Jodi Rave Spotted Bear

Jodi Rave Spotted Bear is the founder-director of the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, located on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. The organization publishes on Buffalo’s Fire, an independent digital news site.

Jodi is an award-winning journalist and opinion writer whose recognition and awards arise from the mainstream, military, university journalism programs as well as the Native American Journalists Association. Jodi wrote for daily newspapers for nearly 15 years. She reported on American Indian issues for 11 years as a national correspondent for Lee Newspapers and was based at the Lincoln Journal Star and the Missoulian. Jodi has been awarded a number of fellowships, including a Climate CUNY Resilience Fellowship in October 2017 at City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. In 2003, she received a Nieman Fellowship for journalists at Harvard University. She is also the recipient of national awards and honors for news and opinion writing, including the Society of Professional Journalists Pacific Northwest, Native American Journalists Association, Montana Newspaper Association, Columbia University School of Journalism and the University of Nebraska. She was also awarded the Paul D. Savanuck Military Journalist of the Year in 1999. Her writing is featured in “The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity,” published by Columbia University Press.

Jodi is Mandan-Hidatsa and Lakota. She lives in Twin Buttes, N.D. with her husband and daughter.