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Indian self-determination: The charge to Indian journalists
Indian Self-Determination: The Charge to Indian Journalists
RICHARD M. WHEELOCK* Fort Lewis College
As Indian journalists struggle with the problems of providing the information necessary for informed decision-making in Indian communities, they face the confusing communications environment created by the ironic nature of the Indian Self-Determination policy. As they select and “frame” their news items, Indian journalists both reflect and help define the aspirations for selfgovernment among their audiences. Because the levels of tribal sovereignty that are the goal of the Indian Self-Determination Policy have not been clearly articulated, Indian journalists are unavoidably involved in helping to define the meaning of Indian Self-Determination among Indian people. A new Indian information order must emerge to accomplish that task.
PROLOGUE Indian communities face great challenges in attaining and maintaining their right to govern themselves. Those challenges cannot be met, however, if Indian people do not have access to accurate, accountable, understandable information upon which to base informed decisions on their own behalf. Information, in this sense, really is a basis of power. For the Indian journalists entrusted to make that information available to Indian people, the struggle to make sense of the confusing media environment that surrounds Indian affairs is a daily one. It is an environment where words and language can never be taken at face value, where political rhetoric and hidden agendas are the rule, rather than the exception. Their experiences and perspectives on the problems facing Indian communities as they strive for greater degrees of self-determination are valuable to the on-going dialogue on the issue. *Direct all correspondence to: Richard M. Wheelock, Colorado 81301. Telephone (303) 247-7227.
Native American
The Social Science Journal, Volume 32, Number 3, pages 279-287. Copyright @ 1995 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0362-3319.
Center, Fort Lewis College, Durango,
280
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This article will deal with one of the two major problems facing Indian people in gaining such information. The focus will be the present confusion over the very term used to describe the relationship between the tribes and the federal government. The label of “Indian Self-Determination” itself has muddied the quality and limited the access to information vital to Indians as self-determining peoples. Indian journalists must continue to play an important role in helping to define “Indian Self-Determination” in ways that crystallize and reflect the aspirations of the tribes with which they work. The second major information problem facing Indian people is that the nature of modern mass society and its “mass media” have frustrated many attempts by Indian people to use the media for their own purposes.’ Cultural dominance in the mass media’ has often reduced the very essence of Indian identity to a demeaning caricature, helping to undermine the confidence necessary for community action. It has also meant that Indian journalists struggle to get their voices heard even by their own people. That dominance has created many barriers for Indianproduced media and has presented Indian journalists with the prospect of competing with well-established entertainment media for a share of the reading and viewing time of their own target audiences. The issue of defining the proper cultural approaches for reaching their audiences in such a mass media environment may be the greatest challenge for Indian journalists. While this brief paper cannot deal with that immense issue, the struggle for cultural survival, for survival as distinct peoples, remains a basic aspect of Indian self-determination.
THE IRONIC NATURE OF THE TERM “SELF-DETERMINATION” With their tight budgets, Indian journalists often face the public battleground of Indian affairs with few resources to draw upon. Their role in relation to tribal governments, though often ambiguous, makes them a critical part of the developing public discourse surrounding tribal authority, yet they are often constrained by the many forces struggling to harness, or restrict, the power of tribal people to direct their own affairs. Accurate, accountable information about a specific tribal concern is often difficult to bring into print amid such circumstances. In order to understand the world in which Indian journalists operate today, it is necessary to consider the communications environment created by the many crises facing the Indian SelfDetermination policy. For this short paper, it is enough to begin that portion of the process by noting the responsibilities for journalists created by the irony of the term “Indian Self-Determination” itself. Despite years of federal pronouncements and court decisions, the policy of Indian Self-Determination remains an enigma. Its limits are shrouded in a turmoil of nearly daily confrontations between people who favor a far greater degree of tribal selfgoverning powers and those who would limit tribal authority even more than the present course of federal policy allows. The confusion over how the policy should be put into action has caused some scholars to call for new federal legislation to clarify the extent of tribal authority. 3 Yet tribes have sometimes foundered over even their present tasks, strained by the many relatively new, bureaucratic responsibilities the policy has thrust upon them. The generations-old conflict
lndian Se/f-Determination
281
between kinship responsibilities and the newer bureaucratic operations of tribal governments also contributes to that internal turmoil.4 Practically any exercise of self-government by tribes is met by determined resistance from entrenched interest groups of mass society. Tribal initiatives in economic development, for instance, can be expected to create new jurisdictional quagmires, bringing challenges to tribal authority from many quarters of nonIndian, corporate America. In a nation where Indian people are a permanent minority, those interest groups wield overwhelming power, especially since they frequently use the mass media for public relations.5 In their role as information specialists for their people, Indian journalists ought to be able to rely upon some clearly defined terms to account for the positions taken by the various contenders in Indian policy scuffles. Unfortunately, the very basis of modern tribal authority, “Indian Self-Determination,” is not a clearly defined term. When then-President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed a new policy of “selfdetermination” in Indian affairs in 1968,6 few probably imagined the implications of the term. When President Richard M. Nixon embraced the term for his own Indian policy in 1970, he too used the term as if it were a familiar one.7 Selfdetermination, as many policy-makers of the time understood it, was based upon international conventions described in President Woodrow Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points proposed in 1918 as a prescription for the problems facing the European powers at the end of World War I.* Though Wilson did not use the term “self-determination” in his comments, his concept soon received that ungainly label in the debates which followed. It was a proposal meant to remedy long standing issues in Europe so that nations which had been overrun by other European nations during the War could be restored to their original sovereignty. In the case of Russia, for example, Wilson urged the nations of Europe to secure . . .the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded to Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good-will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interest of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.’
