Windspeaker No. 1 biweekly

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Windspeaker kept up its tradition of winning awards at the seventh annual Native American Journalists Association conference held in Denver March 14-16, 1991.

It won the General Excellence Award for a biweekly and also the Personal Statement Award in photography with the work of freelance photographer Brad Callihoo.

Windspeaker also received honorable mentions for Best Feature Story (Heather Andrews), Best Editorial (Richard Wagamese) and Best News Reporting (Rudy Haugeneder).

The Press Independent, from Yellowknife, also dominated the awards winning three first-place awards: Best Typography and Design, Best Promotional Idea and General Excellence for a weekly, which it shared with the Tundra Times of Alaska.

Other award winners were: general excellence for quarterly - Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission; general excellence for a monthly - The Circle; best feature story - Susan Andrews and John Creed from the Arctic Sounder; best editorial - Debra Thunder of the Wind River News; best news reporting - Bill Donovan of the Navajo Times and Daily for any category - Nancy Butterfield.

In the radio competitions, KWSO of Warm Springs, Oregon, dominated the awards, winning first place for best reporting and best ongoing public affairs or news magazine. D'Anne Hamilton of the National Native News won the best radio feature award.

The other photo awards were: still life - Tony Lone Fight of the Mandan Hidatsa Arickara Times; landscape - Tony Lone Fight of the Mandan Hidatsa Arickara Times; portrait - Sheldon Preston of Native Images and social documentation - Paul Natonabah of the Navajo Times.

Plans are already underway for the 1992 conference in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Future conference sites are Dallas, Texas (1993) and Atlanta, Georgia (1994). The 1994 conference will be a combined conference with the Asian American Journalists Association, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists.

The NAJA conference was the most successful to date with over 350 Native journalists from across the United States and Canada participating in the various workshops, newsmaker luncheons and panel discussions.