Amplify Utah supports and facilitates dynamic journalistic storytelling to celebrate diverse points of view. By partnering with traditional media, we cultivate an environment that encourages stories be shared widely and made easily accessible for our communities to read, hear, watch and engage.
11-05-2025 By Vanessa Hudson
From photojournalist to public servant: Bruin alum Jesse Valdez aims for mayoral seat
10-21-2025 By Pearl Ashton
'I think we deserve to start telling our own narrative rather than let others do it for us.'
Speakers at censorship ‘teach in’ at Weber State encounter rain outside, restrictions indoors
10-04-2025 By Alfonso Rubio, Jared Mitchell, James Gordon, and Kyle Greenawalt
The “uncensored version” of the Unity Conference began outdoors. When weather forced participants inside, they were told to adhere to the limits of Utah’s anti-DEI law.
Your voices matter. Let us help you get your stories out to our media partners.
Amplify Utah helps facilitate the connection between student work and traditional media outlets to encourage more diversity of voices.
For those interested in replicating, adapting or building upon the Amplify project in your own community, we've put together a comprehensive playbook. We are also happy to share with you a branding toolkit to get you started.
In the home of Darren Parry on a Sunday afternoon, five Salt Lake Community College students circle the former Northwestern Shoshone Nation chairman for a conversation about the crisis facing the Great Salt Lake.
Parry’s gaze, meanwhile, remains fixed on the camera in front of him. Visible over his shoulder, in the frame of the camera, are three framed photographs of his ancestral family. They were Shoshone people, remnants of the 1863 Bear River Massacre, who were later baptized by Latter-day Saints in the same river.
For Parry, his ancestral history serves as an example of how westward colonizers pushed Indigenous people from their homes. When Utah eventually sprung into statehood, Parry pointed out that Indigenous people “were not given a seat at the table,” here in the state or anywhere else.
The latter point is what informs Parry’s views on current efforts intended to help the dwindling Great Salt Lake, and it’s why the crew of students visited his home for an interview. “We’ve scienced this [Great Salt Lake] problem to death,” said Parry, who goes on to add, “We have to start looking at the problem from a … different view. Why not maybe an Indigenous view?”
This conversation with Parry was one of several interviews that the student group conducted for a new documentary covering the lake. They decided that the film should focus on “Indigenous stewardship,” a term that refers to the notion of Native people being at the helm of environmental decision-making.
Titled “Diverted: Indigenous Stewardship and Saving the Great Salt Lake,” the 30-minute documentary is set to premiere Friday, Dec. 8, at Salt Lake Community College’s South City campus. Its premiere comes after months of work, which was carried out by the student group for a course at the college.
Those involved in the project – seven students in total – said they wanted to tackle an urgent subject matter.
27-year-old student McCaulee Blackburn, co-producer of the film, recalls first learning about the climate crisis at age 11 and subsequently wondering what lay in store for the planet.
Like perhaps many young people today, Blackburn said growing up and moving through life was accompanied by “constant climate anxiety” over their future – a future they felt had been stolen from new generations. So, when a SLCC film student pitched the idea of a documentary tackling Great Salt Lake to Blackburn in January, hopping on board seemed like a no-brainer.
At the time, Blackburn had just finished an internship with the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a group of media and education organizations that joined forces in 2022 with the goal of informing the public about the lake and its declining water levels.
During their internship, Blackburn spoke with water experts and wrote articles communicating ways to help the lake. However, they noticed that solution talks almost always tended to omit Indigenous perspectives.
“I knew that if I was going to work on a project about the lake, I wanted to make sure Indigenous people were being centered,” Blackburn said.
Of particular interest to Blackburn was the notion of Indigenous stewardship. They aimed to explore the science of the lake as well as how a different set of hands – those with a link to the land – would manage Utah’s water resources in contrast to the state legislature.
Blackburn initially recruited two fellow SLCC students to work on the project. One of them was friend and SLCC film student Valene Peratrovich, who is also an alternating host of KRCL radio’s Sunday morning program, “Living the Circle of Life,” a show dedicated to the Indigenous people of Utah.
Born in Alaska with ancestry from three separate tribes, Peratrovich said she has experienced firsthand the connection that Indigenous people have with nature and the earth. Blackburn’s sentiments were much the same: “Impassioned,” Peratrovich said.
“As an Indigenous woman, it was crazy and relieving to know other people care; that I don’t have to be the only one … trying to push things forward,” Peratrovich said. “Someone sees me, and I see them.”
The three-student group began producing their documentary outside of a class or work setting, relying solely on personal equipment. Then, in the fall, Peratrovich enrolled in a documentary production course at SLCC and pitched their idea to the class as a potential pursuit for the semester. Much to Peratrovich’s surprise, the class selected her pitch.