Though Wilson was not successful in obtaining international cooperation on the scale he urged, the idea of self-determination finally became a staple of international law in 1960 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 1514, entitled the “Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.” That document declared 1.
The subjection of people to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and is an impediment to the promotion of world peace and co-operation.
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2.
3.
All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. Inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a pretext to delaying independence.. .I0
In 1970, the UN General Assembly again directed its member nations (“States,”
as they are called below) on the subject of self-determination
(resolution 2625):
By virtue of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, all peoples have the right freely to determine, without external interference, their political status and to pursue their economic, social and cultural development, and every State has the duty to respect this right in accordance with the provisions of the Charter.”
Members nations were then charged with the “duty to promote, through joint and separate action, realization of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, . . .“l’ These international standards, ratified by the United States and of which both Presidents Johnson and Nixon were certainly aware, should be the reasonable place to begin the discussion of the powers of Indian tribes in the United States. Did Indian leadership of the time make the connection between the international covenants and the concurrent pronouncements of the nation’s presidents? If they had, they undoubtedly would have expected some form of plebiscite on each reservation as tribes made their level of independence formally known among “the society of free nations.” In fact, the 1970 UN resolution went on the specify the options formerly colonized peoples should be offered: The establishment of a sovereign and independent State, the free association or integration with an independent State or the emergence into any other political status freely determined by a people constitute modes of implementing the right of self-determination by that people.i3
In light of these rather clear definitions of the time, how could the federal policy of “Indian Self-Determination”14 have drifted so far from the United Nations resolutions? It is a question with many answers, not the least of which involves the tribes’ very real concern that self-determination might be administered as “termination,” the withdrawal of recognition of their existing governments and the trust responsibility, which protects tribes from the loss of their assets.” The forces of neo-colonialism and/or internal colonialism have also been blamed for the discrepancy.16 To whatever reasons one wishes to attribute the inconsistency, the policy of Indian self-determination clearly deviates considerably from the international concept of self-determination. After all, taking over the administration of federal programs is hardly self-determination. Yet many Indian people seem to inject their own longings for sovereignty into the term, assuming a great deal of tribal power was recognized under federal law by the enactment of the Indian Self-
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Determination and Educational Assistance Act in 1975. Instead, Indian SelfDetermination often seems to have become simply a rhetorical device, shrouded among the daily expediencies of operations among federal and tribal governments. The power to define what Indian Self-Determination means as a national policy has thus become a power of the United States Congress, which remains impotently vague on the subject. The federal courts, too, have set conflicting precedents on the matter, further confusing the limits and opportunities of self-determination. That leaves the day-today administration of self-determination in the hands of each succeeding presidential administration, greatly exaggerating the role of the Executive Branch in the process of defining the relationships involved. It is difficult to imagine a more ironic outcome from a policy supposedly created to empower the tribes to govern themselves. Since the limits of Indian SelfDetermination are thus indefinite, the term’s very meaning has become a political controversy. Even the most local tribal initiative is likely to have an impact upon the undefined relationships involved, bearing implications for all tribes across the country as new precedents are set almost daily. In that climate, the people of each tribe are forced to educate themselves about the implications of issues or to turn the entire process over to experts, greatly limiting their own participation. It is in that atmosphere, then, that Indian journalists take on a daunting challenge of providing accurate, accountable information so that tribes can educate themselves and take on their responsibilities as self-governing peoples. If the international definition of “self-determination,“leading to a greater measure of sovereignty, really is the long-term goal of Indian people, what is the role of the Indian journalists who are given the task of informing those people?
