Deer founded the newspaper during a 1992 showdown between two Mohawk communities, the Quebec police and the Canadian army. The newspaper was advertising supported for decades but is transitioning to an online only format.In addition to being editor of the Eastern Door, Deer as the chairman/rapporteur of the United Nations Workshop on Indigenous Media and has been an active participant at the meetings of the U.N. Working Group on Indigenous Populations and the U.N. Working Group on the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Article 16 of that declaration provides:
“Indigenous peoples have the right to establish their own media in their own languages and to have access to all forms of non-indigenous media without discrimination… states, without prejudice to ensuring full freedom of expression, should encourage privately owned media to adequately reflect indigenous cultural diversity.”
It would be interesting to discuss how Article 16 can be harmonized with the First Amendment of the United States Constitution that guarantees freedom of the press.
Daniel W. Kops ‘39 was Editor-in-Chief of the Cornell Daily Sun and later owned a communications company. His family endowed an annual lecture on the subject of Freedom of the Press.