Student Kolby Butts, who serves as co-director of the project, had also pitched coverage of the lake separately from Peratrovich. Butts said reading about the lake’s lowest recorded point last November prompted him to bring this pitch forward over other ideas he’d been considering.
“Our lives are on the line,” Butts said of his reasoning. “We’re now trying to preserve our spot in the future so we can continue for more generations. But in the current state of the world, we can’t do that.”
Butts hopes the documentary, with its features of expert voices and various images of the lake, can help more people connect with the issue and influences audiences to consider the perspective of Indigenous stewardship.
“The biggest goal of this was to bring this story into a new medium,” Butts said. “We’ve seen dozens upon dozens of articles … Reading stuff like that works, but I don’t think it gets the point across.”
As the student group readies to premiere the 30-minute documentary – which features interviews with Parry, water and climate professors, Carl Moore of PANDOS, and Elizabeth Kronk Warner, dean of the University of Utah school of law – their plan is not to move on but rather to expand what they’ve already created, with hopes of eventually creating a feature-length documentary.
“We’re going to the wisdom keepers, scholars and community members, and bringing them all together to find the commonality,” Peratrovich said.
Watch the trailer for Diverted: Indigenous Stewardship & Saving the Great Salt Lake.
Cristian Martinez wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a new collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
###
We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Cristian Martinez wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
An activist group at Brigham Young University is asking students across Utah to join a national college walkout next week, in an effort to fight homophobia on college campuses.
The Black Menaces — known for asking BYU students challenging questions about racism and equality, then posting the answers on TikTok— has teamed with the Religious Exemption Accountability Project to organize the “Strike Out Homophobia” walkout on Tuesday.
The aim of the walkout, organizers say, is to protest discrimination against the LGBTQ community and other minorities at colleges and universities operated by religious organizations.
“We are walking out to protest the end of legal discrimination by religious universities against queer individuals,” said Sebastian Stewart-Johnson, content coordinator and editor for the Black Menaces, in a TikTok video posted Sept. 6.
Brigham Young University is owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, through its Church Educational System — which also oversees Ensign College in Salt Lake City, BYU’s branches in Rexburg, Idaho, and Laie, Hawaii, the online BYU Pathway Worldwide, and a network of seminaries and institutes of religion.
Students on campuses across Utah and the nation are invited to participate, as organizers hope to get more than 100 colleges and universities involved. The walkout begins at noon Mountain Time on Tuesday. That day, Oct. 11, also is National Coming Out Day, the annual celebration of declaring publicly one’s LGBTQ identity.
Event organizers, on their website, say the goal is to bring Title IX protections — which prohibit sex-based discrimination in any school that receives federal funding — to private religious schools, which are largely exempt from the law.
Elisa Stone, a professor of English and queer studies at Salt Lake Community College and an advisor for the college’s queer student association, said she believes the walkout could be effective in prompting change.
“Peaceful protest is always impactful,” she said. “Anything we can do to get the attention of those who are choosing to oppress and let them know that the oppressed are rising up, that’s when things begin to shift.”
Student Resource Center (GSSRC), which works to support SLCC’s LGBTQ students throughout their education. The GSSRC holds activities and support groups and provides resources to women, LGBTQ students and allies.
Nizhoni Tsosie, an English student at SLCC who counts several BYU graduates in her family, said she would be interested in participating in the walkout.
The videos the Black Menaces make for TikTok, which have been going viral for months, paired with planning events like the walkout and participating in protests in Provo “takes guts,” Tsosie said.
“The Black Menaces have become notorious among my family,” she said. “I think they’re doing what all BIPOC students at BYU wish they could’ve done. It’s kind of amazing to see just a handful of students and a microphone make a whole school feel on edge.”
Haily Askerlund wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a new collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
###
We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text:
This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through student journalism. Haily Askerlund wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
When he was a high school student, Jevahjire France spoke at the opening of a new community technology lab dedicated to serving South Salt Lake’s youth.
France, who was a member of Cottonwood High School’s robotics team, knows the challenges many students face accessing the latest technology. During that October 2019 event, France expressed appreciation for the tech center’s establishment and praised the larger community center for hosting the lab.
That community center — dating back more than 100 years — hosts many of South Salt Lake’s activities and events. However, France was bothered that the community center is named in honor of Christopher Columbus.
In August 2020, he wrote a letter to South Salt Lake City Council members asking them to consider a name change.
“In all honesty,” France wrote in the letter, “the name of [the community center] was one that I could never find myself in as a youth.”
“As a young immigrant just like many in South Salt Lake, I have always wondered if the members of the council of this city ever question how a young immigrant or refugee feels knowing that he is frequenting a library named after an oppressor not too different from the one(s) they or their parents were fleeing from back home?”
