Alex Jacobs
Special to ICT
The last edition of Indian Time was issued Dec. 19, 2024, as Vol. 41, No. 50, with headlines from the last 41 years, current statements from the three Mohawk Councils on land claims and a story about the Akwesasne Freedom School celebrating 45 years of full culture and language immersion and the final funding push for its new campus.
Indian Time was launched in summer 1983 when the need for a local newspaper became evident to the staff of AKWESASNE NOTES, at the time the largest Native publication in the world.
AKWESASNE NOTES started as a photocopy newsletter in 1969, quickly turning into a newsprint tabloid in the 1970s as people from all over Turtle Island sent in news clippings, magazine articles, opinions, letters, art and poetry. The activism unleashed by Alcatraz and local issues of land claims, treaty and border rights for the Mohawk community of Akwesasne spurred the need for a newspaper that covered Native issues in the United States and Canada. Events in Indian Country continued to grow in frequency and importance, which led to national attention and media inquiries. It also led to a growing subscription base and constant outside attention with attendant political and legal issues. The fact that the operation was sanctioned by the traditional Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs and Clanmothers helped to deflect most of the negative aspects.
The Mohawk Nation Council also sanctioned a traveling group called The White Roots of Peace and their cross-country travels certainly spread AKWESASNE NOTES through Indian Country and on college campuses. One troupe was led by Jerry Gambill (Rarihokwats) who became the editor of AKWESASNE NOTES until 1976. John Mohawk would become the next head editor. Jose Barreiro became his co-editor, and later Michael Myers and Ron LaFrance led an editorial committee. Daniel Thompson (Rokwaho) and myself became editors, started Indian Time and brought in Peter Blue Cloud and Salli Benedict. Doug George became editor of AKWESASNE NOTES and Indian Time during some difficult times. Darren Bonaparte served as an interim editor of Indian Time while Mark Narsisian and Jann Day were managing editors during most of this time. Salli Benedict returned as editor during the color magazine run. Her father Ernie Benedict, a community leader and tribal elder, was involved in the early issues in 1968-69.
The last AKWESASNE NOTES issues were full-color magazines ending in 1996. The last color issue featured Leonard Peltier’s art and sold out. The final AKWESASNE NOTES was black-and-white newsprint with some ads and dated Spring 1997. A dedicated staff of Mohawk women have kept both operations running and on time for two generations from 1990s editor Diane McDonald to today’s Marjorie Kaniehtonkie Skidders.
Native people wanted and needed a voice in the world, and the world wanted to hear from them. AKWESASNE NOTES quickly filled this need and grew to establish its place as governments, diplomats and institutions read it along with grassroots Indigenous people. Copies were sold at powwows and Native American centers and delivered free to Native inmates in prisons. Each issue was eagerly anticipated. AKWESASNE NOTES posters covered the walls of many in Indian Country and a bookstore was continually stocked with stories about Native people that were hard to find but now made available. AKWESASNE NOTES published its own books presenting Native people making history and not figures from the past. Wounded Knee in 1973 was the catalyst for most of this attention and growth. Seemingly overnight people all around the world were asking, “What is going on? What do Indians want?” AKWESASNE NOTES provided answers, clues, histories, photos, stories, drawings, art, poetry and voices. Soon the national and international circulation of AKWESASNE NOTES, A Journal for Native and Natural Peoples, would reach and sustain a level of 100,000 subscribers for close to a decade.
AKWESASNE NOTES in the early 1970s followed the activism of takeovers and blockades and occupations in Indian Country following Alcatraz. The Trail of Broken Treaties and the BIA takeover in Washington, D.C., were published in book form and then news reports followed the American Indian Movement as its members ended up at Wounded Knee, invited by traditional Oglala Lakota elders and human rights activists to assist them in a fight against the Pine Ridge Tribal Council led by Dickie Wilson and his Guardians of the Oglala Nation. In the aftermath of the occupation, AKWESASNE NOTES published “VOICES FROM WOUNDED KNEE,” a book that has gone through several editions and is a testimony of witnesses and participants and is considered a historical resource.
The AKWESASNE NOTES era was 55 years of Native American journalism, and yes, it was proud to be called advocacy journalism since there were not many advocates for Indigenous people anywhere. The term may have negative connotations in some quarters but a look around at recent history and current events demonstrates what has happened to mainstream media. The results of “both sides” and “objective journalism” and corporate ownership of media are easily observable.
AKWESASNE NOTES did not care to represent detailed viewpoints from governments and corporations since those were the prevailing views splashed across all forms of media. To that media, Native people are dissenters and protestors, not sovereign peoples with well-formed ideas, deep historical and cultural philosophies, and potent political agendas. We cared what grassroots Native people said, what people of the land said, what Indigenous people from around the world said, and what our allies said with their support.
The John C. Mohawk (Sotsisowah) editorial regime with co-editor Jose Barreiro was another highpoint after the Wounded Knee siege. The critical thinking articles in AKWESASNE NOTES and the look toward Indigenous people’s struggles in the international arena signaled political changes and predicted decolonization and LandBack themes. Activism turned to spiritualism and homesteading and seeking justice or affirmation in international courts since justice at home had predictable negative outcomes and required a long, patient struggle.
AKWESASNE NOTES and John Mohawk were involved in revolutionary struggles with Miskito Indians of Nicaragua, the Zapatistas in Mexico and reporting on Indigenous struggles in the Amazon, Australia, Indonesia; Mercury poisoning of the James Bay Cree; solidarity with the Sami the traditional peoples of Scandinavia; and Indigenous people caught up in civil wars between guerillas and governments, such as the Maya in Guatemala and the Quechua Inca in Peru. Mohawk was called on with other Indigenous representatives to sit in on negotiations in Iran and with Arab countries. But for most people he was known as the editor of “BASIC CALL TO CONSCIOUSNESS,” a collective work of traditional Haudenosaunee and Indigenous thinkers, philosophers and activists. The original manifesto was presented in Geneva and later published in 1978 with several future editions. It became a handbook, a manual and a guide after the violence of activism and government response led to questions of what happens next.
