Honors for AMMSA publisher

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Alberta Venture magazine has named Aboriginal Multi-Media Society (AMMSA) publisher Bert Crowfoot to its list of the top 100 entrepreneurs who helped to build the province. The magazine published the list to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of Alberta.

Windspeaker is part of the publishing arm of AMMSA, which also includes Alberta Sweetgrass, Saskatchewan Sage, Raven's Eye for British Columbia and Ontario Birchbark. It also owns CFWE, a provincial Aboriginal radio station.

Crowfoot first started in the news business back in 1977 with the now defunct Alberta Native Communications Society.

Faced with hard times and making silver jewelry as a means of support, he started freelance writing for the Native People newspaper to help provide for his family. This was a departure from his original plans to go to Brigham Young University in Utah to become a physical education teacher and a coach.

Crowfoot stepped into the world of journalism when he was asked to cover a basketball tournament because he enjoyed sports and knew the sports slang and lingo. Sports reporting led to photography, and that led to editing, and editing led to sales, and eventually Crowfoot learned every aspect of the publishing business. He came to the realization that an Aboriginal newspaper could make money and not have to rely on government funding to exist.

The Native Communications Society lost its funding in 1982, and Crowfoot started AMMSA from its ashes in 1983. Today AMMSA is flourishing with revenue at $3 million-plus a year, and is the largest Aboriginal media outlet in the country.

In his interview with Alberta Venture magazine, Crowfoot described the importance of an independent media.

"There is Aboriginal media controlled by political organizations. In that media, what is published or broadcast, is what the politicians want the people to hear. We are 100 per cent independent and it is especially important on the political side because our writers are respected because of their objectivity. We have taken federal politicians to task; we have taken our own politicians-whether they have been national, provincial or local chiefs-to task. If the story needs to be written, we write it without fear of reprisal from anybody," he said.

It was always Crowfoot's goal to ensure AMMSA was rooted in a solid foundation of good journalistic principles. In Crowfoot's previous experience with the Alberta Native Communications Society, politicians who ran the board fired anyone who wrote a negative story about them or their associates.

Crowfoot was beginning to witness the same thing starting to happen at AMMSA in the early 1980s. A showdown occurred between the political members of the board and those who favored independent reporting. After the smoke cleared, the politicians had resigned from the board and AMMSA became free from political interference. AMMSA continues to have a board of directors that is dedicated to impartial news reporting.