“I like to talk to classes about my job and how much fun it is,” says Luella Brien, who spent two years at Little Big Horn College (LBHC, Crow Agency, MT) before she transferred to the Journalism School at the University of Montana at Missoula and graduated in 2006. “A lot of students, especially Indian students, don’t even think that journalism is an option,” she says.

Growing up on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana, she caught the “journalism bug” in high school after the school paper printed a first-person account of her ordeal surviving a serious car wreck. Along with her talent, curiosity, and extraordinary work ethic, Brien capitalized on a supportive high school English teacher and on national journalism programs geared to Native American journalism students.

Like most tribal colleges, LBHC does not offer courses in journalism as a separate subject. But in the tribal college’s regular writing curriculum, Brien discovered that writing came naturally to her. In 2002 she attended an intensive, three-week boot camp — the American Indian Journalism Institute sponsored by Freedom Forum (a national press foundation) and the University of South Dakota. She also participated in the American Indian Journalism Career Conference at the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills, SD.

REPORTER BRIEN FACT CHECKS HER STORY. Luella Brien (Crow) on assignment at the Billings Gazette. Photo by Becky Shay.

Through the institute, Brien was awarded a seven-week internship at the Seattle Times. Since graduating, she has worked at several Montana dailies, most recently at the Billings Gazette. A single mother who grew up reading the gazette, Brien always dreamed of working there. “That’s where I want to be,” she said.

Because of her talent and her training, Brien has been able to find positions despite a downward trend in the size of daily newspaper editorial staffs. According to the 2008 “newsroom census” by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), the total number of full-time journalists at daily newspapers shrank by 4.4% last year – about 2,400 journalists left daily reporting jobs because of buyouts or layoffs.

Despite this trend, the percentage of minority journalists increased slightly since last year. Even more promising, the number of Native Americans in newsroom positions is increasing – including supervisors, online producers, reporters, artists, and videographers. In 1999, 241 Native Americans worked in newsrooms in the United States while last year, 284 Native Americans held such positions, according to ASNE’s latest study.

Native students like Brien who have gone through specialized training programs are actually “hot property in high demand,” according to Denny McAuliffe (Osage), formerly a reporter and foreign desk assistant editor at the Washington Post. McAuliffe has been involved in recruiting and training Native American college students in journalism for 10 years.

“Our students who we train through the American Indian Journalism Career Institute program have all found jobs, and some of them have actually gotten multiple offers,” he says. Now in its eighth year, the institute has sent graduates to internships with the Associated Press, New York Times, Arizona Republic, and other major market newspapers. McAuliffe founded and now directs reznet at the University of Montana. He mentors and instructs Native students from around the country whose material is published online (www.reznetnews.org).

Several other organizations offer training opportunities for Native journalism students, including the Native American Journalists Association, South Dakota State University, the University of South Dakota, and the University of Montana.

With some remarkable exceptions, tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) have played a limited role in training journalists. Only a small percentage of TCUs offer journalism or media classes. A telephone survey of 32 TCUs conducted by TCJ in early 2008 showed that 9 colleges offered some sort of journalism and media courses or curriculum; 21 did not offer any journalism or media courses; and 2 offered one-year certificates in digital media or desktop publishing.  Primarily two-year institutions providing a basic general education, the TCUs emphasize science, math, business, nursing, and English classes. Electronic media programs can be expensive to run, and colleges must concentrate on programs with the greatest potential for employment, according to Dr. Frank Tyro at Salish Kootenai College.

A former member of the Native American Journalists Association Board of Directors, McAuliffe is disappointed that TCUs don’t emphasize journalism education and that very few TCU students participate in the Freedom Forum’s three-week journalism boot camp. He hopes this will change in the future. His mission is to find and nurture young Native American students with a passion for journalism wherever they may be.

Some of the most promising opportunities lie in new forms of digital media and the internet. For the last two years, ASNE researchers have counted full-time journalists who work online. This year, a total of 1,700 newsroom staffers produced news that appeared on the web. Of this number, almost 18% were minority journalists.

Students have embraced the new technologies to tell their stories. At Oglala Lakota College (OLC) in South Dakota, for example, students are learning how to create digital television programs. Four students from the program took part in the American Indian Journalism Career Fair at the Crazy Horse Memorial in April 2008. Their instructor, Kathleen Aplan (Cheyenne River Sioux), shares McAuliffe’s and Brien’s enthusiasm. “The opportunities for diversity in the media field are greater than ever,” she says. “It’s how far each student wants to take it.”

The OLC program is relatively new compared with the television production programs at Haskell Indian Nations University and at Salish Kootenai College, which have been in place for decades.

