Dennis Ward saw it coming. The pipeline, the build-up of tension at Standing Rock in North Dakota, which became an eight-month long stand-off. He convinced the APTN news room to go south-side for what has turned out to be one of the most important stories in US-Indigenous relations this century.

We talk about his pre-APTN career, to his coverage of Standing Rock, including news gathering while being pepper sprayed, and dodging rubber bullets.

Melissa Ridgen has exposed corruption and misspending in Indian country.

We dive into what she has discovered about accountability, and some of the key stories Investigates has broken over the last 10 years…. Plus we talk about bunnies.

Trina Roache has worked at APTN – off and on – since 2001. After returning from an “extended” four-year mat leave in 2013, she saw that the equipment had changed and evolved.

But the Mi’kmaq video journalist wanted that big old Sony camera she was accustomed to using earlier in her career.

“I still have that camera,” she told Karyn Pugliese during her interview for APTN Investigates – a Retrospective, talking about her History Decolonized documentary. “My fingers just know where to go.”

Reflecting on her “long journey” with the company, the talented story teller said “APTN has come so far,” since she started.

According to APTN Investigates journalist Josh Grummet, the most important thing anyone can do in life is listen. So that’s why his Twitter handle is @joshlistens! Another intriguing mystery solved during this conversation with Executive News Director Karyn Pugliese.

He’s the right-hand man to producers on Investigates. A journalist, shooter, editor and creative tour de force with a hand in every episode including his own, Priceless.

Kathleen Martens knows this. She’s proved time and again that government did not fairly compensate survivors and some lawyers fleeced them. She’s broken stories, held those in power accountable, some lawyers were disbarred as a result of her exposés.

Her documentary “Truth? Or Reconciliation” was another deep dive winning the 2017 Canadian Association of Journalists award in the Open Broadcast Feature category with one judge calling it a “perfect” documentary.

Holly Moore was a fine arts student, a dancer and a street performer. Naturally, the next step in her career was to join CBC’s elite investigative unit. Not so obvious?

We talk about how she got from A to B to APTN Today, she is the producer of APTN Investigates, and recently won the Amnesty International Award for Human Right reporting for her work on “The Cure was worse” delving into stories of starvation, isolation, loss of culture and even medical experimentation at Canada’s tuberculosis sanatoriums.

Melissa Ridgen has moved from APTN Investigates to host the APTN talk show InFocus. She’s brought her direct style of inquiry and her predilection for getting to the bottom of things in a Frank way. Not everybody likes that.

We’ll talk to her about how she handles haters. Also, how staring out a window led Ridgen to investigate a good news story, but then it all went wrong.

Veteran reporter Kathleen Marten’s takes us behind the scenes. Matty is non-verbal, suffers from serious disabilities and just aged out of foster care. His foster family wants to keep caring for him, but the state is cutting them off. It’s the kind of noble story reporters want to tell.

However, you can’t just bulldoze your way in. Marten’s talks about trying to strike the balance between getting the images and story a television journalist needs, and while trying not to exploit or harm the vulnerable youth at the centre of the story.

Kathleen Martens has done it all, from covering agricultural stories for a small-town paper in rural Manitoba to taking on the complexities of the federal bureaucracy, not to mention just about the entire legal profession. First in local print and then in long form TV investigations for a national audience and now on the APTN National News web site, there’s not much Kathleen Martens hasn’t done in the world of journalism. And by bringing a handful of national awards to APTN Investigates, the evidence is clearly there that she’s done it very well.

Karyn Pugliese and Kathleen Martens discuss the Independent Assessment Process and so much more on APTN Investigates: A Retrospective.

It’s been a unique journey for APTN Vancouver Video Journalist Tina House. She learned how to be in the right place at the right time from her Metis leader father. She picked up the skills she needed to survive and prosper in media the hard way, waiting tables along the way.

Then during the very first season of APTN Investigates, Tina House was awarded the Amnesty International Human Rights Journalism Award for a story about a missing and then murdered relative. Karyn Pugliese and Tina House discuss Missing Women and so much more on APTN Investigates: A Retrospective.

Francine Compton’s father made her transcribe interviews as a child, then encouraged her to study broadcast, telling her one day Indigenous people would have their own TV network.

She was still a teenager when she was put in charge of APTN’s studio crew. She’s since worked as a reporter, producer and is now part of APTN’s management team. We talk about this plus her Investigates story on fracking, before fracking was a thing.

It became clear early on at APTN that the majority of reporters it was hiring were single moms. Melissa Ridgen talks about balancing motherhood and journalism.

As well this episode dives into Ridgen’s investigation into the scandal surrounding the Manitoba Association Of Native Firefighters’ (MANFF’s) apparent disregard for its duty to care for flood victims, not to mention taxpayer dollars. We talk about why it’s important to investigate these stories, despite the fear that it may perpetuate a stereotype.

Kenneth Jackson, a former Ottawa Sun crime reporter trying his hand as a freelancer, got the box. In it were documents with politicians’ names, someone who had a personal connection to the prime minister and a mass of information about First Nations water.

Jackson put the box in the trunk of his car and drove to the Ottawa home of his best friend, a reporter named Jorge Barrera who had been working at APTN as a web reporter. That launched one of the most widely reported investigations into a Canadian political scandal. Spoiler alert: Kenneth got a job at APTN.

Todd Lamirande had been at APTN for only a year when he transferred to BC to open the Vancouver bureau – located in his one bedroom apartment. Shortly thereafter, the police illegally seized his car and his tapes.

It was a precarious start, but so began an 18-year career at APTN, and Lamirande – who never wanted to work in television –began his ascent, becoming one of the best known on air personalities at APTN. Lamirande also tells how he unravelled the mystery behind the missing Bell of Batoche. Or did he?

For a long time Paul Barnsley was the only investigative journalist on the Native beat, and today he remains one of the most respected journalists among Indigenous people in Canada. In Through the Looking Glass he talks about his career and offers wisdom from his own experience to non-Aboriginal reporters breaking in on the beat.

Barnsley won the life-time achievement award for human right reporting, and has mentored dozens of Indigenous journalists.

Award-winning Cheryl McKenzie, known as the face of APTN for more than a decade speaks about her career, a breakthrough story that saved dozens of lives, and the of launch Investigative journalism by Indigenous peoples – a first in the world.