France, now a student at Salt Lake Community College, moved from Haiti to the United States in 2016 when he was 13. As a high school student taking part in the robotics team, France formed a connection with Promise SSL, a city initiative that provides community and after-school programs with an academic focus.
The Best Buy Teen Tech Center, a Promise SSL project, serves a diverse population, France said, noting he believes the name of the community center should reflect that as well.
Following France’s letter, the City Council tasked the Youth City Council, a group comprised of local high school students, to come up with a name change proposal.
Edward Lopez, an adviser to the YCC, said that while France’s letter initiated the current process, other members of the community had previously supported changing the center’s name.
They provided a finished proposal in April 2021 and outlined the reasons for a name change. They have the support of 17 organizations in and around South Salt Lake.
The English Skills Learning Center, a nonprofit that uses the community center to provide English classes to non-native speakers, was among the supportive organizations.
“When we choose the names of buildings, parks and other community spaces, we are making a public statement about the historical figures we honor and value, and in the process, we may be further silencing already marginalized voices,” wrote Katie Donoviel, the learning center’s executive director, in a letter to Mayor Cherie Wood and the City Council.
Other groups that wrote letters of support for a name change include the Utah Refugee Connection, United Way of Salt Lake and Catholic Community Services.
The proposal also lists three potential new names for the center: Amani, the Swahili word for “peace,” bridges and promise. Lopez said these names are only suggestions, but he noted that the YCC supports a “value based” name rather than naming the center after an individual.
“South Salt Lake is one of the most diverse cities in the whole state,” Lopez said. “We have refugees and immigrants here from dozens and dozens of countries.”
According to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, South Salt Lake’s percentage of foreign-born residents is 24.6%.
“The city talks about being an inviting and inclusive space,” Lopez said. “So, we want to show the community that we invite to live here that we do believe that. We believe that the center can be more representative.”
The City Council held its first and, thus far, only discussion of renaming the Columbus Community Center in July. The meeting attracted concerned residents.
“We look at the great things that people did in their past, and that is why we honor them — because they did great things that changed the world,” said resident Austen Gee. “That is why we honor Columbus.”
Fred Conlon, another resident, also wanted the center to keep its name.
“There are those who say that Columbus doesn’t live up to our modern values and morals — that is true,” Conlon said to the council. “But it is also true that without Columbus our modern values might not very well exist, so I am in favor of keeping the name of the Columbus center.”
Eight residents spoke at that meeting, all expressing opposition to a name change. The council members pushed the decision to an unspecified date to get feedback from a “wide representation” of the community.
Lopez said some people do not feel comfortable appearing at council meetings, and that often includes people from underrepresented communities.
“[A council meeting] is an intimidating platform and not accessible to everyone,” Lopez said.
Council member Sharla Bynum noted during the meeting, there is discussion of implementing an app to survey residents, predicting a roll-out in a “month or two.” As of Oct. 25, the council had not yet introduced a survey app.
Wood, the mayor, has in the past supported the efforts of the YCC, but declined to comment prior to a decision on the center’s name change.
Lopez and France encourage residents to reach out to their respective council representatives.
“Your voice, especially as a youth, matters,” Lopez said, “because you are the ones coming up and who will be the decision makers... The youth are the ones who will be leading our community in the future.”
Cristian Martinez wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
###
We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Cristian Martinez wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
Valene Peratrovich begins her Sunday morning show on Salt Lake City community radio station KRCL with an on-air land acknowledgement.
“We honor the original ancestors of this land and also offer respect to our other tribal member communities, and we acknowledge the history to cultivate respect for and advocate with our Indigenous communities still connected to this land,” says Peratrovich, who is known to listeners as “Valene MC.”
Valene Peratrovich begins her Sunday morning show on Salt Lake City community radio station KRCL with an on-air land acknowledgement.
“We honor the original ancestors of this land and also offer respect to our other tribal member communities, and we acknowledge the history to cultivate respect for and advocate with our Indigenous communities still connected to this land,” says Peratrovich, who is known to listeners as “Valene MC.”
Originally from Alaska, Peratrovich’s Indigenous ancestry comes from three separate tribes. She has lived all over the West Coast of the United States and now holds many titles, including radio host, KRCL staff production assistant, Native outreach coordinator and Salt Lake Community College student – all on top of being a mother of two.
Ask her how she’s done it all, and she likely will point to her Indigenous ancestry and genuine love of music.
Growing up in Anchorage, Peratrovich was heavily influenced by her family’s Native history.
Her grandparents were Native boarding school students who experienced abuse at the hands of the teachers, nuns and missionaries who ran the schools. The forced removal of Native children from their homes in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Alaska started a cycle of generational trauma that trickled down Peratrovich’s family tree.
In Peratrovich’s eyes, it ends with her.
Peratrovich was originally on a pre-medicine track during her undergraduate studies at Oregon State University. She switched to family sciences, she said, in order to learn more about herself and break the cycle of abuse she personally experienced.
