Tristan Ahtone: Indigenous Journalism and Cooperative Media

Center for Great Plains Studies Author

04/15/2022 Added

47 Plays

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Reporter Tristan Ahtone will present approaches to Indigenous journalism and cooperative reporting and newsroom organizing as tools to restructure the way journalists operate and subvert long-standing values that rely, and thrive, on racism, colonialism, capitalism, and nationalism. Part of the Reckoning & Reconciliation on the Great Plains summit.

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[00:00:00.344](light music)
[00:00:05.450]Welcome everybody to our second and last day of our
[00:00:09.527]"Reckoning and Reconciliation on the Great Plain Summit."
[00:00:13.440]My name is Margaret Jacobs.
[00:00:14.940]I'm the Director of the Center for Great Plains Studies.
[00:00:18.500]We hope you were able to catch the outstanding keynote
[00:00:21.440]presentations by Walter Echo-Hawk and Hannibal Johnson
[00:00:25.750]during the last two days,
[00:00:27.650]as well as the many stimulating sessions
[00:00:29.610]that were held yesterday.
[00:00:31.520]All presentations and panels have been recorded
[00:00:34.320]and will soon be available
[00:00:35.299]on the Center for Great Plains Studies website.
[00:00:39.470]Before we begin this morning,
[00:00:40.900]I wanna thank our many sponsors and partners
[00:00:43.330]for supporting the summit
[00:00:45.050]and the year long series of which it's a part.
[00:00:47.896]We are very grateful to the Cooper Foundation,
[00:00:50.720]Humanities Nebraska,
[00:00:52.490]the Office of the President of the University of Nebraska
[00:00:55.330]and its Diversity Officers Collaborative,
[00:00:58.000]the University of Nebraska at Carney,
[00:00:59.650]and the many entities
[00:01:00.643]at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln
[00:01:02.900]that you see on your screen.
[00:01:06.140]At the Center, I'd also like to thank all
[00:01:08.680]of our hardworking staff,
[00:01:10.590]particularly Katie Nieland and Dylan Wall and Sarah Giles,
[00:01:15.000]Melissa Amateis, Ashley Wilkinson, and Casey Seger.
[00:01:22.150]I'd like to begin today's event by acknowledging
[00:01:26.060]that the University of Nebraska
[00:01:27.380]is a land grant institution with campuses and programs
[00:01:31.099]on the past, present, and future homelands
[00:01:34.570]of the Pawnee, Ponca, Oto-Missouria, Omaha, Dakota,
[00:01:40.270]Lakota, Kaw, Cheyenne, and Arapaho peoples,
[00:01:45.150]as well as those of the relocated Ho Chunk,
[00:01:48.060]Sac and Fox and Iowa peoples.
[00:01:51.320]The land we currently call Nebraska has always been
[00:01:54.370]and will continue to be an Indigenous homeland.
[00:01:58.940]Please take a moment to consider the legacies
[00:02:01.760]of more than 150 years of displacement, violence,
[00:02:06.230]settlement, and survival that bring us here today.
[00:02:13.980]This acknowledgement and the centering of Indigenous peoples
[00:02:16.810]is a start as we move forward together.
[00:02:21.650]Now to this morning's opening event.
[00:02:24.420]If you have questions for our speaker,
[00:02:26.350]please post them in the chat or in the Q&A.
[00:02:31.070]We're delighted to have Tristan Ahtone with us today.
[00:02:35.280]He's a member or a citizen of the Kiowa Tribe,
[00:02:38.350]and is Editor at Large at "Grist."
[00:02:41.540]He previously served as Editor in Chief
[00:02:43.599]at the "Texas Observer"
[00:02:45.890]and Indigenous Affairs Editor at "High Country News."
[00:02:49.560]He's reported for Al Jazeera America,
[00:02:51.907]PBS News Hour, National Native News, NPR,
[00:02:56.130]and National Geographic.
[00:02:58.400]Ahtone's stories have won multiple honors,
[00:03:00.850]including investigative awards from the Gannet Foundation
[00:03:03.899]and Public Radio News Directors Incorporated.
[00:03:07.550]He additionally led the "High Country News" team
[00:03:09.903]that received a George Polk Award,
[00:03:12.610]an IRE Award, a Sigma Award,
[00:03:14.500]a Society of News Design Award,
[00:03:16.430]and a National Magazine Award nomination.
[00:03:20.020]Many of you may know the very influential article
[00:03:23.160]he co-authored called "Land-Grab Universities,"
[00:03:27.420]which appeared in "High Country News."
[00:03:31.220]Tristan Ahtone is a past president
[00:03:33.430]of the Native American Journalist Association
[00:03:36.090]and a 2017 Nieman Fellow.
[00:03:38.930]He's all also a Director of the Muckrock Foundation,
[00:03:42.720]a nonprofit collaborative news site
[00:03:45.080]that brings together journalists, researchers, activists,
[00:03:47.810]and regular citizens to request, analyze,
[00:03:50.750]and share government documents,
[00:03:52.143]making politics more transparent
[00:03:54.563]and democracies more informed.
[00:03:57.760]Welcome very much, Tristan.
[00:03:59.370]We're so glad to have you today.
[00:04:02.980]Thanks for that introduction, Margaret,
[00:04:04.850]and thanks to all the organizers
[00:04:07.823]for the invitation to be here.
[00:04:10.220]It's really a pleasure.
[00:04:13.169]I'm gonna share my screen here.
[00:04:18.810]So since the theme of this symposium
[00:04:22.479]is reckoning and reconciliation,
[00:04:25.080]I wanted to talk about Indigenous journalism
[00:04:29.210]and how the practice is different
[00:04:31.390]than Western frameworks.
[00:04:33.850]And how Indigenous reporters are really challenging
[00:04:36.405]dominant narratives found in your news digests.
[00:04:39.970]And what I'm hoping to get across during this talk
[00:04:43.410]is that the practice and approach to the craft
[00:04:46.640]of Indigenous journalism
[00:04:48.300]isn't all that different than mainstream reporters
[00:04:51.140]in terms of being fact-based and rigorous,
[00:04:53.699]but we will depart from non-Indigenous principles
[00:04:57.420]by placing the act of journalism
[00:05:00.470]in a revolutionary context that serves communities
[00:05:04.544]while being often in direct conflict
[00:05:07.470]with the foundations and goals
[00:05:08.950]of non-Indigenous, mainstream newsrooms.
[00:05:11.700]An act that I hope promotes ideas of reckoning
[00:05:14.977]and provides pathways to reconciliation.
[00:05:19.670]But first a little bit about me.
[00:05:24.530]I started my career as a journalist when I was a student
[00:05:29.040]at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
[00:05:31.831]I originally went to college to study painting
[00:05:35.600]because ever since I was a child
[00:05:37.120]my aspiration was to become an artist.
[00:05:39.760]But in between my drawing, painting,
[00:05:42.270]and art history classes,
[00:05:43.890]I was required to take an elective writing course.
[00:05:46.980]And at the time, IAIA offered journalism classes.
[00:05:51.277]So I went for it.
[00:05:53.540]You know, growing up, my parents subscribed to "Newsweek"
[00:05:56.970]and "The Christian Science Monitor."
[00:06:00.220]And when they were delivered,
[00:06:01.428]I really enjoyed reading them.
[00:06:04.010]So I figured why not?
[00:06:04.843]I'll give it a try.
[00:06:08.378]So during my, you know, journalism 1, for instance,
[00:06:11.330]I did a few small pieces for the class,
[00:06:13.570]like a profile on an artist who was designing skateboards,
[00:06:17.910]a story about an event on campus.
[00:06:20.010]You know, kind of typical student journalism work.
[00:06:23.920]But there was a moment that really changed the class for me
[00:06:28.450]and made me realize kind of just what journalism could do.
