Steve Bonspiel addresses a class of first year Concordia journalism students. He is the Journalism Department’s second ever journalist in residence, and will be working with a handful of students in their final year on a project of their choosing. Steve, who identifies as being a member of the Mohawk Nation, is the editor and publisher of the Eastern Door - an award-winning community newspaper based in Kahnawake.
The Journalism department at Concordia has maintained ties with the Eastern Door and the community of Kahnawake for more than ten years. Through an on going series of internships, Journalism students get practical experience as reporters and editors covering weekly news in Kahnawake and Kanesatake.
“Internships like this are good because then you produce journalists like our assistant editor Daniel J. Rowe, or people like Christopher Curtis who covers Indigenous issues for the Montreal Gazette. You produce people who challenge themselves to be better journalists and better people,” says Steve, who points out that the last two assistant editors at the Eastern Door were Concordia journalism grads who began their careers interning at the newspaper. “If we didn’t have this internship program I never would have met them. They helped me, they came in and filled a role, they made themselves important. Daniel worked up to being an assistant editor, he knew nothing about the community when he came in and now whenever he’s in Kahnawake people want to talk to him, they want to tell their stories to him. It’s beneficial for both the Eastern Door and Concordia and the students we both work with.”
These internships are valuable, because they help this small community newspaper deliver ongoing coverage of the matters that are important to the community. They have also helped to educate up and coming journalists about the realities of Indigenous communities.
“Even today, speaking with the first year journalism students; they’re curious they want to know more they’re hungry for information about Indigenous People and I think that the journalism program’s internship programs need to keep going,” Steve explains. “It has to evolve it has to expand and become something else, maybe grow into other communities, or other departments can adopt similar internship programs.”
Now, working as journalist in residence, Steve is taking on a project with six journalism students that is important to him, and to the communities served by the Eastern Door. He sees this as an opportunity to help the communities and inform the broader public at large.
“It was quickly determined the Mohawk language will be the focus of the project, and now it’s just a question of what the scope is going to be,” says Steve. “I had this project with the language in my mind and I wanted to see how the students would react. When I threw it out to them they loved it.”
The students will be working with Steve to create a variety of media - print, video and radio - for mainstream and Indigenous news organizations. The stories they produce will focus on how people in Kahnawake and Kanesatake are fighting to promote and preserve their language. He believes it is a chance for people in his community to see what is important to them reflected in the media outside of the Eastern Door, and as a chance for these journalists to start their careers armed with knowledge about Indigenous People.
Visit the Eastern Door's website
Read more about the Language Revitalization Media Project
Profile and photo by Ossie Michelin