Funding Rural | Episode #15 | Season 3: Sue Matters “Radio on the Reservation: Continuing an Oral History Tradition”
Philanthropy has long been a champion of public radio, providing grants for everything from infrastructure and new buildings to special reporting projects. Recent federal cuts have made philanthropic support even more critical to keep public radio stations afloat: across the country, in rural and remote areas, and especially on Tribal lands. Sue Matters is the station manager at KWSO 91.9 FM, which is a non-commercial radio station that is licensed, owned and operated by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs in Oregon. She shares her experience, spanning nearly 40 years, on the reservation’s radio and what the station means to the culture and well-being of listeners.
“Radio for storytelling, for language, for listening to the voice and the wisdom of elders… radio is perfect. It’s an authentic way to continue the legacy of an oral tradition.” —Sue Matters
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About Sue Matters
“Anytime somebody goes missing, the faster you can draw attention to it, the better.” —Sue Matters
Discussion Questions
- Are you and your colleagues up to speed on the closure of The Corporation for Public Broadcasting? Are you doing all you can to elevate community voices in the rural and Tribal areas you serve?
- If you were to think of community public radio stations as ‘third spaces’ what comes to mind? How would the facts and programming support this vision?
Resources
- KWSO Staff – Warm Springs
- Submitter: Sue Matters On Behalf Of: KWSO radio and Oregon Community Media affiliates Committee
- Warm Springs radio station KWSO loses major federal funding, seeking new revenue source
- Oregon tribal radio station battles to survive public broadcasting federal cuts | kgw.com
- Tribal radio stations hit hard by federal broadcasting cuts – ICT
- How tribal radio stations are preparing for a future without the Corporation for Public Broadcasting | Nieman Journalism Lab
- Native Public Media
- Public Media Bridge Fund
- The Missing and Endangered Persons Alert Is Live Nationwide Today – Opportunity Editorial
“Unless something really bad happens in a rural place, usually, the mainstream media outlets don’t really pay much attention.” —Sue Matters
Transcript: Episode #13 | Season 3: Sue Matters “Radio on the Reservation: Continuing an Oral History Tradition”
Erin Borla 0:10
It’s funding rural. I’m Erin Borla, trustee and executive director of the Roundhouse foundation in sisters Oregon.
Erin Borla 0:17
Philanthropy has long been a champion of Public Radio, providing grants for everything from infrastructure and new buildings to special reporting projects. Federal cuts have made philanthropic support even more critical to keep public radio stations afloat across the country, in rural and remote areas and especially on tribal lands. Sue matters is the station manager at kwso radio, which is a non commercial radio station that is licensed, owned and operated by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs here in Oregon. Money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting community service grants made up 40% of the station’s budget, but recently, those funds have been rescinded by the federal government. The Warm Springs reservation was created by treaty in 1855 and is home to the Wasco Paiute and Warm Springs tribes. It’s a huge reservation encompassing more than 1000 square miles here in Central Oregon, it’s an area where cell reception is patchy. Internet can be hard to come by, and getting your news by radio is sometimes the only way to stay informed and connected. I started by asking Sue about kwso and the needs it meets for the community,
Sue Matters 1:26
unless something really bad happens in a rural place, usually, the mainstream media outlets don’t really pay much attention. So it’s a way to, you
Sue Matters 1:37
know, share information that’s useful to people. I think the other unique thing about kwso and all the tribal radio stations is that there’s a real interest in doing things. And every station is different depending on its community. Really does reflect the community. But here, you know, trying to
Sue Matters 1:57
preserve and even restore languages, there’s three tribes in Warm Springs, the Wasco Warm Springs and Paiute, three distinct languages, three distinct cultural backgrounds. And so language preservation, revitalization, just cultural practices and life ways like trying to, you know, share information about that to keep it going, you know, because not everybody had a family member who was, you know, knowledgeable enough to share information. I mean, everybody’s different, just like everywhere and so kind of those identity kind of things super important to us, health, trying to impact health in a positive way in the community in all shapes and forms, just working on trying to make it a healthier and more robust place to be.
Erin Borla 2:50
Do you have community favorite programs that folks always call and say, Oh, this is my favorite. I love when this is on. I always listen.
