{"id":38176,"date":"2022-09-28T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/tribal-radio-station-seeks-a-collaborative-approach-to-reporting-the-news\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:42:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:42:46","slug":"tribal-radio-station-seeks-a-collaborative-approach-to-reporting-the-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/tribal-radio-station-seeks-a-collaborative-approach-to-reporting-the-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Tribal radio station seeks a collaborative approach to reporting the news"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Tami
Tami Graham, KSUT executive director, and Clark Adomaitis, news reporter with KSUT, talk Tuesday in a studio at the radio station in Ignacio. KSUT has received a grant to expand news coverage in coming years. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

There was once only one way for members of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe to communicate news with members in isolated areas who spoke only the Ute language: Two of its members would travel to the KDGO public radio station in Durango and spend 30 minutes speaking in Ute to disseminate information and updates to non-English speaking members.<\/p>\n

In 1976, however, the tribe decided it needed a more efficient way of mass communication among its members. Members knew they needed their own radio station, one with programming mostly in the Ute language that would focus on community news, traditional Native American music, cultural affairs and even personal messages. Thus, the KSUT station in Ignacio was founded, its signal at the time only covering Ignacio and part of Pine River Valley. It was one of only eight tribal stations in the United States in the 1970s, according to its website.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a good way to cover topics and people who weren\u2019t otherwise getting any coverage on other outlets,\u201d said Tami Graham, KSUT\u2019s executive director. \u201cThat\u2019s still one of our goals today because folks are still being left out of the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

To aid in its mission, the radio station recently received a $235,000 grant from Colorado Health Foundation, through the Community Initiated Solutions program, to fund a new tribal media center. The station, along with the KSJD radio station based in Cortez, also received a $135,000 grant from the Colorado Media Project. The two stations, which share a reporter, wrote the proposal together, and will use the grant to fund future projects over the next three years.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal is always to ensure an informed populace, to be a very direct line of communication with the tribal community,\u201d Graham said. \u201cHistorically, their voices have been left out of traditional reporting, or they\u2019ve been underrepresented, if not completely misrepresented in the media. There has always been a sense of distrust toward mainstream news outlets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham has many objectives on her itinerary, now that she has the necessary funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking at partnering with KDUR to bring multimedia training opportunities to the Native American students at Fort Lewis,\u201d she said. \u201cWe would like more Native American reporters on our team. We also want to expand our Native Lens (a first-person storytelling project of KSUT and Rocky Mountain PBS) program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham and KSUT news reporter Clark Adomaitis recently held a panel at a meeting in Denver, run by the Colorado Media Project, that invited all news outlets that had received similar grants. The topic was \u201cAdvancing Equality in Local News,\u201d and Graham and Adomaitis\u2019 panel focused on covering Indigenous issues from a broader perspective.<\/p>\n

\"Kate
Kate Redmond, news reporter with KSUT, interviews a person over the phone on Tuesday in a studio at the radio station in Ignacio. KSUT Executive Director Tami Graham said keeping tribal communities informed and updated can be tricky because of cultural and sovereign issues, but a favorite expression of hers is, \u201cYou have to move at the speed of trust.\u201d (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cWe discussed the struggles we have as a tribal media outlet in southern Colorado,\u201d Graham said. \u201cWe struggle to keep reporters. We struggle to gather information from sovereign Native peoples, so that information may be inaccurate. What is shared in their own communities is not so easily shared with us. We talked about the rural area we\u2019re operating in, and the lack of data one could easily get in a more urban environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those issues were further amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic over the last two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cCOVID news became the most important topic at our station, keeping tribal members informed and updated,\u201d Graham said. \u201cBut there\u2019s always a question of trusting the news we are giving to them. One of my favorite expressions is, \u2018You have to move at the speed of trust,\u2019 and that really encompasses our unique culture down here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Community trust and underrepresented voices were among the main topics of conversation at the Colorado Media Project meeting, and KSUT hopes to establish and build trusting relationships within tribal communities in order to bring those underrepresented voices to the forefront.<\/p>\n

\"Colten
Colten Ashley, Tribal Media Center coordinator with KSUT, goes over projects on Tuesday at the radio station in Ignacio. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Long term, Graham is hopeful that with the grant funding, KSUT can also expand collaboration with other Southwest Colorado news outlets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s really where we want to focus over the next few years,\u201d she said. \u201cCollaboration. Colorado is a really unique state when it comes to collaboration between media outlets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s encouraged here, whereas in other states, news stations and newspapers and magazines don\u2019t share information,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re actually discouraged to. In Colorado, there\u2019s more of a sense of working together, coordinating efforts, to deliver the news, and I hope that applies to us, too. I hope we can all form that kind of a collaborative network in our area to ensure every single person in our region is getting the information they need when they need it, no matter where they are or who they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

molsen@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

An earlier version of this article did not mention the $135,000 Colorado Media Project grant that was given to both KSUT and KSJD.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

to continue expanding its listener base and reporting staff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,3151,561,2196,3617,629],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-38176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-media","tag-native-american","tag-radio","tag-radio-industry","tag-southern-ute-indian-tribe"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83937,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38176\/revisions\/83937"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38176"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=38176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}