Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

January 3, 2026

Censored News Top Stories in 2025

Dine'/Zuni reporter Marley Shebala's daughter was handcuffed as Navajo police violently arrested Marley, evicted the family from their home, and jailed Marley.

 Censored News most viewed article in 2025.
Dine'/Zuni Pueblo journalist Marley Shebala, 73, screamed in pain as she was violently arrested by police. Marley had filed an ethics complaint against Navajo President Buu Nygren, and was reporting on the ongoing corruption in the Navajo tribal government. "I am 73 years old, and they have me handcuffed in my home with my daughter, our Navajo police, to serve and protect" Marley says, as she continues to livestream. Navajo police used a locksmith to enter her home. Marley, who has reported from her homeland, the Navajo Nation, for 40 years, was then jailed. https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/10/navajo-reporter-marley-shebala.html


Censored News Top Stories in 2025

 
Censored News Series: The second most viewed article in 2025 was the voices of Indigenous women as they opened the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York in April.
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/04/un-permanent-forum-on-indigenous-issues.html
Censorship debated at the session was our third most viewed article.
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/04/un-permanent-forum-on-indigenous.html
The inspirational words of Guatemalan youths was the fourth most viewed article.
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/05/guatemalan-youth-inspires-at-un.html
The tenth most viewed was our coverage of the priorities in the final report, including the sterilization of Indigenous women by governments, and mining leading to murder and death.
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/05/un-permanent-forum-concludes-womens.html


Censored News Series: The sixth most viewed article in 2025 was our live coverage of the book launch of John Redhouse, Dine', on bordertown racism and the torture murder of Dine' by white teenagers in Farmington, New Mexico. The Red Nation Media livestreamed the book launches in Pyramid Lake, Nevada; Albuquerque, and Farmington, New Mexico.

https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/07/live-today-john-redhouse-launches-new.html
The seventh most viewed article: 'The Plane Crash that Killed Fred Johnson and Don Noble'
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-plane-crash-that-killed-navajo.html



With a broken gas line gushing, Monique Verdin, Houma, and grassroots radio engineer Govinda Dalton, belted out the best radio broadcast in 2025, from none other than the back roads of New Orleans. The broadcast focused on the years after Hurricane Katrina, and a special studio in the woods for those whose hearts are filled with New Orleans jazz, poetry, and foods from the earth.


The Murder of Raymond Mattia, Tohono O'odham, by U.S. Border Patrol Agents.
An interview with Ofelia Rivas, Tohono O'odham, by Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Cheyenne River Lakota host of First Voices Radio, was among our most viewed and listened to. Ofelia described how her lifelong friend Raymond Mattia, Tohono O'odham, was murdered by a crowd of U.S. Border Patrol agents at his home. The Tohono O'odham Nation government refuses to identify the tribal police officer, a non-tribal member, that led the agents there. The Arizona prosecutor refused to charge the agents.

Most Censored in Indian Country in 2025

STANDING ROCK NATION, North Dakota -- Today's Most Censored: A federal appeals court heard the cases of Marcus Mitchell, Dine', and Sophia Wilansky, both  critically injured by law enforcement at Standing Rock. A web search shows no one reported it in December of 2025, except Censored News.
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/12/federal-appeals-court-heard-case-of.html

Marcus was shot in the eye and blinded in his left eye by law enforcement firing 12-gauge shotguns, loaded with lead-filled bean bags. Sophia was shot with an explosive canister, fired from a 12-gauge shotgun, that blew apart her left arm. Marcus was brutalized on the ground after being shot and strapped to a gunnery in the hospital. Sophia was laughed by officers as she lay on the ground bleeding. Sophia's clothing and evidence were stolen by federal agents in the hospital.

Marcus and Sophia were denied justice by North Dakota courts. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals heard both cases in St. Paul, Minnesota during December, and will issue a ruling. The lawsuits were filed by the MacArthur Justice Center, and are important cases on the issue of the right to peaceful protest and excessive force by police. Marcus and Sophia were defending the water of the Missouri River, the source of water for millions, from the construction of Dakota Access Pipeline, owned by Energy Transfer, when they were critically injured.

