by Bill Dawson

Environmental issues always present a multidimensional challenge for journalists, and nowhere is that more true than in the Native American press.

"For Native Americans, and particularly the Navajo, there's a direct connection to the earth -- it's part of our culture, our tradition, our belief system, making sure everyone is in balance and harmony," said Tom Arviso, Jr., publisher of Navajo Times, a weekly newspaper based in Window Rock, Arizona.

And it's not just this cultural significance -- Navajo reverence for Mother Earth and Father Sky -- that means environmental coverage is "always an important part of the newspaper," said Arviso, whose publication won the first-place award for general excellence this year from the Native American Journalists Association, or NAJA.

Activities involving natural resources -- mining, oil drilling and water use -- are all central to economic development in the Navajo Nation, the largest Indian reservation, which stretches across parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, he said. "It's a big part of how we generate money for the tribe."

Geographical differences, including a relative lack of economically valuable natural resources on some reservations, means environmental issues covered by Native American news organizations vary from location to location.

"There's such a big variety of lands," said Debra Krol, a reporter for the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation News, based at that nation's small reservation near Phoenix.

Krol, who also writes for other tribal media, offered a few examples of this diversity: Illegal dumping is a concern in some desert settings, where urban growth is encroaching on tribal lands; problems related to uranium mining wastes are present on the Navajo and Hopi reservations; and water pollution from paper mills and other industrial activities is an issue for some Native Americans in the Northeast.

"Generally, we have the same environmental problems as other communities, but they seem to impact us more because of disparities in health care," Krol added.

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Different Missions

As in the mainstream media, a few Native American news organizations have a broad-focus mission, offering coverage of Indian-related issues across the United States. Others are principally local in their approach. Many publications in this latter group not only concentrate on news about one tribe or nation but also are owned by tribal government.

A prominent example of the broad-focus publications is Indian Country Today, a weekly newspaper that is itself published by a corporation owned by the Oneida Nation in New York State. It was the second-place winner for general excellence in NAJA's 2005 awards.

The breadth of Indian Country Today's environmental coverage was illustrated by a couple of Associated Press dispatches that were displayed in its website's "Featured Stories" section recently.

One of the AP articles reported congressional action backing the Makah Tribe's effort to resume whale hunting off the coast of Washington State. The other dealt with the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone Tribe's criticism of the federal response to a wildfire in August on its reservation in Nevada.

Indian Country Today also publishes articles on environmental issues by staff reporters, such as this recent piece on oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and by correspondents, such as this one on a salmon-related court ruling.

While national publications often use wire stories on environmental issues because of a shortage of resources, many tribe-specific newspapers produce their own articles on these subjects, said Denny McAuliffe, a former Washington Post editor who is now project director for Reznet, an online newspaper that publishes the work of Native American college students from around the country.

As one example, McAuliffe cited the protracted coverage of water issues by a tribal newspaper in eastern Montana called Wotanin Wowapi ("Something to Read"), whose website calls it "the official voice of the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes."

Bonnie Red Elk, editor of Wotanin Wowapi, said that for the past five years, the paper has been reporting on water contamination problems affecting rural residents north of Poplar, Montana, the 2,500-resident seat of tribal government.

Coverage during that period has ranged from homeowners' meetings that were held "when it became clear the oil companies were ready to admit their role" to the distribution of bottled water to well-dependent residents and ongoing plans for a water treatment plant, she said.

A related subject of interest for the newspaper has been the prolonged lobbying of Congress to fund a pipeline to bring Missouri River water to the area.

One of the freelance writers who contributes to Wotanin Wotabi typically covers environmental issues for the newspaper, which has a full-time staff of three.

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Ownership Issues

Not surprisingly, tribal ownership of Native American newspapers can lead to tussles over journalistic independence.

In most cases, there is "some kind of control," Red Elk said, but added that her newspaper operates with complete independence.

There was a "backlash" to a proposal for an editorial board to oversee the publication, she said, and any effort at censorship now would be reported in the newspaper itself.

