Cultural politics and the mass media : Alaska native voices

Summary: "The book investigates the inextricable connections between indigenous people's profound sense of place, their subsistence cultural practices, and their needs and desires to communicate through community and mass media. It is arranged chronologically, and describes the advent of indigenous media outlets such as the Alaska Fisherman. Founded in 1923, it was the territory's first Native-owned-and-operated newspaper and quickly became the voice of Native opposition to commercial fishing interests. Similarly, the authors detail the formation of KYUK-AM in 1971, the first community radio station to program in both the English and Yup'ik languages. Through these empirically grounded studies, the authors demonstrate that freedom for indigenous peoples is not only premised on control over their political economy, but also on their capacity to tell their own stories. In so doing, they develop a powerful, historically grounded argument for understanding cultural persistence as a valuable and vital form of self-determination."--Jacket.