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Q&A with the creative producer for Molly of Denali

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Princess Daazhraii Johnson is the creative producer for Molly of Denali, an animated children’s show that follows 10-year-old Molly Mabray, an Alaska Native girl who helps her parents run the Denali Trading Post in the fictional community of Qyah. The show, which is the first nationally distributed children’s series to feature a Native American lead character, received a Peabody Award in 2020. Can you share with me the quick story of becoming a creative producer on Molly of Denali? I initially heard of the show when they were looking for a creative producer to come on board at the pilot stage. When I saw what they were trying to do it really resonated deeply with me because I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking about issues of representation. The history between the entertainment industry and indigenous people has not been a good relationship. So I really wanted to work…

Kyle Hopkins Pulitzer prize winner
Authentic Alaska

Voices of Alaska: Kyle Hopkins

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Kyle Hopkins. Photo courtesy Anchorage Daily News. Kyle Hopkins, 43, is a reporter and editor at the Anchorage Daily News. Hopkins was a reporter on the series “Lawless,” a collaboration between the ADN and ProPublica that won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. The Pulitzer board called the body of work “a riveting series that revealed a third of Alaska’s villages had no police protection, took authorities to task for decades of neglect, and spurred an influx of money and legislative changes.” “One thing that was really instrumental and important to me early in the reporting was learning about a lawsuit about 20 years ago by several tribes that were saying if the state wasn’t going to support local means of tribal justice than it had a duty to provide the most basic of public safety services in villages, in the same way that you can’t just not provide…

Culture

Native Time

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Alice Qannik Glenn is a podcaster and one of three creators of Native Time. Photo by Serine Reeves. Three Millennial Alaskans teamed up to create a new platform that aims to amplify indigenous voices and experiences. Native Time, which launched earlier this year, is the brainchild of podcaster Alice Qannik Glenn, filmmaker Howdice Brown III, and M. Jacqui Lambert, a writer and designer. The three storytellers, who all have Inupiaq heritage, gathered over beers and sketched an idea to create a shared space that could engage and connect the Native community. “We want to uplift Native voices, Native art, Native opportunities, Native educators,” Glenn says. On top of promoting diverse perspectives, Native Time is also meant to be a space that pushes the conversation forward and incites progress. Alaska Native culture may often be portrayed as something ancestral, but Native Time is about contemporary stories. “I think it’s important our…

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