How Can I Cover Sacred Places as a Local Journalist? — ProPublica

I’m standing on an indigenous sacred site, looking at something I shouldn’t be seeing. There are ceremonial signs everywhere: small animal skulls, ribbons, freshly burned sage stalks in ash, tied together with red thread. It looks like a ceremony was held last week.

I’m here with a source who wants his story told, who wants to expose the damage that public and private sectors are doing to tribal cultures in the name of renewable energy development. But the source also wants to protect these cultural sites from public exposure. That’s why I don’t take any photos. I don’t write in my notes. I go and I don’t publish what I see.

Another month, in another part of the Pacific Northwest, I’m at a tribal community event; I’m not exactly reporting, but I’m relationship building; this is an important component of building trust in Indigenous journalism. I overheard an elder talking about a ceremonial rite of passage taking place at a site I was reporting on, a site built for renewable energy development. The public isn’t supposed to know about this ceremony, which means I shouldn’t know about it either. So I pretend I didn’t hear.

I am engaged in a year-long investigation, a partnership between two newsrooms, documenting how proposed developments threaten sacred lands and Indigenous cultural resources. I usually write for an Indigenous editor, but currently on this story none of my editors are Indigenous. When I return to the virtual newsroom, they are eager to know what makes these sites sacred; They say that especially when we examine the legal and political mechanisms that threaten the sites, we should be able to convey this to the readers.

I want the public to understand the importance of these places, and part of me wants to tell my editors everything. But if I do this and the information escapes, it will be my fault. I am Indigenous too and must handle this information responsibly without selling out my kin. In the Indigenous world, we tend to view each other and all living things as kin. At the same time, my tribe isn’t from here, and I’m still learning about the cultures I report on. I have the language right in my mind that would bring the space to vivid life, but I don’t feel right about using it. All I can tell my editors — speaking truthfully and honestly while respecting cultural concerns — is that tribal leaders will not share this information with me.

I talked about some characteristics of rock. My editors ask what the features are used for. By careful consideration I say that I have several purposes; hunting, storing, cooking. I’m leaving out information but everything I said is true. Even mentioning archaeological features can endanger them and make them targets of looters and vandals. If you write an article that is too specific, tribal historic preservation officers will find themselves tackling new age meetings Non-Native adoption of Native worship. Or worse: Western scientists destroying ancestral remains for anthropological “research”.

During our discussion, my editors seem to believe that it is in the public interest to share as much information as possible. This is a value assumption of investigative journalism; It’s a very American value, and one that I sometimes share. Transparency is what empowers the watchdog press. And of course, we do not retain information critical to the investigation. However, tribal cultures may not place such importance on transparency. In many Indigenous cultures, information is carefully guarded by storytellers, shared orally and only with select individuals or at certain times.

I sit down at my laptop to write and think about words again. How can I write about plants, places, and ceremonies that I can’t write about?

While reporting, a tribal government sends me, at my request, a set of guidelines regarding cultural information it does not want published, such as the names or pictures of the first foods grown where I am reporting. On the one hand, I don’t work for tribal governments, so I don’t have to do what they say. And I’ve worked with neighboring tribes that have publicly identified some of the same plants that are threatened by renewable energy development. However, I know that if this information gets out, I will be accountable to the community.

My own tribal citizenship also impacts the reporting process. “Toastie, where are you originally from?” I began a recent conversation with a Chickasaw legal expert. “You are Choctaw. “We are kind of cousins.” I’m still surprised sometimes when I hear a question like this from another professional. Normally, I wouldn’t feel compelled to talk about my family history at work. But this part of our conversation is about how we get to know each other and orient ourselves in the relational space. My behavior as a reporter will reflect on my community. So we talk a little like Natives before settling into our official roles.

I sit down at my laptop to write and think about words again. How can I write about plants, places, and ceremonies that I can’t write about? And then one of my editors forwarded me a note from another, quoting a third editor: “Readers may say: These are just roots. How can we get them to think beyond that?”

I leave my desk, play some guitar, go for a walk, try to shake off my frustration. I know that my editors speak for a readership that we cannot assume is educated about Indigenous issues such as food sovereignty (the ability of a people to manage their own food supply). But I have to walk a narrow line between educating and oversharing. I find myself wishing that everyone in America, including me, learned more about Native issues in school. Then we can prevent such situations.

The problem bothers me over the cooking stove. “Root picking,” an expression I have heard natives use, may be the simplest language to choose. But it sounds like a primitive thing, like what hunter-gatherers did; “Civilized” people “harvest vegetables.” I wander around my apartment looking for phrases that might clarify what is at stake. Anger flashes through my mind when I think about how terms like “heirloom” apply almost exclusively to European foods; Italian tomatoes, for example, although tomatoes were first designed by Indigenous scientists in South America.

I find myself wishing that everyone in America, including me, learned more about Native issues in school. Then we can prevent such situations.

What would these Native roots be called if they were in the rustic-looking display cases at Whole Foods? I think I finally found a solution: I write, “Endemic, heirloom, organic root vegetable harvests.” True, it’s a word salad, but the plants themselves remain anonymous, and non-Indigenous readers may better understand why they’re valuable.

I leave this sentence to one of my editors. He laughs, understanding the sarcasm against bourgeois vernacular. Very few of these modifiers will pass the best edits; All that remained in the final draft was a “Root vegetable harvest.It’s not that obvious, but at least we avoided the “root harvest”.

It is difficult for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to write at the same time. A non-Indigenous editor putting the term “first foods” in quotation marks could alienate Native readers. But a non-native reader may have never encountered the term, and the quotations may help explain why it is a common expression.

It’s even more difficult when terms like the word “sacred” mean different things to different audiences. Natives use it a lot, but I’ve seen it spark disdain from some non-Natives. (“Holy land? The year is 2024!” reads one social media comment on one of our latest stories.) Others seem to use it with superficial understanding.

It is the duty and responsibility of the journalist to handle information amidst these tensions created by different value systems. Of course, we cannot cover all this in the draft itself. So the problem remains: How do you write about a sacred place in a way that helps non-Indigenous people care without saying why it’s sacred? There is no clear dividing line between too much information and not enough information. This is the frontier area where a lot of Indigenous events reporting takes place.