accountability

Maintaining accountability between levels of governance in Indigenous economic development: Examples from British Columbia, Canada

Year

Many Indigenous communities in Canada have established economic development corporations (EDCs) to support economic development that meets community goals. Indigenous EDCs, like social enterprises, typically prioritize multiple socio-economic goals and may be used to limit political influence on business operations; however, complete separation can be detrimental to success. This article explores formal mechanisms used by Indigenous EDCs to maintain accountability between levels of governance and ensure Indigenous community- owned businesses remain focused on community objectives. A literature review, interviews and document analysis were used to identify formal mechanisms to maintain accountability in the context of Indigenous community-owned forestry businesses in British Columbia, Canada.

Resource Type
Citation

Hotte, N., Nelson, H., Hawkins, T., Wyatt, S., & Kozak, R. (2018). Maintaining accountability between levels of governance in Indigenous economic development: Examples from British Columbia, Canada. Canadian Public Administration,61(4), 523-549.https://doi.org/10.1111/capa.12287

Herminia Frias: Working Toward Effective Native Leadership

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

For years at Pascua Yaqui Tribe, Herminia Frias has remained a consistent leader in tribal government. She became the first woman elected Chairwoman and youngest to serve the position. After a contentious term with the tribal council, she was removed from office but then immediately returned to tribal council by being successfully elected to tribal council where she continues to serve. Councilwoman Frias spoke at the Native Women in Governance speaker series from Native Nations Institute and the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program where she detailed the challenges she faced and her determination to not quit on being a Native leader. After that speech, Herminia Frias spoke to NNI in an interview that offered her reflections and perspectives on what it means to be a Native Nation building leader. She outlines the finer points of making indigenous governance work for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe that involves working with diverse views and approaches toward governance. Her experiences mark an invaluable perspective about Native leadership that touches on unique challenges and successes toward building more self-determination for her Native Nation.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Native Nations Institute. "Herminia Frias: Working Toward Native Leadership.” Leading Native Nations, Native Nations Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, February, 2019

Transcript available upon request. Please email: nni@email.arizona.edu

Wayne Ducheneaux: Working with Indigenous Governance

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Wayne Ducheneaux II (Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe) sits down with Native Nations Institute to discuss his array of experiences working for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and in the work toward helping other Native Nations efforts with indigenous governance. A former Tribal Administrative Officer, serving as a District 4 Council Representative, as well as a two-year term as Vice-Chairman of the Tribe from 2012-2014, Wayne is currently the Exective Director of Naive Governance Center. His valued perespectives share light on what is invloved to engage self-governance for Native communities.

Resource Type
Citation

Native Nations Institute. "Wayne Ducheneaux: Working with Indigenous Governance Interview," Leading Native Nations interview series, Native Nations Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ,  April 21, 2016

Transcript available upon request. Please email: nni@email.arizona.edu

Dr. Karen Diver: Indigenous autonomy is the way forward

Producer
The Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG)
Year

Dr. Karen Diver spoke at ANZSOG's Reimagining Public Administration conference on February 20, as part of a plenary on International perspectives on Indigenous affairs. The Native American tribal leader and former adviser to President Obama, said that Indigenous communities had been inexorably changed by conflict, and needed to design systems to protect rights and land. She said that autonomy had been shown to be the best way to generate economic growth and address social issues. “Co-design, co-management only works when the other side follows through. Co-ordination needs to give way to autonomy, give us big buckets and freedom to solve problems our own way,” she said. “If the problem is juvenile delinquency, then we know the kids and their families, we know the schools. The solution that we might come up with acknowledges the broader picture.” “The solutions we design are the ones that work.”

People
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). Feb. 21, 2019. Dr. Karen Diver: Indigenous autonomy is the way forward [video file]. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmYfuhK9JzA&t=2s

Transcripts are available upon request. Please contact the Native Nations Institute for a transcript of this video: nni@email.arizona.edu

Project Pueblo: Economic Development Revitalization Project

Year

A strong economy is one of the foundations of a healthy community. Native nations use business profits and tax revenues to invest in areas such as health, education, culture, and public safety programs to meet the needs of tribal citizens. At the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, a sudden economic decline in the early 2000s forced the nation to re-examine the way in which business was being conducted on the reservation. The tribal government responded by launching Project Pueblo, a full-scale planning initiative that took a hard look at all aspects of their economy and government to find a new path forward.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

"Project Pueblo: Economic Development Revitalization Project." Honoring Nations: 2010 Honoree. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2011. Report.

Diné (Navajo) Local Governance Projects

Year

Formed in 1989 by the Navajo Nation Council, the Office of Navajo Government Development works with the Diné people and their elected leaders to conduct government reform, foster the incorporation of Navajo culture and tradition into the Navajo Nation Code, and facilitate the transference of responsibilities from the central Navajo government to the local or chapter level. As a body dedicated to improving government performance, the Office played a key role in the passage of the 1998 Local Governance Act and has developed and informed numerous legislative initiatives that expand tribal sovereignty and increase governmental accountability, transferability, and efficiency.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

"Government Reform, Diné Appropriate Government, Local Governance Projects". Honoring Nations: 2002 Honoree. The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2003. Report.

Permissions

This Honoring Nations report is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development.  

Good Native Governance: Lunchtime Keynote Address

Producer
UCLA School of Law
Year

UCLA School of Law "Good Native Governance" conference lunchtime keynote speaker, Joseph P. Kalt discusses research in the areas of good Native governance. 

