Volume 6, No. 1 – Summer 1994
There is a strong case to be made that a tribal library can play a central role in breaking a reservation out of its isolation. A good library provides access to books, magazines, and movies produced by others. Equally important, libraries—including some tribal college libraries—are beginning to help local people create their own media.
The Saami people of Norway are building a college of their own. Jan Henry Keskitalo and Gerald V. Mohatt write that language is at the root of the college and the culture.
Salish Kootenai College brings public television to the Flathead Reservation.
News coverage of Indian Country will not improve until more Indians become reporters.
Too many tribal governments do not support a free press, argues Sherrole Benton. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting can be a model for tribes seeking publicly funded, yet editorially independent media.
Although the practice of negatively stereotyping native Americans in the mass media can he traced back to the earliest European artists, writers and photographers, examples of the harmful practice abound today, even in the era of so-called “political correctness.”
There is no shortage of information in Indian communities. Newspapers, radio and television make their way onto even the most isolated reservations.
One of the two valedictorians at the Navajo Community College graduation this spring looked a little out of place. Like the other graduates, she was dressed in traditional Navajo attire: a cotton three-layered skirt, moccasins, and turquoise jewelry. Unlike most of the other students, however, Maribel came to the Navajo community by choice, not by birth.
Although the practice of negatively stereotyping native Americans in the mass media can he traced back to the earliest European artists, writers and photographers, examples of the harmful practice abound today, even in the era of so-called “political correctness.”
By Jerry Mander
Sierra Club Books, 1991
446 pages. $14
Review by Brian Palecek
A Sense of the Sacred
Jerry Mander is best known for a book published in 1977 with the outrageous title,
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