In 2013, the Anishinabek Nation awarded Porter with the Debwewin Citation, one of the few non-Indigenous journalists to receive the honour for excellence in reporting on First Nations issues. In 2011, she won the Radio Television Digital News Association's (RTDNA) Adrienne Clarkson Award for diversity for her "Common Ground Café" series that brought strangers together to make a meal and discuss race relations in Thunder Bay. Throughout her career, Porter won numerous awards and recognitions for her work about Indigenous issues and social justice in northern Ontario.
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She's pictured, on the right, with First Nations kookums Tina Munroe, Michelle Derosier and Ma-Nee Chacaby after the four spoke at a 2021 event in Thunder Bay about police and security in public spaces. While she was off work because of cancer, Porter, right, took part in events and interviews, and wrote essays and academic articles to address racism in Thunder Bay, Ont., and improve the quality of journalism. I know myself and many others have deep gratitude, and respect and love for her for going to those places."
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She stepped into that with courage, long before anyone else was really doing that. "As a settler and as a white woman in our communities, she wasn't afraid of that. "She had a remarkable ability as a seer," said Derosier, adding that she told stories forcing Canadians to confront their own history and oppression of Indigenous people at a time when others either weren't looking or were afraid to do so. Porter moved to Thunder Bay in 2000 to continue that work for CBC. She believed in what she was doing," Angeconeb said in an email to CBC News. She was a professional journalist in every way: tough, determined, wholehearted, honest and sincere. It was a time when Wawatay News was facing many challenges just trying to stay afloat, but Porter's work helped turn things around for the better, Angeconeb said. Wearing her biking jacket in this photo, Porter loved her motorcycle, being outdoors, and spending time with friends and family. Porter's friends remember her as someone who was fun to be with, and who had a sense of humour and infectious laugh. About the residential schools, the last of which had only recently closed," she wrote in her essay. "I began to cover stories from those communities: about homes with no drinking water, overcrowded houses full of illness, and mould and grief. In a 2020 essay she wrote for the Maisonneuve magazine, Porter said it was during that time she began visiting First Nations in the region and "got the education I was so sorely lacking." Angeconeb remembers hiring Porter for the position "within a few hours, maybe even minutes" after her interview. Garnet Angeconeb, an Anishinaabe elder and former journalist, was the interim executive director at the time. In Sioux Lookout, she was the editor for the Wawatay Native Communications Society, an independent, self-governing media organization dedicated to telling stories from the 49 First Nations that make up the Nishnawbe Aski Nation in northern Ontario. She spent a brief period as a journalist in the Northwest Territories before moving to Sioux Lookout, Ont., in 1998. Raised in southern Ontario, Porter graduated from Centennial College with a diploma in journalism. She would do that, and she would do that with such grace, and integrity and love." Her early career
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"As a storyteller myself, I would often go to her in the early days of our relationship with stories, whether they were something that was going to become part of a story, or whether there was just a story I wanted her to hold. Michelle Derosier, left, says her friend Porter, right, held and told stories with 'grace, and integrity and love.' In this May 2022 photo, the two work on an upcoming claymation film by Derosier titled A Boy and His Loss, narrated by Porter.