[00:06:33.000]And that story was about the school cafeteria.
[00:06:36.890]So students complained regularly about the food.
[00:06:41.110]And while I didn't think that complaining
[00:06:43.610]about cafeteria food was like uncommon,
[00:06:46.610]there was something peculiar about it.
[00:06:49.410]And everybody kept saying like the food tasted old
[00:06:53.150]and I thought it was an oddly specific complaint.
[00:06:57.440]So I decided to check it out.
[00:07:00.230]And mind you, I didn't need to go like all "Spotlight"
[00:07:03.239]on an investigation here.
[00:07:05.780]I just walked down to the cafeteria
[00:07:07.930]and asked one of the chefs what might be going on.
[00:07:13.400]And it's important to remember that this was 2003.
[00:07:16.334]So September 11th was still fairly fresh
[00:07:19.760]at a lot of institutions,
[00:07:21.483]including the Institute of American Indian Arts.
[00:07:25.150]And what I learned was that in the wake of 9/11,
[00:07:29.711]IAIA had implemented a preparedness plan
[00:07:34.142]to deal with potential terrorist attacks
[00:07:37.381]or being cut off from the rest of New Mexico
[00:07:40.786]if there was like a shelter in place situation.
[00:07:44.110]So in the cafeteria IA had decided to stockpile food
[00:07:49.300]in the event of like a catastrophe
[00:07:51.470]so that on campus students wouldn't go hungry
[00:07:53.790]if they had to shelter in place.
[00:07:57.219]And what I figured out was that
[00:07:59.250]when the food was about to go bad,
[00:08:01.598]they would feed it to the students
[00:08:03.378]so a fresh round of food could be brought in
[00:08:06.280]and put on the shelf.
[00:08:08.190]You know, so basically foods like beans or rice
[00:08:10.310]that were about to kind of hit their expiration dates,
[00:08:12.696]they'd be cooked and replaced.
[00:08:15.499]So I thought that was pretty interesting.
[00:08:17.125]So I conducted my interviews and wrote up the story.
[00:08:20.380]And within days,
[00:08:22.000]IAIA announced that it would end the program
[00:08:25.050]and stop stockpiling food.
[00:08:27.400]And for me, that was sort of like an a-ha moment
[00:08:31.443]when I realized sort of what was possible
[00:08:34.430]through journalism,
[00:08:36.470]and really sort of directed me
[00:08:37.810]into really wanting to pursue a journalism
[00:08:41.620]as a career and a focus.
[00:08:44.430]Of course, the other a-ha moment was realizing
[00:08:48.460]that I was like a terrible painter.
[00:08:49.980]So I just promptly transferred
[00:08:52.810]to the creative writing program
[00:08:55.290]and focused the rest of my college time
[00:08:58.006]in writing and reporting.
[00:09:01.743]So I'm a journalist, but even though I do,
[00:09:07.100]I go about my work in a lot of the same ways
[00:09:09.730]that other reporters do,
[00:09:12.290]I do tend to do things a bit differently because I am Kiowa
[00:09:16.660]and our ways of storytelling and preserving history
[00:09:19.840]and seeing the world really affect the way that I work.
[00:09:25.170]My father is a doctor.
[00:09:26.680]My mother is a nurse.
[00:09:28.150]My grandfather and great-grandfather were school teachers,
[00:09:31.840]while previous generations were medicine people,
[00:09:34.930]soldiers, farmers, and in one case, a prisoner of war
[00:09:39.330]jailed for fighting US troops in the Red River War.
[00:09:43.690]You know, I come from a line of teachers and healers,
[00:09:48.040]people who devoted themselves to serve in their communities.
[00:09:52.190]And when I dedicated myself to journalism,
[00:09:55.960]I knew that my work would really have to live up
[00:09:58.080]to those same standards and principles.
[00:10:02.114]In my early years reporting,
[00:10:06.330]I thought that through a newspaper or radio,
[00:10:09.233]I could serve my community,
[00:10:12.310]but I learned the hard way
[00:10:13.495]how wrong I was when trying
[00:10:17.290]to navigate the journalism industry.
[00:10:23.380]So except for like a handful of news outlets,
[00:10:28.640]when I began working, I started seeing a pattern.
[00:10:32.439]You know, editors were interested in Indigenous stories,
[00:10:36.430]but almost singularly gravitated toward reporting
[00:10:40.980]that like focused on the plight of the Indian.
[00:10:44.870]So like a dying language story
[00:10:46.600]like sells every single time.
[00:10:49.080]Legislation to slash the Indian healthcare service budget,
[00:10:52.292]it's usually a pass, or at least in the past it was.
[00:10:57.335]Over the years, I've really stopped counting
[00:10:59.730]the number of times that I've been approached
[00:11:02.390]to report on domestic violence
[00:11:04.210]or addiction in Indian country.
[00:11:06.320]And these days, I refuse to even answer emails
[00:11:09.070]from editors in search of stories
[00:11:10.560]about poverty in Indigenous communities.
[00:11:14.610]Although more often than not, nowadays I'm approached
[00:11:17.444]about traditional ecological knowledge
[00:11:20.426]and requests to write
[00:11:22.390]about the relationships Indigenous people have
[00:11:24.810]to land, plants, and animals,
[00:11:28.360]which I think is marking a change in stereotypes
[00:11:31.240]that we're seeing in media.
[00:11:34.410]But, you know, the question is like,
[00:11:35.840]what exactly is going on with journalism?
[00:11:39.130]Like why the reporting focus on only the negative stories
[00:11:43.960]in Indian country?
[00:11:45.990]And I think much of it has to do
[00:11:47.680]with journalism's aims and goals.
[00:11:50.990]So in the United States,
[00:11:54.200]the First Amendment protects journalists.
[00:11:57.550]Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech
[00:12:01.169]or of the press.
[00:12:04.010]The profession is so embedded in American culture and policy
[00:12:10.140]that it thinks of itself
[00:12:11.510]as an unofficial branch of government.
[00:12:13.660]You know, this idea of the fourth estate,
[00:12:16.030]independent of the executive office,
[00:12:18.180]judiciary, and Congress,
[00:12:19.857]but engaged in the business of checks and balances on power.
[00:12:25.800]And American journalism is just
[00:12:28.060]inextricably tied to the state.
[00:12:31.410]So when we think of the foundational relationship
[00:12:33.970]US reporters have two ideas of democracy,
[00:12:37.240]you know, we have to remember that it comes
[00:12:39.070]from the country's founding documents.
[00:12:41.000]And those are documents that explicitly degrade a race
[00:12:44.290]and exclude Indigenous people and people of color.
[00:12:48.926]More recent examples of how journalism
[00:12:51.200]is tied to state interests
[00:12:52.660]have been outlets endorsing war in the Middle East,
[00:12:56.219]or in the last month, regurgitating propaganda,
[00:13:00.100]specifically around oil and gas production
[00:13:03.330]related to conflict in Ukraine.
[00:13:07.345]So the idea that the journalism industry promotes
[00:13:11.140]is that reporters work for American democracy.
[00:13:15.780]And that notion, I think, is antithetical
[00:13:19.320]to Indigenous self-determination or survival
[00:13:22.858]as American democracy has been built entirely
[00:13:26.500]on genocide and slave labor.
[00:13:29.940]As well, we really have to think critically
[00:13:32.060]about what journalists are exactly supporting.
[00:13:36.520]You know, "The New York Times,"
[00:13:37.490]for instance, endorsing the Iraq War.
[00:13:40.490]It isn't just a moral failure.
[00:13:43.740]It's a public act of support for the same imperial systems
[00:13:47.510]that expropriated land from Indigenous people.
