Who Speaks for Indigenous Peoples? Tribal Journalists, Rhetorical Sovereignty, and Freedom of Expression

Abstract

This study asks whether tribal journalists appeal to peoplehood or nationhood for authority for their exercise of rhetorical sovereignty and freedom of expression. Freedoms of expression and information, in the context of indigenous tribes in the United States, belong to anyone who practices rhetorical sovereignty of those peoples by communicating what is in the best interests of those peoples. Then, to support that thesis, the study uses rhetorical critiques of writings and historical examples about free expression by tribal journalists and communicators to discuss this issue in a way that helps us understand that freedoms of press and information in their varying forms essential for the survival and prosperity of indigenous peoples, that rhetorical sovereignty is a theoretical framework that helps us to understand how freedom of press or expression comes from the hearts of the tribes, and that tribal journalists are examples of some of the best practices of rhetorical sovereignty and freedoms of press and information for the good of their people. Some of the examples include Elias Boudinot (Cherokee) and William Apess (Pequot) from the early nineteenth century, and Mark Trahant (Shoshone-Bannock) and Tom Arviso Jr. (Navajo) from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Dimensions of Indigenous journalism culture: Exploring Māori news-making in Aotearoa New Zealand

“…When he questioned the journalists, arguing they should report the news rather than be part of it, they responded that they had reported the news earlier in the day, but that now, after work, they needed to participate, saying: ‘Just because we’re journalists, we’re not different, and we’re not standing away from our people.’ Such responses resonate with previous evidence that Native American journalists consider themselves both native and journalists at the same time, and do not necessarily regard the two as being in conflict with each other (Kemper, 2010).…”

“…This conflict between journalistic objectives and tribal allegiances is rarely easy to resolve for the journalists. As Kemper (2010: 7) has argued in the context of the USA, ‘native journalists are native and journalists, regardless of the order in which you put the words. From their writings, it appears it would be unthinkable to most of them to do anything that would undermine the Indigenous people they serve’ (emphasis in original).…”

“…From their writings, it appears it would be unthinkable to most of them to do anything that would undermine the Indigenous people they serve’ (emphasis in original). Based on an extensive review of the literature and interviews with tribal journalists, he argues that ‘there have been and still are enormous pressures, especially when those media outlets are owned by tribes’ (2010: 35). When news media are not owned by particular tribes or Indigenous authorities, they may be more likely to act as watchdogs.…”

Information, communications, rights and freedoms: Observations on the sovereignty of the state and its citizens

“…While the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has the power to plant the idea in the media that the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was responsible for convincing Hitler on the final solution of exterminating the Jews (an ingenious attempt to blame the Holocaust on Muslims) (Beaumont, 2015), an indigenous group fighting to preserve their traditional land from the predations of a mining organization just does not have the power to attract global media attention. They may have rhetorical sovereignty, but their communicative claims are often not heard by those who have the power to make these claims public (see Kemper’s (2010) interpretation of rhetorical sovereignty). So the exercise of freedom of expression by journalists and those in power is limiting in many ways for while they do claim this right, they oftentimes uphold this right selectively.…”