Native American newspapers fight stereotypes, tell their own stories

By Alicia Benjamin-Samuels
freedomforum.org

03.28.01

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One of a series of articles about ethnic newspapers — how they cover their communities, and what mainstream newspapers can learn from their approach.

Much about Native American history and culture is forgotten.

More than 500 federally recognized tribes exist within the U.S., and each has its own distinct language, unique culture and history.

Yet, many trite images of Native Americans still dominate the consciousness of the American psyche, writes Cornel D. Pewewardy in a 1999 article in the journal Multicultural Education.

Negative Native American stereotypes have been used in media images for centuries. Remember Injun Joe in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer? In Twain's book, characters repeatedly refer to Injun Joe's evil "Indian blood."

"The English language includes various phrases and words that relegate the Indigenous Peoples to an inferior status," writes Pewewardy. He refers to the following phrases as examples: "The only good Indian is a dead Indian," "Indian Giver," "drunken Indians," "dumb Indians," and "Redskins."

These stereotypes are included not only in film and television, but also in newspapers, according to reporters who talked to freedomforum.org about their work at Native American newspapers and how they view the mainstream press in their areas.

Understanding Native American culture
Can reporters write accurately about American Indian people when they don't know much about their culture? Not without understanding the historical factors that affect the present status of Native Americans, said Wilma Mankiller, former chief of the Cherokee nation and a Freedom Forum First Amendment Center trustee, at a 1993 lecture at Sweet Briar College in Virginia.

"Because there are a whole lot of historical factors that have played a part in our being where we are today, I think that to even begin to understand our contemporary issues and problems, you have to understand a little bit about that history," Mankiller said.

For example, consider the Trail of Tears.

"An oppressed and ruined people, stripped of the property and deprived of the protection which were repeatedly promised and solemnly guaranteed to them by the Government of the United States, appeal to the Congress of those United States for reparation," wrote principal chief of the Cherokee people, John Rogers, in an April 1844 document he presented to the 28th U.S. Congress as a memorial to the eviction of Cherokees from Georgia that was called the Trail of Tears. "If these be not sufficient to procure your interposition on our behalf, nothing will be left to us and our people but oppression, dispersion, despair and death," Rogers wrote.

Georgia, aided by the federal government during the winter of 1838, had forced more than 14,000 Cherokees to leave the state. The Cherokees marched more than 1,000 miles to what is now Oklahoma. More than 4,000 people died along the way from cold, starvation and disease.

Birth of Native American press
The state where the trail began was also home to the first Native American newspaper, created in 1828.

The Cherokee Phoenix, founded by Elias Boudinot, was published in New Echota, Ga., the first capital of the Cherokee nation. Sequoyah, a Cherokee man born in Tennessee, developed a written language that served as the tool for Phoenix journalists. Sequoyah's language, which he called "Talking Leaves," consisted of a list of syllables and was completed in 1821.

Georgia silenced the Phoenix in 1835 by destroying its office and dumping its lead type into a well. But the Cherokee Nation still publishes what is now called The Cherokee Phoenix and Indian Advocate out of Tahlequah, Okla.

Today, there are approximately 280 reservation newspapers and bulletins, 320 urban Native American publications, about 100 magazines and 30 radio stations.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors estimates the percentage of Native American reporters writing for mainstream newspapers to be 0.52%. The Native American population, which makes up about 1% of the total U.S. population, numbers just under 2 million, with about half residing on Indian reservations.

Breaking down stereotypes
Native American journalists are telling their people's stories largely at specialized newspapers across the country, especially in the West. Reporters said in telephone interviews that they were fighting stereotypes constantly through their work at Native American newspapers.

Mary Pierpoint, who has worked as a reporter for the weekly Indian Country Today for two years, says working for a Native American newspaper allows her to write about "Indian people as people."

"So often what happens with mainstream coverage is they give the perception that all Indian tribes are gaming-oriented, or they see us in feathers and dancing," she said. "We're stuck in some sort of time warp."

But at Indian Country Today, Pierpoint, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, says she's able to cover Native Americans as full, dimensional people who exist in the modern world.

Mainstream reporters that cover Oklahoma and Kansas, Pierpoint's beat, tend to write about Native Americans as "oddities or characters from the past and not as living breathing people of today with stories to tell," Pierpoint said. "It seems the press is more anxious to come out when we're singing and have our feathers than when we open a new business or something like that."