[00:13:50.800]You know, it is the fourth estate at work,
[00:13:53.490]which is engaged in the work of democracy
[00:13:56.460]and supporting the export of democracy around the world.
[00:14:00.530]And that's the democracy, you know,
[00:14:02.775]Latin America or the Middle East tend to learn
[00:14:05.430]at the barrel of a gun or in the way of a drone strike.
[00:14:09.220]And the export of American-style democracy
[00:14:11.720]really finds its roots in early colonial practices.
[00:14:16.160]19th century settlers, for instance,
[00:14:19.750]claimed one of their goals was to export civilization.
[00:14:23.530]And while this export is tied to the needs
[00:14:26.260]of extractive colonialism and capitalism,
[00:14:28.817]it's difficult to say that the claim
[00:14:31.010]doesn't carry some sincerity.
[00:14:33.320]And it's not entirely different
[00:14:35.220]when we think of the idea of spreading democracy,
[00:14:39.400]or the idea that America is a missionary nation.
[00:14:45.130]You know, democracy for one can really only be achieved
[00:14:50.060]by the will of a population.
[00:14:52.350]In other words, the group or state in question
[00:14:55.130]has to agree internally and with consensus
[00:14:58.225]that it will act in a democratic way
[00:15:00.670]through democratic means.
[00:15:03.610]So the violent export of democracy to the rest of the world,
[00:15:08.618]you know, it shares a lot in common
[00:15:11.857]with the idea of spreading civilization.
[00:15:14.698]I would argue it's an evolution in colonialism.
[00:15:19.806]So again, it's that question,
[00:15:22.280]what exactly is going on with journalism?
[00:15:26.230]And one way in is to keep that idea of America
[00:15:31.040]as a sort of civilizing, democratizing force
[00:15:34.540]in the back of your head
[00:15:35.767]and look closely at coverage of Indigenous communities.
[00:15:42.210]You know, Western journalism is colonial and extractive
[00:15:47.330]at its roots.
[00:15:48.540]You know, stories are gathered from Indigenous communities
[00:15:51.912]by non-Indigenous reporters
[00:15:54.310]and then processed for the benefit
[00:15:56.324]of non-Indigenous audiences.
[00:15:59.630]And once processed, those stories reveal
[00:16:02.610]really only a few concepts:
[00:16:05.310]That indigenous people are backwards,
[00:16:07.045]unable to adjust to society,
[00:16:09.650]and generally heading toward extinction.
[00:16:13.560]And be it through the lens of poverty,
[00:16:15.883]violence, addiction, or even language loss,
[00:16:19.232]the message is really always the same.
[00:16:22.898]And the communities that have allowed those reporters
[00:16:25.952]and those news outlets in,
[00:16:28.284]they rarely see any benefit to the stories.
[00:16:32.460]You know, no new laws are passed,
[00:16:34.200]no angel investors come swooping in.
[00:16:37.440]Almost everyone who's on this call right now
[00:16:41.420]has probably seen images or stories
[00:16:43.258]from the Pine Ridge Reservation,
[00:16:45.707]but I'm guessing nobody's ever seen any
[00:16:48.540]sort of like change happen because of those stories.
[00:16:54.380]Journalism, and specifically Western journalism,
[00:16:57.205]is an extractive industry.
[00:16:59.840]It harvests our stories and exploits our pain for profit.
[00:17:05.410]You know, when I said earlier
[00:17:07.685]that I had to sort of learn that the hard way,
[00:17:10.765]you know, it came in the form of editors
[00:17:14.250]who wanted to see sort of real Indians
[00:17:17.382]in the stories that I pitched,
[00:17:19.290]not like the Indigenous lawyers that I wanted a profile.
[00:17:24.020]They wanted to know how a story
[00:17:25.909]about the Tohono O'odham Nation in Arizona
[00:17:29.670]was going to be different than a story
[00:17:31.550]they ran earlier in the year
[00:17:33.090]about the Yakama Tribe in Washington state.
[00:17:39.530]To newsrooms, we're a monolith, and that's not going away.
[00:17:44.070]You know, again, the terminology
[00:17:45.498]and stereotypes are changing.
[00:17:47.480]Again, that like traditional ecological knowledge,
[00:17:50.658]it is literally all the rage right now
[00:17:53.320]especially in environmental journalism spaces.
[00:17:56.340]And of course, when approached the wrong way,
[00:17:59.200]as I would argue it usually is,
[00:18:01.540]is just as harmful and dangerous.
[00:18:09.330]Earlier, I said that Kiowa ways of storytelling
[00:18:12.512]and preserving history and seeing the world
[00:18:15.965]affect the way that I work.
[00:18:18.730]So I'd like to show you some forms of Kiowa journalism.
[00:18:24.060]In Indigenous communities,
[00:18:25.600]news has always been integral.
[00:18:28.618]Being delivered in the form of a song or a story,
[00:18:32.160]or in a carving or a drawing.
[00:18:35.420]What we consider contemporary Indigenous journalism today
[00:18:39.842]has really emerged from thousands of years
[00:18:42.530]of conversation in and among communities,
[00:18:45.645]shared between bands and captured in multiple forms.
[00:18:51.690]So this here is a Kiowa calendar.
[00:18:55.073]These are our stories written by us and for us
[00:18:59.243]using the technology available at the time.
[00:19:02.850]So each image in shape here is an event that took place.
[00:19:07.924]It essentially a mnemonic device
[00:19:10.498]that provides a window, not just to one story,
[00:19:13.538]but many as multiple memories are tied
[00:19:18.240]to the same time period that's represented.
[00:19:21.930]And because the information is carried by multiple people,
[00:19:25.405]when gathered, community members each have a voice
[00:19:28.700]and a point of view to add context and texture
[00:19:32.170]to the events of that year,
[00:19:33.800]really making the data stronger, deeper, and more accurate.
[00:19:37.780]So I would argue that this is 40-plus years of newspapers
[00:19:42.590]spread out in one place.
[00:19:44.410]There are no embellishments or opinions.
[00:19:47.800]There are just events.
[00:19:49.450]The embellishments and opinions
[00:19:51.100]come with the retelling of the stories or analysis of them,
[00:19:54.710]but not in the presentation.
[00:19:59.310]Another form of Indigenous journalism are ledger drawings,
[00:20:04.230]which is a form of visual narrative
[00:20:06.990]storytelling and reporting.
[00:20:09.010]And it's a form that really came to be in the 1800s
[00:20:14.043]with the introduction of paper
[00:20:16.350]and grease pencils and whatnot.
[00:20:20.083]So what you see here, for instance,
[00:20:22.456]is a ledger drawing made by a Kiowa prisoner
[00:20:26.710]at the end of the Red River War in the late 1800s
[00:20:31.260]in what is currently Oklahoma.
[00:20:34.160]And at the end of the conflict,
[00:20:36.670]more than two dozen Kiowa prisoners of war
[00:20:38.723]were sent to St. Augustine, Florida,
[00:20:41.240]to serve out their sentences.
[00:20:42.940]And here in the image,
[00:20:44.148]you're seeing the surrender of those warriors to US troops.
[00:20:54.300]And what happened directly after this
[00:20:56.720]is that after essentially being arrested,
[00:21:00.120]they were taken to Fort Sill
[00:21:02.550]where they were forced to sleep in the building
[00:21:04.483]where ice was stored.
[00:21:06.470]You can see them being lined up to go in there.
[00:21:09.868]And from there, they were transferred
[00:21:11.670]to the town of Cato by wagon.
[00:21:15.140]And after that to Fort Leavenworth, by train.
[00:21:20.577]And they traveled by train from Kansas to St. Louis,
[00:21:25.737]then Indianapolis, Nashville, Atlanta,
[00:21:29.740]and then finally Jacksonville, Florida,
[00:21:32.700]where they boarded a steam boat.
