Jodi Rave Spotted Bear reported for the mainstream press for nearly 15 years before returning home to the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. She has since founded the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, a nonprofit media organization that aims to raise the visibility of Native issues, to strengthen independent media operations in Native communities and to encourage the growth of Indigenous media education. The Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance publishes online at buffalosfire.com. Jodi is currently a Maynard 200 entrepreneurial journalism fellow of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. Jodi’s journalism career includes being selected as a Harvard Nieman Fellow where her favorite classes were at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School. Her writing related to the Nieman Fellowship is featured in the book, Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Diversity, published by Columbia University School of Journalism. She is also a Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution Fellow. In addition to developing a nonprofit organization, Jodi has engaged local community members in traditional pottery making of her tribes, the Mandan and Hidatsa.
While at MacDowell, she worked on a book tentatively titled Remembering the Old Woman's Garden. She also produced and completed a short video and news story that addressed Missouri River water sales to the fracking industry, which is a chapter in the book. The video and news story were published on Buffalosfire.com for the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance.
Jody was the 2019 Sylvia Canfield Winn Fellow at MacDowell.
