Journalists Megan O’Toole and Jillian Kestler-D’Amours win award for report on Indigenous struggle for water rights in US.
Al Jazeera English on-line has been awarded a high prize on the twenty ninth annual Amnesty Worldwide Canada Media Awards for a report on the Indigenous wrestle for water rights within the southwestern United States.
Amnesty Worldwide Canada introduced on Thursday that Al Jazeera’s long-form interactive function Disaster on the Colorado: The Indigenous struggle for water rights received the 2023-2024 blended media award.
The awards “honour excellence in human rights reporting by Canada-based journalists and by Canadian journalists reporting overseas”.
Printed in April 2023, Disaster on the Colorado explored how Indigenous communities that depend on the sprawling Colorado River have asserted their water rights within the face of file drought worsened by local weather change.
The push comes as authorities in any respect ranges have been pressured to think about water cuts as they attempt to stave off the collapse of the river, a 2,330km (1,450-mile) span that begins within the US state of Colorado and ends in Mexico, and provides water to greater than 40 million individuals.
To inform the story, Al Jazeera journalists Megan O’Toole and Jillian Kestler-D’Amours met with Indigenous leaders in Colorado, Arizona and California, and travelled by automobile, boat and small airplane to key factors alongside the river, together with Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
Their report mixed a wealthy, written narrative with pictures, movies, maps, charts and different interactive components.
Throughout the area, Indigenous group leaders demanded a seat on the desk – and insisted that their water rights should be protected after generations of neglect and exclusion.
“We now have to take a look at a special approach of how we respect the river, how we deal with the river, and we’ve acquired to look out for the longer term generations,” Nora McDowell, the previous longtime chairwoman of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, informed Al Jazeera.
“We now have to guard it.”
On Thursday, Amnesty Worldwide Canada congratulated Al Jazeera English and the opposite award-winners for his or her work profiling “individuals and communities who’ve proven outstanding braveness and perseverance within the face of adversity”.
“We congratulate the winners on their outstanding achievements and thank the rights holders who shared their tales for bravely talking fact to energy via the press,” mentioned Ketty Nivyabandi, secretary common of Amnesty Worldwide Canada’s English-speaking part.
Disaster on the Colorado was supported by The Water Desk, an impartial journalism initiative based mostly on the College of Colorado Boulder’s Middle for Environmental Journalism.
Aerial footage used within the long-form function was made potential via LightHawk donated flights.