BY: SHANNON BURNS

INDIAN TIME - Vol. 24 #08 - Ennisko:wa / March 2, 2006 Edition - Page 4

It's amazing what one newspaper article can do. When the NEW YORK TIMES published their flashy story last month - on the front page - about drug trafficking on Indian reservations, particularly Akwesasne, it was the most talked-about subject around town. What was initially surprising to me, however, was the number of people in Akwesasne who were applauding the article, or at the very least didn't see any problem with it.

I myself wrote a lengthy editorial last week criticizing the article's mistruths and manipulations, but pulled it at the last minute to let the issue sink in a bit more.

The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe has been clear that they are offended entirely by the article, while Doug George implies that we should learn a thing or two from it.

My opinion on the TIMES article is purely related to journalism. No one in Akwesasne would ever deny that smuggling (or now, the fancy word 'trafficking') exists here, is a problem here, etc. In Doug's piece (printed in this issue), he mentions the headlines that have plastered our own front page just in the past two months and crime and violence is here. Again, we will not deny it.

But, every journalist in the world has a responsibility to portray facts fairly and accurately. I've said those words in past editorials because it was the only thing my journalism professor was concerned about drilling permanently into my brain.

So, to read the TIMES article and find over and over that its author, Sarah Kershaw, used sly tactics to bend the truth seemingly for the purpose of making the story more interesting was extremely disheartening. I hold the TIMES in such high esteem that the pure lack of journalistic integrity in the article (Tribal Underworld: Drug Traffickers Find Haven in Shadows of Indian Country - Feb. 19, 2006) has made me doubt the whole possibility of honest journalism.

Rather than point out each inconsistency and untruth - and there are many - I will point to one statement that I believe represents the entire tone of the article and its author.

"In upstate New York and across the Canadian border, the roughly 11,000 Indians living here now have long dipped their hands into the rewarding till of smuggling, moving goods as varied as diapers and tobacco across this lightly patrolled frontier, 12 wide-open miles of water and land separating the two countries."

To imply that everyone in Akwesasne dips their hands in smuggling is not only completely and wholly untrue (and Kershaw's editors should be outright ashamed) but is also a deeply insulting statement to most people here. And, what exactly is her point? That buying diapers at IGA - in Akwesasne - and going home to Tsi Snaihne - in Akwesasne - is part of the "rewarding till of smuggling"?