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Bonnie Clincher Red Elk, Prominent Native American Journalist Passes Away

Bonnie Clincher Red Elk.
Courtesy Fort Peck Journal

One of Montana’s most prominent Native American reporters has passed away. Bonnie Clincher Red Elk founded the Fort Peck Journal. It's crunch time at the paper today. Co-founder Marian Clincher Montclair is helping the staff put the paper to bed. This week's edition features four full-color pages dedicated to her late sister, Bonnie Clincher Red Elk, who founded the paper in 2005.

Red Elk died last weekend of complications from a stroke she suffered last year.

Montclair says she really misses her sister.

"Oh my gosh, tremendously. To think that she's actually gone gone. It was sad. It was very sad."

Red Elk was an enrolled member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribes and lived in Poplar.

She's being remembered this week for her unbiased and fearless reporting.

Marion Clincher Montclair says her sister had no formal journalism training. She credits their parents for instilling a sense of curiosity in she and her sister.

"They're both Sioux, but they both joined the service after they bombed Pearl Harbor; everybody joined in. They both made us aware of what was going on. Our dad made us watch the news all the time. That just got it into her system."

Red Elk landed a job with the reservation's official newspaper in 1975. Montclair explains why that can be such a difficult and frustrating job.

"Because you're a tribal employee you've got your 12 bosses. They want to tell you what to do and what to print. That's one thing Bonnie always didn't allow, was them to tell her what to print."

Montclair says Red Elk always wrote unbiased stories that were backed up by meticulous records and hard copies of the minutes from tribal council meetings.

Even that couldn't save her after researching and writing a story exposing former chairman John Morales's alleged misuse of tribal funds for personal travel.

"Within minutes, John Morales called Bonnie and said 'When I get back there's going to be some major changes,' Montclair says.

"I told Bonnie, 'He's going to fire you.' She said, 'Oh, he won't.' She didn't think he was that mad that he was going to fire her."

He was that mad. He did fire Red Elk.

Instead of letting it get the best of her, she and Montclair decided to start a brand new paper. The Fort Peck Journal was started on a shoestring budget with borrowed and donated equipment. The first two issues were limited to a thousand copies and were the size of legal pad paper.

"Cause we didn't know how the people would accept us because once you're fired from the tribes like that, you kind of become an outcast," Montclair said. "Because we started our own paper and stood up to the tribes it was hard to get advertisers to advertise with us because they just wanted to stay in good with the tribes."

The startup was a big risk, but one that eventually paid off. Montclair says the combination of unique special features and Bonnie's accurate, objective reporting drew readers away from the official tribal paper, which eventually went out of business.

"We just decided to try it. It was time to see if we had wings or not - and we did. We had so much support."

Montclair says her petite sister stood barely five feet tall and was remarkably shy and unassuming.

"To get her to talk - to give her a microphone and stand in front of people - no, she would barely say a few words and turn every color under the sun, but when you read her writing, when you read her editorials and see how she reports you think, wow, who is this person?"

Bonnie Red Elk received the Montana Free Press award and was recognized by the Native American Journalists Association for her dedication to her paper’s readers.

She was 62 and survived by four children and grandchildren.
 

Edward O’Brien first landed at Montana Public Radio three decades ago as a news intern while attending the UM School of Journalism. He covers a wide range of stories from around the state.
edward.obrien@umt.edu.  
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