The Pines Reporter and RKR expand
From left to right, Karahkóhare Syd Gaspé, Steve Bonspiel, Sterling Mallette, Gabrielle Lamouche, Fern Marmont, Marcus Bankuti, and Hadassah Alencar at a team meeting on February 9, 2026. Steve Bonspiel The Eastern Door
The Pines Reporter and Reviving Kanehsatà:ke Radio (RKR) 101.7 have hit the ground running after inaugurating a collaborative journalism project to establish a media hub in Kanesatake.
“It’s history in the making,” said Steve Bonspiel, The Eastern Door’s editor/publisher. “We want to make a difference, and we want to pass on something to future generations.”
The goal of the project is to advance Indigenous media reporting in Kanesatake by expanding community coverage and creating media training opportunities for Kanehsata’kehró:non, said Bonspiel.
The Pines Reporter, a newspaper and journalism team reporting on news in Kanesatake, has added two new journalists to the team in this effort to better inform and report on the community. The Pines Reporter is an independent non-profit managed under The Eastern Door.
Marcus Bankuti, who has done the majority of Kanesatake reporting in recent years, continues to serve as the managing editor of The Eastern Door and the revamped Pines Reporter.
“I’m excited to see the project expand,” said Bankuti. “The talent and determination on the team will help ensure Kanesatake has the on-the-ground reporting that makes for a true community newspaper.”
One of the members who is new to the team is Hadassah Alencar, who joined The Pines Reporter in January.
“It’s really an honour to be part of the team and of this project as a whole,” said Alencar. “I hope that our reporting can showcase the good in the community that is often overlooked and shed a better light on issues relevant to the community.”
Another is Fern Marmont, who grew up in BC, and whose mother’s family is Anishinaabe from Whitefish River Nation on Manitoulin Island. She is helping both the reporting efforts at The Pines Reporter and RKR.
“It just feels really centering and good to know that my impact in the community hopefully will be positive,” said Marmont. “I have a lot - maybe too many ideas - of things that I want to start, and I’m really excited to get to know the community.”
For Bonspiel, the project is a long-time dream finally coming true. “When I first thought of the idea of the Pines Reporter years ago, it was always my dream to kind of fill it with reporters who can talk to the community, put the truth out there, be sensitive to the issues, and build a media in Kanesatake, which it needs sorely,” said Bonspiel. “And that’s what we’re doing out there.”
Karahkóhare Syd Gaspé, president of Mohawk MultiMedia Inc., the organization which oversees RKR, said the project is an example of continued collaboration between the radio and the newspaper.
Bonspiel and Gaspé worked together for years to create a media training program, which has graduated a cohort from Kiuna College in 2025.
Two graduates from the program, Sterling Mallette and Karyn Wahsontiiostha Murray, work at RKR, alongside the two new Pines Reporters at the radio’s office.
“Now we’re getting an added boost with the Pines reporters, to come in and give us a hand at trying to expand our content and to improve what we’ve been doing,” said Gaspé. “It’s exciting. It makes me feel proud that we’re able to find people to do this and to set an example for the community too.”
Mallette, who heads the morning radio show, said the newsroom buzzing with new members has helped morale in the office.
“There’s a ball rolling now,” said Mallette. “There’s a little bit of energy going on within this community that we actually have a newsroom.”
Murray, afternoon radio show host at RKR, said that Indigenous people have a responsibility to use their voice to bring back some of the wisdom that has been long lost, and that the media offers them a path to doing so.
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“The course that might be coming in the future is going to give people those voices,” she said.
Ultimately, Bonspiel hopes to continue growing the project to also include video reporting, to create more opportunities for media careers in the community within the project, as well as establish The Pines Reporter as the community’s paper of record.
“It’s really changing things, and it’s giving people that kind of pride,” said Bonspiel. “It’s showing them what a mediascape is and how you have to build it up in order to have a healthy community.”
