left to right; Wotanin Wowapi editor Bonnie Red Elk, typesetter, Verdis Greybill, subscription clerks and sales Karla Duboise and Marion Montclair. |
By the time Bonnie Red Elk reads this, she may be out of a job. The staff at the Wotani, arguably the longest-running Native American newspaper in the country, has just heard news that they may lose their funding from the Fort Peck Assinoboine/Sioux tribal council.
Fort Peck is located in the northeast corner of Montana. The Lewis and Clark expedition traversed this region some 200 years ago. But when the tribe commemorates the famed expedition next year, you may not read about it given the financial crunch they are facing.
Though advertising brings in significant revenue, even an Albertsons grocery store insert from time to time, the small town of Poplar, Mont., does not have enough businesses to keep the presses running. Tribal money is critical to publishing Wotani.
Red Elk is editor and head writer at the paper. She has a staff of three—advertising rep, office manager and business manager. Every week they turn out the area’s newspaper, which is beloved by many. And they do it the hard way—pasting content and ads without any electronic pagination software. It’s an all-night job every Wednesday for the four Fort Peck women.
A free press in Indian Country is hard to maintain when the people you cover are the ones who hold the checkbook. But Wotani is a success story, an encouraging sign that with enough determination a tribal-owned news organization can report the good, the bad and the ugly in their community.
Red Elk said the council has tried in the past to censor content, threatened to fire her, but the paper has gained such support from reservation members that there would be an uproar of protest in order to keep the presses at Poplar running.
"Something to read" is the Sioux translation for Wotani. Red Elk, who is 51, says it was a couple of Vista workers who started the paper back in 1971. She was hired as a writer and in 1976 became editor. She spends most of her time in the halls of the Fort Peck tribal headquarters covering meetings, interviewing council members. She believes she has finally convinced the tribal leaders that it is in the best interests of the community that there be accountability.
"They used to say ‘You’re making us look bad,’ " Red Elk said about the days when leaders were angered with stories that did not reflect positively in their eyes. "The news is for our people about our council," she would argue.
But Fort Peck is not a casino-rich tribal nation. It is located in one of Montana’s most remote and economically difficult areas. Red Elk believes the money crunch is very real, that the tribal council is not out to shut down the paper because of "negative" stories about how they run the tribal affairs. Should Wotani lose funding, Red Elk and her staff are determined to find a way to stay in business. Already they have raised the cost of a single issue from 75 cents to a dollar. Given the zealous support of the paper by its readers, the staff is hoping folks will shell out the extra money per paper so they can continue to have "something to read."
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