Brandi MORIN

On 10 January 2024, police officers arrested Cree/Iroquois/French freelance journalist Brandi Morin while she was reporting on an Indigenous encampment, in Edmonton, Alberta. When police raided the encampment, Morin said she identified herself as a journalist and stated her right to be on public property and to report on matters of clear public interest. Despite Morin exercising her legal right to do her job, the police officers arrested her. After PEN Canada and other organisations raised concerns, the charges against Morin were dropped. 

Brandi Morin, born in Treaty 6 territory in Alberta in 1981, is the author of Our Voice of Fire: A Memoir of a Warrior Rising (House of Anansi, 2022). In 2023, Morin was awarded PEN Canada’s Ken Filkow Prize for her bravery in ‘advancing freedom of expression in Canada.’ Morin is a well-known journalist who has reported extensively on Indigenous land and environmental rights and has won awards for her work on Truth and Reconciliation, and residential school grave discoveries.