Indianz.Com > News > Yellow Bird: On UNITY, Amtrak and North Dakota

Yellow Bird: On UNITY, Amtrak and North Dakota
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Filed Under: Opinion

"We may have complaints about North Dakota’s weather, but there are few complaints about the people who live here. I say this because I traveled outside our area and found people’s interests and manners are different from those in North Dakota.

I returned Monday from Chicago where the UNITY conference of journalists was held. The UNITY conference is a meeting or coming together of people from different ethnic backgrounds — Hispanics, African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Native Americans.

The conference itself is a rather unique combination of minorities in the field of journalism. One of the purposes for bringing together these groups of people is for them to become a force, to empower the groups to do great things because, in the past, many times they were left out of the mainstream media. That is one of the good things about UNITY.

But just like a family where siblings sometimes have conflicts over jobs, recognition and power, we sometimes can run amuck with our own self-interests.

That was true of this convention. We tended to look at our group to see if we were being treated as equally as the other groups. We competed to see who had the best workshops and even the most entertaining parties and receptions.

Unfortunately, the Native American group is the smallest and, therefore, we had less of everything, but many of the sessions were generic, and there was much to learn no matter what ethnic group you belonged to."

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Dorreen Yellow Bird: There’s no place like home (The Grand Forks Herald 7/30)
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