[00:21:35.130]And it was likely the first time many of the prisoners
[00:21:38.320]had been on a boat,
[00:21:39.200]and probably for some of them
[00:21:40.650]it was the first time they had seen the ocean.
[00:21:43.803]And nearly three months after they were arrested,
[00:21:48.140]the prisoners arrived in St. Augustine, Florida,
[00:21:51.380]and watched the boat that brought them sail away.
[00:21:56.340]While at Fort Marion,
[00:21:59.880]these prisoners were under the care
[00:22:01.820]of Colonel Richard Pratt,
[00:22:03.410]which is he's best known for the phrase,
[00:22:05.677]"Kill the Indian, save the man,"
[00:22:08.160]and was the primary architect
[00:22:11.134]of the Indian Boarding School System.
[00:22:14.750]And under Pratt's supervision,
[00:22:17.199]the prisoners attended mandatory religious services.
[00:22:21.380]They also worked as gang laborers,
[00:22:23.331]picking oranges and polishing seashells
[00:22:26.930]for curio merchants.
[00:22:29.470]They also performed traditional songs and dances
[00:22:33.150]for tourists that came to ogle,
[00:22:36.500]which was a common practice at the prison.
[00:22:40.500]And also many of the prisoners learned to read and write
[00:22:44.321]while all of them were trained in military service.
[00:22:49.960]And as you can see,
[00:22:51.980]these images all tell a sequential story.
[00:22:55.510]It's a story that was not covered by any writer,
[00:22:58.185]photographer, or reporter at the time.
[00:23:02.010]And I would argue that this is a form
[00:23:04.900]of Indigenous storytelling,
[00:23:06.961]or more importantly, Indigenous journalism,
[00:23:10.020]you know, harnessing the technologies available at the time.
[00:23:14.980]You know, it's a form of journalism
[00:23:16.707]that has been criminally ignored
[00:23:19.880]by journalists, journalism historians,
[00:23:23.820]and just being able to see the sort of breadth
[00:23:25.931]of that journey captured in real time
[00:23:29.820]by a Kiowa artist is absolutely incredible.
[00:23:35.370]And so is the work of Horace Poolaw,
[00:23:38.830]who was a Kiowa photographer
[00:23:40.260]working from the 1920s to the 1950s.
[00:23:44.880]And his pictures capture really the beauty of our community.
[00:23:49.170]You know, while non-Native photographers
[00:23:51.170]during that time focused sort of more on
[00:23:54.240]like feathers and leathers kind of a thing,
[00:23:56.590]Poolaw really saw and captured reality.
[00:24:01.470]And here in this photo,
[00:24:02.660]you'll see a group of Kiowa women going to church.
[00:24:06.660]And in their arms,
[00:24:07.760]you can see they're carrying Christmas presents.
[00:24:09.530]It happened in the 1930s.
[00:24:11.100]You can also tell, 'cause they've got super cool,
[00:24:13.580]like hair and hats now.
[00:24:15.070]Like they're just cool.
[00:24:16.310]Like these folks are like super cool.
[00:24:19.460]You know, these are all very different
[00:24:22.107]than how non-Indigenous people have seen us.
[00:24:29.267]Negative, racist representations of Indigenous people
[00:24:33.890]are part of the Western hemisphere's colonial history.
[00:24:38.060]And early representations of Indigenous people
[00:24:41.011]are really intimately tied to the process of imperialism.
[00:24:46.030]You know, the first Thanksgiving pictured here,
[00:24:48.180]for instance, uses some pretty creative staging
[00:24:51.400]to show like desired power dynamics,
[00:24:54.690]basically by placing Indigenous people on the ground
[00:24:58.760]with dogs and children.
[00:25:01.762]We know that's not how that's not how,
[00:25:04.523]that's not even the story that people are told
[00:25:07.630]about Thanksgiving as it's,
[00:25:09.280]but here it's the settlers serving the Native folks.
[00:25:16.665]But this is all to say that these early representations
[00:25:19.981]should really be viewed as foundational documents.
[00:25:24.510]And they're created for a singular purpose,
[00:25:26.870]which is to manufacture support for the control,
[00:25:30.330]conquest, possession, and exploitation
[00:25:33.970]of Indigenous people, land, and resources.
[00:25:38.107]And they also often run in tandem
[00:25:40.950]with coverage of Indigenous people.
[00:25:43.560]You know, there is yet to be a comprehensive
[00:25:45.960]sort of historical analysis of Indigenous representations
[00:25:50.560]in journalism in the United States.
[00:25:52.547]But in Canada, researchers have done some phenomenal work
[00:25:57.340]around the topic.
[00:25:58.494]The book "Seeing Red," for example,
[00:26:01.201]examines the role of Canada's newspapers
[00:26:05.067]in perpetuating the myth of Native inferiority.
[00:26:10.280]And examining English language newspapers from 1869
[00:26:14.330]to the present day, you know,
[00:26:16.167]"Seeing Red" really uncovers overwhelming evidence
[00:26:19.850]that colonial imagery not only thrived,
[00:26:22.510]but continues to dominate depictions
[00:26:24.867]of Indigenous peoples in mainstream newsrooms.
[00:26:29.421]And I argue it's the same here in the United States.
[00:26:33.774]Keep in mind, for instance,
[00:26:35.180]that we became US citizens in 1924,
[00:26:37.784]not because there was a great
[00:26:40.120]sort of Indian advocate out there
[00:26:41.910]making sure we had a place in American democracy.
[00:26:45.110]And to be clear, there wasn't.
[00:26:47.680]It was because American democracy
[00:26:50.600]and our forced participation in it
[00:26:52.573]was another weapon that could be used.
[00:26:56.810]In terms of thinking about foundational documents
[00:27:00.230]and how they're sort of being revived and remixed,
[00:27:05.771]here's one that we can kind of look at
[00:27:07.830]from "The New York Times."
[00:27:10.660]So I would argue this is
[00:27:13.020]kind of a new foundational document.
[00:27:14.920]So in September of 2019,
[00:27:18.267]"The Times" published this story, "Sick River."
[00:27:22.810]And you'll see on the head here,
[00:27:25.227]"Can these California tribes beat heroin and history?"
[00:27:30.750]So the story uses data
[00:27:33.850]from the Centers for Disease Control
[00:27:35.860]and reveals a 519% increase in overdose deaths
[00:27:41.710]between 1999 and 2015 in rural Indigenous communities.
[00:27:48.500]And this is coupled with data
[00:27:50.980]that shows historic lows in salmon runs,
[00:27:54.660]but kind of mixes in a really healthy dose
[00:27:57.107]of like mystical Indian bullshit.
[00:28:03.761]The main idea I think that you walk away with
[00:28:07.320]after reading this story
[00:28:09.600]is that the loss of sacred salmon
[00:28:12.650]and the increase in opioid overdoses are linked,
[00:28:17.820]and that the Yurok, Karuk, and Hoopa tribes
[00:28:21.070]are really deeply spiritual beings,
[00:28:23.890]especially in regards to salmon,
[00:28:26.320]but also struggling with addiction.
[00:28:29.420]And obviously the problem here is that
[00:28:31.334]it's asking readers to hold two contradictory ideas
[00:28:35.620]about Indigenous people in their heads at the same time.
[00:28:40.300]And ideas that are rooted in deeply racist stereotypes.
[00:28:45.867]And that ask of the reader
[00:28:48.080]to hold onto two contradictory ideas about Indigenous people
[00:28:52.386]is also something that's been studied.
[00:28:55.401]So for instance, the Reclaiming Native Truth Report
[00:29:00.330]offers a lot of really interesting statistics
[00:29:03.470]and information on how Americans perceive Indigenous people.
