...A Forum for American Indian Issues...

Suppressing Indian Journalism

by: Ojibwa

Sat Dec 17, 2011 at 22:33:22 PM PST

In 1886, The Progress became the first newspaper published on the reservation. The first issue proclaimed:

"We shall aim to advocate constantly and without reserve, what in our view, and in the view of the leading minds upon this reservation, is the best for the interests of its residents."

The paper also said that while it might be called upon to criticize individuals and laws, that freedom of the press will be "guarded as sacredly by the Government on this reservation as elsewhere."

After the first issue of The Progress was published, federal agents confiscated the press and ordered editor Theodore Hudon Beaulieu and publisher Augustus Hudon Beaulieu, both tribal members, to be removed from the reservation. The Indian agent forbade the publication of the newspaper and charged that the newspaper had been distributed without the authority of the Secretary of the Interior, the Indian Commissioner, or the Indian Agent. Federal district court, however, ruled that The Progress could be published without interference and the second issue appeared six months after the first.

The second issue of The Progress stated:

"We did not believe that any earthly power had the right to interfere with us as members of the Chippewa tribe, and at the White Earth Reservation, while peacefully pursuing the occupation we had chosen. We did not believe there existed a law which should prescribe for us the occupation we should follow."

The newspaper, however, continued to annoy the United States government by insisting that Indians had the right to management of their own affairs. Subsequently government agents seized and destroyed the paper's printing press, effectively putting it out of business.