Today, Buffalo Post introduces a new component we find really exciting – a selection of stories from Native Sun News. Each week, Native Sun publishes a newspaper – yes, a real newspaper that you can hold in your hands, take down to the cafe, swat the puppy with. The only thing you can’t do with it is read it online. So each week, Native Sun News e-mails its stories to certain news organizations. We’re thrilled to be included. We’ll run them on Saturdays, starting today with this story about KILI Radio station’s new format. If you’ve ever driven through the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, you know KILI. It’s how you keep up with everything that’s going on – or, at least, it was.

By Randall Howell
Native Sun News Correspondent

PORCUPINE –– Hunger for more local news and less entertainment is part of what’s driving a possible change in the broadcasting board of directors at KILI-FM.

That’s the upshot of the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s Treaty Committee meeting last week. In fact, those attending the Aug. 31 session, showed their intentions with an overwhelmingly positive vote on what perhaps could best be described as a “sense of the committee” proposal to construct an ordinance that, if passed, would significantly change the radio board.
“The current board … it does nothing,” said Cecilia Martin of Evergreen, a 90-year-old tribal elder. “We also need the news back. It’s been gone for three, maybe four, months. That’s how I find out what’s going on. We need to take our radio station back.”

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We in the news business are being deluged these days by reports of the imminent death of “paper” newspapers and the concurrent rush go digital in every format possible.

In the midst of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth is the Native Sun News in Rapid City, S.D., which debuted a year and a half ago as a defiantly paper newspaper and has stayed that way ever since. As publisher Tim Giago wrote about that decision:

You won’t find us on the Internet. So many of my Indian readers do not have computers or do not even have access to them. Native Sun News will go back to the traditional way of providing news for Indian country. The paper will have serious news, but we will never abandon that Indian sense of humor that so many non-Indians accuse us of not having. You will be able to hold our newspaper in your hands, sip on a hot cup of coffee, and read the news you used to love to read in The Lakota Times and Indian Country Today.

The paper is especially tough on cases of alleged corruption.

Native Sun News is often the only news outlet to publicize cases like the one involving Donita King, whose story was featured in the July 21 issue. King, an enrolled member of the Assiniboine Sioux on the Fort Peck Reservation in northeastern Montana, says that she and her family have been fighting for years for the money due from her oil-rich allotments.

People are widely familiar with the issue of Native Americans being cheated out of royalties on their land allotments, thanks to the massive Cobell v. Salazar class-action suit against the Interior Department.

But as King tells Native Sun News managing editor Randall Howell, it’s not the U.S. government, but tribal officials, who have been cheating her family. King, who is legally blind, says the money due her family has instead been directed to fake accounts set up by powerful people in the tribe.

As Howell reports, “What started out as a ‘simple probate search’ more than two decades ago, after King’s father had died, has resulted in nearly 50 grand-jury indictments over allotment fraud.”

King, who is a descendant of Hunkpapa Sioux Chief Sitting Bull and who says the long fight has resulted in death threats to her and her family, calls the whole mess a “path of shame.”

And the only place you can read about it is the Native Sun News “The only Indian newspaper that cowboys can read, too!”). You can look at a reproduction of each week’s front page and read a column by Giago online every week at www.nsweekly.com/. And, even though reading the entire newspaper defiantly remains a tactile experience, you can follow Native Sun News, and discussions about its stories, on both Facebook and Twitter.

Gwen Florio

Still catching up with stories we missed while on vacation. Here’s one we couldn’t pass by — Tim Giago’s column on great Native American reporters:

It doesn’t feel right to name just a few of the people whose work Giago extols. But please check out the entire column. As Giago writes:

Tim Giago

There are probably 300 Indian newspapers in America that are still publishing, papers that have to fight tribal politicians every day, papers that struggle to get funding every year, but papers that are so important to the people of the Indian reservations that they serve.

With the advent of the Internet, blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Tweet there is no chart to show where newspapers or news reporters are headed. Many of us Native journalists still feel that there is a place for our reporting and for our newspapers. Time will tell.