INDIAN JOURNALISTS AND THEIR ROLE IN SELF-DETERMINATION: DO INDIANS NEED THE FOURTH ESTATE? It is the “people,” after all, that are the locus of sovereignty, not the tribal governments who have been delegated the authority to act on their behalf. Despite all the problems of reporting on Indian policy concerns, the greatest day-to-day challenge to Indian journalists lies in their evolving relationship with tribal government. It is important to again look at the federal legislation of the 1960’s and 1970’s to note how that relationship under the Self-Determination policy was begun. A small section of the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968, which required tribes to make no law restricting the right of a free press, set the tone for the uncertain role Indian journalists would play in Self-Determination. Any student of tribal sovereignty would quickly note that the Indian Civil Rights Act was imposed on tribal governments via Congress’ plenary power. Many tribes already had included press freedom provisions in their own tribal constitutions and felt the legislation was unnecessary. ” In addition, some Indian leaders objected to the provisions of the act which guaranteed press freedoms in Indian Country on the basis that tribal culture would be violated. According to the Handbook on Indian Civil Rights, l8 tribal spokesmen complained that “ . . .these principles are not part of traditional
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Indian culture and should not be applied to Indian society. They have argued that tribes are not ordinary governments, but are close-knit family like groups, and that the exercise of free speech in this atmosphere would lead to the disruption of discipline and the breakdown of tribal life.“lg Yet over twenty years later, the complexity of today’s Indian affairs seems to mandate the presence of a free press to assure that the rights of tribal members are not infringed upon by their own governments.20 For their part, some tribal officials have occasionally pointed out that adopting another aspect of mass society’s governing systems, the idea of the Fourth Estate, without some introspection about its effects on the independent development of Indian governance may obviate an important aspect of tribal self-determination.2’ It is a discussion with many implications. For instance, if tribal journalists are completely shielded from tribal government oversight, who will hold them accountable for the very real possibility of abuse of their power over information? One can imagine many scenarios where journalists with a kind of monopoly over a tribe’s information services could become anything but a force for selfdetermination! Because of the nature of contracting under 638 provisions, tribal governments have often been the target of self-determination initiatives to the exclusion of meaningful participation by the tribal electorate, who sometimes complain they can only exercise their sovereignty during tribal elections. Tribal members may also complain that they are “out of the loop” on many of the decisions that tribal governments make that will affect their lives. For that reason, and because of the strange legacy of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 and the tribal governments created under it,22journalists who believe their role is to inform the tribal members so they can be active citizens of their tribes face some interesting challenges. While many tribal governments have made impressive strides in making their decisionmaking more democratic, tribal journalists often seem to play a public relations role for tribal government, rather than the role of an assertive information agent for “the people.” All this discussion of a need for a free press loyal to the self-determination interests of Indian people leads to one critical problem in the dialogue. The fact is, most tribal news publications and broadcast stations have been funded almost entirely by tribal government largess. On many reservations, economic stagnation continues to limit the availability of advertising, the major source of revenue for the commercial press elsewhere. In such a situation, the problem of censorship is obvious, since Indian journalists are usually tribal employees, depending daily upon the good will of the tribal government. The concept of a free press in some kind of adversarial position with tribal government seems a naive notion so long as reservation economies force such relationships. Besides these barriers created by the day-to-day intergovernmental processes of Self-Determination and economic problems, Indian journalists must face those problems inherent in the vagueness of the policy itself, as noted earlier. In doing so, they are often forced to take the lead in defining elements of the communications environment around them. As Gail H. Landsman noted in her analysis of the 1974 Ganienkeh incident, it is important to focus upon the “..role of the media as a
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participant in the political process.“3 While Landsman’s comment was intended to reveal the way the non-Indian mass media colors or “frames” its news events about Indians, the role of Indian journalists in Indian Country is very much entangled with the aspirations of tribes for self-determination. News “frames,” or interpretive frameworks, are the ways in which journalists give context to their news items. The associations given to otherwise obscure or isolated events in the process of reporting thus provide a set of assumptions which journalists hope will make their stories easily understood by their readers. Despite its incredible vagueness and the many misconceptions about its meaning, Indian Self-Determination provides the “frame” from which many Indian journalists must operate. Even though many journalists may not consciously take this fact into account, their stance on the term colors the way they select and frame their news items. It is at this point that Indian journalists have played, and continue to play, a major role in the development of concepts of Indian self-determination. Since journalists often see themselves as “voices of the people” on selfdetermination issues, their dedication to principles of sovereignty are often expressed in editorials and in the way they select and frame their news stories. A careful reading of the work Indian journalists are doing, then, can provide a stunning view of the degree of “self-determination” that their audiences are experiencing. In many ways, Indian journalists must shoulder a large portion of the burden of defining what Indian Self-Determination means to Indian people. The old “media is the message”concept is an important one in the sense that as long as media must come between the mixed messages about Indian self-determination and Indian people, their role is critical. While some Indian journalists complain that they are not free enough to effectively fill this role, creative approaches have emerged. Even as many Indian journalists must continue to make strategic compromises in their relationships with tribal government, may lessons have been learned. Sessions of the Native American Journalist’s Association annual conferences often deal directly with the conditions described above. One session planned for this summer’s Unity ‘94 Conference, for example, will feature a forum for Indian journalists and tribal leaders who will debate the merits of strategies for dealing with free press issues in Indian Country. One can also point to several commercially successful Indian-owned publications, like the Indian Country Today (formerly the Dakota Times) and News From Indian Country, as far less dependent upon tribal government largess and therefore more of a “Fourth Estate” for Indian interests. In addition, some tribally-owned publications have been somewhat shielded over the years by the creation of separate community editorial boards and alternative funding arrangements. Yet the challenge remains to find effective ways to fit Indian-produced media into the processes of Indian self-determination. As tribes are rocked by internal dissension often related to economic development, the ability to resolve issues within the tribal framework grows ever more critical. After all, if the federal or state governments are always relied upon to resolve internal conflict, selfdetermination remains a distant dream. Indian journalists can take on an important role in providing a forum for resolution of internal tribal issues.