As former Seattle Times columnist Mark N. Trahant said in Pictures of Our Nobler Selves, "The media has, for its own purposes, created a false image of the Native American. Too many of us have patterned ourselves after that image. It is time now that we project our own image and stop being what we never really were."

Indian Country Today, located in Rapid City, S.D., was founded in 1981. The paper, with 15,000 subscribers, is distributed in 50 states and 17 foreign countries. Indian Country Today reporters are based in the Southwest, Northeast, California, Oklahoma and Washington, D.C.

Recently, Indian Country Today has tackled such topics as American Indian nations' right to teach Native American languages and cultures in Arizona schools; the high rate of suicide among the Inuit people; and President George W. Bush's request to appoint Slade Gorton, a former Washington state senator, who the newspaper calls "anti-Indian," as a federal court judge.

Limitations of mainstream press
Mainstream journalists lack a basic understanding of Indian history and culture, Native American reporters say.

Marley Shebala, a reporter for the Navajo Times for six years, said the public and many mainstream reporters don't understand the concept of tribal sovereignty. Many people, she said, don't know that Native American tribes have sovereign powers separate and independent from the federal and state governments under the American legal system.

"Most recently that ignorance was reflected when then-presidential candidate Bush said that the U.S. had given the Indian nations land and that states should be the ones working directly with the tribes," she said.

Pierpoint agreed with Shebala: "If [reporters] don't understand sovereignty, then they shouldn't write about Native Americans."

"Reporters, I've found, don't know anything about Indian nations," Shebala said. "They don't educate themselves about Indian nations. If you don't know what you're writing about, then that will be reflected in your story."

Shebala, who is Navajo and Zuni, said that in her travels she discovered that Europeans know more about Native Americans than Americans do. "We live next door, we're side by side, but where are we in American history?"

"People think there are no more American Indians in America," she said. "[Mainstream newspapers] give the impression that we don't exist anymore."

The Navajo Times is based in Window Rock, Ariz., and has 19,000 subscribers. Founded 42 years ago, the Times is the official tribal newspaper of the Navajo people.

Last month, in a Navajo Times article titled "Subtle racism," Milton Bluehouse Jr. wrote about Native Americans and stereotypes. When visitors come to Gallup, N.M., they are persuaded to "Come and See the Indian Village," as if Navajo communities hold the same entertainment value as a "circus freak show," Bluehouse wrote.

Storefront windows in the town display Native Americans as "inanimate caricatures" who are represented as "a lifeless form void of language and culture, rational thought, frustrations felt by poverty and exploitation, and without the struggle for sovereignty, freedom and dignity," Bluehouse said.

Knowing, reporting Native American issues
Nathan J. Tohtsoni, who has worked for the Navajo Times for eight months, says good reporting on Native Americans requires a decent knowledge of American Indian culture.

"We inject our culture into our stories," Tohtsoni said. When he interviews Native American people, Tohtsoni includes the names of their clans. "Most Caucasians don't understand the clan system," he said. "I tell people my clan and they say, 'I'm related to you.' That's really unique. They say, 'Since you're my brother, we can talk more freely.' "

A clan is a group of people descended from a common ancestor. In Navajo culture, knowing the clan of the people one encounters is a key part of daily social interaction; it conveys information about others' family histories and traditions. Tohtsoni, who is Navajo, comes from the Tobaaha, Tlizilani, Tachiinii and "near the water" clans.

Janel States James, a white managing editor and reporter for the Navajo-Hopi Observer, says she has learned a great deal about Native American issues since she began working for the Observer. "It's very eye-opening to have this particular job and connection with the community here," she said.

James, who grew up in Flagstaff, Ariz., wrote an editorial last month about Arizona's approved Proposition 203, which bans bilingual education in public schools. State Attorney General Janet Napolitano said the proposition would not apply to Native American language instruction. James said it was a "crucial victory."

Observer reporters concentrate on issues that specifically affect Native Americans, James said. One particular issue that the newspaper follows closely, which James says mainstream papers in the Flagstaff area don't cover well, is the health problems of former uranium workers on Navajo land.

From the mid-1940s until the early 1970s, uranium workers were allowed to continue working with the substance "long after the government realized the danger of uranium mining," wrote S.J. Wilson in an Observer article last month. "Navajos were allowed to continue their work without protective clothing or masks," Wilson wrote.

To date, many of the uranium miners have not received the health and monetary compensation they deserve, the article says.

