Review Fix Contributing Writer Amy Stretten provides a short glimpse into the life of Kyra Climbingbear, an urban Indian living in New Jersey.
She is Eastern Band Cherokee and Lumbee and Black, is a singer and an activist. She is the mother of two small girls and is an R&B and traditional Cherokee music singer.
I have wanted to be a broadcast journalist since I was in the 4th grade. The year was 1994 and I was 9 years old when I wrote an article about the 6.6 Northridge, California earthquake for a class assignment. I was selected to film a field report for a children’s news show that aired on a local public access channel in Los Angeles, California.
I attended a public bi-lingual Spanish immersion elementary school. Though much of my schoolwork was done in Spanish, I wrote and read this news story in English. I felt so powerful holding a microphone, standing in front of a video camera, knowing others wanted to hear my story. My tribe, the Chickahominy tribe of Virginia has many stories to tell and I want to be one of our storytellers.
I come from a very unique and multi-cultural background and have lived in a variety of places (Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Madrid and Seville, Spain, a little town called South Hadley in Massachusetts, and now New York City), so I feel I can identify with a wide range of people. I have traveled throughout Europe and North America and look forward to traveling to other countries I have yet to explore.
I am currently a student at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. I expect to graduate with a Master's degree in Journalism in December 2011. After earning my degree, I hope to work as a correspondent for a cable news network.
To read some of my most recent work, check out my blog:
www.NativeJournalist.com
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