indigenous knowledges as gathered in media sets
the framework for my principal interests in navigating complexities with relationality and
knowledge stewardship with Indigenous communities.

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INTRODUCTION
In the wake of more than 50 Truth and Reconciliation Commissions globally, and the nearlyglobally adopted United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, there is a
growing recognition of the need to both decolonize institutions and systems of power and
recognize the role of media in making these changes. In Canada, this is reflected in three of the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action to further reconciliation under “Media and
Reconciliation” (TRC 2015: 9-10) alongside the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous People (United Nations 2008). However, resources for media-makers on how to
approach decolonizing their work are limited, particularly in the realm of podcasting. To this end,
this article hopes to open the discussion on decolonizing podcasting production methods by
looking at several resources that foster decolonial frameworks for mediamaking: On-Screen
Protocols & Pathways: A Media Production Guide to Working with First Nations, Métis and Inuit
Communities, Cultures, Concepts and Stories, published by imagineNATIVE (2019); broader
Indigenous methodological frameworks by Margaret Kovach (2021) and Linda Tuhiwai Smith
(2021); and a question sheet for critical reflexivity in academic work with Indigenous
communities, developed by Dr. Candace Kaleimamoowahinekapu Galla (2021). While the
purpose of these documents have distinct goals in media, relationality, or methodology, many of
the key concepts — respect, responsibility, consent, and reciprocity — apply to audio
storytelling and can be adapted for podcasting. Further, the authors describe how developing
and revising a land acknowledgement for podcasts produced in collaboration with the Canadian
Mountain Network (CMN) became the key framework to reflexively implementing these four
concepts over their five seasons of producing the podcast, and how these changes in their
audio production process helped the team better consider and understand their role as audio
stewards.
MEDIAMAKING AS A COLONIAL PRACTICE
Many scholars have established that media production is an inherently colonial practice. In
Decolonizing Methodologies (2021), Linda Tuhiwai Smith opens the book by discussing how
collective memory of imperialism is ‘perpetuated through the ways in which knowledge about
Indigenous peoples was collected, classified and then represented back in various ways back to
the West, and then, through the eyes of the West, back to those who have been colonized’
(2021:1). She references Edward Said’s western discourse about the Other, and how this is
supported by ‘institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial
bureaucracies and colonial styles’ (2021: 1). While she mostly aims her critique at academic

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research, Tuhiwai Smith points to how these ideological constructs of the Other in scholarly and
‘popular’ works help to ‘select and recontextualize those constructions in things such as the
media, official histories and school curricula’ (2021: 8). The democratized media sphere, rooted
in Habermas’s work on the public sphere (Habermas et al,1974) and its subsequent critique,
represents all of these concepts as an institution built within a male Eurocentric world-view to
collect stories and reflect them back to the public.
Research shows that, whether it be in newspapers or in broadcast media, Canadian
media outlets in particular are ‘far more likely to frame Indigenous people in a stereotypic
pattern consistent within a Eurocentric, colonial lens’ (Clark, 2014: 43) that ignores Indigenous
history, context, and perspective. Reworking media institutions is a key step in working towards
reconciliation with Indigenous communities, and is reflected in the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission’s calls to action 84, 85, and 86, which call for increased funding and support for the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) to strengthen Indigenous programming; for the
Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) to support reconciliation through leadership and
programming; and for Canadian journalism programmes and media schools to require
education for all students on the history of Indigenous peoples (Clark, 2014: 49). Internationally,
Article #16 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People identifies that
‘Indigenous peoples have the right to establish their own media in their own languages and to
have access to all forms of non-indigenous media without discrimination’, and that countries
should take measures to ensure their stateowned media reflects indigenous cultural diversity,
while encouraging privately owned media to do the same (United Nations 2008: 7-8).
‘We, Indigenous journalists, have been talking about this need for the media business to
change for a long time. We have been having this conversation internally in our own newsrooms
for well over a decade and longer’, said Duncan McCue, an Anishinaabe journalist, in an
interview with J-Source. ‘There is an obligation in this country, in Canada, to include Indigenous
voices in a substantive way in our newscasts that goes beyond tragedy and protests’ (Perdomo
2023: n.pag.).
PODCASTING AS A DECOLONIZING TOOL
As podcast listenership continues to grow, and the audiences themselves become more diverse
— with 43 per cent of American listeners identifying as non-White (Edison 2021) — there is also
more research being published that looks to podcasting and its influence with marginalized
producers and audiences. There are many characteristics of podcasting that make it an ideal
medium for people underrepresented or misrepresented in traditional media — Richard Berry

