Born in 1983 from community demands in the wake of internal troubles, Akwesasne’s Indian Time newspaper published its final edition Thursday as tensions returned to this Indigenous territory that is severed by the Canada-U.S. border.
The shuttering of Indian Time closes the final chapter on a legacy of journalism in this Haudenosaunee community, which sits 120 kilometres west of Montreal, stretching back to the 1960s that at one time produced one of the most influential Indigenous publications on the continent.
“There’ll be a void,” said Marjorie Kaniehtonkie Skidders, Indian Time’s last managing editor.
“We will no longer be a voice of clarity.”
The weekly newspaper fell to the same forces tearing through legacy media outlets everywhere — broadcast and print.
Indian Time moved to monthly printed editions to save money and staff continued to put out the paper without any pay since June, but it was too much, said Skidders. Faced with declining ad revenues, rising costs and debts, the paper faced no option but to cease operations, she said.
Randy Jock-Reidy, who oversaw advertising at the paper for 25 years, said the local band and tribal administrations that govern the territory on both sides of the border reduced their spending at the paper, choosing to communicate directly with the community over social media and through their own publications.
“Unfortunately it affects us in our revenues,” he said.
Akwesasne is also in the midst of a cannabis-driven economic boom, with storefronts opening all over the territory, but none of this new money ever translated into new ad revenue for Indian Time.
“That’s almost like a tourist type of thing. Everybody here, all you have to do is open up your front door and take a step to the left or the right and there it is. Why would you need to see an advertisement for that?” said Jock-Reidy.
“I think they wanted to market to the people away from this area to come here.”
Journalism born of struggle
Journalism in Akwesasne has been birthed by struggle. A protest in 1968 — which saw RCMP, Ontario Provincial Police and Cornwall Police respond — shut down the international crossing on Cornwall Island, which is within Akwesasne territory and sits in the St. Lawrence River across from Cornwall, Ont.
Akwesasne residents were protesting violations of a treaty that guaranteed their duty-free passage of personal goods — like groceries. The event became the subject of a National Film Board documentary and received wide media coverage.
It also led to the creation of Akwesasne Notes with the backing of the traditional Longhouse government, the Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs.
The Notes grew from a 1969 mimeograph newsletter that reprinted newspaper clippings from the border protest. It was published in a barbershop owned by the Boots family, who were farmers and belonged to the Longhouse, said Alex Jacobs, an editor, poet and ironworker who was involved in launching Indian Time.
“It was a true grassroots effort,” said Jacobs, who worked on Notes from 1972-74 and edited Notes and Indian Time from 1982 to 1986.
Notes, published monthly in a broadsheet-like format, grew into a prominent publication with an international focus on Indigenous rights — from the 1969 Native American Alcatraz Island occupation in San Francisco Bay, to armed conflicts facing Indigenous peoples in Central America.
Jacobs said Notes hit peak circulation of over 100,000 monthly copies mailed out across Canada and the U.S. after the 1973 Wounded Knee armed standoff on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. The standoff began as an internal conflict that drew in federal authorities and left two Native American men dead.
Then, internal conflict flared in Akwesasne in 1979 between the tribal government and traditional people connected to the Longhouse. The standoff at Raquette Point was sparked after the tribal government began cutting a path to build a fence on the western edge of the reservation in New York state that cut through the lands of a Longhouse chief.
This led to a 13-month-long standoff that drew in New York State police and threats of invasion that eventually resolved peacefully.
A political realignment followed this event with the creation of a “Tri-Council” involving the tribe, the Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs and band government on the Canadian side. The Tri-Council also began negotiations with New York state over a land claim settlement.
“That is why there was this interest and need and desire for a local paper, for quick changing events, local events,” said Jacobs.
“People were asking us in the community, in Akwesasne, why don’t you do a local paper?”
So Jacobs, Daniel Thompson and other staff at Notes started Indian Time as a local, weekly offshoot focused on the community, featuring stories on sports, arts, local politics and in-depth obituaries.
Firebombed
Doug George-Kanentiio, an author and journalist, took over editing Indian Time and Akwesasne Notes in 1986 during one of the most turbulent periods in the community. At the time, around 24 people were on staff producing both papers — the monthly Notes and the weekly Indian Time.
In December 1987, a firebomb hit the newsroom.
“In retrospect, we never quite recovered from that. It was such a blatant, dispiriting, terrible event to know that members of our own community would go to this extreme to silence us,” said George.
At the time, George-Kanentiio was reporting on elements within the Longhouse system that were involved in cross-border smuggling and trying to establish gambling enterprises on the territory.
“These people like to operate in the shadows. They did not like to have their names printed once they were arrested and or convicted. But I did that. That was my commitment. And people got very, very upset,” he said.
Tensions over gaming within the Longhouse and wider community would eventually rupture, leading to an armed internal conflict in 1990 that left two Akwesasne men dead.
Notes eventually ended its publishing run in 1997, but Indian Time continued on.
Two weeks before Indian Time’s planned last edition, Isaac White sifted through old copies stored in filing cabinets and bankers boxes. They were stacked in the makeshift archives housed in the basement of the newspaper’s current home in a building constructed right on the Canada-U.S. border.
White was Indian Time’s last staff reporter. During this time at the paper, he was the first to reveal that local police received reports there were shouts for help from the St. Lawrence River in the late evening of March 29, 2023. That night, eight people from two families and a boatman from Akwesasne capsized and drowned on a failed human smuggling run into the U.S. across the river.
He also reported on electoral irregularities during band elections for the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne and, in May, was arrested by New York state police while covering a Land Back protest. The protest was aimed against the same land claim negotiations that began in the early 1980s, just before the creation of Indian Time.
“I know my byline will be here forever. So at least, in some small way I will be a part of it,” said White, standing next to shelves heavy with bulging boxes full of past newspaper editions.
The front page of Indian Time’s final edition features two stories connected to the controversial pending settlement of the land claim that has sparked new tensions on the territory.
One story is based on an exclusive statement sent to the paper from a Longhouse chief who was removed from office over his support for the land claim. The second story is about an Akwesasne man who was indicted for digging a hole with a backhoe during last May’s Barnhart Island protest.
The newspaper won’t report the end of this land claim saga, which has again exposed fault lines between the tribal government and significant portions of the community.
White said he plans to continue his coverage through a podcast he co-hosts called Sage Against the Machine.