Mark Trahant

Mark Trahant is the editor of Indian Country Today. He has been writing about Indian country for more than three decades. Trahant reports and comments on events and trends on his blog at TrahantReports.Com and on Facebook, Twitter (@TrahantReports) and other social media. He does a weekly audio commentary for Native Voice One that is broadcast via tribal radio stations across the country. And, every day for more than a decade, Trahant has written a 140-character rhyme based on a daily news story (@newsrimes4lines).

He’s been a reporter for PBS’ Frontline series. The Frontline piece, The Silence, was about sexual abuse by priests in an Alaska Native village. He also has been editor-in-residence at the University of Idaho in the spring of 2011 and again in 2012. He taught courses on social media, the American West and editorial writing. In 2009 and 2010 Trahant was a Kaiser Media Fellow writing about health care reform focused on programs the government already operates, such as the Indian Health Service. He was recently the Atwood Chair of Journalism at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and a faculty member at the University of North Dakota as the Charles R. Johnson Endowed Professor of Journalism.

Trahant is the former editor of the editorial page for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer where he chaired the daily editorial board, directed a staff of writers, editors, and a cartoonist. He has also worked at The Seattle Times, The Arizona Republic, The Salt Lake Tribune, Moscow-Pullman Daily News, The Navajo Times, Navajo Nation Today and the Sho-Ban News. Trahant is a member of Idaho’s Shoshone-Bannock Tribe and former president of the Native American Journalists Association. Trahant is also president of the board of directors of Vision Maker Media, an important funding vehicle for Native films and media.