Mark Trahant
Mark Trahant is a journalist and the founding editor of Indian Country Today, an Indigenous-focused news operation.
Career
Trahant is a former Charles R. Johnson Professor of Journalism at the University of North Dakota. He is a citizen of Idaho's Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, and a former president of the Native American Journalists Association. Trahant is the former editor of the editorial page for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where he chaired the daily editorial board, directed a staff of writers, editors and a cartoonist. He was chairman and chief executive officer at the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. He is a former columnist at The Seattle Times and has been publisher of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News in Moscow, Idaho; executive news editor of The Salt Lake Tribune; a reporter at the Arizona Republic in Phoenix; and has worked at several tribal newspapers. He was an editor in residence at the University of Idaho. Trahant was a reporter on the PBS series Frontline with a documentary called "The Silence," about sexual abuse by clergy in Alaska. At the 2004 UNITY conference in Washington, D.C., he asked George W. Bush what the meaning of tribal sovereignty was in the 21st century; Bush replied, "Tribal sovereignty means that. It’s sovereign. You’re a... you’re a... you’ve been given sovereignty and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity."Books
Trahant authored Pictures of Our Nobler Selves, a history of American Indian contributions to journalism published by Freedom Forum in 1996.He contributed to a commissioned exhibit, The Whole Salmon, published by the Sun Valley Center for the Arts in 2003. He also contributed a chapter to Lewis and Clark Through Indian Eyes, an anthology edited by Alvin M. Josephy Jr. and published in 2006.
His book The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars was published in 2010, dealing with the federal government's Indian termination policy and the rise of Native American self-determination in the mid-20th century.