Eden Fineday

Tsawwassen First Nation territory (Metro Vancouver), B.C. · Publisher, IndigiNews · Founder and CEO, tâpwêwin media

Career

Eden Fineday is a nêhiyaw (Cree) journalist from Sweetgrass First Nation in Treaty 6 territory, Saskatchewan, and the publisher of IndigiNews, a national nonprofit Indigenous-led news outlet based in British Columbia. She joined IndigiNews in November 2021 as managing editor, having come to journalism after an earlier career as an artist and songwriter. In 2025 she founded tâpwêwin media, an Indigenous-led nonprofit, which acquired IndigiNews from its prior parent organization, Discourse Community Publishing, making IndigiNews fully independent and Indigenous-led from January 2025. She serves as CEO of tâpwêwin media while continuing as publisher of IndigiNews.

Fineday grew up largely away from Sweetgrass First Nation — she moved with her Ukrainian mother at around age two and began reconnecting with her Cree culture and her father (a Residential School Survivor) at age 14. She has described that ongoing reconnection as central to her approach to journalism, including a 2022 IndigiNews column on her grandmother Irene Fineday, and a 2024 column on the remains of her ancestor Little Poplar held at a Smithsonian warehouse. Her family lineage traces to Fine Day, a head of the warrior society of the Sweetgrass band, from whom all Finedays descend.

On December 30, 2024, Fineday gathered with five First Nations women journalists to elect interim leadership for the Indigenous Media Association of Canada, which was incorporated on January 6, 2025. The association works to connect Indigenous media professionals and advocate for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis storytellers across Canada. She serves on the board of the Indigenous Journalists Association (IJA), the US-based organization formerly known as the Native American Journalists Association.

IndigiNews launched the ReFocus Photojournalism Fellowship under her leadership — a program pairing Indigenous photojournalism fellows with mentorship and training, with its inaugural cohort completing at the University of King's College in Halifax. The outlet has also been recognized as a Cultural Survival Community Media Fund grant partner, alongside 35 other Indigenous media organizations.

Background and Formation

Fineday earned a BA in Language Studies from UC Santa Cruz in 2001 and spent years working as an artist before entering journalism. She has described joining IndigiNews as a steep learning curve — in an Eagle Feather News interview she said that if she had known how difficult the first two years would be, she might not have taken the job, and that she initially experienced the common phenomenon of feeling out of place in a field she was new to. By 2024 she had completed CUNY's Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership and was being profiled as a newsroom leader navigating the transition of IndigiNews to full Indigenous ownership.

Her editorial emphasis is on cultural safety for both staff and sources, and on centering Indigenous protocols and worldview in editorial decision-making — an approach she has described as going beyond standard journalistic practice toward what she calls "decolonizing" the newsroom's processes. IndigiNews operates with an Indigenous publisher and an Indigenous editor-in-chief, which Fineday has said is central to the outlet's model.

Recognition

2024

City Mic Award — Jack Webster Foundation

Awarded by the Jack Webster Foundation, which recognizes journalism in British Columbia.

2023

First Place, Best Column — Indigenous Journalists Association

Recognized by the IJA for column writing.

2024

CUNY Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership — Class of 2024

Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, City University of New York.

2020

Room Up Front mentorship — inaugural cohort

Canadian photojournalism mentorship program for Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour. Fineday was a participant in the program's first year. (Note: Room Up Front is the same program that Aaron Hemens participated in as a fellow in 2020.)

Eden Fineday · Publisher, IndigiNews · Founder and CEO, tâpwêwin media

IndigiNews: indiginews.com · Author page: indiginews.com/author/eden/

Indigenous Journalists Association: indigenousjournalists.org/team/eden-fineday/