FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — When the Navajo Nation Council met for its fall session, it had a whole new set of eyes watching. From behind their computers, people around the country were listening as tribal lawmakers discussed a tax measure, adding land to the reservation and their fondness for rock music.
The live Internet broadcast of the quarterly sessions is the council’s latest attempt at transparency. There was praise for the effort to better involve Navajos in their government and there was criticism online for things that only people who visited the council chambers in Window Rock previously could see.
While Navajos have commented freely on the workings of the Tribal Council on social media sites, the platform used to broadcast the sessions allows people to make immediate remarks alongside the video. It wasn’t long before lawmakers characterized the critical comments as trash-talking, and two of them wrote a letter to a Navajo government worker accusing him of misusing tribal resources to post his opinions on Facebook.
The worker, Julius Elwood, said he was exercising free speech during a break from his job at the Navajo Occupational Safety and Health Administration on his own equipment when he wrote about the pettiness of the council and how it fumbled over amendments. Elwood, who is outspoken about the tribal government, boiled down the lawmakers’ concerns to a fear of social media and technology.
“They don’t understand how it works,” he said. “For them to be so thin-skinned is surprising.”
The Navajo Nation does not have a social media policy and not all lawmakers embrace sites like Facebook and Twitter. Council Speaker Johnny Naize referred to tweets as “tweaks” during last month’s session, and delegate Edmund Yazzie quipped that he doesn’t have Facebook or “tweeting or Tweety Bird. I know who roadrunner is.” Some delegates thought the live stream was on Facebook or YouTube when it was on UStream.
Leonard Tsosie, who co-authored the letter to Elwood, doesn’t have a Facebook account either but regularly uses the iPad that delegates were given earlier this year to communicate with his constituents and was told about Elwood’s comments by a colleague. Tsosie knows that criticism comes with being an elected official but said he’d rather see the sessions broadcast on TV than on the Internet with live comments.
“I’m not for setting something up that will promote disharmony and ill will toward people,” he said.
Tsosie and delegate Lorenzo Curley, who also signed off on the letter, called on Elwood to be disciplined. Elwood, who worked alongside Tsosie to reduce the council from 88 to its current 24 members, said he had no indication that would happen. His supervisor, Tom Ranger, declined to comment.
Erny Zah, a spokesman for the executive branch, said tribal government employees should be vigilant about what they post online, although no policy in the executive branch speaks to that. Tribal workers are prohibited from using tribal property for anything other than government work.
“I’m sure if we wanted to be the police of the Internet, we can find the IP addresses and find out exactly where the posts came from,” he said. “But that obviously would take too many man hours to tackle.”
Both the New Mexico and Arizona legislatures stream sessions live online, but those are a one-way broadcast that don’t allow people watching to make any comments on the sites. The Navajo broadcast reaches more people than had been attending the council sessions but is not widely available on the reservation because of the lack of Internet service in rural areas.
The council votes on everything from land leases, the tribal budget, political appointments and smoking bans. Its committees oversee many of the executive branch offices.
Naize assumed that many of the tribal government offices that often turn on the Navajo radio station also were watching or listening to the online stream. The broadcast adds to changes this council made to open up the legislative process by posting bills online and accepting written comments on them.