Sue Matters 2:57
I mean, usually when we prompt people, we can get them to say something like that, but we’re actually in the middle of doing an information ecosystem assessment, a little project that we picked up with the National Federation of community broadcasters, and it’s been interesting. I mean, really, people like just the local news and information. They like to know where the yard sale is. They like to know, you know, what’s going on, definitely when something bad does happen, when there’s an emergency situation or a wildfire, that kind of thing, people tune in for that. And so, you know, it is really just the the unique content that we can provide is local. You know, nobody’s gonna do Warm Springs as good as us. So that’s what they like. They like our morning show. We have we’re a public radio station that really probably sounds more like a commercial radio station, in that, we’re a little bit lively. We play a pretty wide variety of music, and that’s typical, too. Just radio in general, more people listen in the morning because it’s part of their routine. In fact, our show is called the morning routine, but our morning host puts some effort into the entertainment factor. And there’s just a lot of like, little programs and segments that break up announcements that break up the music, and then that’s like a mix of contemporary music, old and new. And then the other big thing that people really like is, we call it talking drum and it’s basically the same format. Is what we do all the rest of the time, except instead of contemporary music, it’s like drum music from recorded from powwows, or taken off of CDs or downloaded MP threes, that kind of thing, of drum groups and that kind of thing. And some of that is social dances. You know, tribes powwow is kind of its own cultural thing that happens that’s a bit of a mash up of a lot of different tribes, but each tribe has its own, like, sort of unique social dance songs and and so we try and share some of that too,
Erin Borla 4:56
talking about the federal funding cuts, particularly. Around the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, that was $9 billion across the country. What does that mean for kwso and other tribal radio stations?
Sue Matters 5:11
Well, you know, it’s still, there’s a lot of unknown. Still there’s a we think so there’s a couple things. One thing I know that’s happening, I think the question is, how is it going to be sustained over time? I think initially, stations, and we certainly have benefited from media coverage in that are like donations, like our one time donations, and there’s been an incredible increase in our sustaining membership program, so people are seeing the stories and going online. And, you know, donating some stations are actively doing like pledge drives and things like that. We’ve never really had to do that so and, you know, so we’ll see how we deal with that. But we want to keep having those sort of small individual contributions come in, because it makes a huge difference. And we have a program in place and a mechanism to accept that money. Not all tribal stations do, and they’re working on it now. But the big picture things, there’s an organization called the public media company, I think that’s what it’s called. And they have gotten together some national foundations and put some money together to assist sort of I think the phrase is the most vulnerable of the radio stations. So I think it’s been radio stations that have the CPB Community Service grant make up more than, like 30% of their funding. So the initial list looked at finances from 2023 they’re going to update to 2024 with the help of CPB, is providing that information to them, and then some amount of money to try and fill that gap will be distributed. So we were on the initial list, you know, so we don’t know, but there’s that. But again, that’s just for a year. There is now talk in this whole hullaboo of rescission, a senator from South Dakota had said, I’m going to come up with some money. And I don’t know that he ever did, but maybe he did, but we are hearing that the Bureau of Indian Affairs has come up with some money. But it’s all very unknown, like, what does that mean? Of those 50 something radio stations that are owned or, you know, providing service to tribes. 36 had the Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding. So this money that we think is there or is quickly being reallocated, we go to those 36 stations and one of those, and again, we don’t know what the amount is, and we also know that, you know, it’s like a one time deal, so, so maybe that gets us two years down the road. But then what you know, so people are trying to think about it. There’s also all these other consequences. The public radio satellite system is the way in which public programs are shared across the country. It also connects stations for the purpose of, like, emergency alerts. So there’s, like, all these other levels. There’s CPB had negotiated music licensing rights. So that’s gonna, we don’t know if that’s going to be passed on to somebody else, or if stations are individually going to have to pick up those costs. So there’s just, you know, a lot of things people are still figuring out. So
Erin Borla 8:24
well, what prior to these cuts, what did your funding model look like?
Sue Matters 8:29
So, and I guess the good news for us too is the tribe’s going to also fill any gaps at this point, with the caveat that we continue to hustle hard to find money from other places. So, so we have operated. And the numbers I’ve been using are, you know, we spend about $600,000 a year. We have six full time staff. That’s a big chunk of that. You know, we have to pay electricity and things like that, too. And then about 40% comes from the tribe. We’re in our we’re in the tribal government’s health and human services branch. And so our money comes from there, about 40% the other 40% came from the CPB Community Service grant. And then about 20% it’s probably less, but I like to try and make it be 20% is from other sources. So underwriting memberships, we get some lease money for some companies that use our tower, and so, you know, just like I said, hustling up business however we can, and we hope to, you know, get more underwriting in and keep the memberships growing and the donations, yeah, so until then, the tribe will definitely front us the money, but then we have these other two funds that might be out there that might come to us, we don’t know. So we feel pretty secure, at least for the immediate future. But again, it’s that long term. And also this is like a moment in time. And in general, when you run any sort of small shop, it’s always good to have a plan, you know. And we like to try and push the bar up all. The time, or to do more or to do something new, and the whole landscape of media, especially public media, has changed over the last 1520, years, as far as different platforms connecting with people online, just as much, if not more so than in the you know, old fashioned broadcast way. We have a kwso app people can download, they can listen on their phone, which is we know, we knew the future was there, and for being a small station in a sort of off the beaten path place, we have tried really hard to do those 21st Century things that we know, sort of the big public media organizations were doing. And the importance of it is because that’s where people are at, you know. So even with sketchy cell phone connectivity or not being able to pay your bill, you can still find free Wi Fi. People are still, you know, they use those tools even if it’s they’re at a deficit. So
Erin Borla 10:56
this show in particular is about philanthropy and how philanthropy can better serve indigenous and rural communities. So as you look at the budget cuts, even if you’re feeling confident in the short term, many other stations may not be in that place. So what do you think needs to happen? How can the private sector and philanthropy step up and support some of this work that needs to continue well, and
Sue Matters 11:21
for sure, the the for the pub, for the the native stations, there is a fund that has begun to collect money for, I mean, there are people that are, it’s crazy. In the New York Times article, they also visited Keeley K i Li in South Dakota. They they’re older than us, even, but they are always like, hard luck. It was like, you know, the their roof leaks into their studio. Sometimes they’re like, selling their record collection to try and raise money. So it’s so there is a need native public media has is working with, I think, the Arizona community foundation to establish a fund. They already have a fund for, like, emergency response to help stations when something bad happens, but this would be to support, like, the neediest of the stations to stay on the air. Because the other thing that’s, I think, interesting and extra unique about Native stations. And full disclosure, I’m not native, so just to say, but I’ve lived here in Warm Springs. It’s going to be 40 years this year. And so maybe it’s, maybe it’s already 40 years. What year is this five? Let’s see, I think I came, yeah, I came in 85 anyway. And so for natives, you know, there’s really at least here in in Oregon, the tradition of, you know, sharing information and communicating with one another is very much like orally. It was spoken language. It wasn’t a written language. You know, people like were face to face and would just communicate that kind of thing. And so radio, I feel like, for storytelling, for language, for listening to the sort of the voice and the wisdom of elders. Like radio is perfect. You know, it’s just, it’s exactly, I think, the way that an authentic way to continue that legacy of an oral tradition. And so, I don’t know. I think that’s true everywhere. And some native stations, it’s so cool. We don’t have any, like, fluent speakers on staff. If we did, we tell them to speak. But other places, Navajos are very strong in their language. Other places too, where they’ve got, like, people just reading the news in their native language. And it’s, it’s pretty powerful really, that and I think just the pieces of, you know, doing programming with youth is a powerful thing. And also with elders, I think both those spectrums, you know, so honoring elders and learning from them, and then also just trying to prepare youth with grounding them as much as possible, with their sort of, you know, culture and heritage and helping to reinforce their identity and their good, you know, mental health, that kind of thing.
Erin Borla 14:06
Is there a time that kwso came through big for the community? Was it, you know, after a natural disaster, is there some one moment that you were like, This is a defining moment that the station showed up, in a way? I mean, it sounds like you’re there every day with culture and heritage and intergenerational work and community support. But sometimes when we face disaster, is when we look to those organizations that you know are you have trust and faith in.
Sue Matters 14:37
I mean, I think we have fires all the time. So there’s that when there’s really big fires, you know, there was that, what was that 2020 where it was like covid had just started, but then we also had that giant lion’s head fire, and just, you know, you’d walk outside and it was otherworldly. Everybody in Central Oregon remembers that it was just like, so smoky. And, like, weird. And so that was a pretty big fire. But we’ve had fires previous to that. There’s one time I remember, and I think it just, it’s like, just a memory of mine. I don’t think it’s the most impressive thing. So there’s two things I want to talk about, covid, but there was a fire. God, was this the flat tire fire? That’s an unofficial title for a fire. But anyway, it was a fire that was sparked by somebody on the highway, 26 Dragon, something that’s made sparks. And so there was, like all these fire starts along the road, like they didn’t stop. And it was like a public meeting to just sort of read, you know, they do that after, after they’re dealing with the fire. And it was just we did really good coverage of, like, what is going on, you know, and like, where’s the fires, and how did this happen, and, you know, and I think we even did a video, and, you know, put that out there of the public meeting. And it was kind of our first, I think, big effort to do some video coverage, which is, like, we’d really like to grow that we’re sort of stalled a little bit. So there’s that kind of thing just being, being that, like fire information board at the post office, but you just tune into your radio, and then, you know, just, I’ve, I’ve tried to get on the air live from a parking lot outside of fire management, because I couldn’t get through because the fire was between them and us, you know, that kind of thing. So we are pretty good at finding the people who know what’s going on and sharing that with the community, especially in the initial outbreak of these things. And again, all central Oregonians know when a big fire starts. It’s not like there’s a huge team in place. You know, the incident management teams haven’t necessarily come in locally. We’re so strong in Central Oregon that people do know what they’re doing. But it’s not like there’s immediately a fire Information Officer, unless they’re sort of pre stationed waiting for a fire to happen. Anyway, that’s where I think just local media and like, sheriff’s offices, and, you know, people like that really are critical in saying, Okay, you need to evacuate now, you know, so that kind of stuff we do, and I think that’s people really do look to us, and that’s been mentioned a lot in our survey we’ve been doing. You know, I need to know what’s going on with the fire. The other thing, I think, where we really, you know, I think we were already established as a community institution. That’s always like, a phrase I like, and I like us to be that. But when covid came, that was a strange, strange time for everybody, but we like stayed on the air. We didn’t alter our programming. Hardly at all we have, I think there was three staff that would work. You know, there would be one of us in the building at a time. So that kind of we all live locally. We drove a car by ourselves to get here, but we pretty much executed things as we always do, just with less people and in a less robust way as we came through that. We also did some interviews, some video interviews with people just about their experience with covid. And I haven’t looked at it in a long time, but so there’s a series of videos of just trying to capture that, you know, what has this been like for you that I think was really interesting and, you know, kind of humble. We also did some pretty good, I think, public service announcements. We worked with the Portland Area Indian Health Board, who had the idea that we could make some PSAs for them, and it was so they hooked us up with a variety of people, but we mostly did phone interviews of just, you know, public service announcements, encouraging people to be safe and to survive, that kind of thing. So, so we did a lot of programming out of that that, I think, was impressive. And then we just, we stayed there for people, you know, we were, like, consistent, and we had a our covid team would do, like, a month, like, there was a daily report on how many cases, and, you know, we pushed that out on our website every day. So we were really trying to be as transparent, I guess, as possible, and this is the situation, and we were connected. And it’s nice when the people who do know what’s going on trust you to relay that. So I think those were that was a difficult time, but I feel like we made it through, and we’re pretty consistent for people. Another This is now just, I’ll just ramble on, so just stop me. But another covid era thing, you know, initially, when the kids stopped going to school, they would just send the bus out to deliver lunch. And these like packets of, you know, work for kids. And part of the packet was language lessons, because at our Warm Springs, k3 at Academy, language class is an option for kids one of the three languages. So they would send out packets, and then the language teachers came back and said, well, the parents say they’re getting the packets, but they don’t know how to say the words, because, you know, not everybody reads phonetic however, whatever that’s called. I’m not a linguist, yeah. And so they came in and recorded it, so we were able to, like, say, go to, you know, go to the website and click on the link, and you can hear how it sounds. And so that’s cool. And, like, we still use those lessons today, so, but it was a neat idea they had that we could fill that gap a little. And then, you know, then there was online school. And it was different again, but that initial, yeah, the bus and the lunches and their work packets, until summer hit,
Erin Borla 20:28
as a parent who lived through that with young kids, I was, I can’t imagine having to teach in another language at home and manage our home and do all those things. I think you know all those examples you shared are just another way that local public radio is a lifeline for especially rural communities.
Erin Borla 20:51
I don’t know if you feel comfortable talking about this, and if not, it’s fine, but the are you comfortable talking about the MEP alert
Speaker 1 20:59
a little bit. Okay, I’m not all that knowledgeable, but yeah,
Erin Borla 21:04
maybe it’s just a teaser so similar to the Amber Alert, my understanding is there is a new alert that has been approved by the FCC for missing endangered persons, which we all know and understand the crisis around missing and murdered indigenous relatives that happens a lot on reservations. Can you talk a little bit about the new MEP alert, and
Erin Borla 21:29
maybe just what you know about it, and if there’s other information we can, we can add in,
Sue Matters 21:34
yeah, I believe it went live last week. I think it was the eighth it went live. So, so the way we do we so we have to, by law, and would we want to anyway? The Emergency Alert System, it’s called so we have a, like a machine in our rack of equipment that’s connected to our signal, and then it’s, there’s also sort of an online piece to it, so that alerts can be delivered, you know, digitally, and that’ll go straight into the machine and like, you know, that’s when you hear the like, the tone, and it says, This isn’t, you know, a test, a test of the Emergency Alert System. And that happens every week. We do tests, even sometimes a couple times a week, to just make sure the system works. That’s all that is mostly the kind of alerts we get here. Sometimes it’s an Amber Alert. Sometimes it’s weather related. So like, there’s a central Oregon area alert system. So a lot of times, the National Weather Service is who issues alerts for us. And so this missing persons one, yeah, it’s like an Amber Alert. And it’s interesting, because I do think we need to do some work on like, what if our public safety department wanted to issue that alert, like, what’s the mechanism for that? Or how do we do that? So there’s still some things to be learned. But anytime somebody goes missing, the faster you can draw attention to it, the better you know. And that’s everything from you know, people go missing for all sorts of reasons, but regardless of it, the faster a community can take action to find out who knows what or what might have happened or where they are. We have people who are missing that are just missing, still years later, and it seems crazy if there had been the ability to say, you know, okay, so and so left the store at this time, and we haven’t seen them. There might have been someone who, you know, would have been like, Oh, I saw that car, you know. But then as time passes, that’s less useful. So I think it’s the same thing where, if somebody goes missing, you know, it would be an alert. We get those often on email from like, public safety departments, sheriffs or police departments where there’s, you know, a missing elder or something. But that’s not like pushing it out to the whole world the way the Emergency Alert System will, because a tone will come across and it’ll just be this person is missing. They were last seen at this is what they look like. If you know anything, call the officials. And I mean, it could, it potentially will save lives, but also beyond that, it, you know, hopefully, will help resolve things for families too, or, you know, the people who care about that person who’s missing? Yeah, you’ve
Erin Borla 24:19
been in Warm Springs 40 years you’ve been, have had roles, on the air, off the air. What does kwso mean to you personally?
Sue Matters 24:29
I mean, I’m pretty proud of kws So and actually all the people who’ve contributed, like over the years, even when I wasn’t here, just being because most of the staff is from here, it’s like, really, you know, creates almost a personal connection to the listeners of the community. And because, you know, when you live here, you just get things that other people don’t get. And so I definitely think we have improved. We’re always, like, looking to shift things around, to just be better Radio. Yeah, you know, it’s important to not be stagnant. And even though every time I tell my staff like I have this new idea, and they all roll their eyes at me, it’s like, just stop. But because we do kind of shift as we need to, or as we have a good idea we have, I’ll just talk about this one idea I had a couple years ago that has now turned into a an unfunded project. But we call it the campus area. It’s sort of the in the population center across the highway from where we’re located, and it historically was like the government center here on the reservation. So the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Health Service, was there. That’s where their workers would live also, but it’s also where, like, the store is, and, you know, it was always kind of the what’s called the agency area. There’s three voting districts on the reservation and the population centers in the agency area. So we’re trying to develop a self guided walking history tour of the campus area, in part, because I think kids would find it interesting, like, there’s things they don’t know. But then also for the purpose of, like, cars pulling in off the highway to buy an Indian taco or something, if we have a QR code, they could scan it and then do this, like self guided tour. So we’ve been collecting interviews for a couple years of people’s like, you know, reminiscing about when they were growing up and that kind of thing. So we’re putting that together, but it’s like a whole other thing besides radio. Although we’ve, like, we’ve we’ve shared a lot of those interviews, so it’s also been on