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(2006) notes that the medium’s open systems allow for anyone to produce or listen to content,
bypassing the ‘traditional model of “gate-kept” media and production tools’ (Berry, 2006: 146).
This break from hierarchical means of production, dissemination, and consumption opens up
possibilities for anyone to create and share their own podcast. In the Canadian podcasting
context, Taylor Mitchell (2017) points out that podcasting’s ability to share first-person stories in
one’s own voice connects to Indigenous traditions of oral storytelling. He positions the rising
trend of Indigenous podcasting ‘at the intersection of digital media, podcasting, and Indigenous
storytelling’ (2017: n.pag.). Stacey Copeland and Lauren Knight (2021) also argue that oral
storytelling through podcasting allows Indigenous producers to disseminate stories in new ways.
Their analysis of the CBC podcast Missing and Murdered: Finding Cleo positions the series as
an anti-colonial framework, despite the fact that it is produced for a predominantly settler
audience by the CBC, an organization that has significantly contributed to the dismissive media
coverage of Indigenous people. This is due in part to host Connie Walker’s Cree background
and personal experience as she works alongside the Semaganis family throughout the
investigation, but also the ‘re-evaluation, reconstruction and self-recognition of [I]ndigenous
cultural connection’ (2020: 110) that is found throughout the series, where the family shifts from
a rhetoric of reconciliation to one of truth and resolution.
Podcasting has also been an area of interest for researchers, some of whom are
exploring the flexibilities of the medium as a way to decolonize research methods. For example,
Day et al. (2017) explored collaborative podcasting as a form of decolonized research and
determined that it fell within four of Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s 25 examples of an Indigenous
Research programme: storytelling, representing, reframing, and sharing (2017: 215). However,
as noted in their study, there is still much to explore in this nascent area of research (2017:
207).
INDIGENOUS RESOURCES FOR PODCASTERS
There is a dearth of available resources for media-makers in Canada looking to work
respectfully with Indigenous knowledge. However, one key resource is On-Screen Protocols &
Pathways: A Media Production Guide to Working with First Nations, Métis and Inuit
Communities, Cultures, Concepts and Stories. This guide, intended for practitioners and
community members, was written by Marcia Nickerson and published by imagineNATIVE — an
Indigenous-run organization in Canada that is the world’s largest presenter of Indigenous
screen content. Nickerson built on initial research by Maria De Rosa and Marilyn Burgess,
including findings from more than twenty additional interviews with Indigenous screen creators

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and seven engagement sessions held across the country (2019: 3). In its 80 pages, On-Screen
Protocols & Pathways introduces and explains working with Indigenous communities and stories
through four key principles: respect, responsibility, reciprocity and consent. It then applies these
protocols for filmmakers through every step of the filmmaking process, from pre-production and
production (working on Indigenous lands, with Indigenous content, with Indigenous
communities, cast and crew) to post-production (working with archival materials, film release,
marketing and distribution).
It is worth noting that this guide is written for settler media-makers as well as Indigenous
filmmakers, and is designed not as a set of strict rules but a starting place to help all creators
navigate ever-changing protocols that vary by community and situation. This is addressed
further in the section, ‘Implementing protocols’, which ‘provides a context and illustrates some of
the ways funding bodies, broadcasters and industry partners can assist in the promotion and
implementation of the protocols’ (2019: 5). It includes an appendix outlining key historical
context for filmmakers, such as cultural genocide and cultural appropriation, and how this ties to
other important considerations, such as Indigenous intellectual property. A second appendix
provides resources for communities, including examples and possibilities for drafting community
protocols, and helping inform and enforce these protocols through reciprocity agreements.
On-Screen Protocols & Pathways identifies four key principles in working with
Indigenous communities and knowledge: respect, responsibility, reciprocity and consent:
Respect is considered in the context of respect for Indigenous peoples, their lands, their
customary laws and traditions, as well as respect for the preservation and protection of
Indigenous knowledge and cultures. The guide also highlights the importance of working
thoughtfully with information and those who hold it, which is based in building and maintaining
relationships (2019: 10).
Responsibility is based in what the guide identifies as a fundamental mental change ‘required
to shift thinking from “individual creative freedom/license” to “community responsibility”’ (2019:
11).
Reciprocity is identified as a cornerstone in creating partnerships, and this includes aspects
such as ‘fair compensation,the sharing of benefits, informed consent, and community
empowerment’ (2019: 12).

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Consent is at the foundation of all of these principles, and is based on ensuring that those
involved have control over their stories, and are able to give informed permissions. The guide
notes that, ‘[d]etermining consent is both a process of acknowledging and respecting. First and
foremost, consent is a first principle in validating nations and people who are trying to protect
their heritage’ (2019: 12). Arriving at consent, especially in the case of collectively held stories,
requires consultation not just at the beginning of the story, but also throughout the storytelling
process.
Another key principle is meaningful collaboration. Noting the past industry standard of hiring
Indigenous people as consultants on projects, On-Screen Protocols & Pathways criticizes this
practice and identifies the current industry standard of meaningful collaboration that ‘not only
follows appropriate protocols, but provides significant opportunities for credited production
employment, serving to support the Indigenous screen industry towards the goal of narrative
sovereignty’ (2019: 26).
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT: THE CANADIAN MOUNTAIN PODCAST
The Canadian Mountain Podcast (CMP) is a series funded by the Canadian Mountain Network
(CMN) that describes itself as ‘the country’s first formal research organization dedicated to
advancing our understanding of mountain systems […] CMN supports research that is centered
on a holistic approach based on Indigenous and Western ways of knowing’ (n.d: n.pag.). The
organization’s work focuses on building partnerships between Indigenous organizations and
communities, universities, governments, businesses and the not-for-profit sector. The Canadian
Mountain Podcast (CMP) is an extension of these concepts. Each episode discusses research
that is funded by the CMN, through either interviews or panel discussions with principal
investigators and research team members. While the first two seasons included Indigenous
perspectives in many episodes, a change in organizational focus and the production team’s
goals in Season 3 shifted to a conscious effort to centre conversations with Indigenous
knowledge holders in every episode, and this continued until the end of the series in season
five.
From 2019 to 2023 (Seasons 2-5), the CMP was produced by a team of undergraduate
research assistants from Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada, overseen by Meg Wilcox
and Kyle Napier as supervising faculty. Seventeen students rotated through the team over this
time period — a mix of Indigenous and settler audio producers, and most studying in Mount
Royal University’s journalism and digital media programme. In this sense, the team approached