“It sounds funny, but almost in an academic sense, I was learning how to be a parent,” Peratrovich said. “Part of breaking that cycle was healing myself, which is partially why college took [16 years] for me.”
As Peratrovich likes to say, she took the “scenic route through college.” While working in a lab as part of her bachelor’s at Oregon State, she and those around her were reminded of her gift of gab, which she remembers being chastised for as far back as elementary school.
“I’ve always loved to talk to people and ask questions,” Peratrovich said. “I found that even when I worked in the lab, I’d get my work done, but I loved to talk and socialize, … so I knew that [the lab work] wasn’t something I wanted to do forever.”
Peratrovich left the lab behind in 2010, around the same time her husband left the military. Four years later, the couple had a major life change — their first child — and decided to move to Salt Lake City.
Once in Salt Lake City, Peratrovich continued to work on her bachelor’s degree online, finishing it remotely in 2016. However, she said, she wasn’t happy with the odd jobs she was working, and yearned to find a new direction.
In 2021, Peratrovich enrolled at SLCC as a radio and TV production major, and almost immediately, she found the college’s classes to be a better fit.
“I went to school at a big university in huge lecture rooms,” Peratrovich said. “At SLCC, people are there because they actually do want to teach, not just because they’re being funded by research.”
In her first semester at SLCC, Peratrovich wrote a Native-focused article about the use of Indigenous mascots in sports that, through the nonprofit Amplify Utah, was published in The Salt Lake Tribune. The story’s subject matter grabbed the attention of Lara Jones, executive producer of “RadioACTive,” KRCL’s weekday activism show.
“When I began to work with [Valene],” said Jones, “It became clear — she can do what I do. Why not pass the microphone and see what she wants to do?”
Jones invited Peratrovich to host a “RadioACTive” Thanksgiving Special, which became “Exploring the Truths of Thanksgiving.” It aired on Thanksgiving Day 2021. Alongside Peratrovich, a distinguished panel of Indigenous leaders and community members discussed Native views of the popular American holiday.
Jones called it “a perfect distillation of what KRCL wants to do. … [We want to] empower storytellers. Especially those who don’t otherwise have access to the microphone, but are ready to step up to the microphone and knock it out of the park.”
Peratrovich’s first effort as a radio talk-show host earned her recognition. The Thanksgiving Special won first place in the public affairs/talk show category at the Utah Society of Professional Journalists’s 2022 contest.
“I finally got a chance to talk about Natives the way I want to talk about Natives,” Peratrovich said. “It was sharing what Thanksgiving means, or non-Thanksgiving, and Indigenizing and telling truths about what Thanksgiving is from different perspectives of people from different Native nations.”
Peratrovich’s Thanksgiving show solidified her switch from family sciences to media storytelling.
Now, as production assistant for “RadioACTive” and co-host of “Living the Circle of Life,” Peratrovich said she strives to entertain and inform – and tops it with her passion for music.
By focusing most of her show on contemporary Native artists like Ya Tseen, Peratrovich said she hopes to break the cycle of Native art being pigeon-holed as something from the past, or that is only traditional.
Carl Moore, a Utah-based advocate for Native issues and co-founder of both Pandos and SLC Air Protectors, said he thinks there needs to be a major shift in the way Native people are recognized today.
“We don’t want to be seen as this ‘historical’ Native American that gets romanticized and fetishized. It locks us into a box, into the past, and it makes us only valid as Indigenous people if we present ourselves in that past,” Moore explained. “It does damage to us, so it’s important [to recognize] that Indigenous people do change and develop.”
People should not forget the past, Moore said, but balance it with an openness of the present. “Our kids should have that ability to do things that speak to them, [whether contemporary or traditional],” he said.
Peratrovich curates her lineup of music in this way, made with the wisdom of ages past, mixed with the common vitality of modern artists.
“Music is how I tell people I love them,” Peratrovich said, smiling.
In only one year, Peratrovich received her associate degree in radio and TV production from SLCC. While in the program, she realized that she also loves being behind the camera, so she’s now pursuing another associate degree in film production.
Looking forward, “Valene MC” said she hopes to keep expressing her diverse history and shed light on contemporary Native culture through media involvement. Public, independent radio is the perfect platform to do so, she said.
“I’m always looking for folks to pass the microphone to,” said Jones. “But [I’m also looking] to say: there’s the next person. The next generation. Valene is eager to tell stories in a variety of formats and I can’t wait to see what she does next.”
“I want to create this vision [of Native culture], where it’s just so normal,” Peratrovich said.
Catch “Valene MC” as she hosts “Living the Circle of Life,” every other Sunday, 7-10 a.m., on KRCL-90.9 FM, or listen live at KRCL.org.
Kyle Forbush wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
###
We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Kyle Forbush wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
