INDIAN TIME and AKWESASNE NOTES - A Half Century of Native Journalism and Advocacy.

The story goes Akwesasne Notes started as a mimeograph newsletter in Mike Boots’ barber shop on Cornwall Island. In a few years it reached a national and international circulation of 100,000 which meant 100,000 tabloid newspapers had to be printed and distributed every month for almost a decade. Subscriptions were the base but bulk shipments, NOTES papers stacked and bundled with string, were mailed across the continent. Every copy became a point of interface, exchange and communication for the organization ordering them, the readers buying them and going back to NOTES. The mailing list for that circulation and subscription base became a valuable commodity and when talk came up about selling the NOTES operation many years later that was the main selling point. The List was far more valuable than any physical equipment but equally important was the NOTES’ reputation as the largest advocacy publication for Native Peoples in the world.

Native Peoples wanted and needed a voice in the world and the world wanted to hear from them. The events around Alcatraz and local events with the Mohawk and within the Iroquois Confederacy created and spurred this need. NOTES quickly filled this need and grew to establish its place in even larger, more important and vital networks. Governments, diplomats, institutions read it along with grassroots Indigenous people. Copies were sold at Pow Wows, Indian Centers and delivered free to Native inmates in prisons. Each issue was eagerly anticipated. Akwesasne Notes posters were on the walls in Indian Country and a bookstore was continually stocked with stories about Native People that were hard to find but now made available. And NOTES published its own books presenting Native Peoples making history and not figures from the past. Wounded Knee in 1973 was the catalyst for most of this attention and growth. Seemingly overnight people all around the world were asking “What is going on? What do Indians want?” NOTES provided answers, clues, histories, photos, stories, drawings, art, poetry and voices.

The Akwesasne Notes Era was a half century, 51 years of Native American Journalism and yes, we were proud to be called Advocacy Journalism since there were not many advocates for Native and Indigenous peoples, anywhere. The term may have had a negative connotation but just look around now at what has happened to mainstream media, and you can observe the results of “both sides” and “objective journalism”. NOTES did not care to represent detailed viewpoints from Governments and Corporations since those were the prevailing views splashed across all forms of media. We cared what grassroots Native People said, what people of the land said, what Indigenous People from around the world said, what our allies said with their support.

NOTES and the community of Akwesasne were at a perilous time in 1983 when INDIAN TIME started up. All the activism of the 1970’s ended up in the International Courts of Law over sovereignty and treaty issues. Kanien’ké:ha and Haudenosaunee were facing with and dealing with existential issues of immediate survival and future sovereignty. Borders, Treaties, Land Claims were at the heart of these issues and problems. But there were other perhaps more immediate issues of day-to-day life, economic and cultural, education and health. Some longtime readers of NOTES wanted to “read about our own Indians and not Natives in foreign countries”, some appeared trapped in the historical or romantical views, but the present day was about exploitation and commercialization. A healthy community needs a healthy culture and INDIAN TIME tried to focus on that. To get pertinent and relevant information out and to hear valued opinion and critical thinking. To understand the toxicity and volatility we were surrounded by, in the environment and in the political winds of change.

I started this piece about values and valuation, what something is worth, monetarily or financially, but we all know the arguments and debates are never exactly about money, (checks, income, jobs etc.) It is about the value of culture and health, land and access to land and resources. Akwesasne Notes and Indian Time were valuable commodities in their time and the community actually needs that now as dependable resources, to have a forum to hear opposing views or opinions so each one of us and all of us (akwekon) together can TRY to come up with decisions. Decisions that affect future generations. When I meet people in public at an art show or somewhere, many ask when is the NOTES coming back? We need the NOTES. This is what they mean. Things of value. Something dependable. Something to open your eyes and ears and hearts.

Alex Jacobs (Karoniaktahke), Akwesasne Notes & Indian Time & Akwekon, writer, artist, editor, correspondent 1972-75, 1983-87, 1995-96