DENVER, Colo. – This summer, Colorado journalists will have the opportunity to learn from Native American tribal members about representation in the media. The program, The Voices Initiative, seeks to bring Native communities to the forefront of media in a meaningful way other than solely during Native American Heritage Month. Helping to facilitate the initiative is Osage tribal member and former Journalist Tara Manthey.
Manthey explained that her work to help form the initiative started a year ago when she and project sponsors from COLab, the Colorado Media Project, the Mountain West News Bureau, and The Colorado Trust met with the Mountain Ute and Southern Ute tribes in Ignacio and Durango, Colo.
Manthey explained that the meetings with the tribes helped make one thing exponentially clear; Tribal news rarely makes it to mainstream media and when it does, it’s superficial most of the time.
“The urban Native community along the front range of Colorado has no media lead by Native people, yet there’s a huge population here and then the Mountain and Southern Ute have their own media with a newspaper, radio news, and a radio station that plays Native Music and they have a strong media specifically for the Native communities,” Manthey said.
“But then the problem is accessing the news because print is expensive, radio doesn’t reach everywhere.”
Coming from a background in both journalism and as a Native, Manthey knows how local journalists care about their communities and care about creating a broader discussion to make the voices of minorities heard. Meeting with the Ute tribes last year, it became evident that the feeling of creating a better relationship was mutual.
After the meetings, Manthey put together a report. The main takeaways include respecting someone’s tribe and referring to them by their tribe not just as Native American, using present tense that acknowledges Natives are still here, combating stereotypes, and the importance of hiring Native journalists and Native community members. Manthey reported that Colorado journalists want to build sustainable connections built on trust so that they have a multitude of Native community members to reach out to as sources for stories.
“There’s a lot of specific information Native communities want journalists to know and, we hope that comes across in the upcoming trainings,” Manthey said.
Creating training to form relationships between Natives and the media
While the details of the Voices Initiative training have yet to be finalized, non-Native members of the media and Natives alike look forward to forming a better relationship that will hopefully impact Colorado’s news during the sessions in June, July, and August.
Mountain West News Bureau Reporter Emma VandenEinde wants to eventually see change in the way journalists report news on a regional scale from New Mexico to Montana.
“There are deep hurts in the Native communities of the Mountain region” VandenEinde said.
“Our goal is to make this accessible to all journalists to learn and to help Colorado’s media shine Indigenous groups in the best light.”
Manthey’s next move
Now that the report is concluded and The Voices Initiative training for journalists will take place, Manthey’s next goal is to help increase funding to Native communities in Colorado.
Manthey recently discovered that all large philanthropies in Colorado provide .1% to Native communities in Colorado, according to a report from First Nations Development Institute. Manthey, in collaboration with the FNDI, is working to increase giving amounts from large philanthropic organizations to help funnel funding to tribes like the Ute tribes who need funding to keep their media services running.
Looking back on the project, Manthey recalls how well the filmmakers of “Killers of the Flower Moon” worked to provide authentic representation of Osage Nation. Their work, serving as a prime example of how easy it is to tell Native stories in an honest light.
“They were so worried about it being shallow and they were great at working with the Nation on creating that authentic representation. I have the same hope, that Native’s stories and representation come out in day-to-day stuff, not just in blockbuster movies,” she said. To view Manthey’s report, visit: https://colabnews.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/COLAB-002-Voices-Initiative_Indigenous_screen.pdf
