Native press ignored except when criticized

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Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Ovide Mercredi, received a less-than-warm response to his speech two weeks ago at the Native American Journalists Association conference in Kamloops, B.C.

And no wonder. The Big M mounted the stage before 150 Native journalists and proceeded to tell the assembled throng of writers, editors and publishers that they weren't doing their jobs right.

As reporters, Mercredi said, Natives are not bringing their own cultural perspectives to their work. We are risking the loss of our entire heritage because we are trying too hard to be like the white press, he said.

Further, he insisted that a Native press not supported by the federal government is not a free press.

What Mercredi obviously doesn't understand about Native media is the environment which it is forced to operate. Government funding does not guarantee a "free press." Quite the opposite actually. It's awfully hard to objectively report on Ottawa's agenda, hidden or otherwise, when the feds are paying the bills.

Reliance on federal funds tied the Native media to Ottawa's purse string so tightly and for so long that many publishers and broadcasters did not survive when major funding cuts came back in 1990. What's so free about that?

Operating in the advertisement-driven press market like most other newspapers in Canada is essential if the Native press is to be truly free. Granted, it's a sink-or-swim environment. Non-Native advertisers sometimes have to be coaxed into spending money in a publication that has a limited readership.

Mercredi is also way off-base in suggesting reports need to take a cultural perspective to reporting. Cultural perspective, unlike a Native perspective, implies bias. Mercredi obviously doesn't understand that a press following the long established rules of objectivity, clarity and precision is essential for the media to retain any credibility.

Mercredi also criticized First Nation leaders for not communicating their needs to Canadians and Native people well enough. They would have to improve in this area, he said, if Natives are to speak with a strong, united voice on issues such as land claims.

If he wants to criticize Native leaders for being unclear and unavailable, Mercredi should perhaps tidy up the operations of his own organization first. Trying to get information out of the AFN is usually an exercise in futility. It's remarkably arrogant of a national leader to criticize others when his own staff cannot issue press releases unless asked to, and sometimes not even then.

And then there's the man himself. Shrouded in secrecy, Ovide's schedule is seldom available to the Native press. He was, in fact, in Edmonton last week on his way to (or from?) Kamloops, but no one at the AFN told Windspeaker. A quick check with our editorial staff revealed that no one remembers the last time Mercredi made himself available to the Native press. The only way to get a firsthand comment from Ovide is to find out, from someone in the mainstream press, usually, when and where he will be at a given time. Then the hopeful reporter has to go and wait around, sometime for hours and often in vain, for the man to speak to them. If you're a white paper, television or radio station, however....

Fortunately, most of what the Grand PoohBah said at the conference fell on deaf ears. At least half the journalists who heard the lunch-time speech were from the United States, and they neither knew nor cared about the speaker or his message.

But the Canadian Native journalists cared a lot. The media controls information and consequently affects change in society more than ever. And if Mercredi wants to see real change in the lives of Canada, he'll start working with us, instead of against us.