'Father of APTN News': Kanien’kehá:ka journalist Thaioronióhte Dan David dead at 73

Thaioronióhte Dan saint david, a renowned Kanien’kehá:ka journalist who helped found the intelligence section of the primaeval 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 — then called InVision News — 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 Kanien’kehá: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.

"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.

"He was passionate about journalism and he expected a lot of journalists," she said in an interview.

"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 — 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."

Fakiha Baig is a journalist with the Canadian Press.

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