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the podcast production from a journalistic perspective, even though the aims of the series would
be best described as research dissemination or knowledge mobilization. Most team members
had the opportunity to work on two or more episodes, usually serving as the host and
interviewer in some episodes and as the producer and editor on others. Aside from their
meetings and training sessions to produce the podcast, the CMP team participated in training
sessions and activities to learn more about mountain ranges, research, and local Indigenous
culture and ways of knowing. These were limited to online sessions over 2020 and 2021 due to
the COVID-19 pandemic, but later moved to in-person activities, which allowed the team to take
advantage of our proximity to the Rocky Mountains.
PODCAST PRODUCTION AND STORY STEWARDSHIP
Both Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2021) and Kovach (2021) address the roles of insider-outsider
approaches when working with Indigenous communities and knowledge. As Linda Tuhiwai
Smith writes,
A critical aspect of the struggle for self-determination has involved questions relating
to our history as indigenous peoples and a critique of how we, as the Other, have
been represented or excluded from various accounts. Every issue has been
approached by Indigenous peoples with a view to rewriting and rerighting our
position in history.
(2021: 31, original emphasis)
There are sensitivities particular to the stewardship of Indigenous stories related to the sacred,
secret, or sensitive nature of each story. This is particularly relevant as most members of the
CMP team are not Indigenous. With the stewardship of these stories come additional
responsibilities and accountabilities to community. Regardless of background, the act of
stewarding a story with Indigenous ancestral significance is not necessarily intuitive.
It should also be noted that being an ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ is not a fixed identity; team
members may find it shifts depending on the episode topic, guests, production roles, or other
factors. Notably, even the Indigenous media-makers on the team may not have shared specific
ancestral Indigenous heritage with the guests. Just because an interviewer and a guest are
Indigenous does not mean that they share Indigenous heritages or perspectives. Even though
both may be Indigenous, they may be from different Indigenous communities, from opposite
parts of the country, or from different Indigenous ontological perspectives. Even when sharing
stories with one’s own nation, it is critical for the learners to consider that they would still hold

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the dual insider-outsider role: they are still representing a non-Indigenous organization or
institution, while stewarding Indigenous knowledges from which they may have intuition of
stewardship. As such, particular nuance and sensitivity is still paid to the media dissemination
process, even if the media-maker and guests are Indigenous.
GALLA’S QUESTIONS REGARDING CRITICAL REFLEXIVITY
In 2021, Dr. Candace Kaleimamoowahinekapu Galla gave the keynote speech at the
International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation, or ICLDC. The
conference was mostly aimed at non-Indigenous linguists who were involved in language
documentation with languages which were not of their ancestry. At the outset of the conference,
Dr. Galla stated: ‘If you are here representing an Indigenous language, and you’re not a
member of that language family, and you didn’t invite a member of that language family —
you’re the savage’ (2021: n.pag). This sentiment reflects the precedent for our transformative
work with the CMP.
At the ICLDC, Galla gave a presentation that included a list of thirteen questions for
linguists to consider when working with Indigenous languages. Some of these questions focus
on the nature of the research (e.g. does the community see and feel the benefits of your
research and work? Who benefits?) while others ask the researchers to consider their position
within the community (e.g. how do you strengthen and nurture your relations in community?
Does your relationship to Indigenous peoples only exist through the language, or does it go
beyond?) Other questions look to the findings of the work (e.g. who gets to share, tell and
publish stories, knowledge and languages of the community? Whose name goes on
publications?). The last question looks to the futurity of the work: what kind of ancestor do YOU
want to be? (Galla 2021).
By re-interpreting these questions through a media lens, we can more broadly apply
Galla’s series of questions to encourage critical reflexivity in our own media practices. As we will
discuss below, these key concepts — respect, responsibility, reciprocity, consent, stewardship
and reflexivity — helped the team frame their work with the CMP and influenced many of our
production choices as the series continued.
PODCASTING PROCESS
As a team trained in journalism, the early seasons of the CMP followed what would be
considered standard journalistic practice. For each episode, the team would start with research
and planning into the topic, which would involve looking up information on the research project,