[00:29:08.650]But one of the most fascinating to me is this:
[00:29:12.010]That contradictory stereotypes coexist,
[00:29:15.080]and one of the most prevalent ones that the report picks out
[00:29:19.720]is that Native Americans are both spiritually focused
[00:29:22.810]and struggling with alcohol and drugs.
[00:29:26.260]And of course this raises questions of story framing,
[00:29:30.250]but it also raises questions of trust.
[00:29:34.220]And in the era of misinformation and fake news,
[00:29:39.380]it is perilously dangerous to be trafficking
[00:29:42.001]in racist stereotypes.
[00:29:45.213]In other words, if the subjects of the story
[00:29:50.850]know that there are serious problems with the reporting,
[00:29:54.010]and readers in Indian country
[00:29:55.507]know that almost all of the "The Times" reporting
[00:29:58.510]in Indigenous communities is deeply, deeply flawed.
[00:30:03.200]You know, I think it's a legitimate question to say,
[00:30:06.340]how are we supposed to trust the outlet's other work?
[00:30:09.860]Like their framing of the Trump Administration,
[00:30:12.134]for instance?
[00:30:13.800]Or their work covering Ukraine?
[00:30:17.470]To be clear, I'm not calling fake news here.
[00:30:19.840]You know, that's not my intention.
[00:30:22.630]I am saying that we have to demand more
[00:30:25.890]from institutions like "The Times."
[00:30:28.580]Like if journalism ethics are simply kind of a veneer,
[00:30:32.470]like a professional good insofar
[00:30:34.840]as they apply to other outlets,
[00:30:36.700]but not "The New York Times,"
[00:30:38.660]then what we're really talking about
[00:30:40.150]is a journalism institution mimicking the same values
[00:30:43.980]of American exceptionalism.
[00:30:46.130]And we deserve better than that.
[00:30:50.440]As many of you are aware, the Indian Child Welfare Act
[00:30:54.254]is heading to the Supreme Court.
[00:30:57.000]And if you're not familiar with it, you know,
[00:30:59.670]the 40 year old law protects children
[00:31:02.210]who are tribal members and citizens
[00:31:04.880]from being adopted into non-Indigenous families.
[00:31:09.240]It's a legal response to more than a century
[00:31:11.360]of Indigenous children being stolen from their families
[00:31:14.881]in an attempt to assimilate Indigenous people forcibly.
[00:31:20.350]And the reason it's going to the Supreme Court
[00:31:23.110]is that right-wing and conservative actors
[00:31:26.100]have challenged the law for more than a decade
[00:31:28.570]and have mounted successful
[00:31:30.380]disinformation campaigns around it.
[00:31:33.240]This is an example in the "Washington Post."
[00:31:35.814]Those right-wing actors say
[00:31:38.180]that the Indian Child Welfare Act
[00:31:40.060]is a law based on race
[00:31:41.760]and is therefore unconstitutional,
[00:31:44.070]which is challenging four decades
[00:31:45.940]of established practice
[00:31:48.870]of nation to nation adoption practices
[00:31:51.414]that protect children based on their citizenship
[00:31:55.867]with sovereign tribal nations.
[00:31:59.740]And what we're seeing here in this op-ed in "The Post"
[00:32:02.520]by a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter
[00:32:05.186]is a successful disinformation campaign
[00:32:09.225]by right-wing activists being amplified by news outlets
[00:32:13.454]by moving the conversation into a conversation about race,
[00:32:17.707]not about citizenship.
[00:32:20.740]And of course, one of the real world outcomes
[00:32:23.650]is that ultra-right lawmakers in Texas
[00:32:26.092]took up this case and championed it.
[00:32:30.410]So using false and misleading information,
[00:32:33.980]these actors have been able
[00:32:35.090]to manipulate a number of media outlets
[00:32:37.700]who are ill-equipped to understand
[00:32:40.090]that these attacks are anti-Indigenous hate speech.
[00:32:44.240]And they have been able to get their disinformation campaign
[00:32:48.960]into the hands of a respected writer
[00:32:51.310]at a national outlet here at "The Post."
[00:32:55.250]And it's important to remember that these outlets
[00:32:57.090]also lack the background to understand
[00:32:59.345]that there is a bigger fight at stake here.
[00:33:02.910]So while the Indian Child Welfare Act
[00:33:04.860]is about protecting tribal citizens,
[00:33:07.870]undermining it provides state and federal lawmakers
[00:33:10.850]an opportunity to fight everything
[00:33:12.730]from environmental jurisdiction
[00:33:14.520]in Indian country to treaties.
[00:33:18.664]This is all to say, in other words,
[00:33:19.643]that the law is built on a nation to nation relationship,
[00:33:24.130]and if it can be viewed as a law based on race,
[00:33:27.420]nearly any agreement or relationship with tribal nations
[00:33:30.600]can also be seen that way,
[00:33:32.490]effectively undoing centuries of federal Indian law.
[00:33:36.907]And that "The Washington Post" here and other outlets
[00:33:39.990]have failed to identify a misinformation campaign
[00:33:44.730]of this scale, like isn't unusual.
[00:33:48.510]You know, these actors are taking advantage
[00:33:50.450]of conditions and features
[00:33:52.170]within an information ecosystem.
[00:33:54.830]And the conditions, at least here at "the Post,"
[00:33:58.080]are geared toward the support
[00:34:00.090]and spread of American democracy.
[00:34:02.210]Remember, like it's in their like super laughable tagline,
[00:34:05.767]"Democracy dies in darkness."
[00:34:08.340]You know, it is a system that is at odds
[00:34:11.667]with the people who would be most impacted
[00:34:14.190]by a negative Supreme Court ruling.
[00:34:19.070]One more example here, this is an older one,
[00:34:22.390]this story from 2010, also by "The New York Times,"
[00:34:26.550]focused on the Obama Administration's program
[00:34:29.660]to tackle crime in Indian country.
[00:34:33.410]And as I said, this is an older story,
[00:34:36.190]but obviously portions of this story
[00:34:39.320]were actually quoted verbatim in the film "Wind River."
[00:34:43.070]So this has had some kind of serious cultural impact
[00:34:47.181]through film and through people's consumption
[00:34:50.700]of Indian country through major filmmaking.
[00:34:56.760]So this program, which was nicknamed The Surge,
[00:35:02.170]was modeled after the military strategy in Iraq.
[00:35:07.780]And basically, as you can see here,
[00:35:11.320]like what's in the story is that it says,
[00:35:13.567]"Despite its bucolic name,
[00:35:15.426]the reservation nestled among snowcap peaks and rivers,
[00:35:19.067]filled with trout,
[00:35:20.580]is a place where brutal acts have become banal."
[00:35:24.601]And I'll read a little bit more here.
[00:35:26.607]"Crime may be Wind River's most pressing problem,
[00:35:29.540]but it has plenty of company.
[00:35:31.660]Life, even by the grim standards
[00:35:33.730]of the typical American Indian reservation,
[00:35:36.180]is as bleak and punishing as that
[00:35:38.540]of any developing country."
[00:35:41.340]And in the reporting, there are the statistics, right?
[00:35:43.600]Like the checklist: life expectancy,
[00:35:45.982]unemployment, dropout rates, suicide data,
[00:35:49.780]child abuse figures, sexual assault stats,
[00:35:52.670]and just on and on and on.
[00:35:55.060]And the picture is pretty clear.
[00:35:57.155]You know, senseless violence is an intrinsic,
[00:35:59.930]if not central part of Indigenous life.
[00:36:02.770]It's typical, they even say so.
[00:36:05.371]But one of the things that I think is important
[00:36:08.203]is that we have to really take a step back
[00:36:11.050]at what's being covered in the story.
[00:36:13.030]And first to say that, yes,
[00:36:14.640]there is a problem with crime in Indian country.