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FUTURE IN FULFILLING
PROSPECTS FOR JOURNALISTS THE “SELF-DETERMINATION DREAM”
Whatever the shortcomings of the federal policy of Self-Determination, it has allowed a ray of hope that “the People” can survive. Helping define who “The People” are, and what their aspirations will be into the future, is a critical challenge to Indian journalists. It seems clear that present policies will thrust ever more responsibility onto tribal governments. Those who worry about their neo-colonial legacy should also be concerned about how Indian people can reclaim those governments as true expressions of their own self-determination. Indian journalists, then, appear to be a key tool for accomplishing that task. To be effective, Indian journalists must educate themselves carefully as to their role in the process of empowering Indian communities. Tribal governments must review their own communications policies and give higher priority to assuring that their actions receive critical public scrutiny so that their constituents have a greater voice in their own affairs. It will not be an easy task. The problems of tight budgets and lack of training will continue to provide major hurdles. Entrenched tribal interests and even important cultural considerations will have to be reconciled. Forces external to Indian communities will continue to disrupt internal dialogue on communications issues. Clearly, though, a new “Indian information order” must emerge if selfdetermination is ever to become more than a’rhetorical concept.
NOTES
4. 5. 6.
7. 8. 9. 10.
Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of Indian Nations (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1991), pp. 203-204. Herbert I. Schiller, Communication and Cultural Domination (White Plains, NY: International Arts and Sciences Press, 1976), p. 7. Vine Deloria, Jr., “A Clear Signal From Congress is Needed on Indian Rights,” Northeast Indian @arterly, 4 (Winter, 1987) and 5 (Spring, 1988), double issue, pp. 57-60. Robert K. Thomas, “Community and Institution” unpublished article. (Handed out in University of Arizona class: AINS 596 CX, “Indian Issues of the Eighties,” May, 1983) pp. 316-330. Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1990) p. 65. Lyndon B. Johnson, “Special Message to Congress on the Problems of the American Indian: ‘The Forgotten American,“‘March 1968,in Documents of UnitedStates Indian Policy, 2nd ed., edited by Francis Paul Prucha (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1990) pp. 248-249. Richard M. Nixon, “Special Message on Indian Affairs,” July 8, 1970, in Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., p. 256. William Allen White, Woodrow Wilson: The Man, His Times, and His Task (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924). Ibid., p. 502. Edward Lawson, Encyclopedia of Human Rights (New York: Taylor and Francis, Inc., 1991) p. 1331.
lndian Self-Determination
11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.
22. 23.
287
Ibid., p. 1331. Ibid., p. 1331. Ibid., p. 1331. David H. Getches and Charles F. Wilkinson, Federal Indian Law: Cases and Materials, 2nd ed. (St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1986). Francis Paul Prucha, fie Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), p. 1159. Annette M. Jaimes, ed., The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization and Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1992). Getches, op. cit., p. 368. Handbook on Indian Civil Rights, United States Justice Department, 1972. Ibid. Getches, op. cit., p. 368. Ovide Mercredi. National Chief, Assembly of First Nations, Canada. Keynote Address, Native American Journalist’s Association Conference, “Telling Our Own Stories,” Kamloops, B.C., Canada, May 14, 1993. Kenneth R. Philp, ed., Indian Self-Rule: First hand Accounts of Indian- White Relations from Roosevelt to Reagan (Salt Lake City: Howe Brothers, 1986). Gail H. Landsman, Sovereignty and Symbol: Indian-White Conflict at Ganienkeh (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988), p. 74.