Back at the Billings Gazette, Brien takes time to think about her advice for young journalism students. “No matter what they do, they shouldn’t be afraid to be the only Indian in the room. We’re kind of in a transition right now where more Indians are actually leaving (their home communities) and going to mainstream jobs,” she says, “You can’t be afraid to break new ground.”

Haskell Broadcasts News over MySpace

HASKELL STUDENTS ANCHOR WEBCAST. Bryan Tucker and Travis Gishie, 2008 anchors, are shown delivering their weekly news program. Photo courtesy of Rhonda LeValdo.

Television production has been a part of the curriculum for decades at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, KS, but recently students started also utilizing the internet. Haskell offers an associate degree in Media Communications with an emphasis on Television Production. The curriculum includes two television production courses, a directed study, and an internship at the local television station in Lawrence, in addition to other courses such as graphic design and digital photography.

Bill Curtis, a former Bureau of Indian Affairs video production unit director in Utah, first moved to Haskell in 1984. Now retired for two years, Curtis finagled, cajoled, and almost willed the program into existence. He worked with other Haskell departments to gain contracts, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Alaska Department of Forestry, and the Seminole Tribe of Florida.

Curtis liked having students work on “real stuff,” instead of just class projects. Curtis’s hands-on approach paid off for his students. Haskell alumnus John Paul Wofford (Kickapoo Tribe of Kansas) is a director and producer for Channel 6 News in Lawrence. Another alumnus, John Weldon (Kickapoo Tribe of Kansas), works as a photographer at the station.

NEWS TEAM ATTENDS NAJA CONFERENCE. From l to r: Haskell students, Haven Daley, Sena Harjo, Rhonda LeValdo (instructor), Allie Joseph, and Aaron Ross. Photo courtesy of Rhonda LeValdo.

Curtis’s former student, Rhonda LeValdo (Acoma Pueblo) now directs the program at Haskell that he initiated. She teaches all of the television production courses while she completes her master’s degree in Journalism at the University of Kansas.

“Last year was the first time we put our stuff on the internet because we knew that’s where the students were watching,” she says. “We know MySpace – that’s where everybody is. I had to learn to put everything on the internet, and I taught it to my students.”

At the website (www.myspace.com/haskell_news), visitors discover the Haskell students’ world. Upbeat and triumphant sounding music plays while images roll across the screen of college graduation, the Warriors women’s basketball game, a female boxer working out, students playing hand games, and Cherokee actor Wes Studi.

In a broadcast from last year, student anchors Aaron Ross and Sena Harjo sit at the news desk with their scripts, Harjo’s long braids draped over her blouse and Ross wearing a dark grey suit. Their eyes never wander from the camera, and their voices never hesitate or falter. After the news broadcast, Harjo and Ross “sign off.” Ross, with the wry delivery of a vaudeville straightman, delivers his catch line, “You stay classy Haskell,” unabashedly borrowed from the fictitious newscaster, Ron Burgundy, in the 2004 film, “Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgundy.”

Under the direction of LeValdo, students work on all facets of news production, including news writing, camera and sound, and editing. LeValdo, who is on the board of directors of the Native American Journalists Association, believes such experience can play an important role in increasing Native voices and perspectives in media productions.

“They all want to do something involved with videos, and I think that’s great because we don’t have that many Natives on that side,” she says. “We have a lot of Natives who want to be actors … in front of the camera, but we need more on the production side.”

SKC Video Classes Evolved over 25 Years

BIGCRANE SHOOTS FOR KSKC. Roy Bigcrane is the assistant director at KSKC-TV, a PBS station located at Salish Kootenai College. Photo courtesy of Lori Lambert.

Far north in the “Big Sky” state of Montana, Salish Kootenai College (SKC) Communications Arts Instructor Frank Tyro, Ph.D., voices the practical concerns related to media and journalism instruction for TCUs. “It’s an expensive program to run,” Tyro says. “(Also) we try hard to make sure there are jobs available for graduates.”

“We’ve been teaching in this area for 25 years,” says Tyro, who taught the first courses in video production at SKC at that time. Tyro now is the director of media at the public television station, KSKC, which is owned and operated by the tribal college. When Tyro first began teaching there, his students were older than he was and usually worked for the tribe as department directors. They needed to know how to document their own programs, such as forest harvesting or wildlife management.

Today, students are much younger and more comfortable with the most recent technology. SKC offers two video production courses, which are geared for cultural documentation and not journalism, and six photography courses. The college does not offer a degree program in either of these areas.

Three years ago SKC began a one-year certificate program in Digital Arts and Design that has proven popular with students. Like journalism and media programs at other higher education institutions, SKC adjusted its media programs to reflect the innovations in new media and the changing demands.