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Kalt, Joseph P. "Lunchtime Keynote Address." Good Native Governance: Innovative Research in Law, Education, and Economic Development Conference. University of California Los Angeles School of Law, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, March 7, 2014. Presentation.

Eva Petoskey: Empowering Good Leadership Through Capable Governance: What My Leadership Experience Taught Me

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Eva Petoskey, citizen and former council member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians (GTB), discusses her experiences as an elected leader during a pivotal time in GTB's history. She also stress the importance of Native nations developing capable institutions of self-governance in order to empower their leaders to think strategically, engage in informed decision-making, and focus their time and energy on achieving their nations' long-term priorities. Finally, she provides a detailed history of GTB's development of its revenue allocation ordinance.

People
Resource Type
Citation

Petoskey, Eva. "Empowering Good Leadership Through Capable Governance: What My Leadership Experience Taught Me." Leading Native Nations interview series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. October 3, 2013. Interview.

Ian Record:

"Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I'm your host, Ian Record. On today's program, we are honored to have with us Eva Petoskey. Eva is a citizen of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and served as an elected member of the Grand Traverse Band Council from 1990 to 1996. She also is the better half of John Petoskey, longtime general counsel of the Grand Traverse Band, who is serving as Indigenous Leadership Fellow with the University of Arizona's Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy. Eva, welcome and good to have you with us today."

Eva Petoskey:

"Thank you for inviting me."

Ian Record:

"As I mentioned in your introduction, you served a total of six years as an elected council member of your nation during a critical time in the nation's growth and development. Can you briefly paint a picture of what that time was like and the kinds of decisions you were confronted with as an elected leader?"

Eva Petoskey:

"Sure, but first I think I'll introduce myself in our language because it is our custom when we're asked to speak, especially for our tribe or our experience with our tribe to do that. So [Anishinaabe language]; that's my Anishinaabe name and my clan. So now I'm in a better position to speak."

Ian Record:

"Okay. So I appreciate that and I was remiss -- I usually ask folks to introduce themselves when we start, but I'm curious, you and I have sat down a couple of times this week to talk about your leadership experience and you came into elected office at a really critical time and you mentioned a story that when you started in office the council actually met in a pole barn?"

Eva Petoskey:

"Well, actually our casino was operated in a pole barn and our council chambers were a very small room that we met in and so yeah, we were a much smaller operation and 1990 was two years after we finally adopted our constitution. We did receive federal recognition in 1980, but it took about eight years to get approval of our constitution because it had a lot of complicated issues. But once we had a constitution, we had elections and I was in the second cohort of elected tribal council members after our federal acknowledgement. So at that time, in 1990, our tribe employed about maybe 50 people, maybe that's on the high end of the estimate and currently we employ about 2,500 people. So you can see over the course of 25 years -- well, it isn't quite 25 years, I guess it's 13...I don't know, I can't do the math, whatever 1990 is from our current time here. I guess it is almost 25, 23 years, yeah -- so we've had a lot of growth and those six years that I served was a time when there was tremendous development.

We...I think...during that time, we signed the first gaming compact with the State of Michigan. Of course the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act had just been passed I think in '88 so we were among the new gaming tribes. We had a small gaming operation that was operated out of a small pole barn and it was making money, but after we entered into the compact and even before that time we did some gaming development locally and expanded our casino development. From the time I served from '90 to '96, we went from a small pole barn to two upgrades in a facility within our Leelanau County reservation, Grand Traverse Band Anishinaabe town reservation. And then later in 1996 -- at the end of my time of service -- we opened the Turtle Creek Casino, which is a large operation. So a lot of expansion in gaming, a lot of infrastructure development. I'm not a gambler; I really knew nothing about gaming, so a huge learning curve for me and other council members. Some of our council members had worked within the gaming operation so they knew more about the operation of the casino. I was totally new to that. I had come to it with about 15 years of work experience in human services, social services, education so I was not...that was a big learning curve for me and I think for all of us and a lot of the policy infrastructure that we had to develop.

In terms of other developments...do you want me to continue on? We had huge growth again in terms of health care. At the time that I was elected, we were operating our health clinic out of a modular building, a very small clinic that served primarily the Anishinaabe town community and we had a six county service area. So it was difficult for our members from other areas to come into the Anishinaabe town community because sometimes it was as much as a 60-, 70-mile drive to come to the clinic and that was the only tribally supported, Indian Health Service-supported clinic that we operated at the time. And so now over the course and during the time period that I was in office, we built a very large health facility using primarily gaming revenue, a few other grants, and some support from the Indian Health Service. But the Indian Health Service dollars were never enough and probably will never be enough to provide the support for health care and both health and behavioral health services that we provide through our clinic now. During that time, those six years we built this fabulous facility and have been operating it ever since, so that's another area of really substantial development.

Treaty fishing, inland hunting, we had a lot of continuing issues related to exercising our treaty rights to fish in the Great Lakes and Lake Michigan within our treaty territory. We were in a transition from using gill nets to trap nets. It was an enormous transition for fishing people, men and women, because the gill net is more of a traditional way of catching fish and to try to change your whole equipment and upgrade, all these...it's very complicated. It's very complicated and a wide array of issues that we dealt with: land acquisition, putting land into trust, those are some of the...we developed a lot of housing during that time. We also had I think only one tribal house that we had built in 1990, maybe there were a few more, but now we have tribal housing in all surrounding service area, out of all six counties I think five of the six counties now have tribal housing."