[00:36:17.690]You know, the Department of Justice estimates
[00:36:19.740]that Native Americans experience violent crime
[00:36:22.758]at a rate about 40% higher than the rest of the nation.
[00:36:27.950]But there are a number of facts that reporters
[00:36:30.769]don't seem concerned with
[00:36:34.390]or just outright ignored or didn't check on Google.
[00:36:38.880]I'm not really sure what happened here,
[00:36:40.640]but here are two.
[00:36:43.438]So first, according to the Department of Justice,
[00:36:46.030]nearly 60% of Native American crime victims
[00:36:49.220]describe their attackers as White.
[00:36:53.080]Second, more than half of all violent crimes
[00:36:56.040]committed in tribal communities
[00:36:58.310]are declined for prosecution
[00:37:00.060]by state or federal authorities.
[00:37:02.830]So just imagine more than like half of the crimes committed
[00:37:06.530]in like the Dallas area weren't prosecuted.
[00:37:09.310]I mean, what kind of like city would that be?
[00:37:12.718]And there's a reason for that last fact too.
[00:37:17.210]State or federal authorities
[00:37:19.025]usually have criminal jurisdiction
[00:37:21.195]over Indian country crime, not tribes.
[00:37:25.260]So that means when non-Natives
[00:37:26.680]commit crimes on reservations,
[00:37:28.251]tribal authorities typically lack the jurisdiction
[00:37:31.460]to arrest or even prosecute.
[00:37:34.660]So those facts offer very different perspective
[00:37:37.996]on crime and violence in Indian country.
[00:37:43.690]However, according to "The Times" analysis,
[00:37:46.760]and I'll just read it to you,
[00:37:48.537]"The difficulties among Wind River's population
[00:37:51.130]of about 14,000 have become so daunting
[00:37:54.171]that many believe that the reservation,
[00:37:56.940]shared by the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone Tribes,
[00:38:00.340]is haunted- the ghosts of the innocent killed
[00:38:03.530]in an 1864 massacre."
[00:38:08.340]In other words, when it comes to the complexities
[00:38:11.710]of Indigenous life,
[00:38:13.080]ghosts are apparently reasonable explanations
[00:38:15.890]for complicated situations,
[00:38:17.440]at least by "The New York Times."
[00:38:19.500]You know, the other plausible interpretation
[00:38:21.238]is that glaring security issues in Indian country
[00:38:25.040]are the result of Supreme Court decisions
[00:38:27.190]and congressional acts that strip tribes
[00:38:29.331]of any ability to protect their own territories,
[00:38:33.100]which aren't ghosts.
[00:38:34.510]It's just broken federal policy
[00:38:36.340]and predators taking advantage of it.
[00:38:40.100]Oddly enough, ghosts and spirits show up
[00:38:42.851]in a lot of Indigenous coverage.
[00:38:45.570]Earlier, I showed you the slide from "Reuters" titled,
[00:38:48.967]"How the Sioux Tribe puts the Black Snake prophecy
[00:38:52.017]"at the center of the Dakota Access Pipeline."
[00:38:54.784]I mean, you can also see it in the story from "Bustle."
[00:38:59.820]After a rash of Indigenous youth suicides in South Dakota,
[00:39:02.947]"Bustle" put this piece out about a ghost
[00:39:05.980]that may be causing teens to take their lives.
[00:39:08.840]Like, I mean, I'd look to historical trauma
[00:39:11.411]or political disenfranchisement
[00:39:13.840]or persistent marginally to start explaining
[00:39:16.810]why that is happening,
[00:39:18.380]but it's like gold star to "Bustle" for trying.
[00:39:23.851]And again, when you look for it,
[00:39:26.380]you really start to see it everywhere.
[00:39:29.320]Like I'm embarrassed to even show you this slide.
[00:39:33.440]I mean, "On a vast reservation,
[00:39:36.277]"female Navajo officers patrol with bulletproof vests
[00:39:39.291]"and protective amulets."
[00:39:41.500]Like somebody completely straight-faced wrote that headline.
[00:39:45.310]Like did the chef's kiss and published it.
[00:39:47.800]And just in case you're missing the issue
[00:39:50.330]with this headline,
[00:39:51.200]like I'm willing to bet police officers
[00:39:53.430]who are like Catholic
[00:39:54.540]wear St. Christopher's medals
[00:39:56.090]or carry images of other saints for protection.
[00:39:58.910]Like that's not making headlines
[00:40:01.510]because it's like quote/unquote normal,
[00:40:04.120]which in this case translates to White.
[00:40:07.360]So again, who are these stories for?
[00:40:10.120]And what do their subjects gain from them?
[00:40:15.470]So how do we kind of connect all of these threads?
[00:40:20.180]How do the ideas of reckoning and reconciliation
[00:40:23.820]play into really challenging, dominant news narratives
[00:40:27.610]that utilize Indigenous principles
[00:40:29.560]to really serve our communities?
[00:40:32.300]And the short answer here is in the work.
[00:40:35.470]You know, I mean, for instance,
[00:40:36.900]I showed you the Kiowa calendars earlier
[00:40:39.210]and explained that the information carried in them
[00:40:41.331]are nurtured by multiple people.
[00:40:43.960]You know, that idea isn't all that different
[00:40:46.350]than the work that we do
[00:40:47.400]at the Indigenous Investigative Collective,
[00:40:49.490]which is a network of reporters from multiple outlets
[00:40:52.931]working collaboratively to investigate stories
[00:40:55.718]in Indigenous communities.
[00:40:58.918]Last year, Indigenous reporters at "Indian Country Today,"
[00:41:02.987]"Searchlight New Mexico," and "High Country News"
[00:41:05.780]came together to cover COVID-19's impact
[00:41:09.180]on Indigenous communities.
[00:41:12.400]And the question we needed to answer
[00:41:14.050]was how many Indigenous people died from COVID?
[00:41:18.050]And what we found was that no state,
[00:41:19.790]federal, or tribal entity knew.
[00:41:22.690]So through multiple public records requests,
[00:41:25.131]reporters really met resistance like at every level,
[00:41:30.160]and we ultimately were not allowed
[00:41:32.718]to see any death records that were needed
[00:41:36.320]to do any sort of analysis on COVID's impact.
[00:41:40.380]And the findings that we finally have here
[00:41:43.220]that like there is no central system
[00:41:45.780]to measure the pandemic's impact in Indian country.
[00:41:49.650]And that, essentially the lack of transparency
[00:41:52.660]from states and the federal government
[00:41:54.198]will ultimately prevent any accurate accounting
[00:41:58.850]of the death toll in the future.
[00:42:02.040]But again, that reporting was only possible
[00:42:04.780]by having multiple reporters
[00:42:06.620]in multiple areas of the country
[00:42:08.220]ready and able to report different facets of the story.
[00:42:11.920]It's information reported and carried by multiple people
[00:42:14.910]that when gathered, add context and texture to events,
[00:42:18.450]making the reporting stronger, deeper, and more accurate.
[00:42:23.770]Then there is the actual visual journalism.
[00:42:27.660]Here you can see the story in "Nizhoni Girls"
[00:42:29.650]that we reported for "High Country News."
[00:42:32.920]And we decide that we, this was a few years ago,
[00:42:35.167]and we decided we want to do a story
[00:42:37.470]about an Indigenous surf rock band,
[00:42:41.200]and essentially do a profile of the lead singer
[00:42:43.330]and how she became a part of the band.
[00:42:45.830]You know, we could have done this in print,
[00:42:47.680]you know, like a "New Yorker" style profile
[00:42:51.048]of an interesting artist,
[00:42:53.800]but what we decided to do was tell it in graphic novel form.
[00:42:59.670]So again, sort of like previous generations
[00:43:02.010]of record keepers,
[00:43:03.610]we rooted our reporting in Indigenous experiences and values
[00:43:07.700]and really embraced a visual form to do so.
