About

Sarah Liese is an Indigenous Affairs reporter at KOSU Radio in Oklahoma City. Liese has experience in content creation, research, public relations and mitigation video. She firmly believes in combining accurate, extensive reporting with powerful visuals. To her, that is the best way for the truth to shine forth thoughtfully, contextually, and creatively.

She was a 2022 Indigenous Non-Fiction Fellow at the Sundance Institute and presented her research at the International Indigenous Research Conference in 2022 and 2023. She completed her Master of Science degree at Ohio University, where she student journalism and visual communication to build a strong documentary filmmaking foundation. She was a teaching assistant at Ohio University from August 2021- April 2022, instructing 10-20 students on how to report the news on multiple platforms. She was a research assistant to Dr. Victoria LaPoe, which allowed her to learn more about issues prevalent to Indigenous communities– a topic Liese is passionate about, as she is Diné and an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. During her assistantship, she created the 2021 NAJA Media Spotlight report, which analyzes the New York Times' coverage of Indigenous issues over the past five years to highlight their use of Native American stereotypes, Indigenous authors, and sources. She served as a Full Circle Fellow at the Sundance Institute from May 2021-June 2022, was a Native American Journalism Fellow (Mentor-In-Training) at the Native American Journalist Association (NAJA), and was awarded the NAJA Facebook Journalism Scholarship in 2021. And in her free time, Sarah worked as a poetry reader for the New Ohio Review in 2021.

Her undergraduate degree and experience are grounded in social media management, broadcast journalism, and creative writing. During her four years at the University of Mississippi, Liese pursued multiple internships and fellowships, including the Ole Miss Producer in Residence Fellowship that brought her to WLOX-TV, where she later worked as a digital content producer. She was a marketing intern for her University's English department for two years, a 2017 Native American Journalist Fellow and intern for NAJA, and a news correspondent for her university's news station, NewsWatch Ole Miss. In 2018, the Ole Miss Croft Institute awarded Sarah the Freeman Foundation Grant, which provided funding for her to live and intern in Tokyo, Japan, for eight weeks.

Her articles, photos, poems, and videos can be found on kosu.org, indiancountrytoday.com, indigenousgoddessgang.com, youmightneedtohearthis.com, among others.