Honoring the Movements and People who Inspire. Warriors, Writers and Dreamers -- Censored News 20th Anniversary.

 

Klee Benally, Dine' writer, musician and revolutionary, Debra White Plume, Lakota, wife, mom, writer and revolutionary; Ofelia Rivas, Tohono O'odham, writer, photographer and human rights advocate; Marcos, Zapatista revolutionary, Michelle Cook, Dine' human rights lawyer; Floyd Westerman, Lakota musician and icon; Bolivian President Evo Morales, leader and revolutionary.

Honoring the Movements and People who Inspire us. Warriors, Writers and Dreamers -- A Thread Runs Through Them. Censored News 20th Anniversary.

'Know who you are, and never let anyone take your power from you.'

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, August 30, 2026

Kahentinetha is publisher of Mohawk Nation News and a Mohawk Mother holding Canada responsible for kidnapped, missing, tortured and murdered Native children. Kahentinetha holds her Haudenosaunee passport during the border summit in San Xavier, Tohono O'odham Nation, in 2007. Photo by Brenda Norrell.

We're coming up on our 20th anniversary at Censored News, and we are honoring the warriors, leaders, writers and dreamers who make Censored News possible.

When the Mohawks came for the border summit in 2006 and 2007, it was, as they say in the movie Casablanca, the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Along with the Mohawks, leaders, writers and dreamers through the years became a sort of collective which makes Censored News what it is, a service to Indigenous People and human rights.

We lost many of our best, Lakota Warrior Woman Deb White Plume, our longtime friend Klee Benally, our French translator Christine Prat, and many more. But thanks to those who keep sharing their work, we keep Censored News going. This summer our page views increased by millions, thanks to their labors of love.

Today, we celebrate the movements and people who inspire us, as we celebrate our 20 Year Anniversary at Censored News.

Klee Benally and I met when he was a teenager, sounding it out with Blackfire. Among the amazing things Klee did in his life was locking down at the US Border Patrol headquarters in Tucson, and locking down to heavy equipment on Sacred San Francisco Peaks, in protest of the use of sewage water for snow for tourists. Klee spoke in defense of the desecration of the Peaks, a place of prayer, ceremony, and medicine plants.

Klee joined Christine Prat and her husband Theo in Paris to expose, and protest, the museums and auction houses who were selling Navajo and Hopi sacred items. Before he passed, Klee wrote 'No Spiritual Surrender: Indigenous Anarchy in Defense of the Sacred.' As in life, his book is a work of no compromise.

Before our friend and French translator Christine Prat passed, she translated Klee's book into French.

Klee was a friend, a collaborator and writer for Censored News.

Soar high my friend.

Debra White Plume, Lakota, led a life of resistance, while being a wife and mother.

During the protest of the fake Lewis and Clark Expedition on the Missouri River in South Dakota, she gave the impersonators a blanket -- and told them it was smallpox.

At Red Warrior Camp at Standing Rock, she led non-violent direct action.

Debra knew who she was, a warrior, what had to happen, and she did not ask for permission. She was a friend, writer and collaborator for Censored News.

She fought for the water.

Rest in Power my friend.

Ofelia Rivas, Tohono O'odham, lives on her homeland at the border and has spent her life defending human rights.

Ofelia testified on the militarization of her homeland before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Jamaica, and spoke on the spy towers in Spain.  Ofelia's new book, just released, is 'Significant Impact.' She has documented the spy towers, integrated fixed towers, on her homeland since the beginning at Censored News.

During the construction of the spy towers by Israel's Elbit Systems, and construction of the border vehicle barrier, there was the destruction of the sacred. O'odham were dug up from their graves and ceremonial places were violated.

Speaking in Spain during an international Peace conference, Building Peace, in December, Ofelia described the around-the-clock surveillance by the spy towers,

"The journey to Spain is personally traumatic, to arrive at the homelands of the tormentors of my ancestors and homelands, the tormentors that at the fall of a blade removed my ancestors' limbs for incorrect gesturing of the christian sign of the cross. Tormentors who baptized the people with fear, fear of further brutality. This is the source of my surname," Ofelia said.

"I am here to say, I am the tangible proof of resistance and survival of my people today. I am fluent in our ancient language and I am not a christian and practice only the O'odham way of life. I hope only for a peaceful future for the next generations."

Marcos, shown here south of the Arizona border in Sonora, is a poet, a dreamer, and revolutionary. With appreciation to Tim Giago, Lakota news publisher, I was able to ride with the Zapatistas, in the mountains of Chiapas and throughout Mexico. The Zapatistas magic is love, love for their families, love for humanity, and love for the water, land and stars.

In Sonora, Marcos said, "We, those who have the color of the earth and hearts of corn, without regard to our skin color – we have to do it, because if we don’t, the whole world is going to disappear."

"To the one who has money, what’s happening is not important. O’odham and Navajo territory is now a territory of death. Your fields, where your culture flourishes, is where poor Mexicans are killed, families who try to cross to the other side. The O’odham and Navajo people cannot permit that. You know that they are converting our lands, besides, into their garbage can: we are their garbage dumps. Toxic wastes, nuclear wastes, are not going to the residential zones, not in New York or Washington: they are going to Indian lands."