SKC Digital Media Arts Director Kathy Benedetti sees the field of digital media growing, both locally and in the Pacific Northwest. Like Haskell, SKC students work on real-world projects. “There’s a real demand here. I have to turn jobs away,” she says, referring to the calls from both tribal agencies wanting to start a web page and local businesses in need of a digital logo. According to Benedetti, who taught for seven years at the local high school before joining the SKC faculty in 2000, her first job was to “revamp” the curriculum in Digital Media. She is the sole instructor for the program.

Benedetti created courses that existing multimedia programs, such as that at the University of Montana at Missoula, would accept so her students could transfer to advance their careers. In addition, photography instructor David Spear and television production instructor Frank Tyro also provide courses that satisfy the requirements of the certificate program.

When helping a student search for media jobs in Seattle, Benedetti discovered that most digital media firms required two years of experience. She advised her student to stay one more year and continue independent study courses with her. She hopes to expand her program to a two-year certificate next year to help students get jobs more easily after graduation. Such responsiveness to the job market is appreciated by students.

The Digital Arts and Design program was the dream of the late college vice president, Jerry Slater, according to Benedetti. “Our whole mission at SKC is to empower tribal members to be self-sustaining,” Benedetti says. Students in digital media often pursue careers such as newspaper and magazine layout, web design, illustration, video production at local news stations, and photo-touch up and manipulation.

“If we can get our kids here to serve the tribe, then we’re not having to hire someone else (to fulfill contracts for web design or production).” Last year, six students gained their certificates in Digital Media Arts. One of the graduates, Sam Sandoval, is now the webmaster for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe’s newspaper, Charkootsa. Sandoval also authored the award-winning children’s book, Beaver Steals Fire. Another recent graduate was hired by the local newspaper to create a new layout design.

One potentially promising job area came from an unlikely phone call earlier this year. According to Benedetti, Disney Studios in California contacted her as well as faculty from the Great Plains Art Institute in South Dakota, the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in New Mexico, and engineering and architecture faculty from Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Benedetti said that one reason for the invitation was that Disney wants help designing “culturally themed” rides and attractions.

The initial meeting at Disney Studies with SKC students and faculty was not entirely successful. However, IAIA – which recently created a four-year degree in New Media – did develop a partnership with the company, and several IAIA students were hired as well. Benedetti is still pursuing a potential partnership with the studio and will take her students back to California for another meeting in October.

It’s a Sunny Day at OLC TV Studio

“Wojapi” is a Sesame Street-inspired show for Head Start children on the reservation.

At Oglala Lakota College (OLC) on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, Kathleen Aplan is helping to fulfill the dream of OLC President Thomas Shortbull (Oglala Lakota) and the OLC Board of Directors: student empowerment through media. “I think they want to get the message of the Lakota people out there, and they see the need for people in this field,” she says.

Aplan (Cheyenne River Sioux) is the director and sole instructor of the television production program within the Oglala Lakota College’s Applied Science Department. The tribal college created this associate degree program in 2005, and it has already garnered a prestigious state award from South Dakota’s Office of Career and Technical Education in the Arts and an award from the Native Voice Film Festival. In addition, her students have won top honors from the American Indian Higher Education Consortium in each of the last three student film festivals.

But offering courses – where the average class size is seven students — is about much more than awards. The program includes classes designed to make students attractive to potential employers, including television production, documentary, dramatic, and commercial formats. OLC wants to provide students with the best training using the latest digital video cameras and editing suites.

WOJAPI CHARACTERS ENTERTAIN HEADSTART STUDENTS. The stars in the show include: Butterfly – Kimimila, Eagle – Wanbli, Buffalo – Pte or "Unci”(grandmother), Skunk – Maka, Porcupine – Pahin, and Spider – Iktomi. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Aplan.

The students produce “Wojapi,” a Sesame Street-inspired show for Head Start children on the reservation. The program features Oktomi, a spider puppet with eight buckskin moccasins. Mostly in English, the show uses Lakota words and promotes Lakota language, culture, and values.

Aplan has screened the five- to ten-minute segments to parents and plans on supplying Head Start Centers throughout the reservation with DVDs. “There are a lot of opportunities to really grow with the indigenous (message),” she says.

The OLC website lists the following Television Production course offerings:

• Live TV Production I, II and III
• Editing I , II, and III
• Script Writing
• Intro Documentary
• Commercial Production and Reporting
• The Documentary
• Commercial Production II
• News Reporting II
• Internship in TV Production

Juan A. Avila Hernandez (Yoeme/Yoi) teaches on Native American History and Media at Saint Mary’s College in the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California and reports on current topics of importance to the Native American community.  He can be reached at bwikame@hotmail.com.