And the Beat Goes On: A conversation between Native journalists Christine Trudeau and Tristan Ahtone

DOMINIQUE HOLMES

Last September, the Indian Country Today Media Network suddenly stopped publishing, citing financial pressures as the reason for its decline. The network consisted of a book publisher, a magazine, and the Indian Country Today website, a prominent source of writing on Native issues. That news hung in the air as Native journalists Christine Trudeau and Tristan Ahtone discussed the future of Indigenous media, the challenges of covering Native issues, and the evolutions of their respective careers in a wide-ranging conversation for World Policy Journal. Ahtone, an award-winning journalist and member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, was in Boston on a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard; Trudeau, an accomplished radio and print reporter, and a member of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, spoke with him from her home in Alaska.

Christine Trudeau:

I work as a public radio reporter for KYUK, a station serving the entire Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, which is made up of Bethel and 56 other villages. The population here is predominately Alaskan Native—Yupik and Cup’ik, specifically. I live in Bethel, which is sort of an anomaly in a bunch of village communities, as it’s a rapidly expanding community of about 6,500 or 7,000 people.

Tristan Ahtone:

I know you’re originally from California, so how did you end up there?

Trudeau:

I grew up in California and studied in Northern California; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and New York City. I saw the job and a number of mentors said, “This is a great opportunity, and by starting at a smaller station, you’re going to have a lot more responsibility.” I wanted to take on something challenging and not get an internship or be an associate producer somewhere, so I applied for the job and got it. They wanted me quickly because they had just lost somebody. It was a small newsroom: They had two people when I applied, and one of those people had just left, so they were down to one.

Ahtone:

To jump into our topic area here, you cover a lot of Indigenous stories. Is that because of your interest, or because of the region you’re reporting on?

Trudeau:

I think I’m attuned to the kinds of stories that are valued in Indigenous communities, but it’s also definitely because of the region. When the vast majority of the population is Native, a lot of your stories are going to be Native-focused. Prior to this, I did have an interest in covering Indian country—in covering Native lands, Native issues, Native people.

Ahtone:

Do you think you’d be looking for Indigenous stories if you had found an equivalent job in Atlanta, for instance, or another area that doesn’t have a large Native population? Or do you think you would just be focusing on the beat you were tasked with?

Trudeau:

When I was working in the lower 48 states I freelanced and I sought out stories that pertained to Indian country. If I had gotten a job at a radio station not in a predominantly Native area, I think I would have done the job and reported the beat I was given. But wherever you go, there’s a local tribal element, whether people choose to look at it or not, so I am attuned to that. Before I got this job, I found that many stations had preconceived notions about local tribal communities and whether they were open or closed to media. Generally, if a group was closed to media, there wasn’t an attitude beyond, “Well, they don’t want to talk to us, so we’re not going to talk to them,” and the station wouldn’t go back and check in. Something I looked for when I was applying to jobs was how open a media organization was to different communities. Do they have blind spots? I don’t want to say “prejudices,” but it turns into that when you completely ignore an entire population just...