[00:43:10.821]So just like the ledger drawings you saw earlier,
[00:43:14.750]this piece just works to update the technology
[00:43:18.310]from ledger paper and wax pencils
[00:43:20.424]to graphic novel forms and digital tools.
[00:43:24.240]And again, it's a record of moments
[00:43:27.300]that reflect the values and priorities
[00:43:29.890]of one group of Native artists
[00:43:32.340]at one point in a collective history.
[00:43:37.170]Finally, there's land-grab universities,
[00:43:41.540]and it's here that I'll start to wrap up
[00:43:44.310]because to me, this story is about being
[00:43:46.660]in direct conflict with state institutions
[00:43:50.040]and provides you as an opportunity
[00:43:52.270]to play a part in doing that.
[00:43:55.820]And for those of you who are not familiar
[00:43:58.750]with the origins of land grant universities,
[00:44:03.420]in 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act,
[00:44:07.870]which distributed public domain lands
[00:44:09.784]to raise funds for fledgling colleges across the nation.
[00:44:13.900]And the story that we've learned around the Morrill Act
[00:44:17.480]is that land grant universities
[00:44:18.984]were given the gift of free land
[00:44:21.230]to bring education to the masses.
[00:44:24.490]They're referred to as democracy's colleges.
[00:44:27.650]But as our investigation at "High Country News" reveals,
[00:44:32.970]the Morrill Act worked by turning land
[00:44:34.810]expropriated from tribal nations
[00:44:37.190]into seed money for higher education.
[00:44:40.130]And in all, what we found was that the act
[00:44:43.530]redistributed nearly 10.8 million acres of land
[00:44:46.943]from more than 250 tribal nations
[00:44:49.890]for the benefit of 52 colleges.
[00:44:53.938]But the Morrill Act's footprint
[00:44:57.400]is also broken up into almost 80,000 parcels of land
[00:45:01.298]scattered across 24 states,
[00:45:03.960]which has made previous research and reporting
[00:45:06.200]on its impacts nearly impossible.
[00:45:08.970]But thanks to tools like ArcGIS,
[00:45:12.660]and being able to utilize a lot of tech
[00:45:15.800]that wasn't available even a decade ago,
[00:45:18.750]we were able to map and identify
[00:45:20.832]those 80,000 individual land parcels
[00:45:23.605]to really better understand the relationship
[00:45:26.450]between higher education and violent colonialism.
[00:45:31.593]As you know, the University of Nebraska
[00:45:34.792]is a land grant institution.
[00:45:37.150]And you can find more information about its role
[00:45:40.450]on our site landgrabu.org.
[00:45:43.430]So opened in 1871, Nebraska was assigned land
[00:45:48.090]under the Morrill Act in 1873.
[00:45:51.790]89,920 acres to be exact.
[00:45:55.920]And that land was obtained from the Omaha, Pawnee,
[00:46:00.080]Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes
[00:46:03.138]for approximately $11,000 through treaties.
[00:46:07.680]Keep in mind though that the Arapaho,
[00:46:09.360]Northern Cheyenne, and Sioux were never compensated.
[00:46:13.630]Nebraska sold that land for nearly $569,000.
[00:46:19.460]And adjusted for inflation, it equals about 12.3 million
[00:46:23.850]in today's dollars.
[00:46:27.020]And as you'll see here on this slide, you know,
[00:46:31.100]when we approached Nebraska for comment on this story,
[00:46:33.250]they sent back to this statement,
[00:46:34.910]the land acknowledgement,
[00:46:35.930]which we heard at the beginning.
[00:46:37.727]"We acknowledge that the University of Nebraska
[00:46:39.683]is a land grant institution with campuses and programs
[00:46:43.290]on the past, present, and future homelands
[00:46:46.240]of the Pawnee, Ponca,
[00:46:47.073]Oto-Missouri, Omaha, Dakota, Lakota,
[00:46:49.840]Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Kaw Peoples,
[00:46:52.737]as well the relocated Ho-Chunk, Iowa,
[00:46:55.404]and Sak and Fox People."
[00:47:00.870]But you'll also see a lot of the stats here too,
[00:47:02.810]which we'll come back to in just a second.
[00:47:04.500]But, you know, again,
[00:47:06.410]one of the things that we wanted to do with this project
[00:47:09.680]is make our data available to anybody
[00:47:12.230]who wanted to do additional reporting or research
[00:47:15.680]or even to fact check our findings.
[00:47:17.430]So if you're not comfortable using spreadsheets,
[00:47:20.310]you're not a heavy data user,
[00:47:22.930]we wanted to make sure that you could still
[00:47:24.770]have access to this information
[00:47:26.800]in a clear and user-friendly way.
[00:47:29.360]So again, on landgrabu.org,
[00:47:32.204]where this image came from,
[00:47:33.670]you have access to all the same data
[00:47:36.148]that we used in our reporting
[00:47:38.360]with the same level of accuracy.
[00:47:40.030]And you can explore all of it through interactive maps
[00:47:42.850]on your computer or even your phone.
[00:47:46.210]So if you want to learn more
[00:47:47.590]about the Indigenous land sold by Nebraska,
[00:47:52.150]we have worked to make all of that data open source,
[00:47:55.200]so you can download it raw,
[00:47:56.810]you can download the shapefiles if you wanna map it,
[00:47:59.290]or you can just play with the map.
[00:48:01.740]And again, it's in this spirit of sharing and transparency
[00:48:05.164]that we hope to be challenging institutions.
[00:48:10.440]But of course, we also want to be
[00:48:13.060]challenging institutions that we report on in the long term.
[00:48:17.100]So I will wrap it up with this.
[00:48:20.690]The University of Nebraska still owns 6,173 acres
[00:48:26.967]originally obtained through the Morrill Act.
[00:48:30.410]And in fiscal year 2019,
[00:48:32.069]those acres produce nearly $427,000 in income
[00:48:36.920]for the school.
[00:48:38.190]So we know where the land is,
[00:48:40.240]we know whose land it is,
[00:48:41.860]and we know how much the school profits from them.
[00:48:46.070]As far as we understand in our reporting,
[00:48:48.440]the money does not go to Native students,
[00:48:50.620]of which in 2018, only 69 identified as Indigenous
[00:48:55.610]in a student body of 25,820.
[00:49:00.860]And as far as we also understand,
[00:49:03.374]the University of Nebraska has no intention
[00:49:05.750]of returning that land.
[00:49:08.794]And I wanna leave you with that.
[00:49:11.080]This institution is in possession of and profits from
[00:49:14.480]stolen property and has every day for 140 years.
[00:49:19.570]And any reckoning or reconciliation
[00:49:22.110]at University of Nebraska or elsewhere
[00:49:26.534]has to start with that return of land,
[00:49:30.180]here, nationally, and globally.
[00:49:33.480]And I'll stop there so we can take questions.
[00:49:39.290]Gosh, thank you so much, Tristan.
[00:49:42.697]I got so much out of your presentation
[00:49:45.580]and it's really interesting too
[00:49:47.130]to get the update on where Nebraska
[00:49:51.040]is in terms of how many, how much acreage it still holds,
[00:49:55.470]how much money it's still making.
[00:49:56.980]And we really appreciate you sharing that with us.
[00:50:01.350]I also really appreciated all your insights
[00:50:03.322]about mainstream or Western journalism
[00:50:08.130]versus Indigenous journalism.
[00:50:09.410]And I invite everybody to leave some questions
[00:50:13.800]in the chat or the Q&A.
[00:50:16.469]And while we're waiting for more questions to come in,
[00:50:19.420]I wanna ask you, maybe you get this question all the time,
[00:50:24.200]but I think our listeners are really highly motivated.