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the researchers and experts involved, and identify the key points and themes to discuss. A team
member would then reach out to the guests (if they were available) to conduct a short preinterview to build upon their research and ensure that they have a good understanding of the
key points of the research and its story. From there, the team members would develop an
interview question line, which would be vetted by a faculty member, before conducting the
interview. After the interview, the team members would review the tape, write a script for
narration, which would be vetted by a faculty member, and then the host would record the
narration. A team member would then edit the episode and send the draft for review by a faculty
member and the CMN. Any notes or feedback would be incorporated into a final edit before the
episode was published online by the CMN. Once the episode was published, a team member
would reach out to the episode guests with a thank you and information on how to access the
podcast.
In its second year (the third season of the podcast), the team made a shift to reconsider
how they worked with Indigenous experts and knowledge in the series. Uncertain of where to
begin and recognizing the importance of land and place (it is, after all, a mountain podcast!), the
team members, made up predominantly of settlers, chose to start by developing a land
acknowledgement for the series. This work was undertaken by research assistants Gabrielle
Pyska, Ethan Ward, Eric Tanner and Sarah Buffalo, supervised by Meg Wilcox.
DEVELOPING A LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT
A land acknowledgement, also known as a territory acknowledgement, is defined by Native
Land Digital as ‘a way that people insert an awareness of Indigenous presence and land rights
in everyday life. […] It can be a subtle way to recognize the history of colonialism and a need for
change in settler colonial societies’ (n.pag.).
Land acknowledgements are often held at the start of ceremonies, lectures or public
events – however, they are not often found in podcasts. As the team members noted, ‘[o]ne of
our biggest struggles was actually finding podcasts with examples of land acknowledgements
as a reference. The ones we did find were either made by Indigenous producers or strictly
academic’ (Pyska et al. 2022: n.pag.). In the team’s words, ‘[w]e wanted to explore how our
current perspectives could be further moulded to understand the true meaning behind land
appreciation, while remaining concise to suit the needs of the podcast’ (2022: n.pag.).
The team first met with Prof. Patti Derbyshire, who works in social innovation and
reconciliation, and Spirit River Striped Wolf, an Indigenous student and then-president of Mount
Royal University’s student association. In an online meeting in early 2021, the team discussed

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the background and history of this land, and ‘the importance of moving past the performative
mentality of an acknowledgement and creating a deeper understanding of what this land means
for us and our guests on the show’ (Pyska et al. 2022: n.pag.). One suggestion from Prof.
Derbyshire was to begin asking each guest to provide their own introductions and asking what
‘home’ means to them – an idea to which the team would later return.
After this meeting, the team created an action plan to research further on land
acknowledgements, particularly in a journalistic and podcasting context. They identified what
they liked about different statements, and each developed their own personal land
acknowledgement. Through this, they learned what are considered best practices for a land
acknowledgement, which includes not only identifying the local Indigenous people and
recognizing their history and current connection to the region, but identifying themselves within
the colonial systems that play a role in these events, and a commitment to action towards
reconciliation (Pyska et al. 2022).
From there, the team combined favourite elements of different acknowledgements to
create one for the episode – but there were still some challenges to address. First, the draft
statement was far too long for an audio format. While one of the advantages of podcasting is
there is no time limit, like in radio broadcasting, listeners still have a limited attention span and
will tune out or turn off if something feels too long or too formal. The team decided to address
this by breaking the statement into two parts – one at the beginning of the episode and one
towards the end. This allowed for the team to share what it wanted to say, but in shorter lengths
that fit better within a podcast format.
The other challenge facing the team in developing an acknowledgement was ‘what
counts as here?’ When land acknowledgements are inherently local in nature – when they are
part of an event – it is easy to determine where ‘here’ is. But, for a podcast, listeners and guests
can be from all over the world – in this case, the team was all based in one location, but
interviews were mostly done remotely with experts from across Canada and around the world.
How, then, could we create an acknowledgement that recognized these many places and their
highly individualized contexts? To solve this, the team came back to Prof. Derbyshire’s
suggestion of asking guests about their home and connection to the land. Every interview would
begin by asking the guest to identify themselves and explain where they are from, and how this
is important to them.
This approach created three sections in each episode that would address a different
aspect of the land acknowledgement. First, early in the episodes for Season 3, listeners can
hear:

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The Canadian Mountain Podcast acknowledges that our conversations engage with
diverse knowledge holders who live and work on unceded land and Treaties one to
eleven of Indigenous Peoples. We also recognize the historical and ongoing
oppression that many different cultures, lands, and nations have continuously faced
within Canada. We hope to continue our work to help decolonize, change, and
inspire media platforms to further collaborate with Indigenous Peoples through
storytelling and partnerships.
This first section is national in scope – the rationale was to connect these ideas and themes to a
Canadian audience, which has been the main listenership for the series.
Second, after the narrated introduction discussing the episode topic and themes,
listeners hear the guests introduce themselves and describe their connection to the land. An
example from Season 5, ‘Restoring the Klinse-Za Caribou and Maintaining Wildlife Balance’
(2023), first has an introduction from Chief Roland Wilson:
I’m Roland Wilson, chief for the West Moberley First Nations. I have been elected
chief there for the past 22 years. I was first elected in 2000. We’re a small Dunne-za
Cree community located in northeastern bc, the west end of Moberley Lake. The
Dunne-za People have been the Indigenous people in northeastern B.C. for 13,000
years, time immemorial I guess you could say. Our ancestors hunted the bison and
the mammoth that walked in the valley here. We have had a connection to the land
forever. We’re a nation that consists of 360 members. We were small, nomadic
family groups that would travel the land, hunt the animals through what they call now
a traditional seasonal round; we would move seasons and follow the animals back
and forth. In the last 100, 120 years, we accepted treaty – this is Treaty 8 territory –
and we have taken up permanent residence on the west end of Moberley Lake and
been there as far back as anybody can remember. It was an area we would have
constant settlement in. We are part of what was considered to be the Hudson’s
Hope Beaver Band back in 1914 – when we adhered to treaty, we would gather in
Hudson’s Hope, us and the Halfway River First Nations, they are our sister
community; we were actually considered one community at that one time.
Listeners then hear the second guest, Clayton Lamb, introduce himself:

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I’m Clayton Lamb, I’m a wildlife scientist at Biodiversity Pathways, which is a
research institute out of the University of British Columbia. And I work on wildliferelated science all across western North America – I work on caribou with Roland,
West Moberley and Saulteaux First Nations, and I work on grizzly bears down here
in southeast B.C., and wolverine and elk and sheep and all kinds of different animals
– I’m located here in southeast B.C., which is the homeland of the Ktunaxa Peoples.
The connection to the land for me, I was privileged to grow up in an outdoor-oriented
household; I grew up hunting and fishing and spending lots of time in what is now
called British Columbia. I grew a pretty deep relationship with the animals and trying
to understand, even through hunting, where they are and what they do and learning
more about them, and that’s basically what I do for a job.
These introductions provide an opportunity for the guests to share how they would like to be
introduced and provide key context that frames both how the interview is conducted and how
listeners can approach the interview content. Third, at the end of the episode, is a section that
acknowledges where the podcast is produced:
This podcast was produced from Treaty 7 territories, of which is immersed in ancient
culture and storytelling. With the Canadian Mountain Podcast, our goal is to share
both western and Indigenous ways of storytelling – and we give appreciation to the
stories that have been told on this land, and shared through generations. Therefore,
we give acknowledgement to the hereditary keepers of these lands – the Niitsitapi,
Stoney Nakoda, Tsuut’ina and Métis Nations.
In the fall of 2021, Kyle Napier joined the CMP team as a co-supervisor. His journalistic training,
audio production expertise and experience working in Indigenous contexts was a welcome
addition to the team. As the Season 4 production team – Gabrielle Pyska, Ethan Ward, Eric
Tanner, Catalina Berguno, Sydney Klassen-Rosewarn and Vanessa Forbister – met to start the
new year, he led the group in multiple online sessions to review and revise the series land
acknowledgement. This was a good time to engage in this work as the new season saw a
change in team members, with some new and some returning for a second year, and was a
chance for the team to create an acknowledgement that reflected the new team. These
sessions were an opportunity for the team to engage in reflexivity (Galla 2021), revisiting the
team’s assumptions and beliefs that might influence how the series was being produced. In

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these sessions, the team decided to keep the structure of three parts throughout the episode;
however, the language of the first section was refined to cut the specific treaty names as a way
to limit colonial references, and a discussion around the terms collaboration and inclusion led
the team to decide that the podcast was best identified as including Indigenous knowledge
holders rather than collaborating with them. The second section, with guests introducing
themselves and their connection to the land, stayed the same. The third section stayed
relatively similar in overall content, but there were changes in wording. At the end of the
episode, listeners can hear:
This podcast was produced from Treaty 7 territories, a place that holds generations
of culture and stories. With the Canadian Mountain Podcast, our goal is to share
both Indigenous knowledge and settler perspectives – and we give appreciation to
those stories. We are committed to collaborating with Indigenous Peoples through
storytelling and partnerships. Therefore, we acknowledge the hereditary keepers of
these lands – the Niitsitapi, îyârhe Nakoda, Tsuut’ina and Métis Peoples.
The term ‘ancient culture and storytelling’ was adjusted to reflect the ongoing and current
influence of Indigenous culture, which is often referred to as historical or existing only in the
past. In acknowledging that our team was not yet collaborating with our Indigenous knowledge
holders, we chose to make this part of our commitment moving forward in our production.
Lastly, the team identified an inconsistency in how we referenced Indigenous peoples in this
section. In the first season, the team chose to identify groups by their cultural group in
Indigenous languages rather than by their government-asserted Nation name or colonized
English names. However, we had neglected to translate one of the groups – and so Stoney
Nakoda was changed to îyârhe Nakoda to align with this.
At the start of Season 5, the new team – Sydney Klassen-Rosewarn, Catalina Berguno,
Sherry Woods, Noel Ormita, Julie Patton and Grace Heavy Runner – met again to review and
revise the land acknowledgement, considering the lessons learned in producing the podcast so
far. While the team chose to continue spreading these elements across the episode in three
sections, the team made a significant change in the first part of the episode. Critically, the team
realized that land acknowledgements ring hollow without a commitment to action. In the
episodes throughout Season 5, listeners first hear:

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This podcast is produced across the ancestral Indigenous territories now referred to
as Treaty 7. The Canadian Mountain Podcast acknowledges the land where we
work on as the home to the Niitsitapi, îyârhe Nakoda, Tsuut’ina and Métis Peoples.
As journalists and media-makers involved in Indigenous knowledge mobilization, the
collective responsibility of our podcast is to strengthen our relationship with
Indigenous Peoples through storytelling and partnerships.
The team wanted to highlight the importance of where the podcast was produced and to move
the recognition of local Indigenous peoples higher in the episode. This was a way to
acknowledge information according to journalistic practice, where the more important elements
of a story are at the beginning. Additionally, the team wanted to identify our positionality as
journalists and media-makers from the start, as well as our commitment and responsibility, as it
provides a framework for listeners to better understand the episode content that follows. The
second section, hearing from guests, remained unchanged.
The third and final section of the acknowledgement was changed to:
The Canadian Mountain Podcast is produced from Treaty 7, with the goal of bringing
together Indigenous knowledges with settler research and sciences through this
shared platform. We are committed to collaborating with Indigenous Peoples in
respect of the contributions of Indigenous voices and knowledge holders. We are
actively learning to decolonize our production practices throughout this series – and
encourage other media professionals and organizations to decolonize their practices
as well.
Because much of what was in the old third section was moved up to the first, it allowed some
space for the team to reaffirm a commitment to collaboration and engaging in ongoing learning.
This version of the land acknowledgement was used throughout the fifth and final season of the
podcast.
REVISING OUR PROCESS AND OUR PRACTICE
In considering the four principles in On-Screen Protocols & Pathways (2019) – respect,
responsibility, reciprocity and consent – developing a land acknowledgement for the CMP
was instrumental in helping the team better understand respect towards Indigenous knowledge
and experts, and our collective responsibility in working in this area. First, learning about land

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acknowledgements meant the team began to learn more about Indigenous perspectives and
approaches, which helps create a better understanding of and respect for them. Second,
creating a land acknowledgement means learning more about local Indigenous communities,
their history and context. This included not only important topics such as residential schools, but
for a team of producers based at a university and working within a research context, this also
involved learning about the many ways that institutions have excluded Indigenous peoples while
mistreating communities in the name of research, extracting knowledge and keeping it
inaccessible to those who provided it in the first place. As journalists, this also meant
acknowledging and learning more about how the media have and continue to harm Indigenous
communities. By identifying these realities, past and present, the team was able to better
identify our positionality in this work, which helped direct the team’s commitments in producing
the podcast. The acknowledgement was also an opportunity for team members to consider the
land we live on, and what it means to us individually; this was particularly meaningful for the
Season 2 team, who developed the first series land acknowledgement remotely while COVID19 lockdown and remote learning measures were in place. As Gabrielle Pyska, one of the team
producers, noted in a podcast interview:
The question ‘What does this land mean to you?’ has always stuck with me.
Because for the first time it wasn’t just writing a script to get by, it wasn’t just saying
the words and going through the motions. It made me stop and think, ‘Wow. I live in
this awesome place’ […] and it was the first time that I stopped and I was like, I have
a lot to appreciate about this land […] So it was the first time I stopped and reflected,
and was just able to write about home.
(Wilcox et al. 2023: n.pag.)
From these learnings and conversations, the team was better equipped to consider how it
produced the podcast, and this is where the principles of consent and reciprocity came into
play. Generally speaking, consent was not a challenge for the team, as the episodes involved
knowledge holders and researchers who had been awarded grants through the CMN and were
well-versed in talking about their projects and areas of expertise. The team created e-mail
templates for reaching out to guests that clearly outlined the podcast, its goals and the recording
process so they could make informed decisions in agreeing to the interview. Guests also had
the opportunity to ask questions or raise concerns in the pre-interviews and interviews.
Considering reciprocity, however, was not so straightforward. Reciprocity is the basis for
meaningful collaboration, and the team had already acknowledged that the original podcasting

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process did not give participants the opportunity to truly collaborate on the podcast. Journalistic
practice in and of itself is purposefully not collaborative – often because it has been seen that
allowing the guest to participate in the output contributes to bias, affecting journalism’s
objectivity and distance. As McCue notes,
That’s part of the reason why journalists, old school journalists, get their backs up
when we start talking about this kind of thing […]. But herein lies the challenge. It is
that we need to start understanding that we can adapt our journalism practices in
ways that do not fundamentally challenge our role as fact-finders, as truth-tellers.
That there are ways that you can do both, that we can bridge those relationships. It
is possible to adapt our practice.
(Perdomo 2023: n.pag., original emphasis)
While objectivity is a pillar of journalism, it is important to note that accuracy is as well.
Journalists typically are not experts in the topics on which they report. In the case of the CMP,
the team felt that, given the fact that we had no expertise in mountain ecosystems and the track
record of media outlets’ history of misrepresenting Indigenous issues and perspectives,
prioritizing relationships and accuracy were our most important goals. To that end, the team
created space for guests to provide feedback and input at two points in the podcasting process:
sharing the interview questions ahead of time so guests could provide suggestions and sharing
the edited podcast episode before it was published to allow for any inaccuracies to be
corrected. The team felt this created a more respectful environment with podcast guests and
ensured accuracy in the episodes while not taking up too much of the guests’ time and did not
compromise overall objectivity in terms of podcast content.
In sharing the questions ahead of time, the team noted that the focus of the interview did
not change, but specific areas of research and findings could be highlighted – information that
the team would not usually have ahead of time as not all teams had published yet on their work.
Additionally, it was an opportunity to ask the guests – often teams of settler and Indigenous
experts who had been working collaboratively over significant periods of time – how they
wanted to balance the interview, allowing one to answer certain questions while another
focused on their expertise. This allowed the guests to have more control in how their work was
represented, while guiding the production team to direct questions to the best person suited to
answer them. Once the podcast was edited, guests would have a week to review the podcast
and provide any feedback or corrections before publication. It was rare for guests to write back
with corrections – perhaps because they felt confident in the content based on their input in