A delegation of Native women testified before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Jamaica in 2019 on excessive force by law enforcement at Standing Rock, and the militarization of the Tohono O'odham Nation. Censored News provided live coverage.


Mohawk Mothers Defend Burial Places at McGill University Hospital in Montreal -- U.S. CIA Torture Site

"We wish we had seen our children who were taken from us, we wanted to see them grow up among us, but we couldn't, because we never saw them again," Kahentinetha said in front of Canada's Supreme Court.

Mohawk Mothers, Kanien’keha:ka Kahnistensera, continued their battle in 2025 to protect the ground at McGill University's hospital and the search for graves of Native children.

"We have the right and responsibility to represent ourselves to the best of our ability," Kahentinetha said holding the Two Row, which represents the power they have been given to protect the children and the Earth. Kahentinetha said they are speaking to Canada, as a sovereign nation, as Nation to Nation.

The Allan Memorial Institute at McGill University's hospital was the site of the CIA's MK-Ultra mind control and torture experiments using excessive electric shock and drugs. A survivor of torture in her teens said that she saw Native children here, who vanished. She also saw the staff digging graves out back at night with red shovels.

Read more at Mohawk Nation News
"The Serpents are Trying to Return"
https://mohawknationnews.com/blog/




The Most Censored in 2025: Censored News ongoing coverage of Native children's deaths in U.S. boarding schools.

Interior Sec. Deb Haaland did not report thousands of children's deaths at U.S. boarding schools from disease, abuse and murder by staff. Censored News, using the Washington Post's raw data, is examining thousands of children's death. Apache children imprisoned with Geronimo, shown here, died in large numbers at Carlisle after being taken from the prisons. Our updated coverage includes the horrific abuse of O'odham, Dine' and other Native girls in Colorado boarding schools, and the  lawsuits filed in 2025. https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/01/buried-in-history-native-children-who.html



The Most Censored by the media in 2025: Betrayal Revealed: Interior Sec. Deb Haaland's Interior stalked defenders of Thacker Pass, in a joint terrorism task force in Reno.  https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/07/law-enforcements-secret-surveillance-of.html

The surveillance by Haaland's BIA and BLM in the joint terrorism task force in Reno, Nevada, intensified when Myron Dewey, Paiute journalist, supported the defense of the Paiute massacre site at Thacker Pass.

Haaland told A.P. that she supported the lithium drilling at the sacred massacre site Peehee Mu'huh. Myron was known internationally for his drone activism and news reports from Standing Rock in 2016 and 2017.

In opposition to the expansion of a U.S. military bombing range in his Paiute homeland near Reno, Nevada, Myron livestreamed from the bombing range. Myron was killed the next day when a mining engineer hit his vehicle head-on, on an isolated dirt road near his family's home in Yomba, Nevada.

The Indian country media also censored three federal lawsuits filed against Haaland for destruction of sacred places. Tohono O'odham and San Carlos Apache filed a federal lawsuit for Haaland's permits for a wind energy project that bulldozed ancient villages, medicine grounds, and sacred places in Arizona. Hualapai filed a federal lawsuit against Haaland for issuing a permit for lithium drilling by an Australian company, at their sacred spring in Arizona.

Although Haaland said in interviews that she grew up on Laguna Pueblo, she actually grew up in a military family, and attended 13 schools. Her father was white, a career U.S. Marine.

Haaland said in Farmington, New Mexico, that the atomic bomb industry would lead the "green transition" in the Four Corners. Haaland named the Los Alamos Labs in northern New Mexico, in the heart of the Pueblos, which has already poisoned the land, air and water, with decades of radiation, to lead the so-called "energy transition."

Censored News Welcomes Millions of New Readers

We're happy to report that Censored News readers increased by more than 200,000 page views each month in 2025, an increase of more than 2 million in 2025. We're in our 19th year -- with no ads, salaries or revenues -- as a service to Indigenous Peoples and human rights. Thank you to all the writers, broadcasters, photographers and translators around the world that make this possible. Censored News was created in 2006 by journalist Brenda Norrell, a reporter in Indian Country for 44 years, to reveal what was being censored in Indian Country.



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