Patty Talahongva
Native American journalist, documentary film maker and news executive
Patty Talahongva (native name: Hopi language Qotsak-ookyangw Mana, born 1962) is a Hopi journalist, documentary producer, and news executive. She was the first Native American anchor of a national news program in the United States and is involved in Native American youth and community development projects. A past president of the Native American Journalists Association, she was the recipient of their Medill Milestone Achievement Award in 2016. In 2019, she was hired as the news executive for the national television news program developed by Indian Country Today at Arizona State University.
Early life
Patricia A. Talahongva, or Qotsak-ookyangw Mana (white spider girl) in the Hopi language, was born in 1962 in Denver, Colorado. Though her Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood states she is four-fourths Hopi, Talahongva acknowledges Tewa ancestry as well. Her parents had been relocated from the Hopi Reservation in Arizona, under a federal program that sought to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream society by relocating them to urban areas. Her father worked in King's Bakery, but when she was four, her parents and sister returned to their village, Songoopavi in Second Mesa, Arizona so that the girls would not lose their cultural heritage. Talahongva' upbringing was complicated because her parents wanted their six children to participate in their native culture and religion but they also did not want them to struggle with the stigma they had faced. Because of this, she had both a Catholic and Hopi upbringing and did not learn the Hopi language as a child, but instead was taught English.
The public source identifies “Patty Talahongva” as native American journalist, documentary film maker and news executive. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Patty, Talahongva and Native.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q66081992. VIAF identifies the subject as 41640615. The Library of Congress control number is no2008021145. None of the 4 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1962, 2016 and 2019.
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This entry incorporates text from “Patty Talahongva” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.