17

preparing the interview – but those who did send in corrections helped ensure accuracy in vital
areas. In particular, one round of feedback from a guest corrected some of the episode’s
scripted language referring to local Indigenous groups. With more than 600 First Nations in
Canada, local context and language varies greatly, and so having feedback and corrections
from experts on the ground was invaluable. Ultimately, the team would classify these changes
as encouraging contribution from guests and knowledge holders rather than meaningful
collaboration. The production team and the CMN determined the series focus, format and
episode topics, and these core elements are the types of decisions that should and would be
part of a meaningful collaboration. Realistically, guests of the series were not looking for this
level of collaboration to be on an episode of the podcast, but having opportunities to open
dialogue provide before the interview and before the episode is published was a way for the
production team to ensure that they were stewarding the information shared in an accurate and
appropriate way.
Overall, the team felt that developing – and more importantly, regularly reviewing and
revising – the series land acknowledgement was an important step in helping consider how to
help decolonize our podcast production methods. That said, it is critical to consider that land
acknowledgements are not enough, nor are they the beginning of setting the precedent of
relationship building. Land acknowledgements are, however, an opportunity for non-Indigenous
peoples to set forward a public commitment which establishes a standard for their relationship
with the lands upon which they are currently situated, and the impacts of colonization upon
those lands. As ubiquitous as land acknowledgements have become in public events, their
verbiage is often rehearsed and hollow. By establishing commitments, revisiting these
commitments through reflexivity, and grounding our axiologies in Indigenous research
methodologies, we have a better opportunity to state such relationships with sincerity and
authenticity. Across continental North America, land acknowledgements are often enacted
contemporarily as an obligation in public-facing events and media. They are often written by ad
hoc committees and approved by a board of directors, to be repeated ad nauseam by event
emcees and hosts. They remain impersonal, scripted and often without commitment. The
exercise this team has undertaken calls for an establishment of commitments, continual review
with input from the team, and a grounding shift in conduct through such commitments. In many
ways, this iterative process reflects the way podcasts are made: every interview, every episode,
every season is an opportunity to learn and improve for the next.
For media-makers looking to make changes in their own processes, one potential way to
approach this work is looking to Galla’s questions of critical reflexivity (2021), adapted to

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consider a decolonial media framework rather than a language framework. Such reworked
questions for the media could be re-imagined as follows:
1.

Is the media work you are engaged in community-led, community-driven and

community-centred?
2.

How is your media work co-created, co-designed and co-developed with community?

3.

Does the community see and feel the benefits of media dissemination and work? Who

benefits?
4.

How do you strengthen and nurture your relations in community?

5.

Is your work erasing the people, community and land from their own media? How is your

work COUNTERING the erasure of Indigenous peoples?
6.

How does your media work amplify community voices?

7.

Does your relationship to Indigenous peoples only exist through your media work, or

does it go beyond?
8.

How are your methods and practices accountable within a framework of relationships to

land and people?
9.

What does it mean to be an ally in community?

10. How do you build capacity within community for language and cultural work?
11. How are you actively decolonizing your practice?
12. Who gets to share, tell and publish stories, knowledge and languages of the community?
Whose name goes on publications?
13. And lastly, what kind of ancestor do YOU want to be?
By continually considering and revisiting these questions, we as mediamakers can begin
to address and counter the colonizing narratives still prevalent within the media, whether in
Canada or elsewhere.
CONCLUSION
In this article, we first described and considered several resources which foster decolonial
frameworks for mediamaking: On-Screen Protocols & Pathways, published by imagineNATIVE
(2019); broader Indigenous methodological frameworks by Margaret Kovach (2021) and Linda
Tuhiwai Smith (2021), and questions for critical reflexivity in academic work with Indigenous
communities, developed by Dr Candace Kaleimamoowahinekapu Galla (2021). We then
detailed our work on the CMP and how the team developed a land acknowledgement for the

