Editor Theodore Hudon Beaulieu (left) and publisher Augustus Hudon Beaulieu (right) stand in the press room of The Tomahawk, White Earth's newspaper.  Augustus founded White Earth's first newspaper, The Progress, in 1886 but was forced to suspend publication for more than a year when the local Indian agent seized the printing press. The Indian agent's arugment that the paper intended to influence local American Indians against the agent was overturned by a U.S. federal court. The Progress analyzed federal Indian policies and made no secret of its political views.

The Progress ceased publication in 1889, and in 1903, the Beaulieus re-introduced the paper to the White Earth community as The Tomahawk. Augustus Beaulieu stepped away from the paper in 1905 and returned in 1915, with a renewed focus on equal rights and citizenship for American Indians. After his death in 1917, the paper changed hands several times before shutting down in 1927, three years after the Indian Citizenship Act.