UCLA

Centering the role of Anishinabe storytelling, this thesis aims to interrogate the kinds of worlds that the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe’s Tribal Observer and mainstream media throughout Michigan create with the stories each tells about boarding schools. I deploy quantitative and qualitative methods of frame analysis to confirm which elements are most prevalent in each source. Quantitative data reveals that the Tribal Observer and mainstream media vary in the frequency of publishing and most visible frames. Qualitative data reveals a “Federal Fix:” frame in mainstream media and an “Interconnected” frame in the Tribal Observer. In conclusion, this thesis finds that Tribal journalism is an integral component of Native Nation building.