While Krol said she experiences "very little restriction" in her own work as a reporter for tribal media, she added that some tribal officials "tend to think of us as PR people."

The potential tensions inherent in tribal ownership were dramatically illustrated by a controversy in the 1980s concerning the Navajo Times, then owned by the Navajo government, and its coverage of a land deal involving a former Navajo president.

"The (newspaper's) revelations tore the reservation apart, leading to a riot in which two people were killed," according to recent article on the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism's Covering Indian Country blog. "Critics harassed the paper's staff. They hung the employees in effigy, made bomb threats, vandalized their cars and killed one reporter's dog."

The Navajo Times became a formally independent newspaper in 2003 after the Navajo government voted overwhelmingly to sell it to Arviso, the current publisher.

The question of the appropriate relationship between tribal governments and the media that cover them continues to be an active subject of broader debate among Native American journalists.

During NAJA's annual convention this year, for example, an interactive poll question posed on Native Voice Online, a web-based publication produced by student journalists was, "Should tribal publications be owned by the tribal government?" Two-thirds of those responding said no.

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Eco-tours, Student Training

A key part of the NAJA convention last August in Lincoln, Nebraska, was an ecology tour of the Winnebago reservation.

Dealing with subjects such as the ecological communities in the state's prairies and wetlands, and the impacts of farming and ranching activities, it was the last such tour to be offered by the organization under a four-year grant from the National Science Foundation through Columbia University, with participation by the Society of Environmental Journalists.

The aim of these "eco-tours" has been to foster more coverage of environmental issues by NAJA members, who work for both Native American and mainstream news organizations, particularly in their own communities, said Kim Baca, Executive Director, NAJA.

NSF officials, for their part, hope that increased coverage will have an indirect effect of prompting greater interest among Native Americans in scientific and science-related careers, said Kim Kastens, a research scientist with Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Although the NSF grant that funded the NAJA programs on environmental issues has now expired, NAJA leaders hope to offer another such tour at next year's convention, scheduled in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Baca said. The tentative agenda for that conference includes a visit to the Tar Creek Superfund site, a result of toxic wastes produced by large-scale lead and zinc-mining operations on the Quapaw reservation.

The Reznet project, co-sponsored by the University of Montana School of Journalism and the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, is another undertaking that involves the familiarization of Native American journalists -- in this case, student journalists -- with environmental issues.

While there is no special emphasis in the Reznet program on environmental coverage, said McAuliffe, project director, although contributors do sometimes write about environmental issues, as in a recent story on a protest against expansion of an Arizona ski resort.

The Reznet project, he said, "is strictly an attempt to create more Native American journalists for mainstream newspapers" based on the rationale that Native reporters may not be assigned to cover Native issues, but they can nonetheless be the "eyes and ears" of a news organization with regard to such issues, increasing awareness and understanding.

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A Tool for Other Reporters

In the environmental arena, that process could lead mainstream news organizations to stories they might not otherwise cover.

"There's an assumption out there that newspaper reporters should be interested in environmental issues on Native reservations, but they're typically overlooked," McAuliffe said.

"There are amazing things on some reservations that just can't get mainstream media interest, like groundwater that's poisoned, radioactive waste issues, and reservations used as dumping grounds over the last 20 years or so," he said. "A big frustration among Native people is the lack of interest among mainstream reporters."

From Krol's perspective, mainstream reporters can benefit by paying attention to the environmental coverage in the tribal media.

"Tribal papers are a great way to understand what's going on in the community, but it's just one tool," she said, adding that "tribal people like face-to-face contact," so it's also important for mainstream reporters to build relationships in that way.

To consider just one prominent example, mainstream reporters reading the Navajo Times over the past year or two would have noted stories on coal mining and the use of pristine groundwater to send coal in a slurry pipeline to the Mohave power plant on the western end of the Grand Canyon, a facility also involved in controversy over air quality.

"Because of the drought in the last few years, the fact that they're using such good water has meant that people were up in arms," said Navajo Times' Arviso.

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