Freedom of the press and tribes
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News Today Contributing Editor
nativesunnews.today
WASHINGTON - Owning about 75 percent of Indian mass media, tribal governments are a key barrier to independent reporting in American Indian outlets, according to a
new report from the Democracy Fund announced last month.
“It is time to flip the script and make independent media in Indian country normal rather than an exception,” says report author Jodi Rave, an award-winning journalist of Mandan, Hidatsa and Minneconjou Lakota descent.
She would know. Having both founded her own digital publication Buffalo’s Fire and held a top post in the Three Affiliated Tribes’ media department, she went on to become executive director of Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance.
The donor-supported non-profit aims at “creating a news system that can respond to the news gap of information in American Indian communities in the Great Plains.”
Indian-owned newspapers that are run as independent businesses, such as the Native Sun News Today based in Rapid City, are precious few, according to the report entitled “American Indian Media Today: Tribes Maintain Majority Ownership as Independent Journalists Seek Growth.”
Among the independent outlets the report spotlights are: the Teton Times based in McLaughlin, Native News Online headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Native Hoop, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
“Like other media sectors, Indian print media has had a significant downturn,” Rave writes. “Today, there are 54 urban and reservation newspapers and 24 newsletters, compared to 280 reservation newspapers and bulletins and 320 urban Indian publications in 1998.”
A classic illustration of vanishing independent indigenous print media is the previously private Indian Country Today, founded by Native Sun News Today owner Tim Giago, which went all-digital after he sold it to the Oneida Nation, and then became property of a consortium of tribes in 2018 through its new owner National Congress of American Indians.
More’s the pity, Rave notes: “In so much of mainstream media, American Indians are invisible as contemporary people or romanticized as relics of a bygone era. The invisibility affects how policymakers make decisions about native people whose lives are often struck by high rates of poverty, suicide, poor health care, and missing and murdered indigenous women,” she says.
“This has made Indian media a critical source not only to inform and engage our communities but also to lift up our stories in the broader culture,” Rave says.
While print media is in decline, one bright spot for Native American media is that the number of radio stations has nearly doubled from 30 to 59 during the last 20 years, she found. Native Sun News Today owner Giago strongly disagrees that print media, at least Indian print media, is in decline.
“Our newspaper is as strong as ever and has maintained a steady growth since its inception 11 years ago," says Giago. "After I sold Indian Country Today and it went digital, I found that there was still a very powerful demand for the old fashioned printed newspaper in Indian Country.”
Contact Talli Nauman at talli.nauman@gmail.com
Copyright permission Native Sun News Today
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