Indian journalist says national media failed to do their jobs on Navajo-Hopi coal story

We reported on USA Today's story last week about the messages from the Navajo Nation president and Hopi Nation Tribal Council message to environmental groups to stay off their reservations in the battle over a proposed coal-fired power plant. Now one local Indian journalist says that the national media didn't properly investigate the story, Mary Annette Pembler of the Daily Yonder reports.

“Can you imagine journalists simply reporting verbatim a press release from President Obama without doing some sort of background on the information presented in the document?” Marley Shebala, Navajo and Zuni reporter for the Navajo Times, told Pembler. “There is a big difference between elected leadership and traditional leadership in Indian Country; reporters need to know this and dig deeper into the community when reporting on political issues.”

Shebala, who was named community journalist of the year by the Arizona Press Club, added, "Journalists would never assume that the mayor of a city or governor of a state speaks for the entire population. Journalists should use that same level of skepticism when covering tribes." Shebala, who maintains there is no such thing as "clean coal," explains that the Hopi and Navajo have a long history of environmental activism.

Vernon Masayesva, executive director of the Black Mesa Trust and former Hopi chairman, says the real story in Indian Country is “take-over of the Hopi government by pro-mining legislators.” He reports that 40 individual Hopis have filed challenges to the U. S. Office of Surface Mining’s decision to issue the "life of mine lease" that would extend the lease of Peabody Energy's Western Coal Black Mesa Project indefinitely. Former Hopi tribal chairman Ben Nuvasma adds, “the opposition to the environmental groups is not an issue of compromising sovereignty. It is an issue of corporate and financial greed.” (Read more)

You can also read the original USA Today story, and Shebala's report that the Environmental Protection Agency's decision the Desert Rock Power Plant, subject of the USA Today story, needs further review.