Freedom of the press in Native tribes was the focus of this year’s Oppenheimer Symposium featuring a panel of Native American journalists and a showing of “Bad Press” which made its premiere on Tuesday, April 9.
As part of the Renfrew Interdisciplinary Colloquium, the panel was deemed Freedom of the Press in Tribal Nations.
Travis Snell, one of the presenters, is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and he is a public relations specialist for the Umatilla Indian Reservation along with having 20 years of journalistic experience.
Snell talks about his reaction once the Free Press Act was overturned, the central issue in the documentary, during the panel.
“Just in one bill that passed,” Travis Snell said. “The free press was dead.”
Lori Edmo is the editor of the Sho-Ban News and joined the panel via Zoom.
“(Mainstream press) don’t cover our stories and for us,” Edmo said. “It’s important that we cover our stories because we know our tribal people best.”
Angel Ellis is a citizen of the Muscogee Nation, the director of Mvskoke Media and the main participant of “Bad Press.”
She discusses how the tribal media will help mainstream news cover the tribal community.
“So that we are better represented in those archives,” Ellis said. “And that the draft of history is correct.”
Rachel Wilson is a member of the Nez Perce Tribe and serves as their communications manager. During the panel, she discussed the community that the newspaper brought together- the younger and older generations.
Lisa Snell is the editor of the Confederated Umatilla Journal. Despite being Cherokee and putting out a multinational paper, she saw that people were often looking forward to the paper and were even stopping her when she was driving to get one.
“It wasn’t my newspaper,” Lisa Snell said. “It was our newspaper.”
The Kenworthy Theater presented the film “Bad Press” Tuesday evening.
With an attentive audience, a question and answer session prompted the ending of the film with the filmmakers Rebecca Landsberry-Baker and Joe Peeler and the main participant of the documentary, Ellis.
The film follows Ellis and her fight to put freedom of the press in her tribe’s constitution.
Landsberry-Baker is a journalist and the executive director of the Native American Journalist Association.
“I had seen other tribes try to squash movements for repressed freedom,” Landsberry-Baker said when asked about their origin story for the film.
Landsberry-Baker goes on to describe how her husband knew Peeler and that sparked their partnership for the film when the act was overturned.
Ellis said that they were helping to maintain press freedom and even looking at some tribes who were trying to add it to their constitution.
Ellis also credited the Indigenous Journalist Association, which has helped her to look at the needs of each tribe individually. When asked to describe the film, Peeler took to the microphone.
“Part of how I describe the movie is a portrait of a democracy that is young enough that one person can still change it in a real way,” Peeler said. “That, as a U.S. citizen, often feels too big for us. It’s both a document about a journalist becoming an advocate, but it’s also a document of democracy shifting because of one person.”
More of UI’s events can be found here.
Andrea Roberts can be reached at [email protected]