Fifteen years ago, a University of Montana journalism dean decided to create a news course dedicated to Native American issues. Professor Carol Van Valkenburg stood ready to teach it.
Since then, Van Valkenburg has readily dispatched journalism students to the far corners of Montana’s seven Indian reservations to broaden their perspectives and put them in contact with cultures and languages unfamiliar to most of them.
The students report stories of the state’s indigenous people — the Chippewa, Cree, Crow, Blackfeet, Assiniboine, Gros Ventre, Yanktonai Sioux, Little Shell, Northern Cheyenne, Salish and Kootenai. A typical class project compiles enough news to fill a 36-page tabloid, which gets distributed throughout the state.
The Native News Honors Project earned a recent payoff.
On May 24, students from the University of Montana’s School of Journalism were presented with the 2005 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for best college newspaper reporting. They received the award during a ceremony at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
The prized RFK awards are often referred to as the “poor people’s Pulitzers.” Winning entries from print, radio and TV target problems of the disadvantaged and impoverished. Statistics show Native people easily fall into that category.
For example, the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development reports one in five Native children between the ages of 12 and 17 uses illicit drugs; Native women are victimized at a rate 50 percent higher than that reported by black males; and Native people are incarcerated at a rate 38 percent higher than the national per capita rate.
And that just covers disparities in crime and substance abuse.
Tristan Scott was one of the 14 students invited into the J-school’s 2005 honors project. He went to Montana’s Blackfeet Reservation to report on the Indian Health Service’s badly underfunded health care system in which the annual patient care cost amounts to $1,914. In comparison, federal prisoners are allocated an average of $3,803 for health care and the average American, $5,065.
Scott said he welcomed the invitation to attend the semester-long honors project, which divides students into seven writer-photographer teams. Each travels to a reservation with a specific topic to report on. This year’s class focused on perceptions surrounding race.
The 23-year-old senior said he completed the class feeling confident about his ability to report with authority on a Native community. He learned how to navigate through the Indian Health Service bureaucracy, and received invitations into reservation homes so he could report his stories.
In addition to Scott’s health care story, classmates also tackled subjects related to multimillion-dollar “poor Indian” fundraising programs to Native preference for job hiring to racism in a town bordering the Rocky Boy’s Reservation.
Students in the class often become the journalists who report compelling Native news stories when they move on to full-time reporting positions, said Van Valkenburg, who is also chair of the J-school’s print department.
Experts argue that’s what a good J-school program should do.
In a report released Thursday by the Carnegie Corporation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, news industry leaders were asked how journalism schools could change the ailing status and standards of the news profession. McKinsey & Co., the consulting company that led the study, reported findings that encourage strengthening basic reporting skills while improving in-depth knowledge of specific topics.
The news leaders suggested J-schools carry out this mission by doing the following:
- “Emphasize the basics of the journalism craft, along with analytical thinking and a strong sense of ethics.”
- “Channel the best writers, the most curious reporters, and the most analytical thinkers into the profession of journalism.”
- “Help reporters build specialized expertise to enhance their coverage of complex beats from medicine to economics, and help them to acquire first-hand knowledge of the societies, languages and cultures of other parts of the world.”
It’s hard to argue with these suggestions. But it’s also easy to ask why news industry leaders don’t provide equal emphasis to seek “first-hand knowledge of the … languages and cultures” here in the United States.
Many stories in distant parts of the world deserve U.S. media attention. But time and effort are also required to help this country’s citizens better understand the complex, historical, government-to-government relationship between sovereign tribal nations and Washington, D.C. Additionally, the 120-some disappearing tribal languages in the United States demand first-hand knowledge, too.
Many of the University of Montana students have never been to a reservation in a state where some adults avoid even driving through tribal lands. Students are told to approach their stories with an open mind and to leave all preconceived notions behind.
Each year, they consistently produce award-winning, quality news stories backed by solid reporting skills and cultural training. If more colleges had the conviction to report on complex beats, such as the poor, the disadvantaged and the overlooked, the mainstream press might rebuild its credibility by providing an accurate reflection of the world in which we live.