Ian Record:

"You mentioned health care and the fact that some of the gaming revenue that you had generated -- which rapidly grew during your time in office and certainly after -- went to healthcare and went to housing and so forth. And that involved the establishment of the revenue allocation ordinance, basically the tribe creating an ordinance in conjunction with the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act to determine how the money that they were generating through gaming was going to be used by the tribe. And as you've shared with me, that was quite a long, drawn-out, contentious deliberations process. Can you sort of paint a picture of what that process was like in terms of coming to a decision about how the money was going to be spent and actually putting that into law and just what the revenue allocation is?"

Eva Petoskey:

"Sure. Before I do that, though, I'll say that we...even prior to the development of a revenue allocation ordinance, we did have a budget procedure and it was in policy. And so we had a transparent budget process where every...we developed an annual budget and we hold public hearings for the members to have input into the budget process and to review the priorities for the budget. So we already had that in place actually. And it was fairly new. We'd developed it during that time. I felt...for me that was one of my top priorities that we have a transparent budget process and that we have...that members have the ability or citizens have the ability to be involved in developing some of the priorities. So I'll say that first. We also were a tribe that...we kind of took development slow. We were trying to pay as we go, we didn't want to get into a big loan agreement with someone and so we were saving money. This was prior to the development of our per cap discussion...internal discussion on per capita distribution, so we had quite a bit of money saved, several million dollars. We were hoping that we would be able to use those funds to do gaming expansion without going deeply into debt. But somewhere around maybe 1993, a group of tribal members -- called themselves the Tribal Members Advocacy Group -- which actually normally I would be all for, because I think it's really important for citizens to have input into their governmental decisions, and in a way I was all for it except I was on the wrong end of the issue on the per capita distribution at that time, myself and...we had a seven-member council, four of us were not for the per capita, at least initially, and three members were. So we did have a majority to keep the per capita discussion distribution at bay. However, after a lot of internal debate and dialogue there was a petition drive to put the per capita distribution on the...as a referendum. And when I saw the petition, it was shocking to me as an elected -- I don't call myself a leader -- elected official of the tribe because everyone that I knew, all of my friends, all of my relatives, with the exception of my mother, had signed the petition for the per capita distribution. And I think my mother would have signed it possibly had she not been my mother. So there was a...it was a huge move, it was a huge movement, there really was no stopping it. So to me, it came down to the question of did I want to remain in office because I think had we dug our feet in? We probably wouldn't have been and that would have delayed the process, but I don't think it ultimately would have made a difference; the momentum was just too great. So I just say that for other tribes and other people in similar situations, not to say that you should necessarily make that choice, but it is an option and it was an option that I chose to eventually vote for the per capita distribution partially, probably in large part, so I could be part of the process of putting together the ordinance that would control how we would use the money and how it would be distributed. So if I'd have been removed from office I wouldn't have had that opportunity to participate in those policy decisions so it was a conscious decision on my part, a huge compromise. But those are the things that I think are the difficult challenges in leadership, especially if something... it didn't sit right with me. I made the statement in one of the public meetings that one of the challenges with the per capita distribution was that we would be in some...in a lot of cases, the people who could benefit most from the resources in terms of their income, people living in poverty or well below poverty, who were currently eligible say for food stamps or other benefits, health benefits, Medicaid, would lose those benefits. So in a way it was a wash. We were basically paying the money out to the federal or state government and while that was true and the facts supported it, it was really an unpopular statement because no one really was wanting to listen to reason at the time. So it was quite a learning experience. It was not a rational...particularly rational process, but that's politics and that's leadership, learning to set up the most rational system you can and then when the decision making isn't rational, learn to sort out with some degree of wisdom or insight as to which way to go, so we did put together a revenue allocation ordinance. I think we were probably one of the first tribes to do so, and right or wrong to avoid being held hostage by the momentum in the community we allowed, at that time it was up to 50 percent of your net revenue from gaming could be allocated to per capita distribution and that's what we did."

Ian Record:

"So the...and I know there's been some minor tinkering with it over the years and we'll get into one of the recent developments around it here in a second, but how does the per capita distribution policy currently work for adults and then how does it work for minors? And I know you've shared with me that the minors' trust accounts was a very contentious issue at the outset."

Eva Petoskey:

