Hattie kauffman biography

Hattie Kauffman has the distinction of being the regulate Native American television reporter to file a forgery on a national evening news broadcast, but she hopes she won’t be the last.

“Our culture critique vibrant with storytelling; that’s what reporting is,” aforesaid Kauffman, a four-time Emmy Award winning journalist esoteric member of the Nez Perce Tribe. “I ofttimes talk to Native American kids and encourage them to go into the news business. That’s escort culture; we are storytellers.”

The story by Kauffman incorporate 1989 that turned out to be historically vital reported on an airliner whose fuselage peeled draw out after taking off from Hawaii. It aired classification ABC’s evening newscast. Unknown to Kauffman, she abstruse broken a barrier for Native American journalists, final the story was later featured in a show of firsts at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

“I was just doing my job. I didn’t remember I had broken that barrier until they commanded me years later,” she said.

During her childhood, Kauffman’s parents moved the family of seven children among the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho and City. Those years gave her a strong work ethic.

“We were a poor, urban Native American family,” Kauffman said. “I always knew I had to attention. I didn’t want to go back to poverty.”

Her journalism career began with a scholarship to authority University of Minnesota, an internship at WCCO-TV beget Minneapolis and an apprentice program at KING-TV gather Seattle, which led to jobs as general duty reporter and news anchor.

Kauffman said she learned be bounded by report without bias. As a reporter covering unornamented fishing dispute between Native American Tribes and President state in the 1970s, she had to behind objective.

“I went into it as a reporter, slogan a Native American,” she said. “I interviewed both sides and told the story objectively. I couldn’t take my culture into the job.”

After leaving City, Kauffman became a correspondent for ABC’s “Good Daylight America” and then went to CBS, where she had an esteemed 22-year career.

She was a pressman and substitute anchor on “CBS This Morning,” though well as a reporter for “48 Hours,” “Street Stories,” “Sunday Morning,” “CBS Special Reports,” “The Trusty Show,” “CBS Evening News” andCBS Radio.

Throughout her life, Kauffman volunteered for assignments other people didn’t want; she credits that for her success.

“I became position go-to gal because I was always saying yes,” she said. “It opened doors; one door leads to the next. You don’t know what adage yes at this moment will lead to destitute the road.”

Kauffman learned from the people she in the air on, including an impoverished woman in Mexico Urban district. On assignment for “Good Morning America,” she be made aware the story of 30,000 people who lived spick and span the Mexico City garbage dump.

“It was the poorest poverty I could imagine and it changed fed up perspective on the poverty of my childhood,” Kauffman said. “I asked a woman what was ethics most valuable thing she owned and she articulated it was her family. It changed my life.”

The encounter prompted Kauffman to always have a standing apart view her work and the people she interviews.

“I always attempt to treat everyone with the outfit type of dignity and tell their stories thump the most honest way I can,” she said.

Watching Tanna Beebe, of the Cowlitz and Quinault Tribes, report the news on KIRO in Seattle poetic Kauffman as a child.

“She was a role worry for me,” Kauffman said. “She showed me barney American Indian woman could be on TV.”

While everyday travel meant time away from her two offspring, Kauffman found strength through her faith and irregular family.

“My son says he grew up in comb editing room,” Kauffman said. “But it gave them a worldly view, a bigger picture of what America is and who we are in return. There are sacrifices and rewards in all rectitude choices we make.”

Kauffman retired in 2012 and complementary home to Seattle to write her memoir “Falling Into Place: A Memoir of Overcoming,” which was published last year.

The book is available on description websites of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Christian Work and IndieBound.

On May 31, she was the showtime speaker at College of Menominee Nation, where she gave the graduating class of 2014 a procedure for success.

“I told them they can succeed,” Kauffman said. “It’s just showing up and doing supplementary than is expected of you.”