WASHINGTON —
“John,” the editor of a small Native American tribal newspaper, asked that VOA protect his identity. His paper, like an estimated 72% of media outlets in Indian Country, is owned and funded by the tribal government. And because the government controls the purse strings, leaders say they have the right to control what gets printed.
“That’s why my paper is kind of tame,” he said.
He writes about community events, school sports, births and deaths, national news that affects the tribe, but said he never reports on tribal affairs —unless, that is, it is something that makes the leadership look good.
“I wrote something [negative] a few years back and almost lost my paper,” he said. Had the tribal government cut funds as they’d threatened, he would have had to shut down operations.
Because they have long been overlooked by mainstream media, citizens of the 574 federally recognized Native American tribes in the U.S. have always relied on their tribes for news and information that affect their daily lives.
The 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA) made it illegal for tribal governments “to make or enforce any law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
Many tribes have laws protecting First Amendment rights, but enforcement may be lax, and because tribes are sovereign, federal courts don’t have jurisdiction over civil rights violations.
In a 1998 article, “Protecting the First Amendment in Indian Country,” the late Yakama journalist Richard LaCourse described a number “interfering actions” tribal governments may take to stifle press freedom: hiring unqualified reporters on the basis of blood relation or political unity; firing staff; cutting funds; censoring stories before publication; blocking access to tribal government records and proceedings.
In 2018, the Native American Journalists Association, or NAJA, launched its Red Press Initiative, reaching out to members and asking them about the state of press freedom in their communities.
Only 65 media directors and producers responded, along with nearly 400 consumers. While not an exhaustive survey, it demonstrates that press freedom in Indian Country is inconsistent.
About half of the respondents said they faced censorship; a third said they were “sometimes or always” required to get tribal leadership’s approval before publishing stories; nearly a quarter said tribal government records and financial information were “probably” not open to journalists; and nearly half said they had faced intimidation or harassment by tribal officials or community members.
Today, NAJA says that a handful of tribal newspapers have managed to overcome these challenges and can serve as models for other tribes.
The Navajo Times, based in Window Rock, Arizona, is one of a handful of Native newspapers to have achieved full editorial independence, but it was decades in coming.
The paper began as a monthly newsletter in late 1959 to keep off-reservation boarding school students up to date on happenings back home. Over the next two decades, editors came and went, and relations with the tribal government were uneven.
In 1982, Peterson Zah was elected Navajo chief, replacing Peter MacDonald, who had held a stranglehold on the office since 1971. MacDonald was, according to one Navajo Times reporter, a man who didn’t like to “work openly and honestly with the press.”
But Zah felt differently and pledged to restore honesty and accountability to the tribal government, along with press freedom, which he said was “absolutely necessary in a true democracy.”
Zah lived up to his promises, supporting the paper even when it was critical of his policies.
“We were completely independent, if not downright ornery,” former editor Mark Trahant would later tell the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
But Zah lasted only one term. MacDonald was reelected chairman in 1986 and shortly afterward closed down the Times—which had publicly endorsed his opponent—firing most of its staff. It relaunched four months later as a weekly paper.
In 1989, a Senate Indian Affairs committee investigating corruption in Indian Country heard testimony that MacDonald was siphoning tribal money to fund his expensive lifestyle.
“It was a time of great turmoil and political divisiveness,” said Navajo Times CEO and publisher Tom Arviso, Jr., who had come to the paper as a sports writer in 1983 and by 1989 had been promoted to editor. “We just tried to tell the story of what was going on with the leadership and let readers decide for themselves.”
The Navajo Times covered it all, said Arviso, provoking anger among MacDonald’s supporters.