"Yeah, it was contentious, but let me say generally that the per capita distribution is half of the net revenue goes to individuals and the remaining half is split...well, I guess the remaining portions are split: 25 percent goes to tribal government operations, which would include all services and the operation of government itself. And then 15 percent to -- I always get these two wrong -- 15 percent to long-term investment and I think...or I think it's 10 percent to long-term investment, 15 percent to economic development, so that there were three other funds set up: tribal government operations, long term investment and economic development. So that was the whole pie of the...our revenue...I don't like to use acronyms -- so the revenue allocation ordinance. When it came to how the per capita distribution was to be, the 50 percent of per cap, that was very contentious and I sat as the chairperson of the committee that put the revenue allocation ordinance together. There were about maybe 10 or a dozen of us on the committee from all factions including people that were in the leadership of the TMAG, the Tribal Members Advocacy Group. So we all sat together and I think I told you this earlier when we were discussing this, I'm kind of a storyteller so forgive me if I start...I could be here for probably hours, but I'll tell the short story. I decided that we needed to use...try to come together. So we did this in a talking-circle format using some of our ceremonies, just simple...the smudging and then using an eagle feather that I had brought to kind of help us come together as a community to figure out how we would, now that we'd made a decision, how we would carry that decision out. So we had a lot of discussions and some of them were heated and well, I don't know if they were heated, they were... ctually they were quite civil I should say, they were quite civil, but a lot of difference of opinion expressed and...one of the things I brought up, I asked the group, "˜Many tribes, ours in particular, has a long history of kind of disruption, enormous disruption due to loss of land, a rapid kind of economic change, the whole culture over the last, we call it the '150[-year] Anishinaabe abyss period' and we certainly were emerging from that.' I think we're emerging from that now, but certainly was a very dark period in our history I would say from the 1850s forward until probably in the 1970s when we started to reclaim our place and through the law, which has been a good tool for us. But as a result of that abyss period, we have many of our people who were put in boarding schools, my mother went to Mt. Pleasant Indian School, my husband's parents went to Mt. Pleasant Indian School, all of that generation, people in our parent's generation and many in our generation either went to boarding school...my grandmother went to Carlisle, so it goes back several generations. So people were... had their lives disrupted in many ways. So we always bring this to the table in our deliberations because this is who we are. Many of us are people who have suffered enormous loss in terms of our family relationships, our cultural identity, our language, our ability to speak the language in our community. The generation that spoke the language is...many have passed on, but my mother's first language was Anishinaabe or Odawa. All of my family members could converse and I grew up hearing this, but now in this generation that's not the case. So I go into...I just say that because this is sort of who we are as we sit at the table together. We are all of these people that have...all of these humans that have brought all of this collective history to the table when we have a discussion and this particular discussion on how to distribute this money that we had, which most of us had never had, was a difficult one. So I did ask the group how many of us...because one of the issues that was very contentious was whether or not children should have an equal portion in the distribution and some of us had the position, including myself, that felt -- and a number of the group felt -- that everyone should have an equal share. There was another contingency that children should not have a share and that the money should go to their parents and then there would be more money just go for people 18 and older. That was probably one of the most contentious complaints and other smaller things about how frequently the distributions should be made, etc., but the one over who receives a share and what type of share was really a contentious discussion and in the end we made a...we agreed on a plan where everyone would have an equal share, but it was a painful discussion and at one point in the discussion I did as the group around the table just to tell you about not only our tribe, but the circumstances of many tribes and maybe...probably as many...maybe more so in our region of the country, I don't know how the impact of boarding schools and some of those effects were out here in the southwest. I'm not as educated about that, but in our part of the country many people were raised outside of their family, not by their parents, either through foster care, adoption, or through boarding schools and in our group of people around this table discussing our per capita distribution, only two of us had been raised by our parents, myself and one other member, one other citizen. So that was a sad commentary on where we were, where we are still. I think the impact of that..."

Ian Record:

"But you used that as a counter to the contention that parents should get their kid's share because they're the ones taking care of the children."

Eva Petoskey:

"Yes and I...it didn't make me popular, but I said a difficult statement of, "˜How well were we cared for by our parents? And no offense to anyone or to any of your parents. I am in the same category.' I just had a really strong mother who didn't allow things to happen and a really strong grandmother and some other people did too, obviously. But anyway, yeah, that was why I brought the discussion up. It was a hard discussion, but it did in part bring us around to a reasonable decision, which I think there have been problems with. So since we've had the per capita distribution...like I said to you the other day, I could probably talk for several days on this because it was a long, contentious process and other tribes have dealt with it in other ways, but now that...once we had a decision about how we would distribute, there have been challenges with it. Some young people don't use their money wisely. The money is held in trust for the young people until it is paid out when they're age 19 and...over 19, 20, 21 over three payments. So some young people use their money wisely. I guess they probably...whoever, however they're using it, I think they may think it's wisely, but maybe not. And others have not used it as wisely. We do have a new law I understand, I wasn't part of developing this because I'm not currently on the council, but we do have an amendment to the revenue allocation ordinance that requires that a child have at least a GED or a high school diploma in order to receive their payment. If they don't have it, I think it's deferred until they're 21. So I think that's a very good development. I would have liked to have seen that even sooner and I know other tribes have similar and maybe even more restrictive criteria to encourage people to continue to complete their education."

Ian Record:

"I'm glad you mentioned that. And you are right, there are a number of other tribes that have gone that route that may have not had it in place initially, but saw the effects of just sort of a basic issuance of the money once they turn a certain age without any sort of conditions set on the issuance of that money. I'd like to turn now to the topic of leadership and I know I'm asking you to look back a bit because you...it has been close to 20 years since you were in office, but if you think back to 1990, when you first came to office, what do you know now that you wish you had known before you first took office in the first place?"

