This book offers an account of 150 years of the American Indian press and includes an overview of the contemporary Indian media. Its goal is to provide a wider perspective than was hitherto available from which to judge the nation's press as a whole. The picture of the establishment press that emerges is not an altogether pleasant one. Historical study indicates that, when Indian news was presented at all, it often contained wholesale misinformation about American Indians. Chapter 1 deals with white editors and their role in the denigration of Indian cultures and despoliation of Indian homelands. Chapters 2 to 4 focus on the development of Indian journalism beginning in 1828 and continuing--through periods of relative strength and bare survival--to the present day. Chapters 5 to 9 look at the American Indian press of the 1970's, when it emerged as stronger and more active than at any other period. By the late 1970's, communications activity was beginning to spill over from print into electronic media. Radio and telecommunications form the material in Chapter 10. Chapter 11 surveys the consolidation of effort in Indian country during the 1970's, in the form of media associations that were starting to give Indians a stronger, more unified voice. Appendix A offers "Indian Press Freedom Guarantees from the United States Commission on Civil Rights," from the American Indian Civil Rights Handbook issued by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Appendix B is an 1826 address to Whites by Elias Boudinot, a Cherokee Indian, and Appendix C offers a directory of contemporary American Indian print and broadcast media. (TES)