RICHARD M. WHEELOCK* Fort Lewis College
As Indian journalists struggle with the problems of providing the information necessary for informed decision-making in Indian communities, they face the confusing communications environment created by the ironic nature of the Indian Self-Determination policy. As they select and “frame” their news items, Indian journalists both reflect and help define the aspirations for selfgovernment among their audiences. Because the levels of tribal sovereignty that are the goal of the Indian Self-Determination Policy have not been clearly articulated, Indian journalists are unavoidably involved in helping to define the meaning of Indian Self-Determination among Indian people. A new Indian information order must emerge to accomplish that task.
PROLOGUE Indian communities face great challenges in attaining and maintaining their right to govern themselves. Those challenges cannot be met, however, if Indian people do not have access to accurate, accountable, understandable information upon which to base informed decisions on their own behalf. Information, in this sense, really is a basis of power. For the Indian journalists entrusted to make that information available to Indian people, the struggle to make sense of the confusing media environment that surrounds Indian affairs is a daily one. It is an environment where words and language can never be taken at face value, where political rhetoric and hidden agendas are the rule, rather than the exception. Their experiences and perspectives on the problems facing Indian communities as they strive for greater degrees of self-determination are valuable to the on-going dialogue on the issue. *Direct all correspondence to: Richard M. Wheelock, Colorado 81301. Telephone (303) 247-7227.
Native American
The Social Science Journal, Volume 32, Number 3, pages 279-287. Copyright @ 1995 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0362-3319.
Center, Fort Lewis College, Durango,
280
THE SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL Vol. 32/No. 3/l 995
This article will deal with one of the two major problems facing Indian people in gaining such information. The focus will be the present confusion over the very term used to describe the relationship between the tribes and the federal government. The label of “Indian Self-Determination” itself has muddied the quality and limited the access to information vital to Indians as self-determining peoples. Indian journalists must continue to play an important role in helping to define “Indian Self-Determination” in ways that crystallize and reflect the aspirations of the tribes with which they work. The second major information problem facing Indian people is that the nature of modern mass society and its “mass media” have frustrated many attempts by Indian people to use the media for their own purposes.’ Cultural dominance in the mass media’ has often reduced the very essence of Indian identity to a demeaning caricature, helping to undermine the confidence necessary for community action. It has also meant that Indian journalists struggle to get their voices heard even by their own people. That dominance has created many barriers for Indianproduced media and has presented Indian journalists with the prospect of competing with well-established entertainment media for a share of the reading and viewing time of their own target audiences. The issue of defining the proper cultural approaches for reaching their audiences in such a mass media environment may be the greatest challenge for Indian journalists. While this brief paper cannot deal with that immense issue, the struggle for cultural survival, for survival as distinct peoples, remains a basic aspect of Indian self-determination.
THE IRONIC NATURE OF THE TERM “SELF-DETERMINATION” With their tight budgets, Indian journalists often face the public battleground of Indian affairs with few resources to draw upon. Their role in relation to tribal governments, though often ambiguous, makes them a critical part of the developing public discourse surrounding tribal authority, yet they are often constrained by the many forces struggling to harness, or restrict, the power of tribal people to direct their own affairs. Accurate, accountable information about a specific tribal concern is often difficult to bring into print amid such circumstances. In order to understand the world in which Indian journalists operate today, it is necessary to consider the communications environment created by the many crises facing the Indian SelfDetermination policy. For this short paper, it is enough to begin that portion of the process by noting the responsibilities for journalists created by the irony of the term “Indian Self-Determination” itself. Despite years of federal pronouncements and court decisions, the policy of Indian Self-Determination remains an enigma. Its limits are shrouded in a turmoil of nearly daily confrontations between people who favor a far greater degree of tribal selfgoverning powers and those who would limit tribal authority even more than the present course of federal policy allows. The confusion over how the policy should be put into action has caused some scholars to call for new federal legislation to clarify the extent of tribal authority. 3 Yet tribes have sometimes foundered over even their present tasks, strained by the many relatively new, bureaucratic responsibilities the policy has thrust upon them. The generations-old conflict
lndian Se/f-Determination
281
between kinship responsibilities and the newer bureaucratic operations of tribal governments also contributes to that internal turmoil.4 Practically any exercise of self-government by tribes is met by determined resistance from entrenched interest groups of mass society. Tribal initiatives in economic development, for instance, can be expected to create new jurisdictional quagmires, bringing challenges to tribal authority from many quarters of nonIndian, corporate America. In a nation where Indian people are a permanent minority, those interest groups wield overwhelming power, especially since they frequently use the mass media for public relations.5 In their role as information specialists for their people, Indian journalists ought to be able to rely upon some clearly defined terms to account for the positions taken by the various contenders in Indian policy scuffles. Unfortunately, the very basis of modern tribal authority, “Indian Self-Determination,” is not a clearly defined term. When then-President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed a new policy of “selfdetermination” in Indian affairs in 1968,6 few probably imagined the implications of the term. When President Richard M. Nixon embraced the term for his own Indian policy in 1970, he too used the term as if it were a familiar one.7 Selfdetermination, as many policy-makers of the time understood it, was based upon international conventions described in President Woodrow Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points proposed in 1918 as a prescription for the problems facing the European powers at the end of World War I.* Though Wilson did not use the term “self-determination” in his comments, his concept soon received that ungainly label in the debates which followed. It was a proposal meant to remedy long standing issues in Europe so that nations which had been overrun by other European nations during the War could be restored to their original sovereignty. In the case of Russia, for example, Wilson urged the nations of Europe to secure . . .the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded to Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good-will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interest of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.’