Eva Petoskey:

"Well, I'm 25 years older so I've lived a bit. I guess in answering that question, I'd say probably two different avenues that I could answer that. One is I think I certainly have more knowledge about how government conducts itself. I didn't have that much coming into it and I think that's the case for a lot of newly elected tribal leaders that they come in inexperienced in tribal government. Even if they've worked for the tribe, it might not have been in a position where they were required to work with policy or maybe even to understand the larger historical and political and legal context in which tribes operate. That is very common for people to walk into it. So I think, in retrospect, I had some of that because I had 15 years of work experience in Indian Country and so I had some of that. I did work for tribal organizations and so I had some experience. I knew some core ideas of self determination, sovereignty. I even knew what sovereign immunity was because I'd worked with contracts with tribes. But I think a lot of people come in without that, so I think it's very important for people to have some education coming in either before...I know there are some tribes that have instituted some training programs for people interested in running for council. I think those are excellent ideas. Certainly if your tribe doesn't have that then having some kind of orientation and education program and process once a person is elected. I think to the extent that you can use people with prior tribal council experience that is a great benefit because not only will they get the information about the complex legal structure and all of the public policy issues, they also get some firsthand experience on people reflecting on their own leadership and some of the mistakes and successes that they had or mistakes they made and successes they had. So that's one track, I guess: education, education, education, education. I wish I had more of it when I came into this, but at another end I wish I had more wisdom. I wish I'd have been a wiser person. When you're young, a few...sometimes young people are wise, but more than often we're not when we're young. We tend to be impulsive. I know I would frequently get angry. Now as I've grown older, I've trained myself. I still get angry, but I usually don't speak when I'm angry. I've learned how to tell myself to hold that until I'm not angry. So I would even say it would be good if tribes -- whatever their culture is, whatever their Indigenous world view -- is that some of those teachings could be also shared or discussed as you go into your elected duties, that the person newly elected has an opportunity to sit down with someone, an elder or some other appropriate leaders within the community to, if they haven't had that proper or appropriate education and maybe some people do, they already have that. So we have -- in our Anishinaabe way -- we have the Seven Grandfather teachings, which tell us how to conduct ourselves in our relationships with other people. I see that sometimes we put them up on a poster someplace, but they're very difficult to follow in our relationships and looking back at my experience on the tribal council, aside from all of the challenging issues that we dealt with, the complex...context in which we found ourselves in, and in our case and the people that served with me, the enormous amount of development that we accomplished and worked tirelessly to accomplish was often painful in terms of our interpersonal relationships. And as you can imagine, when you're related to many of the people you serve with, that's just normal in a tribe that even on the council your relatives are sometimes on the council and certainly in terms of your constituents, your parents, your nieces and nephews, your cousins, just every...there's a very thick set of relationships. So how you treat one another in those heated political contexts, in the heated political context will last...will follow you for a long time."

Ian Record:

"One of the things you mentioned to me yesterday when we were chatting was this issue of consistency and in your relations with the people that you serve that the answers you give to the requests that they often make are consistent and the explanations for the answers you're giving them are consistent. Can you touch a little bit more on that in terms of being clear with the people who come to you with their hand out to say either 'yes, I can do this for you and here's why' or 'no, I can't and here's why,' and making sure that those answers are consistent no matter who's coming to you?"

Eva Petoskey:

"Yeah, this is a huge issue in tribal government. I think it...the responsibility there needs to be borne by the elected leader in term...and by the citizens. So I think...I'll talk about both of those, because I think it's a shared responsibility because if it is the norm that the council is kind of a patron system, which isn't outside of our cultural norm. See, that's one of the issues, that it's not really an unfamiliar cultural idea that you would give things away to your relatives. It's just that in the context of government, they're really not yours to give as a person, as an individual. They belong to the community. Whatever resources you have been elected and given the responsibility to be a good steward of are the resources of the community, so it really is different than giving out your own personal property, things that you've acquired in a giveaway at your home or in some kind of celebration where you're feeding everyone. That's your personal property and that is, within our cultural teachings, that's a different thing than taking the property of the collective and giving it out to your relatives. To me, that seems unethical. But I wasn't always...oftentimes your relatives would come in and expect you to solve a problem immediately, to give them some special consideration and I always gave them -- everyone really -- I tried to give special consideration in terms of listening and not shutting people off and then trying to help them problem solve where they could find a solution to their problem within our system. That implies that you have a system that helps people find a solution to their problem and that is part of developing your tribal infrastructure so that there is a known process for solving a problem, whether it's an employment problem or you felt like you've been treated unfairly, whether it's in employment or some other issue or involving your lot assignment or all kinds of controversies that come up. And we as a tribe, I'm sure others too, have...took us a long time to develop all that infrastructure so that there was a place for a person to go to get their problem solved or at least to try and they may not like the results, but at least there was a process in place. So it's both a shared responsibility on the part of the leadership to act in an ethical manner, again keeping in mind that the resources that you have been given the responsibility to be a good steward of are not yours, they're the community's, and so if you want to have a giveaway, go do it at your house with your own stuff unless it's the community giveaway and you're participating and it's open for everyone on an equal basis. And likewise, the members, the citizens need to understand that the more citizens that serve in government and in a good way, and the more citizens that come to understand how it's really a collective process and these are our collective resources and together we can build a nation and we can learn to put our...it's hard to learn to put your individual needs aside because many of our people live in poverty. It's still the case today. It's still the case. We have...if you go into the communities around our tribe, many of the homeless people are our tribal citizens. There's still a lot of people living...struggling to have their basic needs met and it's understandable why people feel frustrated sometimes. I totally understand that and yet it's an ongoing challenge for the elective."

Ian Record:

"And isn't it first and foremost a challenge of education? You mentioned that a lot of hard work has been done to build up the governmental infrastructure so that there are processes in place to help people that come with their hand out. And we've heard other leaders talk about really the education needs to begin with the elected official in that interpersonal exchange with the constituent to say, "˜Look, I cannot do this for you because we have a process in place that can address your problem. That's not my role.' We often hear leaders talk about role confusion, that they think they're a social service administrator and not a policy maker."

