Last weekend, at the Alaska Press Club annual conference, held at the Anchorage Senior Center, when the issue of those stupid white boys from California pissing on people they thought were supine came up, I held back in my observations. That's not to say I didn't make any. I did.When, during a seminar on racism in Alaska media, commentators seemed to feel that the pressure on Anchorage's Clear Channel (thanks, St. Ted!) radio outlets was a community-wide event, illustrating a growing awareness of how awful it is that our First People have been mistreated, I was incensed. I pointed out that, after simmering for days, the issue only gained traction when the economic clout of Alaska Native organizations began to be noticed and respected by the local media. Very soon afterward, the media narrative had changed.
I'm in the midst of the hardest essay-article I've ever written. I've been working on a biography of Diane Benson which is attempting - feebly, so far - to show her central importance in an array of civil rights issues in Alaska since Benson was a child. One of the hardest parts of this has been getting my friend to trust me. I understand.
I worked for 13 years in the field of public safety. For seven years, I was employed by Allvest (now Cornell Corrections). I ran the Cordova Center, Alaska's biggest halfway house, for two years. I've helped thousands of offenders get back into society. I've sent hundreds of people back to jail or prison. I've been educated in and have trained others in aspects of domestic violence and sexual abuse. One thing I've learned is that women who have been injured by violent men have a hard time relating to men seeking information on why or how they were victimized.
Diane Benson is certainly not a victim. She might have been, at least one of the times she was raped by a white man as a young woman. She might have been when she was shot in the thigh, and left to bleed to death by one of her assailants. She might have been when she was assailed by the Anchorage Daily News, the Associated Press, the UAA Northern Lights, and others for defending her Tlingit clan from a UAA faculty mentor who had turned upon Diane.
She might have played the squaw role to so-called "real Democrats" after she challenged Don Young in 2006 and narrowly lost, after being outspent by her opponent nine to one. She might have gotten upset by now (I would be!) that the Anchorage Daily News and most other MSM outlets have continually neglected to cite her important role in keeping pressure up against Don Young and his long list of calumnies.
She might have been upset that the Alaska media, hot on the Abramoff-Young connections now, fails to mention that her 2006 campaign begged the same outlets to consider this matter almost two years ago, and didn't. As recently as last fall, when Benson gave the ADN four days notice to show up for her announcement of a request for an investigation into Young's unconstitutional 2005 legislation changes, they could have given a flying fucking shit.
Doing my research into Benson's civil rights record, I'm disturbed. She's an inconvenient truth. More than that, she's a multi-level inconvenient truth. Not only did her early 21st century challenge to defend her house, clan and tribe get screwed and skewed by the Alaska media, her extremely articulate and moving challenge to it at the time, a long essay she wrote defending her objection to Linda McCarriston's Indian Girls, is locked behind an internet screening block.
Benson's deeper truth is in her continuity. A substantial portion of the lack of understanding of that resonant depth for our Native Alaskan community by our Alaska media may well be inadvertent. Diane understands that. Benson has also commented upon this legacy's stepchildren for a long time.
Diane Benson may be more than a little Quixotic. But maybe not. Her challenge to a party - the Alaska Democrats - that has been so long out of real connection with what Democrats mean to the USA, is dismissed as "opportunistic," even now. But she isn't attacking windmills, she's attacking a corporate paradigm that is killing not just Indian girls, but all our exposed small communities off the road grid. She's attacking politicians who accept money from war criminals like Henry Kissinger without even caring to know that. She's attacking politicians who dissed her in 2006 because Rahm Emanuel, a Republican in Democrat's clothing, told him to let her bleed to death once again in the cold snow.
As I've read through the material on Benson's history in Alaska civil rights issues, I've been looking at the records of her two opponents in the upcoming primary. All three compare favorably to Young, to say the least. But I hope to illustrate here, over the next three weeks, how uniquely powerful Benson's courage, perseverance, common sense, tribal loyalty and universality actually is.
Unfortunately, I'll also have to explain how far short our statewide media often is in recognizing deeper issues when an Alaska Native woman is the subject of discussion.
Unless there's a lot of money involved.
image of Diane Benson signing her request for an investigation into Don Young's unconstitutional change of Federal legislation last autumn. photo not courtesy of the ADN, because they weren't there.