Though Wilson was not successful in obtaining international cooperation on the scale he urged, the idea of self-determination finally became a staple of international law in 1960 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 1514, entitled the “Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.” That document declared 1.
The subjection of people to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and is an impediment to the promotion of world peace and co-operation.
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2.
3.
All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. Inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a pretext to delaying independence.. .I0
In 1970, the UN General Assembly again directed its member nations (“States,”
as they are called below) on the subject of self-determination
(resolution 2625):
By virtue of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, all peoples have the right freely to determine, without external interference, their political status and to pursue their economic, social and cultural development, and every State has the duty to respect this right in accordance with the provisions of the Charter.”
Members nations were then charged with the “duty to promote, through joint and separate action, realization of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, . . .“l’ These international standards, ratified by the United States and of which both Presidents Johnson and Nixon were certainly aware, should be the reasonable place to begin the discussion of the powers of Indian tribes in the United States. Did Indian leadership of the time make the connection between the international covenants and the concurrent pronouncements of the nation’s presidents? If they had, they undoubtedly would have expected some form of plebiscite on each reservation as tribes made their level of independence formally known among “the society of free nations.” In fact, the 1970 UN resolution went on the specify the options formerly colonized peoples should be offered: The establishment of a sovereign and independent State, the free association or integration with an independent State or the emergence into any other political status freely determined by a people constitute modes of implementing the right of self-determination by that people.i3
In light of these rather clear definitions of the time, how could the federal policy of “Indian Self-Determination”14 have drifted so far from the United Nations resolutions? It is a question with many answers, not the least of which involves the tribes’ very real concern that self-determination might be administered as “termination,” the withdrawal of recognition of their existing governments and the trust responsibility, which protects tribes from the loss of their assets.” The forces of neo-colonialism and/or internal colonialism have also been blamed for the discrepancy.16 To whatever reasons one wishes to attribute the inconsistency, the policy of Indian self-determination clearly deviates considerably from the international concept of self-determination. After all, taking over the administration of federal programs is hardly self-determination. Yet many Indian people seem to inject their own longings for sovereignty into the term, assuming a great deal of tribal power was recognized under federal law by the enactment of the Indian Self-
lndian Se/f-Determination
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Determination and Educational Assistance Act in 1975. Instead, Indian SelfDetermination often seems to have become simply a rhetorical device, shrouded among the daily expediencies of operations among federal and tribal governments. The power to define what Indian Self-Determination means as a national policy has thus become a power of the United States Congress, which remains impotently vague on the subject. The federal courts, too, have set conflicting precedents on the matter, further confusing the limits and opportunities of self-determination. That leaves the day-today administration of self-determination in the hands of each succeeding presidential administration, greatly exaggerating the role of the Executive Branch in the process of defining the relationships involved. It is difficult to imagine a more ironic outcome from a policy supposedly created to empower the tribes to govern themselves. Since the limits of Indian SelfDetermination are thus indefinite, the term’s very meaning has become a political controversy. Even the most local tribal initiative is likely to have an impact upon the undefined relationships involved, bearing implications for all tribes across the country as new precedents are set almost daily. In that climate, the people of each tribe are forced to educate themselves about the implications of issues or to turn the entire process over to experts, greatly limiting their own participation. It is in that atmosphere, then, that Indian journalists take on a daunting challenge of providing accurate, accountable information so that tribes can educate themselves and take on their responsibilities as self-governing peoples. If the international definition of “self-determination,“leading to a greater measure of sovereignty, really is the long-term goal of Indian people, what is the role of the Indian journalists who are given the task of informing those people?
