Washington Post reporters Dana Hedgpeth, Sari Horwitz, and The Washington Post staff have won the 2025 Dori J. Maynard Justice Award for “Indian Boarding Schools,” a searing five-part series based on an 18-month investigation of the widespread sexual abuse of Native American children by Catholic priests, brothers and sisters. Judges called the entry “haunting,” “beautifully done” and “probing.”
The Dori J. Maynard Justice Award, sponsored annually by the O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism at Marquette, honors social justice reporting that illuminates ignorance, systemic racism, intolerance, negligence and inequality.
This is the second straight year The Washington Post has won the Maynard Award. One of 10 Poynter Institute Journalism Prizes, the award honors the memory of Dori J. Maynard, a former American Society of News Editors board member and advocate for diversity in journalism and newsrooms. The award comes with a cash prize of $2,500.
Contest winners are expected to visit Marquette University this fall, in person or virtually, to present their work.
“This series represents the best tradition of public service journalism, the legacy of Dori J. Maynard, and the mission of the O’Brien Fellowship to promote justice and equality,” said Jeffery Gerritt, director of the O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism. “It illuminates a shameful chapter in U.S. history that continues to traumatize Indigenous peoples. We’re honored to welcome to Marquette the journalists who produced this outstanding work.”
The United States government operated Indian Boarding Schools, where thousands of students died, for roughly 150 years, from 1819 to 1969. Last year, U.S. President Joe Biden apologized to all Indigenous Americans for the harm caused by federal Indian boarding schools that separated Native children from their families and tribal communities.
Hedgpeth, a Native American journalist who has worked for The Washington Post for 25 years, is an enrolled member of the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe of North Carolina. She has covered Native American issues, Pentagon spending and the U.S. Defense industry, as well as local governments, courts, and rail and bus systems. Her honors include the Gerald Loeb Award for Best Writing with Post colleague Robert O’Harrow Jr.
Horwitz, an investigative reporter who covers criminal justice, has won numerous national awards. She has shared four Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of the child welfare system, police shootings, the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Horwitz is the author of the series “Justice in Indian Country” and co-author of the book “American Cartel: Inside the Battle to Bring Down the Opioid Industry.”
Full winning entry:
