Editor’s Note: This story compiles the notes of gratitude and recognition flooding in to celebrate ICT’s founding editor and managing innovator, Mark Trahant, on his 50 years of journalism. Read his personal essay here.
Congratulations on your 50th year in journalism, Mark!
In 2015 Governor Walker and I were trying to work with the Alaska Legislature to approve Medicaid Expansion as so many other states had done.
Our position was that health care was critical to growth because people can’t work, hunt, fish and learn if they are not well enough to do so.
While we had public support, the Legislature was not on board, despite answering over 350 questions in over 50 hearings. It was tough getting pummeled day after day.
On one particularly difficult day, Mark ran a story about Medicaid Expansion in Alaska and Montana. Mark’s story supported our position as sound health policy. I felt seen, heard, and validated as a new Commissioner with national expertise in complicated Medicaid and health policy analysis.
It was a rare and refreshing experience for Alaska Native women to be accurately portrayed with strength and talent. Unfortunately, that is not our typical experience in the media.
Quyana (thank you) Mark for holding us accountable and holding us up. We are all better informed because of your commitment to a good, factual story.
Val Davidson
Former Lt. Governor state of Alaska
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Mark! Don’t be embarrassed. But we remember you as a youngster at the Billy Mills Leadership Institute back in WDC. You made a deep impression on us as a teen and we knew you would grow into this fine journalist that you are. Congratulations on a life well lived!
Pat and Billy Mills
(Via Facebook)
Fair Oaks, Calif.
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I want to thank ICT and Mark Trahant for Mark’s half century in journalism. I am one of the many people who have benefited from Mr. Trahant’s cogent reporting and also his leadership in half a century of covering Indian country. In my opinion, Trahant is the “dean” of Native American journalism. I have not only been guided by Mr. Trahant’s reporting, which is always excellent, but also his thoughtful book on the development of the federal policy of tribal self-determination. I have also enjoyed his advice and insight on many occasions. I have spoken with Trahant many times during my career in a lot of different locales, including Anchorage, Denver and Washington, D.C. I always learn something important from a conversation with Trahant. I am grateful for all of his many contributions to federal Indian policy.
Kevin K. Washburn
N. William Hines Dean and Professor of Law
University of Iowa
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Congratulations on 50 years in journalism, Mark. When I think of your career it is difficult to single out any one achievement over another because you have broken through so many barriers in so many ways and places. I have thought about this off and on over the years and particularly in the last few weeks as we have approached the 50th anniversary date. I have concluded that any effort I might make to list your achievements will be futile because it will inevitably be incomplete.
I have also concluded that your ultimate achievement is that you have refused to be constrained by any of the limits that hold others back. And, you are still learning, growing, asking the hard questions, challenging the conventional wisdom, and demolishing unfounded assumptions, beliefs and understandings on any and all subjects. You are still breaking through every barrier that gets in your way, no matter how or why it was imposed.
You have done more to advance the role and place of Indigenous people in journalism and Indigenous journalism itself than anyone else in my lifetime. I’m looking forward to seeing more of the same in the years ahead. We are all better because of who you are and what you do each and every day.
Eric Eberhard
Professor from Practice
University of Washington School of Law
Mark Trahant knows everything, or so you think. Here’s something that he didn’t know, until now, that is. This news (rather “olds”) is from the time when we were in the Carter Administration. Mark was Indian Affairs Public Information Officer and I was a political appointee in the Office of the Interior Secretary, as all of the non-BIA Indian Affairs people were, including the first Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs (AS-IA), Forrest J. Gerard (it took a very long time for others to figure out how to make that new office fit into the departmental bureaucracy).
Forrest had two deputies (DAS-IAs) and a small cadre of special assistants (my areas were legislation and liaison) and nearly all of us worked on the full range of things that the AS-IA worked on.
Because many, if not most things, were super sensitive, private and involved tribal and/or individual Indian proprietary interests, there were many meetings about who could be in meetings and know things.
One was about Mark.
