Missing in Journalism: National news coverage of Diné Sáanii for Justice March

Screenshot from live video by Censored News.

Photos courtesy Dine' Saanii March of Justice.

Missing in Journalism

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News

Where is the regional and national news coverage of the tremendous Diné Sáanii for Justice March, on Friday?

A news search today shows only an article by KNAU Radio, and a photocopy of the Gallup Independent print edition.

Normally, and unfortunately, paid reporters use a combination of plagiarism, rewrites and phone calls to cover Indian country. Even this is missing.

As for local media, they usually provide actual journalism and post quickly on the web. Where is it today?

On Friday, outside the Navajo Nation Council Chambers, Dine' women said they would no longer be silent as victims of disrespect, abuse and violence.

Dine' women called on the Navajo government to fund an office for investigations and prosecutions of missing and murdered Dine'. They asked that funds be re-allocated for this office, instead of renovating the new building in DC that the Navajo government purchased during the pandemic.

The lack of immediate online reporting is a story in itself, as the national and regional media ignore missing and murdered Indigenous Peoples, and fail to have reporters present in Indian country for authentic journalism.

It also reveals the oppression in news rooms, where the truth is censored, hidden, distorted or delayed to avoid impact and carry out specific agendas of editors and publishers.

KNAU Radio reports, "At the march, Former Council Delegate Genevieve Jackson called for greater representation of women within the Navajo Nation Council. 'How are we going to achieve balance and harmony when it's male-dominated?' Jackson asked amid applause."

The national and Southwest news media relies heavily on public relations spin, regurgitating the press releases of politicians, but there is little serious investigative reporting.

There has been little media coverage of how the Navajo government is actually spending the $2.5 billion in federal virus relief. Meanwhile, Dine' volunteers are still raising their own funds and delivering water and food to desperate Dine', including isolated elderly, and the sick and dying.

Zapatistas 'Chiapas on the Verge of Civil War'

Zapatistas Tour for Life delegation in Vienna, Austria, protests in front of Mexico's Embassy. Photos Radio Zapatisa
https://radiozapatista.org/?p=39527

Chiapas on the Verge of Civil War

Communique from the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee-General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation

September 19, 2021

Tradução em portugês (Portuguese)
Dansk oversættelse (Danish)
Deutsch Übersetzung (German)
Traduzione Italiano (Italian)
English translation (English)
Traduction in Français (French)
Český překlad (Czech)
Nederlandse vertaling (Dutch)

Original en espanol 

To the people of Mexico:
To the peoples of the world:
To the Sixth in Mexico and abroad:
To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion:

First: On September 11, 2021, in the early morning, while the Zapatista air delegation was in Mexico City, members of ORCAO – a paramilitary organization serving the Chiapas state government – kidnapped the compañeros Sebastián Nuñez Pérez and José Antonio Sánchez Juárez, autonomous authorities from the Good Government Council of Patria Nueva [New Homeland], Chiapas.

The ORCAO is a political-military organization with paramilitary characteristics: they have uniforms, equipment, weapons, and ammunition purchased with money they receive from [government-sponsored] “social programs”. They keep part of the money for themselves and use part of it to pay off government officials for reporting that they [the ORCAO] are complying with the terms of the social programs. They fire on the Zapatista community of Moisés y Gandhi every night with these weapons.

Censored News Celebrates 15 years Publishing Voices from the Land

Censored News Celebrates 15 years of Publishing Voices from the Land

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News

We are celebrating 15 years of publishing at Censored News. It was 15 years ago that I was terminated as a staff writer at Indian Country Today, after being censored. The editors threatened me, with termination, if I did not stop writing about grassroots Indigenous People. The threat was in writing. The newspaper had been sold to the new owners, a New York tribal government, in the late 1990s.

There was not only the censorship of Native people who live on the land, but there were the hidden agendas and other forms of censorship. The truth about casinos was forbidden -- the Las Vegas casino owners who exploited tribal sovereignty, the white casino management companies who hid the profits, and the detriment to local communities. There was also the cover-ups of the Washington DC wannabes -- both politicians and non-profits who benefited with power and money.

Today, we are happy to share with you, now 15 years later, those grassroots voices, the voices of Natives who live on the land, which the newspaper attempted to silence all those years ago in September of 2006. We lost some of our friends and great writers and voices who began with us, Lakota Debra White Plume, Yaqui Ceremonial Leader Jose Matus, and many others.

Still, today we have so many great friends and writers that continue with us at Censored News. We don't have advertising, secret grants, salaries or revenues, so there are no cash prizes, but we send out a heart-felt thanks to all of you who believed in us, helped us continue, and made Censored News one of a kind, free from the dollars and control of the exploiters and profiteers.

Thank you, Brenda. https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

Photos: Debra White Plume giving the masquerading Lewis and Clark Expedition a symbolic blanket of small pox on the Missouri River in Chamberlain, South Dakota. Louise Benally of Big Mountain speaking out for the protection of the aquifer water stolen by Peabody Coal and the Navajo Generating Station on the Navajo Nation. 

Buffy Sainte Marie singing at Dine' College, where she was censored by Indian Country Today, when she described being blacklisted out of the U.S. music industry by Presidents Reagan and Johnson. Yaqui Ceremonial Leader Jose Matus in the mountains of Chiapas, serving as a human rights shield in a village as the Mexican government continued its assassinations of Zapatistas in 1995.

Onboard the trucks to the Zapatista stronghold near the Guatemala border in Chiapas. Tohono O'odham Mike Flores and Mohawk Mark Maracle at the Indigenous People Border Summit.

