Cara McKenna

Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territory (Metro Vancouver), B.C. · Journalist, editor

Career

Cara McKenna is a journalist and editor based in Metro Vancouver. She has worked with Indigenous and environmental news journals in British Columbia, including APTN National News, the Canadian Press, the Nanaimo Daily News, and the Salish Sea Sentinel magazine, where she served as editor. She is currently a part-time editor at IndigiNews and has contributed reporting to The Narwhal. Her Narwhal bylines include coverage of the Sipekne'katik First Nation's lobster fishing dispute and its request to the United Nations for peacekeepers (2021), B.C. herring population decline and calls for a commercial fishing moratorium (2021), the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion's provincial environmental certificates (2021), and a long feature on the 2023 return of a stolen Nisg̱a'a totem pole, which won a National Newspaper Award. She is also working toward a BFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.

Selected Work

'Welcome home, dear ancestor': after nearly a century, a stolen totem pole returns to the Nisg̱a'a Nation

The Narwhal / IndigiNews, October 2023 · With Matt Simmons and Marty Clemens · Won National Newspaper Award, Arts and Entertainment category (2024)

thenarwhal.ca/stolen-totem-pole-nisgaa-nation-rematriated/

The dream behind a big, beautiful Buffalo story — in English and Cree

The Narwhal, December 2024 · On a Narwhal/IndigiNews collaboration reported in both English and Cree

thenarwhal.ca/buffalo-grasslands-collaboration-cree-indiginews/

Making awards history — and decolonizing journalism

The Narwhal / IndigiNews newsletter, May 2024 · McKenna's account of the NNA win and IndigiNews becoming the first Indigenous outlet to receive an NNA since 1949

thenarwhal.ca/nna-2024-indiginews-collaboration/

Sipekne'katik to request UN peacekeepers in anticipation of Nova Scotia lobster fishing conflicts

The Narwhal, April 2021

thenarwhal.ca/nova-scotia-first-nation-lobster-fishery-united-nations/

Recognition

2024 (for 2023 work)

National Newspaper Award — Arts and Entertainment

Shared with Matt Simmons (The Narwhal) and photojournalist Marty Clemens, for the long feature on the rematriation of a stolen totem pole to the Nisg̱a'a Nation, published in The Narwhal and IndigiNews in October 2023. The win marked the first time IndigiNews received an NNA, and the first time any Indigenous media outlet had won the award since the program began in 1949.

Cara McKenna · Metro Vancouver, British Columbia

The Narwhal: thenarwhal.ca/author/cara-mckenna/

IndigiNews: Part-time editor · indiginews.com