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Kathrin Podbrecnik
American movies help perpetuate European stereotypes
Kathrin Podbrecnik
Strength of Native culture overpowers oppression
Morgan Winsor
Changing 's-word' controversial but needed to make a difference
Dr. Chris Campbell,
Director, UI School of Communication

Native culture rich, important stories to be told
Lori Edmo-Suppah,
UI Journalist in Residence, 2001 -02

Cooperation key to gathering information

Shortly after arriving at my new job at the University of Idaho in the summer of 2000, I met Mark Trahant, who had served for several years as a member of the UI School of Communication’s Advisory Board. I knew of Mark because of his national reputation as a journalist and as an activist for cultural diversity in America’s newsrooms.
In our very first conversation, we talked about things the UI School of Communication might be able to do to help journalism students learn how to cover tribal life and Indian affairs. In that conversation, Mark mentioned Lori Edmo-Suppah, editor of the Sho-Ban News in Fort Hall, as a potential visiting professor. Before long, Mark convinced The Freedom Forum to help fund a position for Lori for the 2001-02 school year. With that $45,000 grant, the UI Native American Journalism Project was born.
Over the last year, a group of senior journalism majors worked with Lori on a project on Idaho’s five Indian tribes. I worked with the group during the fall semester, and I was impressed with the students’ passion for the project. They learned quickly that the deadline-driven urgency of journalistic culture can clash with values in Native American culture. The students learned that they would need to work hard to cultivate sources, and that they shouldn’t expect phone calls to be returned from sources with whom they had not established a trusting relationship. Their patience and persistence were rewarded as they built those relationships and completed remarkable stories about Idaho’s Native Americans. They learned that good journalistic work is not easy, and that taking the time to understand complex issues is well worth the reward.
I learned along with my students that it takes a special effort for news organizations to effectively cover tribal issues. We also learned that there are important stories that need to be told and that the culture and history of Idaho’s Natives is rich and powerful. The students who worked on the project will leave the university with the skill to cover even the most complex stories out of Indian country, and that’s a skill that will make them invaluable to America’s newsrooms. They’ve also left behind a remarkable report that will be of value to all of Idaho’s citizens.

I had the privilege of working with ten upper-level University of Idaho School of Communication journalism students this year to complete a Native Journalism Project.
The project is the result of a one-year grant to the UI School of Communication from the Freedom Forum, thanks to trustee Mark N. Trahant. It is patterned after a similar project the University of Montana School of Journalism has done for the last ten years.
I learned right along with the students as we traveled from one end of the state to the other visiting all five Idaho Indian reservations.
From the remoteness of the Duck Valley Reservation on the Idaho/Nevada border in southwestern Idaho to the Kootenai Reservation 30 miles from the Canadian border, the Native people were all gracious hosts and very willing to share information with us so we could learn more about their people and culture.
The goal was to learn about covering tribal issues and sovereignty. What we learned is when covering Native issues, journalists need to learn about the respective tribe – its government, history, culture and issues. All tribes are different and all have different issues, but they also have similar concerns regarding land, protection of treaty rights, water, natural resources, culture and exercising sovereignty.
Thank you to all of the tribal people, the students, the Freedom Forum and Mark Trahant, UI School of Communication Director Chris Campbell and to my husband Delson and children Hoss, Noah and Lucy, who allowed me to be away from them.

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