Loris Taylor’s Remarks
In our webinar on Tuesday, November 10th, our day of action and education for DEI in public media, Loris Taylor from Native Public Media gave an wonderfully personal speech comparing the need for media diversity to that of biodiversity. Thanks to volunteers for transcribing her remarks.
Hello, my name is Loris Taylor, and I am the President and CEO of Native Public Media. Native Public Media represents the media interests of Native Americans through broadcasting, journalism, new technologies and platforms, and public policy.
I come from the Hopi village of Oraibi, noted as being the oldest continuously inhabited village in North America. To this day, my village has no running water, electricity, telephone or internet service. When I was 12, I went away to boarding school because we did not have a high school on our reservation. My life experiences give me insight and empathy about what Native communities face today in terms of the media revolution.
While most of America is repurposing media and embracing the convergence of media, we in Native America are still trying and, in some cases, fighting to hear our own stories and news. We have been fortunate in establishing a media base of 59 Native-owned radio and four television stations that serve Native nations and tribal communities in the United States. These stations serve as critical platforms for education, dialogue, public affairs, and culture. You can hear the Navajo, Sioux, Hopi, Apache, and other Native languages on these stations. These stations play a substantial role in strengthening language vitality and culture in Native communities.
However, let me assure you that the media divide is alive and well. Juxtaposed against the machinery of media consolidation and the gobbling of Spectrum, 574 Native nations in this country face challenges and real barriers of media access, control, and ownership. Our issues are more than just about hardware. Media diversity is key to maintaining our tribal identity and the freedom to be who we are. It is about the old cowboy and Indian westerns where we hope the Indian will finally win. That is why I welcome this opportunity to have this conversation with you about media diversity.
Diversity is part of a broader ecosystem and understanding of the universe. We need only look at plants and animals to know that the variety of life makes for more robust and healthy habitats and ecosystems. As human beings, we thrive and grow with intellect, artistic, cultural, religious, governance, and spiritual diversity. In this way, we are very much like the plants and animals around us. If we focus on media diversity in the context of history as our barometer, we can determine the health of our own media access, control, and ownership.
History is all around us. The common thread in history, except that part written by nature, is humankind and our role in making history. Behind every historic event stands a human being with ideas of right and wrong, views of the necessary and the expedient, acts of selflessness and selfishness. History first is an idea in the mind of a human being.
During the present coronavirus pandemic, we find comfort in medical advancement and the attendant easing of human suffering that it brings. At the same time, we look back on the pages of history and try to comprehend the evil resulting in the genocide of Native Americans in this country, the reign of Hitler, and political intolerance based on race, religion, and creed. Media diversity assures us that the pages we write into history will include stories of our resilience, hope, and truth to power.
Media diversity requires action. Far too many of us stand as detached observers of history's unfolding. We watch as events spin out of control. We trust that someone else will do what is right and take no thought of how our lack of action is influencing the development of history. We are part of humankind, and our actions and inactions play a part in shaping history.
Media diversity is necessary for the advancement of knowledge and truth. A history that has already happened can only be studied and its lessons incorporated into our present lives and policies. History occurring in front of us, and history that is not yet born, has the potential to be shaped by human action. We have the power to report what we see, and to participate in shaping an unfolding history, page after page.
Media diversity is the freedom to develop and hold onto Native beliefs and opinions on any subject we choose, the right to communicate our ideas, thoughts, and opinions, and even random information, through our stories, speech, writing, music, and art. Media diversity supports our right to participate in the decisions that affect our lives, and to engage in the broadest possible exchange of ideas and information possible.
Our judgments, formed in the privacy of our minds, flows out from us and become part of that flowing stream known as public opinion. In turn, public opinion shapes public policy, and public policy becomes embedded in our national culture and expressed through our laws.
Therefore, the repercussions to populations that remain invisible within the broader media landscape, like Native Americans, is to be at the whim of a policy pendulum that swings between popular and unpopular Indian policy. The uninformed, or those not included in our media cultures, unwittingly become history victims, rather than the shapers of its boundaries.
Just like biodiversity, media diversity is kept healthy by a broader ecosystem of citizens, journalists, government, the First Amendment, and our vision that each individual has the right to the power of the pen as an informed human being. Thank you.
