A Right to Media? Lorie M. Graham - Columbia Law School

2010] A RIGHT TO MEDIA? 479
public policies that limit the ability of tribal governments to
determine their respective telecommunications destinies. 192 In this
digital age, increased access to Internet connections could aid in the
promotion of media rights.
Additionally, the lack of clarity regarding tribal control over
telecommunications on tribal lands has been a barrier to increasing
telecommunication access by Native Americans. 193 J.D. Williams, the
general manager of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Telephone
Authority (CRSTTA) in South Dakota, says that “a]ccess to
broadband media depends on who controls the system,” and “if the
local media company is tribally owned they tend to look first at the
telecommunication services the people need most . . . and then ask
how to deliver these services in a rural setting.” 194 He compares this
approach with that of an outside company whose decisions are based
primarily on revenue growth.
CRSTTA was founded in 1977 with a loan from the Rural
Electrification Authority and now provides telephone and television
services for four communities with an emphasis on local needs. 195
Such examples reinforce the argument that telecommunications for
indigenous communities is most efficiently analyzed through the lens
of sovereignty, much like land rights and mineral rights.
Unfortunately, not all tribes are as favorably situated to create
community programming in the way that the Cheyenne River Sioux
Tribe has, particularly from a funding standpoint.
Organizations such as Native American Public
Telecommunications (NAPT) have created funding programs to help
finance new Native American media projects in a broad array of
formats. 196 The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has similarly
noted as a priority the need to fund indigenous media, since listeners
“depend on these stations to cover national and local news, deal with
community issues, and create links across geographic and tribal
192. HearUsNow.org, Communities: Native American,
http://www.hearusnow.org/other/8/nativeamerican (last visited Feb. 5, 2010).
193. Bissell, supra note 190, at 141.
194. Ken Freed, NATV Challenging Media Frontiers, Media Visions
Journal (1996), http://www.media-visions.com/itv-natv.html.
195. Id.
196. Native American Public Telecommunications, Structure,
http://www.nativetelecom.org/structure.html (last visited Feb. 5, 2010).