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Emily Schwing

The World

Emily Schwing is a reporter for KUAC in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Emily Schwing started stuffing envelopes for KUER FM90 in Salt Lake City in 2002. It was meant to be volunteer position, but it turned into a multi-year summer internship in the public radio newsroom. Emily moved on to an internship with "Radio Expeditions" at National Public Radio in Washington, DC, in 2006. She’s also worked for Deutsche Welle Radio in Bonn, Germany. Emily has also filed stories for NPR, APM, CBC, Monocle Radio and National Native News. Emily grew up between Denver, Pittsburgh and Salt Lake City. She is currently based in Fairbanks, Alaska. In the winter, Emily becomes something of a "Mushing Correspondent," following all 1,000 miles of the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race and the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. She regularly produces stories on Arctic research, science and resource development.

Attendees perform a round dance during a press conference and prayer vigil at the former Muscowequan Indian Residential School, one of the last residential schools to close its doors in Canada in 1997 and the last fully intact residential school still sta

What the US can learn from Canada’s commission on Indigenous residential schools

Conflict & Justice

For some, recent findings signal that Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission didn’t go far enough to get answers about what took place in the residential schools. 

Flowers, children's shoes and other items rest at a memorial

Gruesome boarding school discovery forces Canada to reckon with its cultural genocide history

Human rights
A group of Sinixt tribal members stand together near a mound and conduct a ceremony.

Canada’s highest court rules in favor of Sinixt tribal rights at heart of hunting case

Justice
The Supreme Court of Canada is seen in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Nov. 4, 2019.

Do US-living descendants of tribes in Canada have rights north of the border?

Justice
A man raises his left arm in protest.

Indigenous youth take global stage in Madrid to voice climate change worries 

Climate Change
A slate-blue sea stretches out on the horizon. In the foreground, green grass is dotted with wildflowers.

For some Alaska Natives, the Bering Sea and an international border makes it hard to go home

Culture

For generations, Alaskan Natives crossed the Bering Sea to visit family on nearby islands. It’s harder today, thanks to international politics, high costs and weather.

Rick Desautel, flanked by his daughter and his wife, Linda (right), celebrates his acquittal of illegal hunting charges outside the provincial courthouse in Nelson, British Columbia, in March 2017.

Canada says the Sinixt tribe is extinct. The tribe’s American descendants disagree.

Justice

What do you do when a country has officially declared your people extinct? One descendant of the Sinixt tribe went on an illegal elk hunt.

Olga Letykai, one of Far East Russia's best known throat singers, this summer in Chukotka.

Beyonce? No. But her throat singing soars

Culture

The secret, explains a master singer in Far East Russia: “It’s a road. It’s an oxygen road.” A deep, earthy and guttural road, too.

A handmade walrus skin boats lies along the shore of the Bering Sea. These boats, also known as bidarkas, are used for hunting marine mammals. In the summer, teams of men and women race them.

Arctic cultures could be under threat as mining and oil come to their lands

Culture

This summer, the first-ever Beringia Arctic Games brought Arctic natives from around the world to compete in far eastern Russia. But while the Russian government wants to make it an annual tourist attraction, the games may be a last gasp for Arctic cultures in the face of mining and oil booms.