To be Indigenous to North America is to be part of a postapocalyptic community and experience. Indigenous journalists have always grappled with earth-shattering stories: either as historical background to current events or in the deep despair of the still-unfolding legacy of Indigenous dispossession, displacement, and death that brought nations like the United States and Canada into being. This perspective tests the limits of journalism, asking reporters to cover marginalized subjects unfamiliar to most readers with an eye on the people, histories, and systems buried and erased by colonization—all without losing the thread of the narrative.
I got my start in journalism through a fellowship covering Indian Country for HuffPost. The challenge of the beat was to turn stories about an invisible people into news. I generally employed two strategies. The first was to work from a timely headline. “Fight For Marriage Equality Not Over On Navajo Nation,” I wrote, the week after the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges. The second was to jujitsu ignorance into curiosity. One of my most-read articles was “13 Issues Facing Native People Beyond Mascots And Casinos,” with the clickbait subhead “These are the problems you’re not hearing enough about.”
These two approaches succeeded in attracting readers, but neither felt adequate. The former forced Indigenous stories into existing media narratives. The latter hinged on disproving misconceptions or explaining unknowns, implicitly re-centering a colonial perspective. I knew there were complicated and emotional stories afoot in Indian Country, and those were the stories I desperately wanted to tell. Yet they felt much bigger than my beat and my skill set at the time. In the years since, as a freelance writer, I’ve tried to hone my craft so my journalism can rise to the challenge of my subjects.
This is the premise from which journalism begins: the assumption that well-trained reporters can go out into the world, gather up the facts, and shape that material into narrative and argument. Indigenous stories test the limits of this enterprise. They require journalists to draw upon centuries of history, elucidate structures of annihilation, and build trust with people who have learned to be wary of misrepresentation. The task feels almost ludicrous, like balancing a skyscraper atop a tiny plinth. When you consider a news market in which few consumers are seeking Indigenous media and would rather spend their leisure hours with the New York Times or HBO, it feels nearly impossible. Kyle Whyte, a Citizen Potawatomi philosopher and professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan, described the challenge facing Indigenous journalists succinctly: “In the space of a short piece that’s widely accessible, how do you write in a way that includes a structural analysis and a sense of history that many readers don’t initially understand?”