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series, which led to several transformative changes in how we conducted interviews and revised
episode drafts. Finally, we considered how reviewing and revising the series land
acknowledgement provided a space to reflect on our journalistic practice as audio stewards and
to adjust our processes to better align with the values of respect, responsibility, consent and
reciprocity.
For media-makers, working with Indigenous communities, stories and knowledge is an
ongoing and ever-changing process. In the four years of producing the CMP, the team found
that developing a series land acknowledgement – and revising it yearly – was an important part
of engaging in reflexivity that was essential to identify our positionality in the podcast and
helped us consider our roles as audio stewards more carefully. This process led to significant
changes in how we produce the series, and the team sees further ways to decolonize our
production, particularly in the context of expert knowledge. Specifically, rematriating rights
around information shared can ensure that knowledge holders and communities maintain
control of their stories, even though current copyright law privileges journalists and audio
producers. This is an area of research that requires more attention.
While there is a growing body of work by Indigenous media-makers and academics to
help guide responsible reporting and storytelling with Indigenous communities, this article
contributes to the discussion by addressing the existing research gap around land
acknowledgements in podcasting in two ways: first, as academics, we are amplifying existing
Indigenous research and work in the field and hope this encourages further research in this
vitally important area of media production; second, as media-makers, we propose changes to
practise and provide a model for how these concepts can be applied.
FUNDING
This research was funded through a grant from the Canadian Mountain Network. There is no
grant number.

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For those looking to read further, the following resources may be helpful:
Elliot, Patricia W (2016), Decolonizing the Media: Challenges and Obstacles on the Road to
Reconciliation, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 15 November,
https://policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/decolonizing-media.
Indigenous Culture & Innovations (2019), Spoken from the Heart: Indigenous Radio in Canada.
Ottawa: UNESCO. https://en.ccunesco.ca//media/Files/Unesco/Resources/2019/08/SpokenFromTheHeartIndigenousRadioInCanada.pdf.
Journalists for Human Rights (2017), Style Guide for Reporting on Indigenous People,
December 2017. https://jhr.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/JHR2017-Style-Book-IndigenousPeople.pdf.
Loft, Steven (2014), Coded Territories Tracing Indigenous Pathways in New Media Art.
University of Calgary Press.
McCue, Duncan (2022), Decolonizing journalism : a guide to reporting in Indigenous
communities. Oxford University Press.
McMahon, R., McNally, M., Fraser, C., Pearce, H., and Fontaine, T. (2019). Eetsii tthak
t’agwahii getr’ootanahchàh (Learning About the Machine that Does It All); Digital Content and
Connectivity with Dinjii Zhuh Contexts (Student Workbook).
https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/04a10919-c166-47c6-8b43-d72c37751666/view/670ae6a5e098-4ad1-b476-3ff3708f8312/Gwichin%20Student%20Workbook.pdf.
Wemigwans, Jennifer (2018), A digital bundle : protecting and promoting Indigenous knowledge
online. University of Regina Press.
Younging, Gregory (2018). Elements of Indigenous style : a guide for writing by and about
Indigenous Peoples. Brush Education.

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Native Land Digital (n.d.), ‘Territory Acknowledgment’, native-land.ca, https://nativeland.ca/resources/territory-acknowledgement/. Accessed 15 January 2024.
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SUGGESTED CITATION
Wilcox, Meg and Napier, Kyle (2024), ‘Podcasting protocols: Land acknowledgement in outlining
a process for decolonial reflexivity and audio stewardship’, Radio Journal: International Studies
in Broadcast & Audio Media, 22:1, pp. 57–74, https://doi.org/10.1386/rjao_00090_1

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CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Meg Wilcox is an associate professor in journalism and digital media at Mount Royal University
and co-director of the Community Podcast Initiative. Prior to teaching, she spent nearly a
decade travelling Canada as a reporter, producer and host, and her podcasting work has won
national and international awards. Currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of Glasgow,
Meg’s research looks at ways where podcasting can help underserved communities and
individuals tell their stories in ways that reflect their communities, their values and their lived
experience. Her first book, The New Journalist’s Guide to Freelancing (2022), is out now
through Broadview Press.
Contact: School of Communication Studies, Mount Royal University, 4825 Mount Royal Gate
SW, Calgary, AB, T3E 6K6 Canada. E-mail: mwilcox@mtroyal.ca https://orcid.org/0000-00024148-5206
Kyle Napier is Dene/nêhiyaw Métis from Northwest Territory Métis Nation.
He is the co-chair of Native Land Digital, a sessional instructor at the University of Victoria,
NorQuest College and Mount Royal University and a guest instructor with Dechinta Centre for
Research and Learning. He also develops language resources, conducts research, provides
consultation and designs collaborative media. He is a doctoral student at the University of
Alberta in Educational Policy Studies – Indigenous Peoples Education. He remains passionate
about Indigenous language reclamation and is a learner of the Indigenous languages of his
ancestry – which include both Dene Dedlıne Yatı and sakâw-nêhiyawêwin.
Contact: Faculty of Education, University of Alberta, 11210 – 87 Ave, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2G5
Canada. E-mail: knapier@ualberta.ca https://orcid.org/0009-0007-2433-7782

© Wilcox, Meg and Napier, Kyle (2024). The definitive, peer reviewed and edited version of this
article is published in Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, 22:1,
pp. 57–74, https://doi.org/10.1386/rjao_00090_1]

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