AIPMI Conferences

Conferences & Workshops of the Initiative

 

The American Indian Policy and Media Initiative has sponsored, co-sponsored or otherwise participated in several major conferences and similar educational or policy gatherings focusing on media and policy issues affecting Native America. Here is a partial list of these activities.

  • Buffalo Roundtable. The Initiative hosted American Indian leaders from throughout North America in this founding conference for AIPMI. Keynote presenters were Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Northern Cheyenne) and Chairman Anthony Pico of the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians. It included partipants associated with Anishnaabe, Cheyenne, Mohawk, Muscogee, Seneca, Taino, Wampanoag, and Yakama Indians. The meeting was hosted by President Muriel Howard of Buffalo State College. (June 2005)
  • Washington Roundtable. The Initiative convened Native leaders and media experts, in the board room of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. Keynote presenters included Native elders Suzan Shown Harjo and Helen Schierbeck. Also on the agenda was a dialogue including the HBO vice president for films and two producers with the Discovery Channel. (May 2007)
  • United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples. Initiative senior advisor José  Barreiro presented a panel discussion at the UN headquarters in New York City. The panel included AIPMI fellows James Adams and Steven Newcomb. (May 2007)
  • "Hear Our Voices" Native American Media Symposium. The Initiative co-sponsored this gathering in Washington DC with the Friends Committee on National legislation, attracting more than 150 participants to a series of stand-room-only presentations. (March 2006).
  • Consultation & Planning Study: Messages of Engagement: Strategies for the National Museum of the American Indian. The Initiative was invited to consult with the Smithsonian's museum in Washington DC in a series of meetings involving the Initiative leadership along with Buffalo State College officials (President Muriel Howard, Dean Mel Netzhammer, and College-Community Partnership Director Marian Deutschman). The consultation led to a contract between the museum and the Initiative for a research program and report that has become the museum's first strategic plan for civic engagement.
  • Diversity Workshops. Initiative director Ron Smith presented two training workshops in newsroom diversity at the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and chronicle newspaper.
  • Networking. The Initiative has developed alliances or working partnerships with several organizations, including the Tribal Leader's Forum in San Diego, Evergreen State College's Native Futures Project, the Indian Law Resource Center, and the National Museum of the American Indian.
  • Conference Participation. Leaders of the Initiative have participated in numerous conferences and both academic and professional forums, including the following: Journalism's Crisis of Confidence: Challenge for the Next Generation symposium by the Carnegie Foundation of New York; American Indian Nations: Yesterday, Today and Tomnorrow conference at the University of Great Falls; Northwest Young Nations Leadership Challenge at the University of Washington Seattle; Women Empowering Women for Indian Nations Arizona; Indigenous Cultural Conference at Willamet University in Oregon; Sovereignty Symposium of regional Native leaders in Washington State; First Nations Development Institute conference; and Journalism and Women's Symposium in Sun River, Idaho,
  • Grassroots Consultation: Celilo Falls. The Initiative has assisted the Celilo Wyam Board in preparing its message for the 50th anniversary of the destruction of Celilo Falls on the mid-Columbia River in Oregon. Before the river was dammed by the Army Corps of Engineers, the falls was the center of the regional Native economy and the greatest salmon fishery on the Columbia.