Freedom of the Press in Indian Country Censorship an issue when tribal governments pay the bills By Beau Hodai Excerpt From July 1, 2010 Article “The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal Constitution does have an explicit free speech protection clause—virtually identical to the First Amendment—in its Bill of Rights. However, as journalist Dana Attocknie soon learned, even this clause proved to be insufficient in keeping her neck from the chopping block. By the time the newly elected Cheyenne and Arapaho (Oklahoma) tribal administration of Gov. Janice Boswell took power in January of this year, Attocknie had served as managing editor of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal Tribune for a little over two years. Attocknie says she received an email just days into the new administration from Ida Hoffman, then acting executive director of the tribal Department of Administration (DOA)—the department under which the government-subsidized paper falls. The email, she says, expressed Hoffman’s desire to review the paper before publication. ‘I questioned that, because a review to me is censorship if you’re going to decide what goes in and what won’t,” said Attocknie. “Her response was that basically, if I wanted to call it a review, that was entirely up to me, but that I didn’t seem to mind letting the old governor do it. I responded back that, with all due respect, the old administration or the governor never reviewed the newspaper.’ Attocknie says that Hoffman and the administration were not pleased, and that contentious meetings took place between the Tribune staff—comprised of herself and one other reporter—over the following weeks. In early April, Attocknie was called into a meeting with the Department of Administration executive director Eddie Hamilton—Hoffman having gone on to her current appointment as the governor’s chief of staff. ‘They said I was being let go because of ‘reduction of force,’ Attocknie said. ‘They said they were eliminating my position. Of course I questioned it—I said, ‘Are you going to have just one person doing the paper?’ It didn’t make sense.’ According to Attocknie, Hamilton made it clear that something theTribune had printed had not pleased the administration, and that this was the real reason behind her removal. On March 15, the paper had run an article detailing the events of a March 4 legislative oversight hearing written by Michael Kodaseet, speaker of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Legislature. The intent of the oversight hearing, according to Kodaseet, was to determine the legal validity of a resolution enacted by the Legislature in 1996, which had been called into question by a new resolution introduced by the incoming administration regarding gubernatorial confirmations. The 1996 resolution dealt specifically with Hoffman, charging that Hoffman had attempted to present falsified meeting minutes of the tribal council to the BIA in 1995 and was therefore barred from taking part in certain functions of tribal government. Kodaseet’s article, essentially written as a public service announcement describing a legislative decision, stated that the resolution was indeed valid and did apply to the new administration. Regardless of the fact that the article in question was not written by Tribunestaff, and that it accurately conveyed the legislature’s resolution, tribal spokesperson Lisa Martin said that Attocknie had been fired for publishing ‘false information’ (El Reno Tribune, 5/2/10). Lisa Liebl, a Cheyenne and Arapaho public relations officer, said that the March 15 issue, which allegedly contained ‘a lot of mixed up dates and information regarding resolutions,’ was not the only time Attocknie had printed errors and therefore was not the sole reason for termination. However, when asked to provide other examples, Liebl claimed that the tribe was unable to do so since Attocknie ‘destroyed all of the archives’ when she left—an accusation Attocknie flatly denies. Several issues of the paper printed during Attocknie’s tenure under the Boswell administration—including the contested March 15 issue—are available on the tribal website (c-a-tribes.org/tribal-news). According to Liebl, the other alleged inaccuracies appeared in articles provided to the paper by the new administration, which were intended to be published verbatim. ‘When there were some inaccuracies in the articles, someone from the other branch [DOA] asked if they could look over the paper to make sure it was accurate information, and she perceived that as being censored,’ said Liebl. ‘So that’s really what that pertained to. They just felt it was in the best interest.’ Attocknie says she is currently seeking work outside the tribe. ‘I thought it might be nice to teach journalism. I certainly would like to teach Native kids, too—I’ve always thought that there should be some kind of course when you work for Native media, because you face different obstacles,” said Attocknie. “You’ve got to love what you do and you’re either going to stand up for yourself and face tough consequences like I did, or be told what to do.’…” Beau Hodai is a freelance writer and regular contributor to Extra!.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 16:59:44 +0000
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