"In the most remote parts of Alaska, staying in touch can involve a bit more effort than sending a text. Cell service is spotty, highways are nonexistent, and the postal service remains a vital lifeline, delivering supplies and mail by plane. But for anyone who wants to broadcast a different kind of message — a reminder to pick up milk, for example, or birthday wishes — there’s always the Muktuk Telegram.
Named for a traditional food of whale skin and blubber, the Muktuk Telegram (also called the Mukluk Telegraph, after a phrase referring to how gossip spreads in Alaska) is sort of like an amplified shout: Someone calls into a radio station with a message, and it gets broadcast on their airwaves so that anyone in range with a radio tuned to the right frequency will hear it. Usually, the radio station broadcasting the Telegram is one of the fifteen tribal radio stations in Alaska. But now, after Congress took away $9.4 billion in previously allocated public media funding and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) subsequently announced it will shut down, the future of those stations, the Telegram, and tribal public media across the country is up in the air.
“Stations are trying to figure it out,” said Jaclyn Sallee, president and CEO of KNBA, a tribal radio station in Anchorage, and Koahnic Broadcast Corporation, which produces shows that are distributed to tribal radio stations across the country. “Some stations are very concerned that they won’t be able to operate starting October 1 or maybe sometime later this fiscal year.”
Indigenous radio and television stations are unique in the landscape of American media. While many are part of the NPR and PBS networks, they are mostly staffed by Indigenous reporters and producers and primarily serve audiences in tribal nations around the U.S., many of which lack broadband or cell service. According to Native Public Media, an NPR-like network for tribal stations, there are 57 tribal radio and 3 tribal television stations in 20 states in its network across the country, and most if not all of them received CPB funding before the rescissions package passed."
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