[00:50:28.491]They're attending a symposium or a summit on these issues.
[00:50:33.840]So what are some steps all of us can take
[00:50:36.269]no matter our background
[00:50:38.080]to support Indigenous journalism
[00:50:40.380]and to challenge mainstream depictions of Indigenous people?
[00:50:46.070]Yeah, I mean, I think, you know,
[00:50:47.410]simply, it's supporting Indigenous news outlets.
[00:50:50.990]I mean, I think there's 250 easily across the country.
[00:50:56.260]You know, a lot of them are hyper-local.
[00:50:57.980]Some of them are sort of regional
[00:50:59.390]and then you've got national outlets too.
[00:51:01.760]But you know, it's really changing up like your news digest.
[00:51:05.750]And I don't know how everybody...
[00:51:07.056]As a journalist, I think I consume news
[00:51:09.630]like really differently.
[00:51:11.640]Like a lot of the stuff I'm getting,
[00:51:13.400]I'm curating on like a Twitter feed or something like that.
[00:51:16.730]So I really work to make sure
[00:51:19.240]that I'm sort of mixing everything up
[00:51:20.900]so I'm seeing a lot of stuff.
[00:51:22.270]But again, I think, you know,
[00:51:24.816]in supporting Indigenous journalists,
[00:51:27.376]it's reading it, it's subscribing,
[00:51:30.180]it's becoming a member.
[00:51:31.490]I'm sure some of y'all are like NPR members,
[00:51:37.080]or providing support to organizations like that.
[00:51:41.210]You can do it just as easily with Indigenous outlets.
[00:51:45.340]And I'd argue it's probably a better use of your funds
[00:51:52.360]to go to a lot smaller outlets with a lot smaller budgets.
[00:51:55.855]You know, I mean, the CEO of NPR
[00:51:58.470]makes something like $680,000 a year.
[00:52:01.150]Like that's where your money's going.
[00:52:05.660]So that's one real way is to read it and support it.
[00:52:14.330]So we've got a couple more questions coming in.
[00:52:17.350]One from an Indigenous journalist,
[00:52:19.010]whose name is Kevin Abourezk.
[00:52:21.620]He asked what are the untold stories in Indian country
[00:52:24.500]that we should be watching?
[00:52:28.020]Geez, I mean, all of them, I guess.
[00:52:32.090]I dunno.
[00:52:34.119]You know, I mean, Kevin, as you know,
[00:52:35.870]a lot of the stuff,
[00:52:36.950]a lot of the action happens at the courts.
[00:52:39.140]And I think that at the moment,
[00:52:43.360]you know, we're kind of in early stages
[00:52:45.230]of talking about some like tools.
[00:52:47.720]And I'm sorry for the cat,
[00:52:48.960]he is really eager to have a say here.
[00:52:55.270]We're kind of in early stages of talking about
[00:52:57.340]some like tools to start capturing
[00:52:59.321]when consultation happens between tribes and agencies.
[00:53:04.750]Really trying to find ways to get into the reporting early.
[00:53:11.040]I mean, we brought up Standing Rock earlier, for instance.
[00:53:14.150]I mean, as many of y'all probably know,
[00:53:16.530]it was like a three year legal
[00:53:20.840]and consultation battle that was happening
[00:53:22.890]before protests even started.
[00:53:26.450]And being able to catch like conversations
[00:53:30.040]that are happening between a tribe
[00:53:31.189]and the Army Corps of Engineers early,
[00:53:34.150]like gives us a lot of opportunity to jump in
[00:53:38.060]before things become protests
[00:53:40.160]and be able to follow those in ways
[00:53:45.030]that really get at the heart of the matter early.
[00:53:50.490]So this is all to say,
[00:53:52.240]I think like when it comes to stories
[00:53:54.010]that should be being told,
[00:53:55.173]again, we focus a lot on the courts.
[00:53:58.550]And at "Grist," we are now focusing really heavily
[00:54:03.364]on international systems as well too.
[00:54:07.400]So my colleague and our "Grist" fellow, Joseph Lee,
[00:54:12.470]has really started to develop some really fantastic work
[00:54:16.770]around monitoring, like, you know, UN agencies, NGOs.
[00:54:23.570]Really keeping a kind of an eye on what's happening
[00:54:25.842]in these international spaces as well.
[00:54:30.510]So I, you know, again, I think for a lot of reporters,
[00:54:33.930]it seems boring to be just looking at the documents
[00:54:36.590]and going through like this happened in court today,
[00:54:39.160]but that's where the action is.
[00:54:42.130]That's where like, that's where decades
[00:54:44.574]of activism and fighting have like gotten us to,
[00:54:49.930]is that we have a core of really sharp, smart,
[00:54:52.668]Native lawyers who are out there doing this work
[00:54:55.575]in the court systems and less so on the streets
[00:55:00.230]like in the sixties and seventies.
[00:55:02.912]So my advice is to start digging into the places
[00:55:08.749]in which agencies and tribes are starting to talk
[00:55:11.469]because that's where the conflict begins often
[00:55:14.990]and then rises from there.
[00:55:17.850]So we have time for one more question, Tristan,
[00:55:20.440]and this is from Barbara Ayer.
[00:55:22.130]She asks, can you name a few
[00:55:25.150]of your favorite Indigenous journalists or sources?
[00:55:30.100]Yeah, I mean, yeah.
[00:55:31.096]Kevin at indians.com does does great work.
[00:55:35.300]Check on them regularly.
[00:55:37.110]Folks over at "Indian Country Today" are getting like,
[00:55:40.120]they were already doing great work
[00:55:41.820]and they get better and better all the time.
[00:55:43.550]It's really great to see
[00:55:44.734]just how much they just keep doing great stuff.
[00:55:50.190]You know, admittedly I am a "High Country News" alumni here,
[00:55:54.810]but you know, the Indigenous Affairs desk
[00:55:57.010]continues to like pump out some of the best work
[00:56:01.940]that I think, or analysis that I see
[00:56:04.456]coming out of Indian country.
[00:56:08.040]You know, those are some like pretty good examples.
[00:56:11.987]"Navajo Times," I always like reading "Navajo Times" stuff.
[00:56:18.150]If you're gonna start anywhere,
[00:56:19.830]yeah, "ICT," "Indians," "High Country News."
[00:56:23.148]Hopefully you'll throw "Grist" in there too.
[00:56:25.670]That was a good place--
[00:56:27.011]Okay.
[00:56:29.330]I'm trying to keep up and put all these things in the chat
[00:56:32.690]so that people can access them easily,
[00:56:34.630]but I'm failing miserably.
[00:56:36.700]So I just wanna thank you so much, Tristan,
[00:56:40.820]for your comments today and your insights,
[00:56:43.710]and we just appreciate all that you're doing
[00:56:46.722]and we're really glad to have you here today.
[00:56:52.700]I want to encourage people to stick around
[00:56:55.900]for the next session.
[00:56:58.549]There's four sessions to choose from.
[00:57:00.550]We also have a lunch session
[00:57:02.533]called "What Would Land Back Look Like at UNL?"
[00:57:06.750]And we hope you'll come to that.
[00:57:08.060]That's at 11:30.
[00:57:10.850]And I wish we could have you here in-person,
[00:57:14.020]Tristan, so we could give you a big hardy round of applause.
[00:57:17.070]A lot of people are writing their thanks in the chat.
[00:57:19.680]So at least we can sort of give you a virtual applause,
[00:57:25.220]and we thank you so much for being here.
[00:57:28.320]And thank you to everybody else who's attending.
[00:57:32.750]Well, thanks again for the invitation.
[00:57:34.229]I really appreciate it.
[00:57:36.469](light music)

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Tristan Ahtone: Indigenous Journalism and Cooperative Media

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