An anchor media outlet in the Mohawk community of Akwesasne is facing financial troubles.
Indian Time newspaper has suspended publication for a month as it restructures and prepares a new business plan. Its goal is to resume publication at least online in the next few weeks.
Indian Time started in 1983. It was an offshoot of Akwesasne Notes, a groundbreaking indigenous-owned and -written publication born from the American Indian Movement of the 1970s.
Indian Time editor Marjorie Kaniehtonkie Skidders told David Sommerstein her paper was born during a time of internal conflict in Akwesasne. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Indian Time editor Marjorie Kaniehtonkie Skidders. Photo provided.
MARJORIE KANIEHTONKIE SKIDDERS: We were not reporting on ourselves. It was all mainstream media reporting on Native nations in Akwesasne and across the US and Canada. The events that unfolded around 1980 prompted writers, artisans, and business people to say we need to come up with our own newspaper. We need to report locally on what’s happening here, unbiased, true, and factual. And they went with it from there.
DAVID SOMMERSTEIN: So Indian Time has been going for more than 40 years. Now it’s such a huge part of the community in Akwesasne, along with CKON – the radio station – serving everybody across Akwesasne territory and beyond. It must have been a real shock to you, to everybody when you had to suspend the paper for a couple of weeks.
SKIDDERS: It is! I’m an editor. I write, I take photographs, I proofread, I am scanning media all day long, all weekend long. To me, it’s heartbreaking to see that this is the position we’re in right now. It was very sad [to make the decision].
I have several connections in Cornwall (Ontario), Potsdam, and Canton and we talk about the paper. I’ve always heard such good compliments and they always mention, ‘we just love how you cover the community and you always shed a positive note on the community.’
And I think that’s an important part of the paper: the health and wellness of the community. We’ve had some horrible and tragic events happen with us. But it’s important for the paper to take seriously the health and wellness of our community members by portraying them in a positive, inventive, creative, and innovative light.
Indian Time also has a supplement that covers practically anything you want to know about the Haudenosaunee (formerly known as “Iroquois”) Confederacy — our foods, our ceremonies, our government. Indian Time created that years ago, and a few years ago, I was part of updating it. It was really exciting to go through all of the information that we have in there on ourselves.
We also are a vital part of the community as far as everybody’s efforts to relearn our Mohawk language. We offer a language lesson every week. It’s there for everyone to use. It’s always pertinent to what’s going on, it’s seasonal. We also have a culture corner and we carry legends, works on the Great Law, works on Kariwiio [“the good word”]. We offer that every week.
SOMMERSTEIN: What has the reaction been from people around the community in Akwesasne to suspending publication?
SKIDDERS: We’ve received a lot of support but there still has to be a lot of changes, like how to transfer that support – the verbal support of ‘I think you’re doing well, I hope you don’t close’ into actual business practice that can take us forward.
SOMMERSTEIN: Every outlet has particular financial issues. But there is a larger narrative of news outlets really struggling and laying off journalists. It makes me want to ask you about the importance of having independent journalism in Akwesasne?
SKIDDERS: I think it’s vital. It’s vital for us to cover the monthly meeting for community members to be able to read something independent, non-biased, to read something that isn’t written by an employee of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe or the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne [the U.S. and Canada-recognized governing councils]. It’s written independently. So as much as we’re not a huge investigative journal, we are a community newspaper. We try to do our best to cover that.
By David Sommerstein (News Director)