Investigative journalism can right wrongs, unearth information and expose corruption. In the latest project from a collaboration of newsrooms and organizations, it also reveals broken systems.

Last week, the Indigenous Investigative Collective published an investigation that shed light on what we know and don’t know about the number of Indigenous people who’ve died because of the coronavirus. They report:

In an effort to come up with a more reliable fatality count, reporters with the Indigenous Investigative Collective (IIC) made multiple public-records requests for death records held by state medical examiners of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. Those requests focused on the counties on or adjacent to the Navajo Nation where many Navajo families live. The states rejected those requests, citing privacy concerns, preventing independent analysis of those records to determine death rates. Experts also cite pervasive misidentification of race and ethnicity of victims at critical data collection points, making the true toll of the pandemic on the Navajo Nation impossible to ever know.

The Native American Journalists Association created the IIC to help amplify the coverage, voices and work of Native American journalists. “A broken system” includes work from journalists at High Country News, Indian Country Today, National Native News and Searchlight New Mexico, in partnership with MuckRock.

The work of accounting for fatalities started in individual newsrooms, where reporters were asking similar questions, said Christine Trudeau, a contributing editor at High Country News.

“Interviews just didn’t match up with what was reported a lot of the time,” she said.

Sunnie Clahchischiligi, an investigative reporter with Searchlight New Mexico, knew that, too, from reporting and personal experience.

The team started meeting weekly and was able to pool resources and skills while navigating cultural issues and a maze of systems. 

“Something people don’t understand sometimes is how different it is to do reporting in Indian country,” Clahchischiligi said. “We understand how to be respectful in that sense and how to handle those kinds of things with care. It’s a challenge, but also, we were the right group to meet that challenge.”

Working with IIC harnessed the skills of Indigenous reporters and newsrooms already covering their communities, and it showed what can happen when newsrooms collaborate, said Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, managing editor at Indian Country Today.

“There’s so many Native reporters in mainstream and tribal media and intertribal independent media doing such great work and they have all their skills and resources and expertise,” she said. “We’re always looking at the same stories, but actually bringing all those together is really a neat way to collaborate. I think it’s really powerful to see that we’re all striving for the same thing.”

The IIC is already working on its next collaboration, she said. And its value isn’t just in the work, but in the people making it.

“I think that this is really showing that the importance of having Indigenous investigative journalists working on anything in any newsroom is just absolutely essential to reporting on America,” Trudeau said.

While you’re here:

• A programming note: I’m off for the next two weeks, and will return in July on a new day — Wednesdays. See you on July 7!

• I spent 2020 working with the Tampa Bay Times through an RJI fellowship on obituaries. Here’s what I learned, and how you and your newsroom can work to bring back reported obits, too.

• Speaking of obits, I’ll be talking about what we learned along with my Tampa Bay Times editor, Maria Carrillo, at ONA’s virtual conference next week.

• Please read this piece by Lauren Harris at CJR: “We need to complicate the ‘save local news’ mantra.”

• Check out the Journalist Trauma Support Network, a new pilot project from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

• Happening today: The American Press Institute’s Local News Ideas-to-Action series will highlight “how Outlier Media, Documented and the Philadelphia Inquirer are building journalism that helps people understand and navigate how their lives intersect with issues of local governance — and how prioritizing listening to audiences leads to important accountability journalism.”

• Reporters Without Borders has launched the Journalism Trust Initiative, which it calls “a game-changing transparency tool designed to promote trustworthy journalism.”

• Check out the Emerging Leaders Institute for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion from the News Leaders Association.

• Here’s the Institute for Nonprofit News’ 2021 INN Index, which reports “the nonprofit news field grew by almost every measure. During a year of crises, audiences swelled, coverage expanded, staffing measures increased, and individual giving revenue surged for many."

• In case you missed the 2021 Pulitzers last week, we have all the coverage.

• And back to obits: I wrote this week about a man who pioneered the study of Florida’s coral reefs and had a 41-year-old parrot named Siegfried.

That’s it for me.

I intend very soon to write a pithy out-of-office message, close my computer and savor a lost year’s worth of summer things. 

Kristen