Waskaganish’s own magazine, The Portage, has gone national. It will come out on a monthly basis and will be available throughout Cree territory. . We visited the offices of The Portage at the Gathering Place building in Waskaganish and talked to its Editor in Chief, Derek McLeod. (The portage can be contacted at 819.895.2483. Ed.)

Derek McLeod: It was in May 1997 Charles Hester that me and sat down together. We talked about how print communications was such a powerful tool compared to video communication and audio communications. We talked about dreams and our dreams and what they meant for communities and the Cree nation as a whole. We also talked about a dream that I had when I was a kid, and I think Neil knows a little bit about this. (Laughter) I wanted to be in news as a journalist. And I remember growing up next door to him. He would take his camera out. We would pretend we were going after a news story. That was many many years ago. (Laughter) I guess we parted ways and then later I saw him following his dream. I guess that sort of kick started me to thinking about what I wanted to do. We started talking about a community magazine. And that’s how the portage came into effect.

Do you get a bit of the reaction from the community?

Derek: I’ve had elders sit me down and say “I want to talk to you about what you wrote.” There’s feedback sometimes that I find a little shocking. People will read into a story much more than what is actually in the story. One simple sentence in the story could be construed in so many different ways. You try and cover it as unbiased as possible. But no matter what you’ll never ever satisfy everybody. With most of the stories that we cover, we try to cover them in the light we feel is going to try and help the community for itself. We’re right in the community it is so easy for someone to walk in and throw the paper in your face. We try to tell the stories as honestly as we can.

How will your going regional affect the focus of the stories?

Derek: We know we have to change the content of the paper, right now we’re mainly focusing on Waskaganish. We know some want to read about Waskaganish who are outside the community, their home community. We have subscribers for example in Chisasibi who have no connection to Waskaganish other than reading about it. So we want to cover people like the guy next door. So we will change the content but not the focus.

I’ve had people come up and tell things to write about in terms of opinions. And I get phone calls like that, when I do get them I try and encourage them to write. That’s one area that should be developed in the Cree nation.

It must get hectic once in a while?

Derek:

(Laughter) let’s just say there some gray hairs in the past couple months.

Sometimes you try and write a story to meet a deadline, you are trying to make sure they are happy with what they are getting.