Gilbert Badoni, displays a family poster of Cold War uranium when he was a child. Even today, the radioactive tailings remain strewn in the Shiprock, N.M., region on the Navajo Nation.

Anishinaabe songmaster Keith Secola, and the unforgettable Lakota Floyd Westerman, supporting the Indigenous Border Summit on San Xavier, Tohono O'odham Nation, 2006. Photos by Brenda Norrell.

Ian Zabarte: 'Media silent on nuclear dumping scheme targeting Yucca Mountain and Texas'

Western Shoshone Ian Zabarte Photo Brent Holmes

Native Community Action Council
P.O. Box 46301
Las Vegas, NV 89114
www.nativecommunityactioncouncil.org

MEDIA ALERT Friday, September 17, 2021
Contact: Ian Zabarte, Secretary

This letter is to express concern about the lack of reporting on nuclear issues threatening Nevada. On Monday, September 13, 2021, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a 40- year license to Interim Storage partners, a private company to store 5,000 metric tons of commercial high-level nuclear waste in Andrews County Texas. The Texas site license application was issued based upon the eventual licensing of the proposed Yucca Mountain site currently undergoing licensing at the NRC.

In 2018, Ian Zabarte, Secretary of the Native Community Action Council (NCAC) was appointed to the NRC Licensing Support Network Advisory Review Panel in advance of the continued licensing of the proposed Yucca Mountain site. According to Secretary Zabarte, “We have a vulnerable tourism-based economy in Las Vegas and Nevada that needs public awareness to protect. We have the oldest life on earth in the Great Basin that needs protection from the most toxic material on earth. The “fourth estate” must act now to bring attention and focus all hands against transportation across Nevada to Texas and potentially back to Yucca Mountain” Stated Zabarte

The NCAC is a “party with standing” in the NRC Atomic Safety Licensing Board Panel Docket 63-001, Yucca Mountain, presenting the only contentions of ownership of land and water required by 10 CFR Part 60.121. The Department of Energy has failed to meet the Ownership as documented by the NRC Safety Evaluation Report Related to Disposal of High-Level Radioactive Wastes in a Geologic Repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada: Administrative and Programmatic Requirements (NUREG-1949, Volume 4):

The NRC staff finds that DOE has not met the requirements 10 CFR 63.121(a) and 10 CFR 63.121(d)(1) regarding ownership of land and water rights, respectively.

https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1949/v4/index.htm

Read more:
Nuclear Waste in an Oil Patch?

A site in West Texas now has a federal license to store spent nuclear fuel, setting up a potential showdown with state leaders who oppose the prospect of attracting high-level radioactive waste from across the country. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced the license for Interim Storage Partners LLC to build and operate an interim storage facility in Andrews County, Texas, on Monday — just days after Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill seeking to restrict nuclear waste storage in the state.

https://www.eenews.net/articles/nuclear-waste-in-the-oil-patch-feds-spark-clash-with-texas/

Dine' Weaver Jane Benale's Weaving: The Radioactive Uranium Dust Came Home from Mines on Clothes

Image: Ann Collier, Kim Hahn (Korean), Jane Benale (Diné), Malcom Benally (Diné) , When They Came Home, 2017, Clothing: dyed wool, silver, turquois, cotton, silk organza. Photo by Chelsea Darter.

By Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Arts

Censored News

During the Cold War through 1986, mainly men, working in the mines came home with their clothes tarnished by yellow toxic dust from the uranium. The uranium dust stayed in their homes. This installation represents the ways that uranium contamination has affected the lives of women and the earth. The garment is inspired by customary Navajo clothing.

Jane Benale has experienced the personal trauma of uranium toxicity in her family and on her land. In consultation with Benale’s son, Navajo writer Malcolm Benally, Ann Collier dyed wool in colors that represented important elements in Navajo life. Wool was chosen as a medium because of the significance of sheep in Navajo daily life and ceremonies.

Benale then created a weaving - a prayer for the stories to be told, as the very fabric of her life changed because of uranium toxicity. Inspired by Benale’s weaving, Kim Hahn created a design, which she printed on silk organza fabric. Collier then used the silk organza printed images to create nuno felt yardage which harmonized with Benale’s rug. Hahn used this felt fabric to design a skirt and cape, inspired by both contemporary and traditional Navajo garment style and infused with all the design elements. Then Collier and Hahn designed a striped textile pattern printed on 100% cotton chambray, hand cut the fabric into ½” width strips and hand wove them together based on a Navajo weaving pattern.

They also developed an organza shroud, using green-yellow irradiated color to illustrate the uranium pollution spilling onto the body. Collier’s felt necklace is inspired by Navajo squash blossom turquoise necklaces.

Navajo Women March for Justice Sept. 17, 2021

Photos video screenshots Censored News

Dine' women are marching today to demand justice for Navajo women, children and elderly, with funding allocations from the male-dominated Navajo Nation Council, and diligence in investigations for murdered and missing Dine'. Dine' women speaking in front of the Navajo Nation Council chambers said they will no longer be silent as victims of violence.

The Diné Sáanii for Justice March is demanding the Navajo Nation President to VETO the $200 K and reallocate funds to Prosecutor's office to create a position so the Navajo Nation will track local state and federal capital crimes committed on the Navajo Nation and develop a tracking system for proper reporting so cases are fully investigated and ready for prosecution and justice.

Videos at https://m.facebook.com/brenda.norrell.90
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Dine' victim of trafficking and homelessness speaks outside Navajo Nation Council Chambers, giving voice for other victims.

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