Will Chavez
By WILL CHAVEZ
Senior Reporter

At a luncheon during the recent Native American Journalists Association conference in St. Paul, Minn., a discussion arose about freedom of the press, or the lack of it, in Indian Country.

The discussion underscored how difficult it is to establish a truly free press in Indian Country and how few tribal newspapers write and print information without input from their tribal governments. Even if a tribal leader or council claims not to interfere with their tribe’s press, the editor usually understands he or she could be seriously reprimanded or even fired for publishing something unfavorable toward the chief or council. 

I’ve worked with our newspaper long enough to remember a similar situation here 13 years ago when the so-called “constitutional crisis” erupted among the principal chief’s office, the Tribal Council and Judicial Appeals Tribunal. I was still fairly new at my job, and the Cherokee Advocate printed only good news about the chief and his policies and never crossed the Tribal Council fearing the paper’s funding could be cut. 

In the 1990s, the Advocate staff was responsible for public relations work for the entire Cherokee Nation and chief’s office. Back then we should not have been doing all three jobs because it made it difficult to write objectively about what our leaders were doing. (Today, the Phoenix staff does not handle public relations. CN Communications does.) 
And then came the winter of 1997. On the morning of Feb. 25, CN marshals raided Principal Chief Joe Byrd’s office searching for financial documents. The raid kicked off months of court orders from the JAT and finger pointing over who started the whole mess. Also caught up in the mess was the Advocate staff. 

For our March-April issue, I wrote about the controversy, what started it and where things stood among the three branches of government. I tried to write an informative story to go along with a lengthy press release the chief’s office forced the Advocate to publish. My story was not balanced at all and leaned heavily in favor of the Byrd administration, though I did manage to include that some Tribal Councilors and the JAT were against the administration’s attempt to impeach the justices and amend tribal laws. 

As the “constitutional crisis” moved to federal court in the spring of 1997, I continued covering the issue. On May 3, a majority of the Tribal Council that had sided with Byrd impeached the three JAT justices. Also in May, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a temporary restraining order to prevent the marshals who taken part in the raid on the principal’s chief’s office from acting as law enforcement. 

Byrd had fired the marshals after the raid, and even though the JAT issued a court order to force Byrd to rehire them, he refused. 

I wrote about all of this, and my story that appeared in the May-June 1997 issue was more balanced and provided points of view from all three branches of government. This apparently did not sit well with Byrd and his advisors. Not much later, our editor Dan Agent was let go and the rest of the staff was threatened with layoffs. 

The crisis continued into the next year, but the staff remained intact with a new editor. Though an independent commission found fault with all sides involved in the crisis, it took the election of a new chief in 1999 to truly resolve the situation. 

On July 17, 2000, the Tribal Council unanimously approved a free and independent press act. The act established an editorial board and states the tribe’s press “shall be independent from any undue influence and free of any particular political interest.” 

“It is the duty of the press to report without bias the activities of the government and the news of interest to have inform citizens,” the act states. 

We have a free press now, but will never truly be an independent newspaper until we are financially independent like the Navajo Times, which is a weekly newspaper. We depend on the council and administration to fund us, and are our advertising revenue goes into the tribe’s General Fund. 

The stressful days of the “constitutional crisis” seem like a long time ago, but I wonder sometimes about the future when we have a new chief. Will he or she honor the Free Press Act or take us down that road again the first time the Phoenix is critical of the administration? I hope not. 

will-chavez@cherokee.org • (918) 207-3961