RIGHTS YOU ALREADY HAVE · AND THINGS TO ASK FOR

What should be public

≈ 11 min read · or listen, or skim the bold lines

A · Primary source Citations below were read in the Navajo Nation Code Annotated or the resolution itself, except where marked otherwise. How we verify →

Two lists. The first is a set of rights the law already grants. Asking for those things is not a reform — it is enforcement. The second is a set of records nobody publishes. Asking for those is a request, and it needs someone to say yes.

📊 Download this chart (Excel)

Why the difference matters

If a record is already required to be public and you are refused, you can ask which section authorizes the refusal.

If a record is not required to be public, no one is breaking a rule by keeping it. Somebody has to decide to publish it. That is a budget line, a resolution, or a vote — not a lawsuit.

List one — the law already says the public may see this

What	The law	Where to ask
Any contract the Nation signed, with change orders	2 N.N.C. § 225 — “Access to contracts or papers shall be provided to the public.” § 224 — all executed contracts must be filed.	Central Records Department; Office of Contracts and Grants
The record of advertisement and bidding	§ 223(E) requires it exist. § 225 makes the papers accessible.	Central Records
Council resolutions	Published by the Council and the Office of Legislative Services	navajonationcouncil.org · nnols.org
Judicial Branch caseload data	Quarterly and annual reports, published B	courts.navajo-nsn.gov
The status of an ethics complaint you filed	Per the former Director: if a case was closed, “there should be some type of documentation to say why.” C	Ethics & Rules; the Speaker’s office
The outcome of a HIPAA complaint you filed	45 CFR § 160.312(b) — if OCR finds no further action warranted, it will inform the complainant in writing.	HHS Office for Civil Rights

One claim we are checking on ourselves

Elsewhere this site says Auditor General reports become public. We can source what the Code requires: 12 N.N.C. § 4(E) obliges the Auditor General to present reports to the Budget and Finance Committee of the Council. It does not say the reports are public.

They may be published in practice, or required by a provision we have not read. Until someone shows us the section, we should not say “public” as though it were settled.

Know the answer, with a citation? Send it — it goes straight onto this page.

List two — nobody publishes this, and somebody should decide to

What	Why it matters	What it would take
1. An up-to-date, indexed Navajo Nation Code — free	The published Code stops at 2009. Amendments since are uncodified. 28 of the 42 transcribed interviews named a Navajo law, Title, named Act, or resolution. Almost none cited a section.	A budget line. This is number one.
2. Supreme Court opinions from before 2013 — and the trial courts’ opinions	Correction, July 2026. This row previously said Supreme Court opinions were not online. They are: the Judicial Branch posts opinions from 2013 forward, free, with summaries — ordinary cases, not only landmark ones. What remains unavailable online: opinions from 1969–2012, found in the Navajo Reporter volumes, and trial-court opinions, also published only in the Reporter. The Nation’s courts handle over 50,000 cases a year. B	Digitizing the back volumes. A decision, and a scanner.
3. Navajo Nation Labor Commission decisions	The Commission decides whether a termination had just cause. No employee or employer can read how that standard has been applied.	A filing cabinet
4. Budget impact analyses	12 N.N.C. § 820(B) requires one for every appropriation request — needs and costs, on objective criteria, including the consequence of failing to fund. Nothing requires publication.	A resolution
5. Ethics & Rules case counts and dispositions	How many complaints filed, how many closed, and on what basis. The office reports to the Law and Order Committee.	A standing report
6. Which chapters are certified	Certification determines how much of its own land and money a community may run. There is no public list a voter can check.	A page on a website
7. The 2010–2013 amendments	The government’s own amendment index begins in 2014. Four years exist in no government record. Law students at two universities fill the gap.	Someone to compile them
8. What the Nation spends on outside counsel	A contract with a law firm is a contract. § 225 may already reach it. Nobody has asked. Whether it reaches a 638 facility — a separate corporation — is a question for an attorney.	A request, then perhaps a resolution

“Not published” and “hard to find” are different claims

FINDING

This page has been re-checked, and one of its own rows was wrong — see the correction in row two. Some records listed here as unpublished turn out to be published: scattered, unindexed, hard to reach, but public. That distinction is not a technicality. If a record exists online and a person cannot find it, the fix is an index, a search box, a link. If a record is genuinely unpublished, the fix is a decision to publish it. Demanding the wrong one wastes the demand.

For comparison, since the question comes up: the U.S. Supreme Court posts opinions on its website on release, keeps a searchable docket of every case filed since 2001, and its bound reports are free through the Government Publishing Office and the Library of Congress. That is the standard a reader may have in mind. It is worth knowing that we could not locate any provision of the Navajo Nation Code requiring the courts to publish their opinions at all. We searched Title 7 and found none. That is a failure to find, not a proof of absence — if such a section exists, tell us and this page changes the same day.

So the honest ask for the courts is narrower, and more achievable, than “publish the opinions”: digitize the pre-2013 volumes, publish the trial courts’ opinions, and index all of it. And the honest question for a candidate is whether that duty should exist in law at all.