"Little education was given to workers," James said. "We have a number of people who are extremely ill with extraordinary medical bills. I haven't seen anything about this in The Arizona Daily Sun (in Flagstaff). They're not talking about this issue or the compensation factor."

"A lot of what we do covers the gap. We usually take a different angle than the Sun would take," James said.

Perceptions differ, however, at some mainstream newspapers as to what and how much is being covered of Native American issues.

Arizona Daily Sun editor Randy Wilson said since he started working for the newspaper five years ago, the Daily Sun has covered uranium workers' concerns fairly consistently. "I can only speak about what we've done since I've been here," Wilson added.

Daily Sun reporters have written about former uranium workers who participated in Flagstaff and Albuquerque, N.M., demonstrations and included coverage of legal cases involving uranium workers in the paper, Wilson said.

Sometimes there are time and distance challenges to covering the closest reservation, which is about 45 miles from the newspaper office, he said.

Living among other Native Americans enhances Tohtsoni's coverage of those communities, he says. Since most mainstream reporters don't live with Native Americans and haven't been exposed to many, they don't know those communities and the issues that affect the people, he said.

The mainstream newspapers only cover the more sensational stories in the Native American communities, he said. "Here (at the Navajo Times), I'm able to do more."

One topic Tohtsoni covers that he says is neglected by daily newspapers in the Window Rock area is alcohol abuse among Native Americans. His approach to the topic included family members affected by alcoholism, discussing causes and treatment.

Pierpoint, who covers 39 nations in Oklahoma and four in Kansas, said mainstream reporters aren't aware of Native American traditions that she believes should affect how certain subjects are covered.

For example, when three young Native American men died in a truck accident in Lawrence, the Lawrence Journal-World included the deceased men's names in their paper. The victims' family members were upset, Pierpoint said.

"Each tribe looks upon death in a certain way," she said. "Some tribes don't want the deceased names mentioned for a year." Mainstream journalists don't understand the customs and taboos of Native Americans, she said. "You can present the news but you have to do it in a way that's culturally acceptable."

However, the names of people killed is public information, and mainstream newspaper editors regard withholding them as likely to raise suspicions of a coverup.

Sometimes Pierpoint has to "warm up" people she interviews for stories. "If they feel they haven't been covered fairly by the mainstream newspapers, then it's harder for me. A lot of Indian people got a bad taste with mainstream media people. It took me a long time to get their trust."

Lessons to be learned
What can mainstream reporters learn from Native American journalists at specialized newspapers?

"They should read our papers to find out what's going on with the Native American communities," Shebala said. "There aren't just controversial stories out here but that's the only time they come out. Our paper has a good editorial section. They could read the letters to the editor to get ideas for stories in the Native American communities."

Tohtsoni said mainstream reporters could read Native American newspapers to see the different angles they take. "I try to pick up their paper to see how they cover stories when they cover Native American communities," he said. "A lot of times they miss what the story is about."

James said mainstream newspapers could use the Observer as a research tool. "I think we have a lot of material that could be seen as good background information on complex issues such as treaty rights."

Pierpoint, Tohtsoni and Shebala have all worked for the mainstream press. Pierpoint worked as a features editor at the Osage County Chronicle, a weekly newspaper in Lyndon, Kan., for two years.

Shebala, who worked for The (Gallup) Independent, a daily newspaper in New Mexico, for two years, said she left the Independent because she wanted to cover reservation news more extensively.

Tohtsoni worked for the Daily Times, a mainstream newspaper in Farmington, N.M., for 16 months, prior to working for the Navajo Times. Tohtsoni says he now travels to other parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah and is free to write about broader topics than those he tackled at the Daily Times.

While working as reporter for the Daily Times, Tohtsoni said he noticed that Native American people were reluctant to talk to him. "Now when I say I'm with the Navajo Times, they're more open, more willing to share stuff with me. I'm able to do more than scratch the surface. I'm able to go deeper."

He says it's probably a matter of pride. "They think more people they know will see [the stories about them] in the paper. They feel more Native Americans read the Navajo Times.

"More Native Americans read my work now," Tohtsoni said. "I know I'm writing for people like myself. "

Pierpoint, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, says she's able to "touch" people with her work at Indian Country Today. "I'm able to give a voice to people who wouldn't have a voice if I'm not there."

James says her experience at the Observer has been extremely educational. "The type of information we're exposed to here, you don't see anywhere else. I've learned an incredible amount about Native American people."

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