Cortes Island resident and journalist Odette Auger recently received a Mindset Award for mental health reporting.
Auger began her journey in journalism with the "Deep Roots" project. The audio story initiative was a collaboration between Friends of Cortes Island Society (FOCI) and Cortes Community Radio (or "CKTZ"). Auger received guidance and training from then-local Rob Selmanovic, a CBC producer. When she began writing the grant to fund "Deep Roots" for its second year, Auger applied the lessons she had learned and decided to “invert the process” in order to “center Indigenous voices.”
Auger now writes for several publications including Watershed Sentinel, Asparagus Magazine, Windspeaker, La Converse, APTN and IndigiNews and CKTZ. Her story, “Workers tasked with tackling anti-Indigenous racism say they faced scapegoating and backlash at Island Health.” was an awarded finalist in the category of "workplace mental health" at the Mindset Awards. The awards were presented by Canadian Association of Journalism - in collaboration with Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma- awards funded by Mental Health Commission of Canada with support from CBC News. Auger also received an honorable mention for her piece titled “Gentle truth telling: How to talk to our youngest community members about residential schools” for the "youth mental health" category.
Auger attributes her journalistic style to her personal approach.
“The best feeling I would say about writing and interviewing is that process of preserving the heart of the story, which is the voices and what they really, what they lit up about or what they offered as a gift.”
She also shared her own story of talking to her kids about residential schools and how that motivated her to write the award-finalist article.
Orange t-shirt paintings on beach rocks commemorate residential school victims. Photo by Odette Auger.
The Mindset Awards honored stories that Auger was proud to be compared to, like “Broken Honor,” in the "Workplace mental health" category and “Generation Distress,” for the “Youth mental health” category.
Odette Auger shares her personal journey in this CKTZ News Update, listen below: