Thaioronióhte Dan David, a renowned Kanienâkehá:ka journalist who helped establish the news department of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, has died.
His sister Marie David said he died Jan. 12 after a long struggle with cancer. He was 73.
Karyn Pugliese, an APTN host and producer and David’s friend and colleague, said his death is a huge loss for the dozens of Indigenous journalists he mentored and whose careers he helped launch.
“We call him the father of APTN News,” Pugliese said in an interview Sunday.
“He was an icon. Dan David was Indigenous journalism in this country ⦠he made a lot people really think about journalism.”
Pugliese said David helped found APTN News in 2000 â then called InVision News â to transform the way Indigenous stories are told. He witnessed news reports of his own community of Kanehsatà :ke, in southwestern Quebec, being distorted by mainstream media during the siege of Kanehsatà :ke, commonly referred to as the Oka Crisis, in the summer of 1990.
The crisis was a 78-day standoff between Kanienâkehá:ka protesters, Quebec police, the RCMP and the army over the expansion of a golf course and other developments on disputed lands in Kanehsatà :ke.
Pugliese said David, who was reporting for CBC at the time, was pulled away from the coverage of the conflict, that also saw two fatalities.
“Some of his family were involved in the land protection there at the time when the army came in. And there was Dan, with all the sources and all the connections, and he wasn’t allowed to report on it because he was considered biased,” Pugliese said.
Loreen Pindera, a retired CBC journalist and friend of David’s, said it irked David that mainstream media was feeding into stereotypes of Indigenous people as dangerous and ignoring the cause of the activists.
“He was passionate about journalism and he expected a lot of journalists,” she said in an interview.
Soon after, David was asked by his boss and mentor at CBC to help launch the South African Broadcasting Corporation in post-apartheid South Africa.
“In South Africa, he was working with journalists from all walks of life, including those who had been on opposite sides of the apartheid years. He was very affected by that,” Pindera said.
That experience gave him the tools and knowledge to establish APTN’s news department.
“He would talk about that experience for years afterwards as he was training us at APTN,” Pugliese said.
“He believed that journalism was for the people ⦠I think that over the years, the way mainstream changed the way that it told [Indigenous] stories, it is largely due to APTN, and that’s Dan’s legacy.”
And, Pugliese said, he trained reporters with expertise and a sense of humour.
“I remember once we invited him to a conference and instead of registering as an ‘elder,’ he registered himself as ‘old fart,'” Pugliese recalled.
“He was funny.”
David was also an empathetic newsroom leader and would listen to everybody in the newsroom, she said, adding that he felt like everybody’s ideas were important.
He was also humble, she said.
“Which is something that Indigenous people really value in each other â being proud without thinking too highly of himself.”
In the nearly 50 years he spent in the industry, David also served as chair of diversity at Toronto Metropolitan University and taught at the University of Toronto.
His sister Marie said he was the third oldest out of eight siblings. He spent his final years biking to raise money for cancer research.
“Since his passing, many people have reached out to us,” she said.
“They said how much they’re going to miss him and how much he gave to them just by teaching them.”