Eva Petoskey:

"Exactly. Exactly. Well, that speaks to understanding what your role is and in most tribes the...I know in our tribe, the role of the tribal council members and the chairperson are specified in some detail in the constitution and that serving as a social service liaison is not one of them, although it is to look out for the assets and best interests of the tribe and to provide for the wellbeing and education, health of the tribal citizens. But a lot of people don't ever read the information on what their roles and responsibilities are and I found many times across Indian Country -- I won't point just to our own tribal council, but some of the work I've done elsewhere -- that many people don't read their constitution or even if they think it was a good idea to have a constitution because sometimes you get into that discussion. "˜Why are we adopting these types of governments?' And I think it's all a developmental process. I think that in our case, I look back at those times as we began to work...I wasn't part of working on the constitution, but as I've heard the stories I'm glad that we went in that direction and I think we put some good ideas into our constitution. We do have a separation of the judicial in our constitution so we have a separate court. That's an unusual situation in Indian Country. And we have both executive and legislative functions within our tribal council and then we have specific roles and responsibilities and a lot of other things that are spelled out that took great... that were given great consideration. We did not just adopt a constitution. We had a lot of discussion about how that should be and what type of government we wanted to have."

Ian Record:

"How empowering was it for you as an elected official to have that constitution to fall back on when somebody was not clear about your role and was coming to you and asking you to do something that was outside of your role for you to say, "˜Hey, look, I'm not allowed to do this and this is where it says I'm not allowed to do this'? Because unfortunately in a lot of tribal communities, leaders don't have that luxury to say, "˜Look, I'm prohibited.' It's sort of...there's so much gray area involved that they can sort of finagle it however they like. Was it...did you feel it empowered you or there was a sense of comfort there to be able to fall back on that rock-hard foundation?"

Eva Petoskey:

"I didn't use it so much in the context of dealing directly with individual citizens, but I did occasionally use it in dealing with some of the things that other council members would want to do and sometimes behind closed doors, which is where some of the really challenging discussions occur, even though we have, of course have to have open meetings, but there were certain things involving legal matters and really complicated legal matters that we did in closed session and sometimes we would have rather contentious discussions there, and I do recall on several occasions getting out the constitution and saying, "˜Read this, folks.' And sometimes people would want to fire people just arbitrarily. I hope I'm not...it's not an unusual thing. I'm not putting down my own tribe. I see it everywhere and I'd just remind everyone, 'That isn't our job. That is not our job,' in spite of the fact that maybe that person had said very insulting things to me and to the entire tribal council, but it was our job to maybe try to create a better climate so people didn't have to come in there and be that angry or have some other rules about how we conduct our business or just take it. If we weren't going to create those kind of rules. I know some tribes have now created rules about how... I'm not talking about Robert's Rules, but how...and of course tribes use those...but how...what the tone of the conduct of the meetings should be and that there must be a tone or respect. I like that idea. We don't have a rule like that currently, but I sure...if I were back...in retrospect, I would love to have a rule like that. I'd love to have those Seven Grandfather teachings not only on the wall, but somehow incorporated into our conduct so that we can hold ourselves accountable."

Ian Record:

"This last answer of yours has given rise to a few questions in my mind and the first deals with transparency. You touched on this issue a couple of times now, and in talking with your husband John and having him share with us all of the hard work that the government has done to not only build its infrastructure, its governmental infrastructure, but also build the background history of why it was developed the way it was. So you guys have gone to great lengths to document everything from council meeting minutes and making them not only...not only archiving them, but making them instantly accessible and obviously that helps for the purposes of transparency, but doesn't it also help for ensuring that folks that are in the position that you were once in can make informed decisions, can say, "˜What was the reason why we first started this particular project and what does it mean for the decision that is before us on this project today?'"

Eva Petoskey:

"Well, certainly as technology gets quicker and quicker -- at one time that wasn't possible because we'd be digging through all these old papers down in the basement of the tribal government center -- but now that it's readily available apparently our current council who actually uses that does a search, what did we decide on this and what's the history of this? And so I think that could be a very useful tool going into the future with technology as it is today. I think that wouldn't obviously be present if we hadn't have archived all that and I wasn't part...well, I guess I was part of that decision. One of the things I was going to mention that we did write a couple of tribal histories, especially some of the recent history and the early history of our federal acknowledgement and what led up to that. And so those documents are available also, but so that in the sense that you're archiving your process as you go along is a wonderful benefit to future generations because there is a record there to the extent that people are able to study it and with technology it's easier to study it. So it's awesome to do that and I think a real benefit both to the current councils and the future generations to see what people were thinking."

Ian Record:

"So another follow-up question deals with this issue of instilling culture into governance, into the practice of governance. And you mentioned that it's one thing to have the Seven Grandfather teachings written on a wall and it's quite another to figure out how do you practice it in the actual activities of governance at the elected leadership level and throughout the governmental organization. You're a big proponent of that. In our discussions you've brought that up numerous times. Can you speak to the importance of a Native nation consciously working to incorporate in a systematic way its culture into how it governs, into the crafting of a strategic vision for the future of the nation?"

Eva Petoskey:

"Yeah."

Ian Record:

"Easier said than done, I know."

