Covering Indian Country Blog

Notes from the Road

How to make people care about Indian stories? Find the compelling people

What story are you working on? As a journalist, I get asked this question often. And when I mention that it’s a story about Indians, the response is usually: ‘’Oh.’’ Some are intrigued, but the topic usually doesn’t spark a lot of dialogue. Why is that?

We have just finished day six of the ‘’Covering Indian Country’’ fellowship. We’ve toured the National Museum of the American Indian, met with policy folks in Washington, D.C., and heard from academics.

But Thursday and Friday, we met members of the Navajo Nation and Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. On the Navajo reservation, 43 percent of the population falls below the poverty level and the unemployment rate is too high. Homes are overcrowded and lack plumbing and electricity.

Jennifer Watchman lived with her Navajo husband and her two children in a tiny trailer for years, never able to save enough money to buy a home. The Navajo Partnership for Housing helped them repair their credit, taught them about home buying and today they live in a three-bedroom home.

But her husband has struggled with alcohol and abused his wife; he is in a rehabilitation center. This, said Richard Kontz, executive director of the partnership, is a family trying to break the cycle of poverty and abuse.

So how do we make people care about stories like this?

We listen, and we watch mothers like Jennifer Watchman tear up when she talks about finally owning her own home. Kontz was emotional, too, saying he hoped her husband eventually becomes a leader in the community.

Too many times our stories are so full of comments from officials and experts that we forget the real story _ the people. It’s up to us to find them, no matter the topic, and tell the larger story through them. And next time someone asks me what story I’m working on and I tell them it’s about Indians, I hope they’ll say ‘’Wow. What a great story.’’

-- Angie Wagner, The Associated Press

Posted on 03.12.05 at 3:58 AM by Angie Wagner, The Associated Press