Leslie Lounsbury was a teacher from Wabowden, a small community in northern Manitoba, and she was tired of what she saw. Every time Indigenous people appeared in Canadian media, the stories were about crisis — addiction, poverty, violence, dysfunction. As an educator, she watched these narratives seep into classrooms and settle into the minds of young Indigenous students who deserved to see themselves reflected in something other than statistics. In 2002, Lounsbury, who was Métis, decided to build the platform herself. She called it SAY Magazine — Spirit of Aboriginal Youth — and its mission was disarmingly simple: find First Nations, Métis, and Inuit success stories and tell them with pride.
What began as a modest publication grew into one of Canada's most established Indigenous magazines, published six times a year from Winnipeg and distributed to individuals, communities, schools, and businesses across the country. Each issue covers business, education, culture and language, law and justice, arts and entertainment, sports, wellness, and grassroots community initiatives — always through the lens of resilience and achievement rather than deficit. In addition to its regular editions, SAY publishes a post-secondary Indigenous Education Guide distributed free to secondary schools, helping students navigate their path to higher education. The magazine functions as both a lifestyle publication and a classroom teaching tool, representing multiple perspectives on Indigenous cultures, knowledge, and ways of life.
Lounsbury spent the better part of two decades building meaningful partnerships and working to enhance the lives of Indigenous peoples across North America. She gave a voice to countless people whose stories the mainstream press had no interest in telling. On May 27, 2018, she passed into the spirit world. She was seventy-one. The publication she built has continued in her memory, sustained by the Government of Canada, institutional sponsors, and a readership that understands what it means to have a magazine that looks at Indigenous communities and sees not problems to be solved but people to be celebrated.
In a media landscape that still defaults to crisis when covering Indigenous life, SAY Magazine remains what Lounsbury intended it to be: proof that the good news stories exist, and that someone is paying attention.
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