Eva Petoskey:

"Well, it's difficult because it goes to the issue of who can speak. And I think when I was younger I didn't feel as though I could speak, but I'm 61 years old and I'm not 80, but I always felt like it would be great if I could have had a group of advisors that were elders and my selection, my ideal selection of elders in our community would have been people over 80 because it seemed like the people I knew, including my own mother or other people I knew within my extended family and other people I knew in the community who were over 80 seemed to have developed a different view, even if they had some culture...if they had the culture intact, they had their language, but as you age something happens and you have a different view. You're facing that kind of eventually your own death and I think...one of our elders told me that, "˜If you have the good fortune to come close to death as a young person, you're very blessed.' And I thought, "˜Well, that's an interesting thing to say,' because usually we think of that differently. But he was saying that it gives you a different view, a longer view of life, what is really important. I think sometimes we have, I think, lost view of that. So I always wished I could have had a group of elders over 80 advising me. I did. I had my own mother so I was lucky. So I think having elders in the community, however that community defines that whether through age or through some other ceremonial leaders, I think that is wise. I think...I really believe that dialogue and consensus is culture because sometimes without that... you're growing a seed, you're growing a seed of translating your own traditional teachings and culture and language into your contemporary setting. So I always feel like people were going way too fast. I think one way to incorporate your culture into your governance is to slow it down, and maybe not in all contexts because some meetings have to be conducted maybe in a more rapid manner because you're dealing with so many issues, but there should be a time where people can talk together and maybe...then again, sometimes the constitution doesn't allow the tribal council to speak together on tribal issues outside of a meeting that's been called so that's kind of problematic, too. But maybe it's not the council speaking or talking in a formal way, maybe it's an informal meeting with the constituents, with your citizens where you can talk things through. That's what our Anishinaabe people always did, always. I observed it in my own life, people solving problems through talking it through until everyone had been heard and then what comes out of that is remarkable, it's powerful. Once everyone's been heard, all of those ideas can be used to take something forward. And if you're applying the Seven Grandfathers teachings, which are principles upon which you're to live and to treat other people that what comes out of that would be part of what we call [Anishinaabe language], which is to live a good life and that idea is central to everything that is in the Anishinaabe world view. I know that other people and other tribes have other words and concepts like that, but essentially, what it means is that it's the interdependence of all things so that you as a human being are connected to your own inner self. That's why I spoke my name and my clan. Your own spiritual and inner self, your own ancestral history, but it's not like you're standing there alone. You're in this web of relationships that are both inside you and outside of you and it includes not only all the human relationships, but it also, and this is very important I think going into the future, it includes all of the other living things on the planet and in the universe so it includes all the plants, all the animals, all of the water, the sky, the rocks, the moon, the sun, the stars, all of the ancestors, all of the spirits out in the cosmos, the whole thing is interconnected and that it is your responsibility as a human being to walk in a good way and in positive relationships with all those things. So I think in that way in the incorporation of the culture and I think as we are going forward...I know within our tribe some of us women have really been starting to talk very...amongst ourselves about the environment and how can our tribe take a position. This is very culturally relevant let's say for every tribe, and in our case it's the water, in our case in Anishinaabe worldview, women are the keepers of the water and so we...I think...so that's one way of how do you incorporate this into tribal governance in terms of setting the priorities for what the tribe does in the future and the vision of the tribe in the future, you have to have elders and people with that collective [Anishinaabe language] vision to speak up so that we're not just taking care of ourselves, which is important -- not at all to diminish that -- we're taking care of those inner circles of [Anishinaabe language], but we're also taking care of the larger circle of the planet that we live on, very important today. Every day we wake up with an acute awareness of how responsible we are and I think tribes have a lot of power in that way because I know we do. We still have...we still retain our inland hunting and fishing and gathering within the Great Lakes, within regions of the Great Lakes and within inland. So we have a lot to say about our environment and if I live long enough I'm going to continue...that's going to be one of my priorities is on the water and things like that."

Ian Record:

"Well, Eva, we really appreciate you taking some time to share your thoughts and experience and wisdom with us, really appreciate it."

Eva Petoskey:

"You're welcome."

Ian Record:

"That's all the time we have on today's program of Leading Native Nations. To learn more about Leading Native Nations, please visit the Native Nations Institute's website at nni.arizona.edu. Copyright 2013 Arizona Board of Regents."

NNI Indigenous Leadership Fellow: Michael Kanentakeron Mitchell (Part 2)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

In part two of his Indigenous Leadership Fellow interview, Grand Chief Michael Mitchell of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne touches on a wide range of nation-building topics, notably the importance of clearly defining the distinct roles and responsibilities of leaders and administrators working on behalf of Native nation governments, and the need for leaders to refrain from micromanaging the day-to-day activities of Native nation administration. He also discusses the need for Native nations to invest in the education of their people, and then to provide them opportunities to contribute to those nations onc they have completed their education.

Resource Type
Citation

Mitchell, Michael K. "NNI Indigenous Leadership Fellow: Michael Kanentakeron Mitchell (Part 2)." Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 3, 2008. Interview.

Ian Record:

"This is our second interview with Chief Michael Mitchell, the first Indigenous Leadership Fellow of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the University of Arizona. What I'd like to ask you about next is this question about defining moments. We see across Indian Country in the work that the Native Nations Institute does these defining moments where Native nations essentially say, "˜Enough is enough. We're tired of the federal government or the state or whoever, whatever external force it might be dictating to us how we're going to run our nation, how we're going to determine our future and we're going to take charge.' And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about when that moment came for Akwesasne and what that moment was."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"It wasn't long after I had become Grand Chief that I began to notice that the [Canadian] government has their hands in everything. Anything you want to know about education, health, social, housing, you had to ask somebody from government. That's how it was set up. And they had a system in place and the reporting system was directly...the final say always came from them. The other thing I noticed is there was a huge deficit within the community because they didn't have control of their budget. They couldn't forecast to the way that would be to the satisfaction of the community.