Gwen Florio

Judge’s ruling halts Seneca Nation mail-order cigarette sales
A federal judge ruled Friday that Seneca Indians in the mail-order cigarette business can no longer use the post office to ship cigarettes while they fight a new ban on the practice, according to this Associated Press story. As the AP writes: “In a mixed decision, Judge Richard Arcara upheld the mail-order ban contained in the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act but temporarily exempted more than 140 Seneca-owned businesses from a provision requiring them to comply with all taxing laws in the places they sell cigarettes.

Death of traditional singer in Glacier National Park prompts investigation
Authorities say Clinton Croff, 30, a well-known traditional Native American singer and dancer, died from from multiple wounds after becoming engaged in an altercation in Glacier National Park, according to this Associated Press report. Croff was from Browning, on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana.

First Nations women married to non-aboriginal men still fighting for rights
Aboriginal women on many First Nations reserves in Canada still are being denied their rights because they married non-tribal men, despite a 1985 law designed to address the issue. Canadian Press reports here about the legal struggle by some women who are even prevented from voting.

Turtle Island News publisher is about all-Native news, all the time
In the 16 years since Lynda Powless started the Turtle Island News on the Six Nations Reserve, she’s been arrested twice (at a band council meeting for refusing to leave), sued (unsuccessfully by then chief Roberta Jamieson) and lodged an Ontario Press Council complaint against another paper on the reserve after it ran a front-page story on Powless’s divorce, writes Denise Davy of the Hamilton Spectator. Powless tells Davy she started the paper because “people on the reserve had no clue what was going on in their own community.”

KVCR Television, based in San Bernadino, Calif., will host the first 24-hour Native American TV channel, with the help of a $6 million donation from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians.

The channel is to launch next spring, and will feature current events, culture and history of Native American and Alaska Native people, according to this news release from the tribe.

“We fully anticipate this unique channel to become a model for public-television programming across the country,” says KVCR president Larry R. Ciecalone. KVCR is a Public Broadcasting System affiliate. “The power and influence for the good this channel will achieve cannot be overstated.”

James Ramos, chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, says the channel is part of the tribes mission of portraying Native Americans accurately and thus help break down stereotypes.

“Supporting this endeavor will help achieve that objective by allowing us to tell the story of Native Americans through themes and images that speak the truth and educate our audiences,” says Ramos.

Cherokee actor Wes Studi (“Dances with Wolves,” “The Last of the Mohicans”) says that “the channel will be in a position to break stereotypes while preserving and celebrating our rich culture and collective history before a larger audience.”

An earlier partnership between the tribe and the statino resulted in three documentary series called “People of the Pines,” a direct translation of San Manuel’s clan designation in the Native Serrano language, Yuhaviatam. To watch trailers, click here.

Gwen Florio

The cousins Abourezk – they would be Richard, an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, who lives in Omaha, and Kevin, an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, who lives in Lincoln, Neb. – started their War Pony Express blog to examine the practice of predatory lending to Native Americans.

Richard has in-depth knowledge by virtue of his job in the auto industry. In his introductory post on the issue, he writes:

Richard (left) and Kevin Abourezk (War Pony Express blog)

I decided to write my first blog post on War Pony Express to elaborate on our
Native Americans living on reservations don’t have the same financial opportunities and education as those living elsewhere. As the graduate of a reservation high school in South Dakota, I can tell you there isn’t much emphasis on teaching financial independence and aptitude in most reservation schools. With the lack education in that area, the only other place a person can pick up that type of knowledge is as an employee.

With high unemployment rates and few available jobs on reservations, few people have the chance to learn financial skills while working. Few jobs also mean little money for tribes to build self-sustaining economic infrastructure that most communities have. Thus, the capitalistic wheel that turns America’s economic engine doesn’t turn in the country’s most needy places.

What does that mean? That Native people are particularly vulnerable to lenders who prey on them – and that those lenders are well aware of that.

