Cyrus Norcross doesn’t want to do just one thing. A former Army Ranger who initially wanted to be a Green Beret but wasn’t quite old enough when he first enlisted, Norcross grew up in a family of storytellers with a legacy of bravery, determination and service.
He’s now an award-winning journalist, recognized by the Military Veterans in Journalism Association, the Native American Journalists Association and the Arizona Newspaper Association, but he’s still striving for a bigger platform to make a bigger difference.
One tour in Iraq and two in Afghanistan prepared him for difficult assignments, keeping his eyes open when others would feel unsettled or experience a strong urge to turn away. His combat experience in the military, combined with a lifelong curiosity for how stories are told and filmed sparked an interest in journalism.
“In 2013 I got out (of the military), walked up to the Navajo Times newspaper, walked in, looked at the editor and said I want a job,” he recalls. “They went, ‘Can you write? Do you have a degree?’ No, I’m a special operations Army Ranger, I can do anything, I’m a quick learner. She denied me.”
After some traveling and a short stint in college as a history major, Norcross went to Standing Rock, during the massive protests against an oil pipeline being built on Indigenous land, where he became friends with some freelance reporters and photojournalists that strengthened his passion.
“We were drawn to each other,” he says. “I thought journalism was a whole different world. These guys were all freelancers. This guy from France, an award-winning photojournalist, he took me under his wing and showed me how to take photos and talk to people. It was a very interesting experience learning from him.”
But Norcross noticed a lot of the people reporting on the standoff at Standing Rock were not Indigenous people.
“I thought we need more voices for Native people. This is something I enjoy, it’s adaptability, it reminded me of the military but not so structured. When I left Standing Rock, I started telling people I’m a photojournalist.”
Norcross eventually went back to the Navajo Times and started writing for them, first about the 200-person police force patrolling the 28,000-mile reservation. However, he quickly started hearing stories about missing and murdered Indigenous people. He spent time talking with a woman who was walking 200 miles to the capital of the nation.
“I was being drawn to a lot of these stories about people who were missing,” Norcross says. “A lot of people were telling me stories about their sister being murdered or their family member had gone missing. For me it was like, ‘OK, I don’t want to say this is normal, but I could handle it. I’ve dealt with war, I was in Standing Rock, I saw people getting shot at, old people getting kicked. I can handle this.’”
Norcross also learned about the 1978 Supreme Court decision in Oliphant vs Suquamish Indian Tribe, which held that tribes cannot hold to justice anyone who is not native if crimes are committed on tribal land.
“I’m an American. If I go to Canada and commit a crime, their laws apply to me,” he says, while the same is not true on Indigenous land, which many believe has opened the doors for non-Indigenous people to onto reservations and commit atrocious acts without ever facing justice.
“I made it my beat. I’ve spoken to other native journalists. No one wants to be involved with it. I’ll take it on,” he says. In his reporting, he’s learned that some of the victims of human trafficking, taken from their families, don’t realize they’re being trafficked at all. In other cases, women who were later freed have told him they never left their community but were held in basements with other victims.
Unfortunately, Norcross thinks the issue is continuing to fall too far outside the mainstream media to gain any traction or real attention.
“The Navajo audience, the Native community, they know about this,” he says. “It’s beating a dead horse with a stick. Everyone knows this is a huge issue. It really isn’t helping. I ended up leaving the Navajo Times because I wanted to freelance and work for bigger publications. And it’s not just my community, it’s all across the United States … go to Canada and it’s huge there.”
Freelance journalist Cyrus Norcross, a member of the Navajo Nation, describes his work covering indigenous affairs. He went from reporting to Army commanders to reporting the news.
