Ed. Note: Earlier
this week the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)announced a
$500,000, two-year grant to support Indian Country Today’s daily
news broadcast. The announcement comes after ICT’s closure four
years ago and its re-emergence as a national multimedia platform
covering Native American communities. The news also comes as Native
American communities are experiencing greater visibility on the
national stage. Mark Trahant is a veteran reporter and
Editor-at-large for ICT. He spoke with EMS’s Peter Schurmann about
ICT’s role covering Indian Country at this historic moment.
Indian Country Today’s re-emergence comes as Native American
communities are gaining greater visibility. What is the significance
of this moment
Crystal EchoHawk did a study about four years ago on changing
public perceptions of Native Americans and said at the time that
invisibility is not a superpower, that it weakens your ability to be
in the public discourse. And we are now at a moment when… there is
the rise of popular shows like Rutherford Falls, Dark Winds,
Reservation Dogs, all these media experiences that are putting
Native Americans in the limelight. And globally, we are about to see
the rise of Indigenous nationhood in a different way. I am thinking
specifically of Greenland’s transition from Denmark to becoming an
independent nation, and how more people are going to see and
experience international governance from Indigenous people. How that
changes the conversation will be really interesting. But all of this
comes at a time when people still don’t know much about tribal
communities.
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Mark Trahant is editor-at-large for Indian Country Today.
Does that inform how do you see ICT’s role in the broader media
landscape？
This goes to our philosophy. Part of it is that we don’t want to be
event driven, but issue driven. Which means we try to look for the
big picture on stories and try to explain things. In the old world
of journalism, journalists rushed to be first on a story. And
frankly, we don’t care if we’re first. We really want to have it
right, and we’ll take an extra day or two… whatever it takes to get
that context. And the other part is that Native Americans didn’t—and
still don’t—see themselves in media. I mean, here we are in 2022 and
just two weeks ago MSNBC hired its first Native American as an
on-air commentator. There is not a single Native on-air reporter or
on-air producer. I’m working on a story now about corporate board
participation and of all public media companies there is not a
single Native American. So we are still in a position where there
are so many zeroes out there.
How were you able to rebuild ICT’s audience after it’s closure?
We knew we wanted to be a non-profit and started asking readers for
money. And that came really quick, mostly through small donations…
the average was $35. We got letters from across the country and one
of my favorites was a letter from Pine Ridge, South Dakota with a
$15 money order. Which means someone cared enough about our success
to stand in line at a post office to buy a money order, and then
mail that to us with a letter. That’s really incredible. The other
interesting thing the data shows is that our readership is really
young. Our number one readership group is 25 to 34, and that’s been
very consistent from the beginning.
And what do you attribute to being able to connect with younger
audiences?
Mobile. One of the first decisions we made when I was brought on was
to have everyone involved in the project remember that the mobile
phone is the most powerful instrument ever invented. It is really
easy in the newspaper world to think of web pages as being your
vehicle… but every day our traffic is 85% mobile. So from the very
beginning we looked at what our load times are on mobile, how our
stories look on mobile. I remember before we launched, I was up in
Bethel, Alaska, and I was testing page load times.
There’s been a lot of reporting about the lack of connectivity in
tribal communities. Did that present an obstacle to growing your
audience reach?
Policy makers are really focused on expanding broadband access, and
that’s important for schools and homes and things like that. But for
us it is all about mobile access and that is a whole different game.
I remember five years ago in Navajo country how difficult it was to
get mobile reception, and now you can travel across the entire
reservation while keeping a signal. And I think that is a
fundamental change that made this whole project easier.
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Aliyah Chavez, a citizen of Kewa Pueblo and anchor and producer of
‘ICT Newscast With Aliyah Chavez’
What role has technology played in the rising visibility of
Indian Country？
Social media has brought about a fundamental change for Indigenous
people. Now what happens in New Zealand or Australia, for example,
becomes local. The connections are real and lasting. Events like
Idle No More in Canada and Standing Rock, meanwhile, captured social
media in ways no one expected, connecting the world to these
stories. Hollywood is a different matter. What helped with Hollywood
was that one success led to another. The rise of shows like
Rutherford Falls led to Reservation Dogs, the same group of people
working together. And Hollywood started to see that this is
successful, that there is a market there they haven’t thought of.
Which is essentially what we’re doing too. There is a market here
that people haven’t thought of.
What are the top issues for Indian Country that warrant wider
attention?
Climate, partly because the climate story has only been told from
the disaster point of view, which is important. But the resiliency
side hasn’t been told. Sovereignty is another big issue, having
communities be able to decide their own future. If you look at the
world’s land base, Indigenous people control roughly 25% of the
land. And if you look at all the minerals required to transition to
electric vehicles, 95% of these mineral deposits run through Indian
Country. Lithium, copper… almost all the minerals required. And so
one of the conversations with our readers is, can you be against
everything when it might be the only way to get forward on climate.
How will you gauge ICT’s success in the coming years?
The big one is to get on more public television stations and be a
true national broadcast. We’re now on about 30 public television
stations. Having the CPB imprint will really help expand this. On
the digital side we’d like to get to 1 million visitors a month:
we’re at about 800,00 now. Personally, I look for the day when we
have kids coming through here on school tours every day, because
that is when I know we’re telling the next generation this is a
career for you.
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