The DAS-IAs thought he should only know or be told what the public could know. The AS-IA, two other political appointees and I thought Mark should know and be in on everything, which should have been the end of the discussion, but the deputies wanted to involve Secretary Andrus, who had no interest in being involved in this kind of discussion and we didn’t ask him, but the depities tapped a few other people in the BIA, which led to three more meetings on security, on international issues and on legislation and litigation. Before any other meetings could be scheduled, Forrest and I met and agreed that Mark could know as much as he thought he needed to know, in order to understand the context for what level of confidentiality he’d need to maintain to protect the Native interest as he was informing or not informing the public. Certain kinds of things—for example non-public locations of sacred places or ceremonies, child welfare proceedings, education records of students, water and land rights negotiations, consultations—were not public. But Mark would need to know some background to know what to say and what not to say about matters that were or became public or information that unscrupulous developers and others were trying to acquire or to make public in order to gain advantage over Native Peoples.
On policy matters, which really was most of our work, Mark would need to know if a policy were in the works and what could be said or not said about timing, content, contours, steps and such. In-progress litigative and legislative positions could be revealed only after clearance by a court, or the Justice Department or the White House, or with respect to protocols of or agreements with federal and/or tribal legislative entities.
In other words, it was the kind of stuff that reporters and editors deal with all the time, being vigilant about what was on background, on deep background or not for attribution, but with the added responsibilities of being a part of the United States’ duty to protect treaty and other sovereign rights and interests. Mark and I were from both journalism and Native rights worlds and understood the differences and priorities. This was our first encounter with considering the federal interest from the position of being a part of its duties of care and being aware of its competing and conflicting interests. Forrest knew more about the latter part of it, having been an Indian Health Service worker and a Senate Indian Affairs staffer. He and I knew how to write what became federal Indian law and the committee reports, floor statements and other legislative-intent docs, and Mark understood more about tribal government workings an employee of tribally-owned newspapers before there were formal tribal freedom of the press policies.
Much to the DAS-IAs’ chagrin and foreboding, a decision was made and worked quite well. Mark may have had other experiences and issues, but I never knew of any problems or breeches, and never heard Forrest raise any such issues. In the interest of full disclosure and a coda: neither Mark nor I ever returned to federal service, while we have encouraged other Native people to so serve and highlighted many who have served.
Mark Trahant was hired and fired for the same reason: because he was Trahant, the Intrepid Native Reporter/Editor. Where did this happen? The Navajo Times. He told the truth about the president and ex-president of the Navajo Nation, Peter MacDonald, and refused to tell lies to protect him as he was publicly caught on recordings committing tribal and federal crimes, federally convicted and properly disgraced. Mark gained a reputation that all of us who were around then count as a standard of excellence that all Native journalists should strive to attain and be willing to leave a dream job to save your self-respect.
Suzan Harjo
Washington, DC
Mark Trahant’s long and illustrious career as a journalist has moved the dial on so many issues that are critical to Tribal Nations and Native people throughout Indian country. We can think of far too many to mention, but two stand out to us in particular.
Although Indian Gaming still has its challenges in terms of popularity and non-Native cultural acceptance, following the Supreme Court’s decision in Cabazon and Congress’s passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, anti-Indian gaming sentiment was at all an all-time high in the mainstream media. Mark wrote several pieces of journalism that explored the various nuances of Indian gaming, highlighting the critical contributions Indian gaming can make to tribal self-governance, tribal economic development, and cultural preservation. Mark’s incredible journalism made a direct contribution to the expansion and protection of the inherent right of our Tribal Nations to engage in gaming across the country.
We have also witnessed Mark’s incredible journalism covering Native candidates for public office. Long before we had the first Native Secretary at the Department of the Interior, or the first Native woman in the United States Congress, Mark was covering Natives running for political office when mainstream media would not. Mark’s career has served to undercut the invisibility of Natives in politics, paving the way for the representation we now have in the United States federal government, as well as state governments, across the country.
He has contributed so much more than the above—but it would take too long to recount! We love you, Mark! Congrats on all you have achieved! And wado and mvto for all you have done for our nations, families, and children!
Mary Kathryn Nagle & Jonodev Chaudhuri
McLean, Virginia
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When Mark came to Kettle and Stoney Point over 30 years ago and visited our paper Nativebeat and gave a presentation at a gathering that included Canadian luminaries like Elijah Harper, Phil Fontaine and Ovide Mercredi. I was asked by a First Nation entrepreneur about how I got to work with ICTnews just the other day. I told him I sent an email to an old friend Mark Trahant. He said he had remembered Mark’s speech and it had made a huge impact on him. He became a youth leader, he was elected to Council, he served as First Nations Police and now he owns three businesses, a convenience store, a gas station and a weed shop. He plans to run for Chief.
Miles Morrisseau
ICT Special Correspondent – Canada
Former ICT Editor-in-Chief
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