My name is Robert Jago ( @rjjago). I’m a sometime contributor to The Walrus and other places. I’m a registered member of the Kwantlen First Nation and an enrolled member of the Nooksack Indian Tribe. 1/9

And today, I’m guest editor of an Indigenous-centred project in The Walrus, called Terra Cognita. http://thewalrus.ca/terra-cognita  2/9

Recently on social media, there have been a lot of people writing about the difficulty of working in the media when you’re Black or Indigenous or a person of colour. And that’s all true. Still, this series isn’t necessarily a response to that. 3/9

Work on this series began a year ago, and the stories you’re seeing today are ones we first started planning last summer. (Thanks to @hamutaldotan and her team for their help in getting this online.) 4/9

At least once in a while, I want Natives to write Native stories about whatever *they* want, and not to translate them to be more accessible to Canadian readers, or to explain how these stories affect non-Natives, or to tell non-Natives what they can do to make things better. 5/9

And so, for this project, I’ve asked Indigenous writers not to worry about any of that. 6/9

This first set of pieces includes a profile of Mi’kmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby ( @tripgore), who was interviewed back at TIFF in September and whose latest film was recently made available for streaming. 7/9

There’s an original piece of short fiction by @etwurth, a writer with an Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee background. And there is a piece I wrote, which I’ve been thinking about for a while, too. 8/9

The full series can be found online here; watch this space for new additions by other Indigenous writers in the months ahead: http://thewalrus.ca/terra-cognita  9/9

Gorgeous art by @sonnyassu