Indian Time coming to an end

After printing over 2,000 issues over the course of 42 years, Turtle Island’s longest-running Kanien’kehá:ka newspaper is calling it quits. 

Indian Time, based in Akwesasne, ran its second-to-last print issue on November 14 and will run its last on December 19. 

Editor Marjorie Skidders said they can no longer afford to print amid a stark plummet in ad revenue. 

“It really is sad,” she told The Eastern Door. “We had appealed to the business community, but they preferred to advertise outside of Akwesasne.”

The newspaper’s challenges intensified in 2020 after the pandemic hit and their beloved manager Helen Cook Lazore lost her life to cancer. As printing costs soared, fewer ads were coming in from their local governments, the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne (MCA) on the Canadian side and the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe to the south. 

“We went through a series of managers, and that’s where everything turned upside down,” said Skidders, the editor there since 2012. “We weren’t aware of what was going on, we weren’t aware that we had gotten into debt, and that debt was entirely with the printer.”

To cut costs, the weekly newspaper has only been printing once per month over the course of the last six months, Skidders said, with all its other issues running online only. 

Their last four online-only editions of the paper are still scheduled to run between now and December, she added.

In addition to no longer supporting the paper much through advertising, the local councils had also begun publishing their own in-house publications, which “severely hurt the local newspaper,” Skidders said. Rather than relying on local media to get vital information out to the community, they also increasingly turned to social media.

“We appealed to the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe to have a better working relationship. We met with them. We didn’t go asking for money. That fell through. They no longer sent notices. They no longer sent press releases, announcements, anything,” Skidders said. 

“I think that we had a really good relationship for a long time between all three councils,” she added. “Maybe they didn’t see the need to put out any other information than what they put out in their own in-house publications.”

The Eastern Door sought comment from both councils for this story. Tribal chiefs with the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe declined the interview request. The MCA meanwhile couldn’t arrange an interview by deadline. 

Artist, poet, and co-founder of the paper Alex Jacobs said he’s disappointed to see local governments haven’t done more to support the paper. 

“It’s a shame that the community can’t support it,” said Jacobs, who co-founded the newspaper in 1983 alongside Daniel Thompson, also a poet. “I don’t know why the local band council and the tribal council decided to go the way they did, as far as the media goes.”

Lazore and Debbie Cook Jacobs were also among those that put together the first issue, writing the articles and arranging the print. The late Mark Narsisian also immediately joined on as managing editor.

Indian Time printed twice per month at first and was owned then by Akwesasne Notes.

Many of them, including himself and Thompson, had actively been publishing in there during the height of the Red Power movement in the 1970s. The political newspaper only ran once per month, however, and with its focus on national and international affairs, there wasn’t much room to talk about local issue, spurring demands in Akwesasne for something new.

While Jacobs said he’s disappointed to see how the editorial staff at Indian Time have been treated by the councils, he said he’s not surprised, either. 

“The politicians, even the local politicians, their attitudes change about the media,” he said. “They’re all for you when they’re campaigning this or that, but once they’re in and they become a bureaucrat, then they change their tune, and they want to go someplace where it’s easier and they get no criticism.”

Once Indian Time stops printing, Akwesasne will be left with CKON 93.7 as its sole local media outlet, Skidders said, but it’s not in a position to do in-depth reporting on the councils.

This summer her newspaper reported extensively on complaints from locals who doubted the results of the MCA council table’s general elections held that June. Of those many appeals then, 14 were later found to have merit, a local election appeal board found. 

The election results ended up being overturned as a result, with locals having to return to the polls again in mid-September, after it was discovered a large number had been left off the voting list.

The second round of voting led to Leonard Lazore being elected as MCA grand chief, a title that had previously gone to Edward Roundpoint in the first round. 

Without a local newspaper around to investigate leads and spur debate, Skidders said she worries about what will be swept under the rug. 

“The information was out there, and they had to do a re-election because there were so many inconsistencies and incongruities about the election, so that won’t happen anymore,” she said.

Annual events and minor sports tournaments the newspaper has covered extensively for years will also no longer get a platform.

“I went to the American Legion on November 11 to cover their ceremony. And you know, we ran six or eight photos of it this week, and that’s the last time anyone will see that,” Skidders said. 

The editor had been looking forward to the opportunity to pass the torch to a new editor before retiring. Knowing that won’t happen anymore has been tough to contend with, but despite that, she said she’s grateful for the time she got to spend there. She had retired from her role as a special education principal when she first started writing on a part-time basis for the paper.

“It’s really, really opened up my worldview of everything you know. Meeting different people, being introduced to certain ones, becoming friends with some,” she said. “There’s been a lot of heartbreak, and that’s just covering stories, but there’s been a lot of joy too, where we try and cover the accomplishments of Mohawk people, and there has been plenty.”

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