Kim Wheeler is a Mohawk/Anishinaabe kwe who has brought positive Indigenous stories to the mainstream and Indigenous media since 1993. She is a writer and a multi-award winning producer. She has created or co-created several radio shows and podcasts including: Ab-Originals, Indian Summer, Auntie Up!, Indigenous Screen Office’s Storytellers, Turtle Island Talks, and The Kim Wheeler Show on SiriusXM. In 2023, Kim received a Canadian Screen Award for Buffy Sainte-Marie: Starwalker. She is also a writer/producer for The Juno Awards and has written for the New York Times and Chatelaine magazine.
Kaylen Belair is a Métis audio producer from Saint Laurent, Manitoba. He is the music director for SiriusXM channels 165 The Indigiverse and 171 Top of the Country Radio. Kaylen also produces the Indigenous Music Countdown, Turtle Island Talks, and The Kim Wheeler Show.
January Rogers is a Mohawk/Tuscarora writer from Six Nations of the Grand River. She owns and operates Ojistoh Publishing and Productions. She works in page poetry, spoken word, performance poetry, video poetry and recorded poetry with music. January is a radio broadcaster, media producer and sound artist. She has produced and written media for gallery and broadcast with 2Ro Media since 2015. In 2020, she won Best Music Video at the American Indian Film Festival for Ego of a Nation. In 2021, January took home an ImagineNATIVE award for Best Experimental Sound for her sound piece The Struggle Within.
Michael Hutchinson is a citizen of the Misipawistik Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory. He began his career as a journalist but moved over to communications to work for the Indian Claims Commission in Ottawa as a writer. He returned to his home province where he worked as the director of communications for the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, and then as a project manager for the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba. Eventually, Michael moved back into journalism and has worked on APTN Investigates, as the host of APTN National News, produced and hosted Face to Face and The Laughing Drum. He recently did a short stint as a co-host on CTV Morning Live Winnipeg. Currently, Michael is the Communications Manager for the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre, which is on the front lines of language and cultural revitalization.
Christine Genier is a Wolf Clan citizen of the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council (Yukon). She is a broadcaster, journalist, writer, poet, performer, and language and culture worker. Since 1995 Christine has been navigating a career spanning northern theatre, journalism, broadcasting, writing, spoken word and public speaking, and getting angry. She tries to do this all with
honesty and humor, language and culture. Christine works to pass on her ancestral languages, Tageesh Koshé and Dawkwanjé (Southern Tutchone). Christine is a regular guest host with the popular podcast Auntie Up!
Melissa Spence is a professionally trained, award-winning broadcaster who is enrolled in Lake Manitoba First Nation. Bornand raised in Winnipeg until relocating to the US in 2015, she is from the Anishinaabe/Ojibway Nation (Turtle Clan) and now calls Las Vegas home. With over 15 years of professional radio to her credit, Melissa has been a part of several Indigenous broadcast programming on local, regional and national levels. She thrived as a popular morning show personality, developed an Indigenous youth radio station Streetz/Rhythm 104.7 (CIUR), hosted the first ever Indigenous Music countdown show (@IMCountdown) on SIRIUS XM (channel 165) and served as the first-ever female Indigenous music programmer at CIUR – Rhythm FM. She’s currently a Cultural Humility facilitator, advocates for MMIWP’s, is the producer and host of IVMusic and the IVpodcast, and takes care of all social media and creative communications at Indigenous Vision.
Madeleine Allakariallak is Inuk and was born and raised in Canada’s second most northerly community. Madeleine is currently the director of production and post-production of an Inuit-owned television and radio broadcaster in Montreal. She began her career at CBC Iqaluit. Madeleine hosted a bilingual Inuktitut/English radio morning show for almost 10 years before taking on a job as TV host-producer for the APTN. She returned to CBC North as host of the only Inuktitut evening news program. She sight-translated on the fly. All of her interviews were only in Inuktitut, and there, she gained valuable history of Inuit from many knowledge carriers from across the circumpolar Arctic world.
