Kyle Hopkins, an award-winning journalist for his reporting work on sexual assault in Alaska, will be the keynote speaker at an event for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) Awareness Day at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 5, at Shakes Tribal House.
Hopkins was the lead reporter on the 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning “Lawless” series published by the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica. The project explored sexual assault in Alaska and why the problem was getting worse.
Though his work is not focused directly on MMIP, he hopes to share the parts of it that relate, like his focus on the criminal justice system and other systemic failures in Alaska.
He said he is also excited to talk to students about his career as a reporter – oftentimes, there’s not enough excitement around journalism as a career, especially in Alaska. He hopes to share what he does in his work, why he loves it and why it’s important. Hopkins will speak to eighth through 12th graders at the high school at 10 a.m. Friday, May 3.
“I grew up in Southeast, and I’ve spent a lot of time in Wrangell,” Hopkins said. He wants students to know they have a unique take on Alaska, and that they can tell the story of the Southeast and Alaska that they know. Living in Southeast provides a perspective that puts students in a position to tell really important and interesting stories.
Originally from Sitka, Hopkins studied journalism at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He started working at the Anchorage Daily News in 2004, with a break to work at an Anchorage TV station. Throughout his career he covered a variety of topics in Alaska like breaking news and politics before covering communities off the road system.
“If I could only tell one more story about Alaska, what would it be?” is the question he asked himself before settling on the issue of sexual assault and domestic violence
As he grew up, sexual assault was an issue he was always aware of. But as he approached middle age, he said he wondered why the problem wasn’t getting any better.
Part of telling the story for the “Lawless” project, Hopkins realized, required setting the scene of rural Alaska.
“ProPublica has a national audience,” he said, adding that Anchorage’s audience is similar, explaining that most people in Anchorage haven’t traveled to rural Alaska communities.
People have this image of public safety where you call 911 and the police show up, Hopkins explained, but in a lot of places in Alaska that’s just not an option.
One in three Alaska communities have little to no law enforcement personnel, and many of those communities are entirely Alaska Native. These communities are being denied public safety, he said, adding “there are a lot of broken promises” in the criminal justice system in Alaska.
“It’s fair for Alaskans to demand transparency and accountability from these institutions, and they should,” he said. “We assume that things are being done like they are in TV and movies,” but he explained that when you start to look into individual case details when people disappear, there’s a lot of disappointment and room for improvement in the way things are handled.
Having Hopkins here as the keynote speaker will make for a very meaningful event, said Kevin Gadsey, the Wrangell Cooperative Association domestic violence prevention specialist.
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