Allison Herrera
Allison Herrera covered Indigenous Affairs for KOSU from April 2020 to November 2023.
Herrera is a radio and print journalist who has worked for PRX's The World, Colorado Public Radio as the climate and environment editor and as a freelance reporter for High Country News’ Indigenous Affairs desk.
While at The World, she covered gender and equity for a reporting project called “Across Women’s Lives,” which focused on women’s rights around the globe. This project took her to Ukraine, where Herrera showcased the country’s global surrogacy industry, and reported on families who were desperate to escape the ongoing civil war that they moved to abandoned towns near the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site. In 2019, she received a fellowship from the International Women in Media Fund to report on the issue of reproductive rights in Argentina, a country scarred by the effects of the Dirty War and a legacy of sexual and physical abuse directed towards women.
In 2015 and 2016, Herrera co-created and produced the Localore project “Invisible Nations” with KOSU. The project included video, radio and live events centered on telling better stories about Native American life in Oklahoma. Invisible Nations received several awards from the Associated Press and the Society of Professional Journalists.
In 2017, she and her colleague Ziva Branstetter received an Emmy Award nomination for their Reveal story “Does the Time Fit the Crime,” which centered on criminal justice in Oklahoma.
In 2019, Herrera’s story for High Country News and Center for Public Integrity titled When Disaster Strikes, Indigenous Communities Receive Unequal Disaster Aid received a Scripps Howard nomination for best environmental reporting along with the One Disaster Away series.
Herrera’s Native ties are from her Xolon Salinan tribal heritage; her family’s traditional village was in the Toro Creek area of the Central California coast.
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Now that Killers of the Flower Moon is becoming a blockbuster movie, the community where many of the murders took place is wrestling with how to open up about this painful past. One solution: rehab a landmark building.
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Osage citizens in Oklahoma see the release of "Killers of the Flower Moon" as a way to embrace trauma in their past. Dozens of tribal members were murdered in the 1920s for their oil-rich land.
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Killers of the Flower Moon is in theaters and already generating Oscar buzz. But for individual Osages, this movie is deeply personal.
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President Joe Biden is nominating the former Cherokee Nation Attorney General to serve as a federal judge in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma.
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The highly anticipated film adaptation of Killers of the Flower Moon comes out on Friday, Oct. 20.
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The tribal nation recently filed a complaint in federal court against the state and Attorney General Gentner Drummond.
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In 1984, the Oklahoma Historical Society took over the management of Lillie Morrell Burkhart’s estate, and today they run the White Hair Memorial — just as Lillie wanted. But, there continue to be questions about what exactly that legacy will be moving forward.
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Join the Osage News and KOSU's Allison Herrera on Oct. 22 for “Examining In Trust” at Wakon Iron Hall in Pawhuska from 4-7 p.m.
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The inaugural Two-Spirit Festival is this weekend in Tulsa-the tagline: An Indigiqueer Celebration. It will feature a lineup of entertainment, music and a drag show.
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Lillie Morrell Burkhart was a wealthy Osage woman living near Ralston, Oklahoma in Osage County in the early 20th century. When she passed away in 1967, she had a will that clearly laid out her wishes: her home is to be kept as a shrine to her ancestor Chief White Hair. She left her land, her country house and her two headrights to the Oklahoma Historical Society.In KOSU’s third story in a series about her legacy, what would happen to that home and everything inside it would be at the center of a lengthy court battle involving relatives who were upset that Osage wealth would be leaving Osage hands once again.