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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT
In late April 1982, James P. Danky organized a conference titled "Native American Press in Wisconsin and the Nation," an extension of the work Danky had been engaged in as newspapers and periodicals librarian at the Wisconsin Historical Society, which brought native editors and publishers together with academic historians. We were engaged in writing a historical reference guide to American Indian and Alaska native newspapers and periodicals, and we learned that Danky and colleague Maureen Hady were involved with a similar project. At the conference we all agreed to cooperate in our research and share information. Attendees reached consensus on a number of issues at that time: the Native press was under significant financial difficulty; press freedoms were often abused; a need existed for an association of native publishers and editors. Other issues came to light, including the need for a systematic, ongoing project to collect the products of the native press and report research on the subject as a means of documenting contemporary native life. Danky and Hady's work helped to lay the foundation for this project that continues to this day at the Sequoyah Research Center.
INTRODUCTION
In late April 1982, James P. Danky organized a conference titled "Native American Press in Wisconsin and the Nation." Sponsored by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin-Madison Library School, and University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the conference was an extension of work Danky had been engaged in as newspapers and periodicals librarian at the society. It brought Native editors and publishers together with academic historians. From Wisconsin were Laurie Fish of the Menominee Tribal News, Paul DeMain of the LCO Journal, and Zoar Fulwilder of Zoar's Weekly Information. From the nation were publishers and editors Antony Stately of The Circle, Joan Willow of the Wind River Journal, and Richard LaCourse of CERT Report. Scholars who spoke were James Murphy, Sharon Murphy, Barbara Leubke, Richard Joseph Morris, and the two of us, Daniel Littlefield and James Parins. (1) Roger Philbrick was present but did not speak. We were not originally scheduled to speak, but were late add-ons to the program. Our being included had an element of "serendipity," to use Danky's term.
By a rather complicated chain of events, we learned that we, at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and the Newspapers and Periodicals unit of the Wisconsin Historical Society were working on similar projects aimed at documenting the Native press. Starting in the late 1970s, we had gone a circuitous route from a failed attempt to publish a historical anthology of Native writers, to a two-volume bibliography of Native writers, to the rather ambitious goal of writing a historical reference guide to American Indian and Alaska Native newspapers and periodicals. At the time we heard about Danky's project, our work was based on two steadily growing lists of titles of newspapers and periodicals established from 1828 to the present: one before 1924, one after 1924. In all, we had accumulated about one thousand titles, which we had already begun to circulate to both Indian and non-Indian scholars, inviting them to contribute publication histories for our projected reference guides. We had not reached the point in the project, however, that we needed to go to Madison to work in the massive collection of Native newspapers and periodicals that we knew the Historical Society held. Thus we did not know that Danky, with the assistance of project librarian Maureen Hady, was hard at work creating a descriptive bibliography and union list of Native newspapers and periodicals. Upon learning of one another, we were like Huck Finn discovering Jim's campfire on Jackson Island. We thought we were alone. The revelation that we were not was momentarily staggering.
Danky learned about our project before we learned of his. In early 1982, apparently concerned that we were working at the same task, he contacted us. He informed us that his working list contained about 500 titles and that he had organized a conference on the Native press in Wisconsin and the nation. Our response was that if 500 titles were all he had, he was not even in the ball park. On April 1, we sent him a list of 728 post-1924 titles and audaciously asked to be included in the conference. Our work clearly impressed Danky. On April 13 he responded, "The breadth of your work in this area is most impressive and the serendipity that brought us together is something that I am most grateful for." He enclosed an annotated copy of our list, correlating it to his. Of the 728 titles on the list, he had no information on 367. He asked our assistance in locating those titles and invited us to the conference that we might meet and "compare notes and methods" (J. P. Danky, personal communication, April 13, 1982) A week later, we were in Madison.
During the two-day conference, discussion was lively, and debate was stormy at times, but it proved to be a watershed event. It described in bold relief the state of the Native press in Wisconsin and the nation in 1982, anticipated future developments in Native publishing, created an increased interest in scholarship about the press, and had significant implications for the building of library and archives collections of Native publications, press history, and related matters. Danky's conference clearly assessed the state of the Native press in Wisconsin and the nation in 1982 and identified issues that have been significant in Native publishing since then.
THE CONFERENCE
One major consensus of the conference participants was the uncertain financial status of most Native newspapers, whether urban or reservation based. Antony Stately was struggling to keep The Circle afloat in Minneapolis by revising his format and circulation practices to stretch his advertising and subscription dollars. The Wind River Press had struggled to survive on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming in 1976 and 1977, when it folded for lack of financial support. The future of its successor, Joan Willow's Wind River Journal, begun later in 1977, was also uncertain because it was funded by a CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) grant, which was scheduled to run out. In 1982 the Journal staff was applying to the tribe to fill the financial void. The Menominee Tribal News at Keshena, Wisconsin, had also originally published using soft money and had suspended in 1979 for lack of funds. After that the tribe funded one half, and soft money provided the other. In 1982, Laurie Fish was attempting to make the paper self-sustaining through advertising, subscriptions, and sales, and she was under deadline to do so. Zoar Fulwilder's little urban newsletter, Zoar's Weekly Information in Milwaukee, had ceased publication for lack of money. And Paul DeMain, feeling restrained by tribal funding, had worked since 1978 to make the Lac Courte Oreilles Journal at Hayward, Wisconsin, self-sufficient; by 1982 he had reached 60 percent of his goal and had aspirations to make the paper independent (Danky, Hady, & Morris, 1982).
What the tribal editors described was not unusual, but was a common phenomenon that affected the survival rate of publications throughout Indian Country in 1982. What Paul DeMain described for the Great Lakes region is a good example. He estimated that there were twenty-eight thousand Indians in Wisconsin...
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