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Jodi Rave, Native American affairs reporter and columnist for Lee Enterprises newspapersAmerican Indian Journalism Institute photo

Jodi Rave Ending Newspaper Career

By Denny McAuliffe and Annie Greenberg

MISSOULA, Mont.—Jodi Rave, who has spent 11 years reporting on Native American issues for Lee Enterprises newspapers, is ending her newspaper career to write a book about Elouise Cobell and the Indian Trust Fund lawsuit.

A farewell column by Rave, distributed to Lee editors Wednesday, confirmed speculation this week that she had submitted her two-week notice to resign her job as the newspaper chain's Native American affairs reporter and columnist.

Rave's announcement of her departure from daily journalism comes a month after another noted Native journalist, Mark Trahant, lost his job when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer shut down newspaper operations to produce an online-only edition. Trahant, Shoshone Bannock, was the paper's editorial page editor.

Lee Enterprises owns more than 50 daily newspapers and more than 300 weekly newspapers and specialty publications in 23 states.

Rave is Mandan-Hidatsa and a 1996 graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder journalism school. A 2004 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, she is a former member of the board of the Native American Journalists Association. Rave has taught at the Freedom Forum’s American Indian Journalism Institute.

Lee and Other Papers

Prior to joining Lee Enterprises in 1998, she worked as a business reporter at The Idaho Statesman in Boise and The Salt Lake Tribune in Salt Lake City. As a Lee reporter, she was first based at the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star. She moved to the Missoulian newspaper in 2004.

Cobell, Blackfeet, is lead plaintiff in the 12-year-old Indian Trust Fund lawsuit against the U.S. government. The case, Cobell v. Salazar, alleges that the U.S. government failed to pay Native Americans billions of dollars in oil, gas, grazing, timber and other royalties from Indian trust land managed by the Interior Department since 1887. Both sides are appealing a District Court ruling last year that Indian plaintiffs should be awarded $455 million, rather than the $47 billion they had sought.

Last Saturday, Rave and Cobell appeared together on a panel called "Covering Native America" at a regional Society of Professional Journalists conference at the University of Montana.

In her farewell column, Rave said she'd written "arguably more than 1,000 stories and columns" about Native issues. She ended by saying: "For a long time, I’ve talked about writing a book about Indian land advocate Elouise Cobell and the federal government’s management of trust lands in Indian Country. It’s time to do it."

Reaction From Fellow Journalists

In a telephone interview, Trahant said when he thinks of Rave he remembers the variety of her stories, from the drama of a white buffalo calf shot on the Pine Ridge reservation to her direct memories of Ward Churchill, a controversial American Indian activist.

"Her voice will be missed," Trahant said. "She's so extraordinary at finding the stories no one else wants to do and putting them in the mainstream."

As for Rave's choice to write a book on Cobell, Trahant said it's a ripe, complicated subject he's glad someone is writing about.

Trahant, who is also writing a book — his is on Henry Jackson, a U.S. senator from Washington who helped pass several pieces of pro-Native legislation — stressed that Rave's departure from journalism isn't necessarily a permanent one.

"There's no reason someone can't leave journalism to write a book and not come back," he said. "It's truth-telling in a different way."

Jeff Harjo, executive director of the Native American Journalists Association, said Rave has a reputation for being a devoted journalist.

"I hate to see her leave the industry as she's one of our best writers," Harjo said, "but (Cobell's) story needs to be told. I wish her luck on her project."

Greenberg reported from Columbia, Mo.

Denny McAuliffe, Osage, is the project director and founder of reznet. He is a former assistant foreign editor at The Washington Post.

Annie Greenberg, Eskimo, is a journalism student at the University of Missouri in Columbia. She worked as a reporter at the Navajo Times for one year and interned as a reporter at the Sun-Sentinel newspaper in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.