INDIAN JOURNALISTS AND THEIR ROLE IN SELF-DETERMINATION: DO INDIANS NEED THE FOURTH ESTATE? It is the “people,” after all, that are the locus of sovereignty, not the tribal governments who have been delegated the authority to act on their behalf. Despite all the problems of reporting on Indian policy concerns, the greatest day-to-day challenge to Indian journalists lies in their evolving relationship with tribal government. It is important to again look at the federal legislation of the 1960’s and 1970’s to note how that relationship under the Self-Determination policy was begun. A small section of the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968, which required tribes to make no law restricting the right of a free press, set the tone for the uncertain role Indian journalists would play in Self-Determination. Any student of tribal sovereignty would quickly note that the Indian Civil Rights Act was imposed on tribal governments via Congress’ plenary power. Many tribes already had included press freedom provisions in their own tribal constitutions and felt the legislation was unnecessary. ” In addition, some Indian leaders objected to the provisions of the act which guaranteed press freedoms in Indian Country on the basis that tribal culture would be violated. According to the Handbook on Indian Civil Rights, l8 tribal spokesmen complained that “ . . .these principles are not part of traditional
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Indian culture and should not be applied to Indian society. They have argued that tribes are not ordinary governments, but are close-knit family like groups, and that the exercise of free speech in this atmosphere would lead to the disruption of discipline and the breakdown of tribal life.“lg Yet over twenty years later, the complexity of today’s Indian affairs seems to mandate the presence of a free press to assure that the rights of tribal members are not infringed upon by their own governments.20 For their part, some tribal officials have occasionally pointed out that adopting another aspect of mass society’s governing systems, the idea of the Fourth Estate, without some introspection about its effects on the independent development of Indian governance may obviate an important aspect of tribal self-determination.2’ It is a discussion with many implications. For instance, if tribal journalists are completely shielded from tribal government oversight, who will hold them accountable for the very real possibility of abuse of their power over information? One can imagine many scenarios where journalists with a kind of monopoly over a tribe’s information services could become anything but a force for selfdetermination! Because of the nature of contracting under 638 provisions, tribal governments have often been the target of self-determination initiatives to the exclusion of meaningful participation by the tribal electorate, who sometimes complain they can only exercise their sovereignty during tribal elections. Tribal members may also complain that they are “out of the loop” on many of the decisions that tribal governments make that will affect their lives. For that reason, and because of the strange legacy of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 and the tribal governments created under it,22journalists who believe their role is to inform the tribal members so they can be active citizens of their tribes face some interesting challenges. While many tribal governments have made impressive strides in making their decisionmaking more democratic, tribal journalists often seem to play a public relations role for tribal government, rather than the role of an assertive information agent for “the people.” All this discussion of a need for a free press loyal to the self-determination interests of Indian people leads to one critical problem in the dialogue. The fact is, most tribal news publications and broadcast stations have been funded almost entirely by tribal government largess. On many reservations, economic stagnation continues to limit the availability of advertising, the major source of revenue for the commercial press elsewhere. In such a situation, the problem of censorship is obvious, since Indian journalists are usually tribal employees, depending daily upon the good will of the tribal government. The concept of a free press in some kind of adversarial position with tribal government seems a naive notion so long as reservation economies force such relationships. Besides these barriers created by the day-to-day intergovernmental processes of Self-Determination and economic problems, Indian journalists must face those problems inherent in the vagueness of the policy itself, as noted earlier. In doing so, they are often forced to take the lead in defining elements of the communications environment around them. As Gail H. Landsman noted in her analysis of the 1974 Ganienkeh incident, it is important to focus upon the “..role of the media as a
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participant in the political process.“3 While Landsman’s comment was intended to reveal the way the non-Indian mass media colors or “frames” its news events about Indians, the role of Indian journalists in Indian Country is very much entangled with the aspirations of tribes for self-determination. News “frames,” or interpretive frameworks, are the ways in which journalists give context to their news items. The associations given to otherwise obscure or isolated events in the process of reporting thus provide a set of assumptions which journalists hope will make their stories easily understood by their readers. Despite its incredible vagueness and the many misconceptions about its meaning, Indian Self-Determination provides the “frame” from which many Indian journalists must operate. Even though many journalists may not consciously take this fact into account, their stance on the term colors the way they select and frame their news items. It is at this point that Indian journalists have played, and continue to play, a major role in the development of concepts of Indian self-determination. Since journalists often see themselves as “voices of the people” on selfdetermination issues, their dedication to principles of sovereignty are often expressed in editorials and in the way they select and frame their news stories. A careful reading of the work Indian journalists are doing, then, can provide a stunning view of the degree of “self-determination” that their audiences are experiencing. In many ways, Indian journalists must shoulder a large portion of the burden of defining what Indian Self-Determination means to Indian people. The old “media is the message”concept is an important one in the sense that as long as media must come between the mixed messages about Indian self-determination and Indian people, their role is critical. While some Indian journalists complain that they are not free enough to effectively fill this role, creative approaches have emerged. Even as many Indian journalists must continue to make strategic compromises in their relationships with tribal government, may lessons have been learned. Sessions of the Native American Journalist’s Association annual conferences often deal directly with the conditions described above. One session planned for this summer’s Unity ‘94 Conference, for example, will feature a forum for Indian journalists and tribal leaders who will debate the merits of strategies for dealing with free press issues in Indian Country. One can also point to several commercially successful Indian-owned publications, like the Indian Country Today (formerly the Dakota Times) and News From Indian Country, as far less dependent upon tribal government largess and therefore more of a “Fourth Estate” for Indian interests. In addition, some tribally-owned publications have been somewhat shielded over the years by the creation of separate community editorial boards and alternative funding arrangements. Yet the challenge remains to find effective ways to fit Indian-produced media into the processes of Indian self-determination. As tribes are rocked by internal dissension often related to economic development, the ability to resolve issues within the tribal framework grows ever more critical. After all, if the federal or state governments are always relied upon to resolve internal conflict, selfdetermination remains a distant dream. Indian journalists can take on an important role in providing a forum for resolution of internal tribal issues.
