Native American journalism

Tribes affected: Pantribal

Significance: American Indian journalism has existed since 1828 and has been faced with such issues as funding and journalistic freedom versus tribal control.

After Sequoyah, an individual of Cherokee (and other) descent with no formal education, became the only person in human history known to have created a written language single-handedly. Cherokee leaders founded the first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, in 1828 at New Echota, Georgia. Cherokee leaders started the paper to resist Georgia’s attempts to take civil rights and land away from the Five Civilized Nations of the American Southeast.

Cherokee Phoenix

Elias Boudinot, a college-educated Cherokee schoolteacher, served as the first Cherokee Phoenix editor. Boudinot and others struggled for Cherokee rights, for a separate Cherokee state, and against forced removal to the West. Like the White press (protected by the First Amendment), the Indian press was to be free from prior restraint (censorship prior to the publication of a news story). In 1829, however, the Georgia legislature stripped all Indians of all their legal rights. Subsequently, the Cherokee Phoenix reported harassment, arrest, and threats to staff members. Because the newspaper also protested the postmaster’s sale of liquor to Indians, the postmaster retaliated by cutting off its mail.

Threats to Boudinot’s freedom came from another direction as well. The tribal governing council, which subsidized the newspaper, became deeply divided on the issue of removal, especially after President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce a U.S. Supreme Court decision supporting the Cherokees. Some Cherokee supporters came to see removal as self-preservation. Yet Principal Chief John Ross told Boudinot not to publish dissension within the Cherokee National Council; he told the editor to report a united front of Cherokee resistance against White encroachment. In a published letter of resignation in 1832, Boudinot said he could not manage the paper without a free discussion of such important issues. Ross appointed his brother-in-law Elijah Hicks editor, but Hicks lacked the rhetorical power exhibited by his predecessor. Meanwhile, pressure from the outside continued. Publication became erratic, and Hicks suspended publication in 1834.

Although Boudinot had campaigned against removal, he gave up the fight and signed the Treaty of Echota in 1835, agreeing to removal. Three years later, the U.S. Cavalry forced Cherokee people from their Georgia homes and forced them to walk to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Cherokees, who had agreed to removal as self-preservation, saw four thousand men, women, and children die along this winter “Trail of Tears.” For his involvement with the treaty faction, Boudinot was killed by Ross supporters in 1839. (Ross himself was not involved.) Although the Cherokee Nation was delayed in starting another paper, the Reverend Samuel Worster, who had been jailed in Georgia for helping Cherokees, moved to Indian Territory and began the Cherokee Almanac, published more or less annually beginning in 1835.

Other Nineteenth Century Newspapers

The second Native American newspaper, the Shawnee Sun (Siwinowe Kesibi), began in 1835 under the editorship of Johnston Lykins, with assistance from a missionary who had taken the first printing press to Kansas for the Baptist mission. The Shawnee mission newspaper used the Shawnee language in the English alphabet. The monthly newspaper was suspended in 1839 but revived from 1841 to 1844. It was apparently the first newspaper published entirely in a native language. It was put out of business, at least temporarily, by the removal of the Shawnee south to Indian Territory.

The Cherokee Advocate, like the Cherokee Phoenix before it, was established with missionary help as the official newspaper of the Cherokee Nation. Founded in 1844 in the new Cherokee capital of Tahlequah, the Cherokee Advocate’s editors were selected by the National Council. The first editor was William Potter Ross, nephew of Principal Chief Ross. Like the Cherokee Phoenix, the Cherokee Advocate worked to assimilate Cherokees, to provide news, and to defend Indian rights. Except for a suspension during the Civil War, the paper continued as an official mouthpiece of whatever party was in power. The paper ended with tribal government in 1906.

Nontribal newspapers occasionally started near reservations to oppose the parties in power. These Indian-owned publications often operated as for-profit businesses, and commercial imperatives required non-Indian support. Like other newspaper rivalries in the West, arguments between native editors often became personal. During the 1887 tribal campaign, Elias Cornelius Boudinot, Jr. engaged in a virulent exchange with opposition editors, especially B. H. Stone of The Telephone. In October, Boudinot went to Stone’s office, confronted him, and fatally shot him.

Churches and government-sponsored Indian schools have run newspapers over the years. Some have been in native languages, others in English. Still others, such as the Cherokee Phoenix, contained articles in both languages. Many of these papers began as part of assimilation programs.

