Wednesday, November 29
Closing Keynote Speaker
Angela Sterritt
Award-Winning Investigative Journalist and National Bestselling Author
Angela Sterritt is an award-winning investigative journalist and national bestselling author from the Wilp Wiik’aax of the Gitanmaax community within the Gitxsan Nation on her dad’s side and from Bell Island Newfoundland on her maternal side. Sterritt has worked as a television, radio, and digital journalist for more than a decade. She is currently the host of the CBC original podcast Land Back, which won a Radio Television Digital News Association award for best podcast in 2023.
Her book Unbroken, a work that is part memoir and part investigation into the murders and disappearances of Indigenous women published by Greystone Books became a national instant bestseller in May of 2023.
In 2021, Sterritt won an Academy Award (Canadian Screen Award) for best reporter of the year in Canada for her coverage of an Indigenous man and his then 12-year-old granddaughter who were arrested while trying to open a bank account at BMO. Sterritt also won a national Radio Television Digital News Association award for the same reporting. In 2020, Sterritt was named in Vancouver Magazine’s Power 50 list of the city’s top 50 most influential people.
In 2020, she was nominated for best local reporter by the Canadian Screen Awards for her reporting on Indigenous babies apprehended by the Ministry of Children and Family Development. In 2019, Sterritt’s documentary on the complexity of Indigenous support for and challenges against the TransMountain Pipeline expansion project won an RTDNA award for best long feature.
In 2017, Sterritt accepted the Investigative Award of the Year from Canadian Journalists for Free Expression for coverage of missing and murdered Indigenous women. She was awarded a prestigious William Southam Journalism Fellowship at Massey College in Toronto and was the first known First Nations person in Canada ever to receive the award in the school’s 60-year history
As a motivational speaker, Sterritt talks about breaking stereotypes and creating change and relationships in Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. In 2020, she gave a Ted Talk about smashing stereotypes of Indigenous people.