"And land is like the human body; one cannot inject poison into one part without affecting the rest. They think that they will only poison O’odham and Navajo land. They are going to poison everything and they are going to destroy it."

Their magic and mystery, from the cornfields, mountains, and rivers of Chiapas, to the caravans through Mexico, and presence in Europe, are a manifestation of resistance like none other, and inspire and empower a new world.

On our bus, the Tohono O'odham and Yaqui bus, on the caravan through Mexico with Marcos, there was a young Nahua man, in his twenties, from Guerrero. He had one leg, and walked with a stick. He served as security, a high risk position on this fast-moving caravan for human rights. There were often death threats and the call out warning, "He's got a gun."

When I asked this young Nahua why he came on the caravan, he said, "There was no food in our village."

Michelle Cook, Dine', human rights lawyer, is a Fulbright scholar. Michelle traveled from the Maori homeland in New Zealand to Bolivia for the Mother Earth conference. She was at Standing Rock during the resistance and protection of the water, and co-produced Standing Rock Spirit Resistance Radio with Govinda.

Michelle organized delegations of Native women to the United Nations and Europe after Standing Rock, and a delegation of Native women to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Jamaica. Michelle and other Native women testified on the excessive force and abuse by law enforcement at Standing Rock. Ofelia Rivas  testified on the militarization of the Tohono O'odham homeland.

Michelle is a writer, photographer and dreamer at Censored News.

Floyd Westerman, Lakota, was a singer, musician and icon with vision. Floyd shared his legacy with Censored News, and his plan for a series of films on genocide, beginning in California, and then moving east through the states. 

Westerman showed his film work in progress about the genocide of Native people.  The first in the series is focused on the genocide by missions and gold miners in the state of California. It also describes the militia who collected bounties paid by the state and federal governments for Indian scalps and Indian heads. It further documents how smallpox blankets were given to Indians in California during the ongoing era of genocide.

Sadly, Floyd was only able to make the first film on the genocide of Native people in California before he passed to the Spirit World.

Soar with the eagles, we will always remember your voice.

Bolivian President Evo Morales brought those of us who were international media in a van to the small community where he grew up, in the mountains of Bolivia, during the Mother Earth Conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia. After he played soccer, he shared a feast of tiny home grown potatoes of many colors, fresh corn on the cob and fresh fish on clay plates. At the gathering in Cochabamba, Indigenous from around the world produced a proclamation of rights, peoples rights and nature's rights.

Mohawks: "That's who we are."

Without compromise, Indigenous called for a halt to the militarization, oppression and psychological terrorism created by the military-industrial complex along the US/Mexico border, during the Indigenous Peoples Border Summit in San Xavier, Tohono O'odham Nation in, September of 2006.

   Mohawks from the northern border united with Tohono O’odham from the southern border and demanded a halt to the militarization of their lands by the US Border Patrol, National Guard and federal agents.

   Mohawk Mark Maracle, representing the Women Title Holders, said Mohawks from the north are ready to support the Tohono O’odham in the south “by any means necessary.”

“We are directed under our law to go to the aid of others and not just sit back and watch the devastation,” Maracle said, adding that the proposed border fence would upset the natural order.

 “If this fence goes up, this nation will see natural disasters like it has not seen before. It will disrupt nature and the natural order.”

When the Mohawks traveled down to the border, a group of young women and small children were being captured by the U.S. Border Patrol, south of Sells. They were probably from Guatemala, and likely had walked here.

Instantly, without thinking, before I could bring the car to a full stop, Mohawks  jumped out and rushed to rescue this little group of little people, who were terrified in the bushes. Brakes screeched from the other cars, and more Mohawks instantly jumped out and ran to the rescue.

The agents, afraid for their safety, quickly forced this little group of harmless Indigenous women and children into the back of their panel truck and fled.

It was the most fearless act I've ever witnessed.

When I told Kahentinetha this, she said, "That's who we are."

The message from the warriors, leaders, and dreamers is, "Know who you are and  never let anyone take your power from you."

Mohawks joined a delegation of Acoma Pueblo, Lakota, Oneida, Dine' and South African on the border on the Tohono O'odham Nation in 2007. Photo by Brenda Norrell

We will be posting more of the heroes and dreamers in celebration of our 20 Year Anniversary at Censored News. 

Photo credits in collage: Klee Benally courtesy photo. Deb White Plume in Chamberlain, South Dakota, by Brenda Norrell. Ofelia Rivas on the border on the Tohono O'odham Nation by Jason Jaacks. Marcos in Sonora, Mexico, meeting with O'odham and human rights defenders from both sides of the border, by Brenda Norrell. Michelle Cook and Floyd Westerman at San Xavier, Tohono O'odham Nation, by Brenda Norrell. President Evo Morales in his homeland in the mountains of Bolivia, by Brenda Norrell.

Censored News 2026.