Contemporary Journalism

Most Native American newspapers and radio stations continue to struggle with the issue of tribal support. One of the largest and most successful Native American newspapers, the Navajo Times, began in 1959 as a newsletter for a tribal council education committee; it continued as a tribal newspaper in 2023.

Intertribal and regional newspapers and press associations have existed since the nineteenth century, but many were short-lived. Indian editors in Oklahoma formed a short-lived press association in the late 1880s. Nearly a century later, the American Indian Press Association lasted from 1970 to 1975. The Native American Press Association began in 1984 and became the Native American Journalists Association in 1989. In 1994, the group claimed four hundred members, about one-fourth from broadcasting. In the early 1990s, Native American writers in Washington, D.C., formed the National Indian Media Association to build a sense of community among native writers in the nation’s capital. The group had about forty-five members from native and mainstream media and federal agencies; it also included filmmakers.

Native media have often depended upon federal grants and corporate underwriting, the kind of support received by “National Native News,” a daily news and feature program produced with the help of Alaska Public Radio. The program began in 1987 and had reached all twenty-five tribally owned radio stations and 170 other U.S. stations by 1994.

A major urban nontribal newspaper has been The Circle, a monthly begun at the American Indian Center in Minneapolis in 1979. Many other regional publications also cover intertribal issues.

National Publications

A few Native American newspapers have sought national audiences. Akwesasne Notes, for example, began in 1969 as an official 48-page publication of the Mohawk nation five times a year. Its circulation peaked at more than eighty-one thousand in the 1970s, when it was emphasizing treaty rights. Publication was suspended in 1992 but was revived with a twenty-fifth anniversary issue in 1994.

Computers and color have played major roles in the two major national commercial Native American newspapers, News from Indian Country, published near Hayward, Wisconsin, and Indian Country Today, published at Rapid City, South Dakota. The Rapid City weekly began its life on the Pine Ridge Reservation as Lakota Times, first published in 1981 by Tim Giago. A boost in outside support and the name change reflected the push for a national audience in the early 1990s. News from Indian Country, a biweekly begun in 1987, originated on the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation. Managing editor Paul DeMain saw the publication as part of the national networking necessary for native peoples.

Most native journalists continue to work for low pay and high ideals against a system that forces them to keep a wary eye on their financial support. Links to the past were honored when a plaque honoring Elias Boudinot was placed at the restoration of New Echota in 1994.

Bibliography

Giago, Tim, ed. The American Indian and the Media. National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1991.

Journalism History, vol. 6, no. 2, (Summer, 1979). Special issue on Native American journalism.

Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr. Alex Posey: Creek Poet, Journalist, and Humorist. U of Nebraska P, 1997.

Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr., and James W. Parins. American Indian and Alaska Native Newspapers and Periodicals, 1826-1924. Greenwood Press, 1986.

Dwyer, Richard. American Indian and Alaska Native Newspapers and Periodicals, 1925-1970. Greenwood Press, 1986.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. American Indian and Alaska Native Newspapers and Periodicals, 1971-1985. Greenwood Press, 1986.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. A Biobibliography of Native American Writers, 1772-1924. Scarecrow Press, 1981.

Littlefield, Mary Wood. “Cherokee Publishing in Arkansas, 1859-1880.” Native Press Research Journal, vol. 3, 1986, pp. 11-20.

McMurtrie, Douglas C. “The Shawnee Sun: The First Indian-Language Periodical Published in the United States.” Kansas Historical Quarterly, vol. 2, 1933, pp. 339-342.

Murphy, James E., and Sharon M. Murphy. Let My People Know: American Indian Journalism. U of Oklahoma P, 1981.

Parins, James W. John Rollin Ridge: His Life and Work. U of Nebraska P, 1991.

Perdue, Theda, ed. Cherokee Editor: The Writings of Elias Boudinot. U of Tennessee P, 1983.

Posey, Alexander, et al. The Fus Fixico Letters: A Creek Humorist in Early Oklahoma. U of Nebraska P, 2002.

Riley, Sam G. “The Cherokee Phoenix: The Short, Unhappy Life of the First American Indian Newspaper.” Journalism Quarterly, vol. 59, 1982, pp. 46-51, 183.

Schramm, Erika. “Pressing the Issues: Native American Journalism Associations.” Wisconsin Journalism Review, 1993, pp. 54-57.