AKWESASNE NOTES and the community of Akwesasne were at a perilous time in 1983 when Indian Time started. Borders, treaties and land claims were always at the heart of these issues and problems. Akwesasne survived major confrontations both internal and external from 1969-70 and from 1979-80, and finally there was a time of peace and co-operation during the Tri-Council talks over the land claims. There was growth. AKWEKON Native Arts Journal was founded in 1985, publishing art and poetry that AKWESASNE NOTES could not. CKON Mohawk Nation Radio was broadcasting. Akwesasne Museum and Cultural Center and the North American Indian Traveling College were focal points of culture. Akwesasne Freedom School was always growing. Businesses were starting up everywhere.
But there were always other issues of day-to-day life, culture, the economy, education and health. The tobacco business became huge but had downsides. Historically, goods came into our territory to be traded elsewhere, but modern borders demanded taxes. It was called smuggling, and soon there was a boom-and-bust cycle with wealth for some and jail for others. A sudden shift in politics occurred with the advent of high-stakes bingo and casino gambling. Sides became pronounced as shifting alliances divided the community. Religious differences no longer mattered as all spiritual people saw breakdowns in the social fabric.
The 1990 Oka Incident in Quebec became a national crisis in Canada as First Nations staged protests and blockades in support of the Oka Mohawks. At Akwesasne, another confrontation loomed from 1989-1990 as a de facto civil war broke out with threats, violence, deaths, refugees and an invasion of multiple law enforcement agencies on both sides of the border. The traditional Longhouse broke into two camps with the Warrior Society backing “businessmen’s sovereignty” and the so-called “Anti’s” who were labelled in a negative light as being against “development or progress” but were based in the Peace and Good Mind of Handsome Lake.
Like what happened at Wounded Knee and Pine Ridge, it took a generation for some factions to talk and consider cooperation. Events on the ground guide decisions, economies develop, outside forces threaten, and people feel the need for therapeutic actions and healing practices. Slowly the community came together, and a generation grew up in relative peace and stability. A healthy community needed a healthy culture and Indian Time tried to focus on that, to get relevant information out and to hear valued opinion and critical thinking. Reporting on schools and children’s activities, elders and seniors, sports and leagues, and historical research, was calming and necessary. But also, to understand the toxicity and volatility we were surrounded by, in the environment and in the political winds of change.
Those shifting winds have caused Indian Time staff to shut down their operation after cutting back to just a monthly issue and online editions. Editor Marjorie Skidders started as a reporter 12 years ago. She described the situation for staff as they went without pay for months as advertising revenue decreased, costs increased, and bills piled up. And the politics never let up. The same land-claims issues that spurred the 1983 startup of the paper came to the forefront as historic land claims appear headed to a controversial settlement.
The issue, as it always has been, is the stand of New York State (or any federal, state or provincial entity) that any proposed settlement will extinguish all future claims. St. Regis or Akwesasne Mohawks are not the only Mohawks, so who does have standing and what historic lands are at issue for negotiated settlement? These important issues will no longer have a forum for all to hear and use to make informed decisions. Other media exist but Indian Time held that center for this community. And as the poet said, “The center cannot hold.”
All print media now face similar problems and often the same results of realignment, merging, cutting staff, closing operations. Broadcast media does not fare much better as the local gets overlooked and underfunded, while large corporate media buy up the weak and struggling or those ready to move on for any number of reasons.
We also see forms of self-censorship as an acquiescence to authority or a reality check on the acceptance or denial of certain revenues. Indian Time editor Marjorie Skidders explained that tribal government entities no longer took out contracts to pay for community announcements, job notices, health and education news. Politics may have been involved in some cases, but today the trend is to use free social media for announcements and news. A further disturbing trend is that in-house tribal publications can ask community members to submit material like photos and articles, again for free.
Indian Time’s closure is big news in Canada and as reported by CBC represents the end of a legacy of Indigenous journalism in North America and at one time the Voice of Indigenous Peoples on the continent. Early copies of NOTES in the ’70s show that First Nation issues in Canada were covered prominently at a time when the Native Press was just starting up. Mohawks from Kahnawake, south of Montreal, from their Eastern Door newspaper founded in 1992, also decry losing a major independent voice for the Kanienkehake and Haudenosauee.
Indian Time editor Marjorie Skidders let me go into the basement archives and told me they hope to find institutional funding to permanently house the 55 years of NOTES and Indian Time materials that would be open for research. Notice had been given months ago that the paper might end operations but after the announced final issue of the paper, people came out with multiple “interesting” offers. Skidders said all that attention would’ve helped a few months ago, but it’s time for Indian Time to stand alone with its history and NOTES.
She said she doesn’t understand how the community could let it close considering the effect the paper and community had on each other. No more celebration of positive achievements, documenting the struggles, the big and little victories of families and community. Most of all there will be no accountability for any government and tribal entities or corporate polluters. There will be a void, and no one will be called to task for their incompetence or corruption.
AKWESASNE NOTES and Indian Time were valuable commodities in their time and all communities need that “communal space” as a dependable resource, to have a free-speech forum to hear confirming views or opposing opinions so each one of us and all of us (akwekon) together can try to come up with decisions that will affect future generations. When I meet people in public now, many ask, When is the NOTES coming back? We need the NOTES. This is what they mean. Things of value. Something dependable. Something to open your eyes and ears and hearts.
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