The reports that already exist — and are almost impossible to find

OFFICIAL SOURCE

The Navajo Nation Department of Justice publishes a quarterly report to the Council, and has for years. They are detailed. Each one carries a report from the Office of the Prosecutor and from every unit inside DOJ — the Litigation Unit, the Natural Resources Unit, the Economic and Community Development Unit, the Tax and Finance Unit, the White Collar Crime Unit, and the Chapter Unit. They name cases, legislation in progress, staffing, and vacancies.

They also, at times, say remarkable things. One quarterly report states DOJ’s staffing plainly: of 122 budgeted positions, 89 filled and 33 vacant — a vacancy rate the report itself calculates. Another reports the White Collar Crime Unit continuing to highlight that a lack of certified chapter oversight creates opportunities for theft and embezzlement. A third notes that where matters are privileged or confidential, the report provides limited information — an honest disclosure of its own limits.

Where are they? Posted as individual PDFs on the Council’s website and on the Office of Legislative Services site, filed under the year and quarter they were written. There is no index of them, no page that lists them all, and no way to search across them. You can read every one of them, and you will not find them unless you already know they exist.

This is the distinction this page keeps making, in its purest form: not withheld — unfindable. The fix is not a decision to publish. It is an index page, and it costs nothing.

What the quarterly reports do not contain

FINDING

They are DOJ’s reports, so they cover DOJ. They do not report how many complaints the Office of Navajo Labor Relations received, how many the Labor Commission decided, or on what grounds — ONLR and the Commission are not DOJ. They do not report how many ethics complaints were filed with the Ethics and Rules Office, or how they ended. So the worker whose case went quiet, and the person who filed an ethics complaint, remain exactly where the seams leave them: told that a system exists, unable to see it work.

The Judicial Branch does publish quarterly and annual caseload reports. That leaves a precise, cheap, nameable gap: ONLR’s intake, the Labor Commission’s decisions, and the Ethics and Rules Office’s case counts. Three numbers and one filing cabinet. They are also three different asks, because the three bodies sit in three places: the office answers to the President, the tribunal’s budget runs through the Law and Order Committee, and the law belongs to the Council. In 2018 the Navajo Nation Supreme Court had to issue a writ of mandamus to make the Labor Commission hear a case at all — that story. Ask a candidate why they are not published, and watch whether the answer names an office.

Notice what these cost

Publishing the Code is a budget line. Publishing the Labor Commission’s decisions is a filing cabinet. Listing the certified chapters is a page on a website.

None of them requires a constitution, a court, federal permission, or an election. And none has an opponent. Nobody argues that the law should be unreadable.

This site takes no position on any candidate. These are transparency measures any officeholder could support, and every voter can ask about.

How to ask

Put it in writing. Name the record, the vendor or program, and the approximate date. Keep a copy of what you sent and when.
If refused, ask which section authorizes the refusal. For a contract, the burden is on the office — § 225 says access shall be provided.
If nothing happens, ask again through the Speaker’s office or the relevant oversight committee. The former Ethics Director’s advice: “Go hold them accountable… You have that right.”
Tell us what happened. Report a refusal or a success — it goes on The Runaround.

And what to ask a candidate — which candidate matters

A question aimed at the wrong office gets a sincere answer that changes nothing. Two offices are on the July 21 ballot, and they hold different powers. A Council delegate is one of 24 legislators: delegates appropriate money, write and amend law, and sit on the committees that receive audits. A President runs the executive branch: the President signs or vetoes what the Council passes, directs the divisions and departments that actually publish things, and proposes the budget. Neither one commands the courts, and neither one commands the Labor Commission. Ask accordingly.

Ask a Council delegate

Will you sponsor and fund the line that codifies and publishes the law from 2010 forward? Codification is already a duty under 2 N.N.C. § 221(A). The question is the appropriation, not the principle.
Budget impact analyses are required by 12 N.N.C. § 820 and attached to appropriations. Will you vote to require that they be posted where a voter can read them?
Your committee receives the audits. Name one audit finding you followed to its fix.

Ask a candidate for President

The divisions report to you. Will you direct them to publish a list of which chapters are LGA-certified? That is a page on a website, and it does not exist.
Will you publish what the Nation spends on outside counsel, and the Nation’s own healthcare spending, without waiting for a resolution?
The Office of Navajo Labor Relations reports to you, through the Division of Human Resources. Will you direct it to publish how many charges it receives and how they end — and to summarize the quarterly reports employers already file with it? This needs no legislation. It needs a memo.
If the Council sends you a budget with no line for publishing the law, what will you do?

Ask either one — and watch for who says “that’s not my branch”

The Labor Commission’s decisions are unpublished. Whose job is it to change that, and what will you do from your seat? This is the honest test. Neither office controls the Commission directly — so the answer reveals whether the candidate knows the machinery, or is promising what they cannot deliver. A specific answer names a statute, a budget line, or an oversight committee.
Name one record you would publish in your first year that nobody has asked you to publish.

FINDING This site has no way to tell you whether a candidate’s answer is honest. It can tell you that promising something outside your office’s power is the most common way a real promise fails — not from bad faith, but from a government whose branches were never finished. Why the branches fight →

In plain words: What you cannot get →