the air. But we want to create this. We also need to learn about cell phone apps that you can geocache locations for. So it’s like trying to learn new things and do things just because it seems like a good idea, and it’s probably not the most important location on the reservation, but it’s kind of an easy one to focus on. And then maybe that’ll lead to other kind of place based projects anyway, the fact that my staff tolerates and supports like these ideas that I have the other like, another thing we’ve done the last couple years. And I don’t really know how we started doing this, but we did, there’s a Thursday market in Warm Springs, like during the summer, and it’s just on Thursdays from 1030 till two. And originally, we were working with the community action team. They would provide, like, the pop up tents and tables for people, and we’d set up in this campus area. And in part, it was to help distribute the fresh harvest kits from the high desert Food and Farm Alliance, so they give 30, like, bags of produce to people for free. So it was kind of anchored in that. But it also was a little bit of a small business opportunity to set up and sell whatever energy drinks, or too many energy drinks in the world, but, you know, something like that, or home baked goods, or, you know, some sort of value added food, or, you know, jewelry makers, you know, on a Thursday, maybe they wouldn’t set up here. They could set up. And it’s the idea is that the local community supports it. I mean, visitors can stop too. So anyway, we started that a couple years ago, and I think it was because the food would always be distributed on Fridays, and they were saying, but we deliver on Thursdays, so where can we keep the food? And I said, why don’t we just do something on Thursday, you know? And so, and since then, like a pavilion, you know, a nice covered area has been built here, and so the Thursday market moved into there, and so we just had our last one last week, and we just show up and do whatever it is we’ve got to give away, or if we’re doing interviews with people, it’s a really great community engagement opportunity. And a lot of other programs have been taking advantage of that. So it’s like a good community thing. But anyway, again, something we think up and then do. And my like staff, you know, just they come along with me, you know, they learn new skills. We learn how to fit 20 tables in a back of a small car and things like that. So anyway, I appreciate them, and I think we, and they allow me to say, No, you got to do this better, you know. And so I’m just proud that we’re still here and that people, like people, will just call the radio station to ask a question. It might not be anything we know anything about, but they think we will, or they’ll trust that we have the right answer. And so just knowing that we’re trusted, I think is like we’re trusted and we’re continuing to evolve, and people do think we’re doing good work. I think
Erin Borla 29:27
it’s a it’s a tough time. I can imagine trying to work through the issues with federal funding challenges, but appreciate your your candor and your willingness to share and be in here today and know that we’re all trying to figure out best ways to support support you and support programs like you and stations like you across the country.
Sue Matters 29:48
Yeah. Well, I appreciate your interest. You.
Erin Borla 30:10
In public media, television and radio is so much more than I think we we think about just in the general scheme of things, it’s not just the free television programming, it’s the language lessons like Sue described. It’s the farm report and the weather report in these rural places that are so important to the farming and ranching communities. It’s emergency alerts and disaster preparedness. Those things are so critical to these communities that are further away from where decisions are made and where the power is held. There’s an opportunity for philanthropy to step up and support these things. Round House has committed a million dollars to the public media bridge fund in order to support rural and remote places and stations to ensure that their voice gets heard. In addition, we’ve contributed 500,000 to the native public media endowment to ensure the continued sustainability of these stations across the country. Roundhouse is a place based funder, like many of you, this infrastructure and support is critical across the country. So we encourage other funders to consider investing in these larger national movements to elevate the voices of the communities that you serve. After all, Public Radio, in a way, is a third space. And you know, in philanthropy, we’re all about supporting third spaces, places where we can connect and convene and learn and share knowledge. Rural radio stations do that and so much more, the information they share literally keeps people alive, whether it’s wildfire information, flood information, weather updates, putting out the word on a lost person. What an easy way for philanthropy to help rural and indigenous communities, by coming alongside organizations like kwso, who are already loved and trusted, and most importantly, doing the work on the ground. The missing and endangered persons alert went live this past September. Now is the time to ensure that that alert can be utilized and help support missing and murdered indigenous relatives. That’s a topic that we are all interested in supporting. For more information on the MEP alert, how to support public media. Check out funding rural.com you you.
Transcribed by AI; please forgive any mistakes.
