Daley,Patrick J. and Beverly A. James, 2004 Cultural Politics and the Mass Media: Alaska Native Voices, Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 235 pages.

This is a long overdue and much welcome study of indigenous media in Alaska, which places the media firmly in historical, political, and cultural context. In part, it is a political history of efforts by Alaska Native peoples to challenge state and federal policies and activities, making it an excellent teaching resource for programmes in political and social sciences as well as media and cultural studies. It outlines the political machinations and manoeuvrings that have constantly threatened—and continue to threaten—the cultures, lives, and livelihood of Alaska Natives and the overall integrity and survival of Alaskan flora, fauna, lands and waters. Also included are a helpful list of abbreviations and a few well-chosen maps and illustrations. The very interesting and thoughtful introductory discussion of Alaska Natives’ use of mass media to challenge Euro-American cultural hegemony is followed by a chapter outlining indigenous experiences of missionary interventions and the role of mass media in helping to clarify and amplify voices of indigenous resistance. Chapters two and three—case studies of the Alaska Fisherman and the Tundra Times—are the strongest, in terms of successfully and carefully linking theory to experience. In a reversal of the order one might expect, the two strong case studies are followed by two more broadly based chapters on cultural politics, Alaska Native radio and television, and a concluding section that does not quite live up to its intention of summarising cultural politics and indigenous public spheres. Drawing on Mary Louise Pratt’s (1992) theory of transculturation in “the contact zone,” the authors consider the emergence of the Tundra Times as an Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) lobbying tool in the conflict between indigenous and commercial fisheries. They see the ANB as an amalgamation of Tlingit cultural persistence with “Presbyterian Americanization,” embodied in its “White” boarding school-educated Tlingit leader, William Paul (p. 62). Skilfully adapting Tlingit Raven narratives to political expediency, Paul linked Raven’s silencing of the people he controlled to the need of indigenous people to control the press, reappropriating “the White man’s journalism” to the needs of indigenous Alaskans (p. 64). This discussion of William Paul’s approach calls to mind the more recent work of Gloria Bird and Joy Harjo (1997), and their characterization of indigenous writers’ English-language poetry and prose as “reinventing the enemy’s language.” The Tundra Times bolstered Alaska Native resistance efforts by giving voice to a pan-indigenous movement that managed (however imperfectly) to unite Aleut, Yup’ik, Inupiat, Athabascan, Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian peoples. With the newspaper front and centre, the movement’s best known and farthest-reaching achievement was the signing of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). The prime mover in that process was the Seattle-educated artist and Inupiat leader, Sikvoan Weyahok (Howard Rock). The story of the Tundra Times, which ceased publication in 1997, has striking resonance for today. While they are correct in terms of that newspaper’s specific history, the authors present an incomplete portrait of the paper’s historical and international significance. Relegating its crucial seasons to the 1960s and 70s, they suggest that from then on, it steadily weakened until it finally died. It would be useful to consider the paper’s continuing effects and influences in a changing political and media culture—its media afterlife—in Alaska and elsewhere. In light of the present United States government’s obsession with oil and the continuing assaults on Alaska resources and lands, the need for a Tundra Times is greater than ever. Daley and James understand the emergence of Tundra Times as a conflict between subsistence and technocracy, a history quite different from that of indigenous media in Canada. Unlike the situation in the Canadian North, with …