Buffalo’s Fire wins awards, Silver Telly for digital news video

The Buffalo’s Fire news team received a 41^st Annual Telly Award for its online feature news story, “Trespass: Contractor Sued for Missouri River Water Sales.” The Telly Awards, founded in 1979,  honor excellence in video and television. A panel of national industry experts selected winners in each category. Buffalo’s Fire won the online Silver Telly Award alongside four other winners, including CBS Interactive, Inc., AJ+ and Fast Company.

“The Missouri River Water Sales video demonstrates the high quality work we aim for with our news teams,” said Jodi Rave Spotted Bear, an executive producer of the online feature news video.

Charles “Boots” Kennedye, a documentary filmmaker, helped create the video, which also won a 2020 National Native Media Award for TV best feature story from the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA).

Kennedye, who currently works as a producer for the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority, has produced several documentaries about Native issues and has teamed up with Spotted Bear in the past, he said. Kennedy and Spotted Bear and Georgiana Ausan, now assistant director at the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, worked as a team to produce, shoot and edit the online news feature. Video footage was filmed on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. “Oil and gas are quite intrusive in that area and Jodi wanted me to approach that,” he said.

It’s important to tell stories about issues that aren’t always easy to report on, stories others would prefer not be told, said Kennedye. “Our roles as journalists and documentary filmmakers are that we really are public servants,” he said. “As journalists, we inform people about things they need to know. We do this to give back as a selfless pursuit.”

Ausan worked as the consulting producer on the project. “I wanted to help them create this story, a story about unchecked tribal government that shines a light on a corner of the oil industry that needs to be reported,” she said.

The Telly Awards website notes how the annual event “showcases the best work created within television and across video, for all screens. Receiving over 12,000 entries from all 50 states and 5 continents, Telly Award winners represent work from some of the most respected advertising agencies, television stations, production companies and publishers from around the world.” The awards are judged by the Telly Awards Judging Council, a group consisting of 200-plus working industry professionals who have previously won the awards highest honors.

“We’re honored to be selected as a best online news feature,” said Spotted Bear. “We are embracing all platforms of news production and we stand humbly alongside the national news organizations selected in our category.

The Buffalo’s Fire news feature brings attention to Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation water sales of the Three Affiliated Tribes from the Missouri River. The MHA Nation had also partnered with Kansas-based engineering company Bartlett and West to sell millions of gallons of water to oil companies on the reservation which has been inundated by the hydraulic fracking industry. The tribes and engineering firm trespassed on the property of tribal citizens on the Fort Berthold Reservation. Landowners – Charles, Howard and Gabe Fettig – said they were never paid a cent for the water pipeline trespass and filed a lawsuit against the tribe and Bartlett and West.

You can watch the video news feature here.

“It’s my privilege to serve native communities and to try to keep that storytelling tradition alive and to train the next generation,” Kennedye said. “It has been a great experience.”

The Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance (IMFA) advocates for freedom of the press and independent media in tribal communities to preserve language, culture and to create an environment where citizens can control their destiny by making informed decisions. Buffalo’s Fire is the digital news arm of the IMFA.