For those that are new and even regular readers of my website, Dine’ Resources & Information Center, I decided to change the name of my website to Marley Shebala’s Notebook. And I want to thank everyone that visits and reads my website! My name is Marley Shebala and I have been a journalist on the Navajo Reservation for about 28 years. My mother was a Navajo from Lake Valley, N.M., which is in the eastern part of the Navajo Reservation. My father was Zuni from the Pueblo of Zuni, N.M., which makes me Navajo and Zuni. My mom’s clan is Where The Waters Come Together and my father’s clan is Frog. And so I am Where The Waters Come Together and born for Frog.
My website consists of my news articles, my professional journal or blog and my photographs. I do much more work on my professional journal or blog because I am reporting from Navajo government meetings as the meetings happen. And I am the only news reporter that is doing that because I believe that the People have a right to know what their government is doing in their name and with their money, their buildings, their vehicles, their airplanes, and their employees.
My professional journal or blog is also where I post web addresses to proposed legislation and proposed meeting agendas from the Navajo Nation Council and its standing committees and my YouTube videos. I also post related voice recordings and photographs of the meetings that I’m attending. And not all the meetings are Navajo government meetings. I recently attended the Navajo Human Rights Commission meetings on violence against Navajo women and LGBTQs (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgenders and Queers) and gender violence. I was also at the International Uranium Film Festival, which was held at the Navajo Nation Museum. And through the kind donations of grassroots Navajo environmental groups I was able to travel and attend federal environmental hearings on reducing dangerous pollution from Navajo Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant.
I started my journalism career as a nursing major at the University of New Mexico in the 1970s when change was flowing across this country and students were standing up for peace, not war, equality for women and people of color, and independent journalism. I’ve received numerous journalism awards but the one award that I cherish the most came from an elderly Navajo couple one frigid snowy evening as I stopped to refuel my old VW van in Fort Defiance, Ariz., The couple told me that my words were “straight.”
May Peace Prevail on Mother Earth!
*Greetings