Gwen Florio

National Public Radio’s reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan has been justifiably honored. But it came under scrutiny recently with reports on the death in Afghanistan of a 23-year-old Navajo Marine from Rock Point, Ariz.

NPR’s Kabul correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, who was embedded with the Marines India Company 3rd Battalion, 6th Regiment, included in her report details of how the young man died.

The piece provoked comment from listeners who found it both moving, and intrusive, according to this NPR review of the matter.

Although the Marine’s family knew of his death, they didn’t know NPR was planning the piece.

“The only complaint we, as the family, have is that we were not notified about the broadcast,” his sister-in-law tells NPR. “It was quite a shock when we actually heard the story then heard the moment he was killed from the audio. It was too graphic for us to hear.”

She also says she wishes the NPR had not used his name, out of respect for Navajo culture.

As she tells NPR:

“In our Navajo tradition, once we lay him to rest we cannot talk about his passing anymore,” said his sister-in-law on March 4. “Culturally his spirit will not be at ease if we keep hearing about his death…It is hard for all of us to grieve the loss of [name withheld] with all this media attention it is getting and we know that this is not what he would have wanted. He was not the type of person to have wanted all this attention.”

This story is fraught with ethical issues. Should NPR have aired the moment of death? Should his name be aired? Should NPR have notified the family before the piece aired?

NPR’s review of the matter notes there are no easy answers. This blog has printed the names of Navajo soldiers and Marines killed in combat, usually linking to the stories in the Navajo Times mentioning those names. In a story involving this particular Marine, the Times noted that the family asked that his name not be made public. Thoughts?

Gwen Florio

Rob Capriccioso covers Native American news in Washington, D.C., for Indian Country Today. That means he’s a very, very busy reporter, logging lots of time in the halls of Congress.

Only one problem: As a writer for a publication owned by a tribe, he’s considered to be working for a foreign government – and that can make it tough for him to get a press pass. As he writes here in Native Pop on True Slant:

The U.S. Senate Periodical Press Gallery says those are the rules. But what the situation really boils down to is a U.S. government bias against tribes. The same U.S. government that strives to protect the 1st Amendment; that holds freedom of the press up as an important symbol of our country’s greatness; that likes to say it has a special relationship with tribes. If special means unfair, then that’s news to me.

It’s the same U.S. government, too, that has previously approved congressional credentials for many foreign news services, including China’s Xinhua News Agency.

Capriccioso says he’s been told that Indian Country Today should ask Congress to request a special hearing on whether Indian publications should get press passes. That seems a like a very complicated solution to a very straightforward issue.

Yes, tribes are sovereign nations. But their members are U.S. citizens, and Capriccioso is reporting on news vital to them.

He lists the number for the Senate Periodical Press Gallery, and we’re happy to include it here, too. It’s (202) 224-0265. Call and let them know what you think.

Gwen Florio

For more than a half-century, KELO-TV has been watched by people throughout central South Dakota.

But now the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe wants the station to find a new spot for the broadcast tower that was blown down in last month’s winter storms, Seth Tupper of the Mitchell Daily Republic reports here.

.KELO is putting up a temporary tower and will apply to the Federal Communication Commission for a permanent one.

But, as Tupper writes, the old tower was on Medicine Butte in central South Dakota, a site sacred to the Lower Brule Tribe.

“It ties into a whole sacred set of buttes that figure predominantly in our culture, and I would like to have our folks comment more on that,” says tribal Chairman Michael Jandreau. He says his tribe wants to consult with the FCC on the matter.

KELO general manager Jay Huizenga told Tupper that that the old 700-foot tower supplied a television signal for people in central South Dakota, and that there are other towers on Medicine Butte.

And, writes Tupper:

Jandreau acknowledged that there may be little his tribe can do to get KELO’s tower moved, given that the site is not within reservation boundaries or held in trust for the tribe. He is holding out hope, though, and he playfully suggested that perhaps the winter storm wasn’t the only force at work in the tower’s fall.

“When it was built, some of our old men told them that it was going to fall down,” Jandreau said. “It took 53 years, but it fell down.”

Gwen Florio