Mark Trahant is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist who for many years was the author of “West by Northwest,” a twice-weekly column for The Seattle Times. Prior to his position at the Times, he served as editor and publisher of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News and as the Executive News Editor of The Salt Lake Tribune. Trahant was the owner and publisher of a small weekly, Navajo Nation Today, when he lived with his wife’s tribe in Window Rock, Arizona. Trahant also served as the Public Information Officer at the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C.
Trahant’s awards and honors include Best Columnist from the Native American Journalists Association and the Society of Professional Journalists, a Ruhl Fellowship, and co-winner of the Heywood Broun Award.
As a Native American and a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe of Fort Hall, Idaho, Trahant will bring a unique perspective to the Sun Valley Center’s The Whole Salmon project. As a young boy, Trahant grew up in the Northwestern United States and has watched as the relationship between the people and the land has evolved and changed. He can remember fishing the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River with his family. As an adult he understands and has written about the conflicts and contradictions inherent in preserving the past and the realities of the present. He finds hope in these contradictions and in the interface between rural and urban life, the historic and contemporary uses for the land, and the weight of memories and that of the law.