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FUTURE IN FULFILLING
PROSPECTS FOR JOURNALISTS THE “SELF-DETERMINATION DREAM”
Whatever the shortcomings of the federal policy of Self-Determination, it has allowed a ray of hope that “the People” can survive. Helping define who “The People” are, and what their aspirations will be into the future, is a critical challenge to Indian journalists. It seems clear that present policies will thrust ever more responsibility onto tribal governments. Those who worry about their neo-colonial legacy should also be concerned about how Indian people can reclaim those governments as true expressions of their own self-determination. Indian journalists, then, appear to be a key tool for accomplishing that task. To be effective, Indian journalists must educate themselves carefully as to their role in the process of empowering Indian communities. Tribal governments must review their own communications policies and give higher priority to assuring that their actions receive critical public scrutiny so that their constituents have a greater voice in their own affairs. It will not be an easy task. The problems of tight budgets and lack of training will continue to provide major hurdles. Entrenched tribal interests and even important cultural considerations will have to be reconciled. Forces external to Indian communities will continue to disrupt internal dialogue on communications issues. Clearly, though, a new “Indian information order” must emerge if selfdetermination is ever to become more than a’rhetorical concept.
NOTES
4. 5. 6.
7. 8. 9. 10.
Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of Indian Nations (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1991), pp. 203-204. Herbert I. Schiller, Communication and Cultural Domination (White Plains, NY: International Arts and Sciences Press, 1976), p. 7. Vine Deloria, Jr., “A Clear Signal From Congress is Needed on Indian Rights,” Northeast Indian @arterly, 4 (Winter, 1987) and 5 (Spring, 1988), double issue, pp. 57-60. Robert K. Thomas, “Community and Institution” unpublished article. (Handed out in University of Arizona class: AINS 596 CX, “Indian Issues of the Eighties,” May, 1983) pp. 316-330. Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1990) p. 65. Lyndon B. Johnson, “Special Message to Congress on the Problems of the American Indian: ‘The Forgotten American,“‘March 1968,in Documents of UnitedStates Indian Policy, 2nd ed., edited by Francis Paul Prucha (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1990) pp. 248-249. Richard M. Nixon, “Special Message on Indian Affairs,” July 8, 1970, in Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., p. 256. William Allen White, Woodrow Wilson: The Man, His Times, and His Task (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924). Ibid., p. 502. Edward Lawson, Encyclopedia of Human Rights (New York: Taylor and Francis, Inc., 1991) p. 1331.
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11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.
22. 23.
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Ibid., p. 1331. Ibid., p. 1331. Ibid., p. 1331. David H. Getches and Charles F. Wilkinson, Federal Indian Law: Cases and Materials, 2nd ed. (St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1986). Francis Paul Prucha, fie Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), p. 1159. Annette M. Jaimes, ed., The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization and Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1992). Getches, op. cit., p. 368. Handbook on Indian Civil Rights, United States Justice Department, 1972. Ibid. Getches, op. cit., p. 368. Ovide Mercredi. National Chief, Assembly of First Nations, Canada. Keynote Address, Native American Journalist’s Association Conference, “Telling Our Own Stories,” Kamloops, B.C., Canada, May 14, 1993. Kenneth R. Philp, ed., Indian Self-Rule: First hand Accounts of Indian- White Relations from Roosevelt to Reagan (Salt Lake City: Howe Brothers, 1986). Gail H. Landsman, Sovereignty and Symbol: Indian-White Conflict at Ganienkeh (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988), p. 74.