Reporter’s Notebook

By Nicholas House | Apr 10, 2025 | Reporter's Notebook |

Burden of Representation

Nicholas House
Navajo Times

As a Diné journalist reporting within and for my own community, I have come to understand that objectivity, while foundational to our profession, often coexists uneasily with cultural accountability.

I am not simply a chronicler of events; I am, inescapably, a participant in the narrative I strive to document. Each time I step into a chapter house, a school auditorium, or a remote family homestead, I carry more than a reporter’s tools. I carry the ancestral weight of representation.

The professional detachment championed in traditional journalistic ethics begins to erode when the subjects of one’s reporting are not strangers but relatives, neighbors, and clan kin. When the statistics reflect not an abstract population but your own people – your own bloodline – the work becomes less about distance and more about discernment.

In my early assignments, I approached my reporting with an eagerness to prove my use of reporter’s ABC’s (Accuracy, Brevity and Clarity), to show that I could write with the dispassion expected of a “professional.”

But I soon found that neutrality in the colonial sense – sterile, impersonal, and extractive – was both incompatible and insufficient when covering the lived realities of Indigenous communities. Our histories are not composed of neatly separated facts; they are interwoven with trauma, survival, protocol, and spiritual dimensions that are invisible to the uninitiated eye. To render them accurately requires more than objectivity – it demands cultural fluency and a sense of relational ethics.

The burden of representation, then, is not merely about visibility. It is about how we are seen, who gets to do the seeing, and what is seen as worthy of record. In many ways, being a Diné journalist among Diné grants me an unparalleled intimacy. I am allowed into homes and moments that would remain closed to outsiders. My questions are met with less suspicion, my presence contextualized by a shared worldview. There is profound privilege in this access, but also profound responsibility.

This responsibility crystallizes most sharply when the story veers into painful territory – child welfare cases, suicide clusters, misappropriated funds, systemic neglect. These are not simply news items; they are ruptures in the fabric of our collective wellbeing. To report on them without care risks commodifying our suffering for public consumption. To avoid them entirely is to abdicate the journalist’s duty to the truth.

There is no easy resolution.

In these moments, I often ask myself: Who am I writing for? Is it the elder who speaks only Navajo but whose voice rarely enters our public discourse? Is it the urbanized Diné youth searching for cultural reconnection? Is it the external observer, policymaker, or funder who needs to understand the stakes? The answer is usually all of them. And reconciling these audiences within a single piece of reporting is a delicate exercise in editorial balance.

Complicating this further is the dual gaze I must navigate. On one hand, there is the internal gaze of the community – keen, discerning, and deeply attuned to nuance. On the other is the external gaze – curious, often well-meaning, but prone to oversimplification or romanticization. Each story I write is filtered through both. And each misstep, no matter how unintended, can reverberate beyond the page.

I have experienced this firsthand. I have been praised for telling difficult truths. I have also been questioned – sometimes harshly – for exposing internal failures. “Why did you include that detail?” “Couldn’t you have focused on something more positive?” These questions are not merely about editorial choices; they reflect generational wounds and a long history of being misrepresented or invisibilized. They remind me that my pen is not neutral. It is a conduit of power.

Yet, despite the weight of this burden, I remain committed to the work. I return to the field not out of obligation, but conviction. I believe that Diné journalism must be both rigorous and relational. That we can hold our leaders accountable while honoring our ceremonial values. That we can illuminate our challenges without diminishing our brilliance. That we can tell the truth without forfeiting compassion.

Perhaps what I carry is not a burden at all, but a form of stewardship – a responsibility to protect not only the integrity of the facts, but the dignity of the people behind them. And perhaps, in doing so, I contribute to a larger reclamation: of narrative sovereignty, of cultural continuity, and of our right to be the authors of our own stories.

In the end, I do not write because I am above the story. I write because I am inside it – and because someone must ensure that it is told with care.