So probably within the first month, I got a pretty good reading and I went and secured a meeting with the Minister of Indian Affairs and I told him, "˜In my opinion, the people are not involved in the governance.' In theory, in literature, in all the stuff they write, governance for the people, but the way their system works, everything is going back to them. So the big thing for him was this, "˜How do you deal with this deficit?' Because the day that I got elected they sent in a guy from Indian Affairs to come down to Akwesasne and he said he had two mandates. One was to run the election because it was...elections were run under the Indian Act and Indian Affairs conducted the elections. The second was...he says, "˜I really came down to lock up your administration buildings because of this humongous deficit.' So this is what the Minister and I were talking about. He looked directly at me and he says, "˜How are you going to deal with that deficit?' I said, "˜I'm going to deal with it by setting up a whole new management regime. And in this regime, I'm going to separate the politics from the administration. And the second really depends on you, Mr. Minister. I want you to recall all your people and I want to hire my own people from the community that have the skills to do the administration. We'll set up a transparent governance system.' And I guess it kind of surprised him because he says, "˜You think my people are responsible for your deficit?' I says, "˜Yeah, you are. You don't give a damn how funds are allocated and if it's...they're always short of their goal. They never realize that there's no satisfaction then people don't care. People that come down from Indian Affairs to service the community, they don't care. It's not their house, it's not their school, it's not their roads.' I says, "˜You need to involve people in governance who are going to have a direct involvement in impact, they're going to be impacted by what you do.' And curiosity they say killed the cat, but this man says, "˜I never had that question posed in that way before.'

So he gave me a year. He gave me a year to put all these things in place. We're considered a large reservation and once he gave the go-ahead and pulled his people out, then the rest was up to us to try to find people to come home. They were either working in Washington or Syracuse or Ottawa or Toronto, Albany, New York City, but I had a list of people and I started phoning them up and, 'I'd like you all to consider coming home and let's do something for this community.' And it was a challenge. I made a plea to find the right people and they all came back. They left their jobs and they took time off and they moved home and we had a team, I'd say a core team of about 20 that head up all the different departments and in a team meeting you ask, "˜What is it that we have to do that hasn't been done before?' Well, for one, the people don't get information on what council's doing. They don't know your deficit. So we set up to give quarterly reports and at the end of the year an annual report, very carefully put together that deals with almost every aspect of governance, with stories that went along with it. But in the beginning, we also asked people to, from the community, to get involved in the governance and help us. So they got on various boards from the health board to legislative to justice, police commission. These were all things that weren't there before so they were new. That's what the adventure's about. Not dealing with the government, but dealing with your community because the authorities came from external. You have to look at what has to be done to get people interested in their governance and we thought of different ways.

Within the first few months, we made a community flag for Akwesasne and we put that in all the schools, just to put our identity in the community. And there already was in existence a nation flag for the whole Iroquois Nation. So we made a community flag to fly alongside the nation flag and beside Canada's flag. And this is when I went to the customs and all the government buildings and I said, "˜I want this flag flying alongside.' And it did a lot to stir up involvement, interest, pride and along the way, very early, we started changing the name of the St. Regis Band Council, and as I said a while ago, we... everything was "˜band.' And it was done for a purpose, not many people think about it. They say, "˜I'm from the Ottawa Band' and 'I'm from the Chippewa Band.' Over here they all say tribe, it's the equivalent, but it's a government terminology. But they forbid you to say nation and in my meetings I says, "˜Whatever happened, we were once nations. We belong to a nation.' So I started using that and nation thinking and in the community people, even the chiefs along the table that were veterans, "˜We don't talk like that.' I said, "˜I know, because the government trained you not to talk like that.' Anyhow, we made a game of it. We decided that we're not going to use the word "˜band' in the community anymore and had nothing to do with our finances but it had everything to do with pride. And so there was no more 'band office,' there's no more band programs,' there's no more 'band administrator.' Everything...it went around the table, everybody kicked in with ideas and I says, "˜Well, that's...all these things is what we're not going to say. We're going to give new names.' "˜Well, what about the St. Regis Band?' "˜Well, we're going to change that. Our traditional name is Akwesasne and we're a territory, we're not a reserve, we're not a reservation.' So with everybody's help it became the Mohawk Territory of Akwesasne. It just grew.

Some of the older ones on council that had been in the system for a long time, they didn't kind of like go along with this right away and it's hard to deal with a mentality that has been there and they left it up to me. They says, "˜Look, you've got to find a way that we all go in the same direction.' Well, I wasn't about to tell somebody older that, "˜You're saying things wrong, your terminology is wrong.' So we made a game. Put a coffee cup in the middle of the table and said, "˜In our council meetings, anybody that refers to anything in the community about Band, if you say that, you're going to drop a quarter in here.' And they said, "˜Why?' I says, "˜That's just to remind you not to say it.' So when it became a game, it removed the tension, it removed the threat of direct authority. "˜Okay, let's do that.' Pretty soon, even when I'm not there, they were watching each other and months later they all had it, but I didn't realize that it influenced the program and service department and so they did the same thing and they're catching each other and everybody's laughing. Nobody's saying, "˜You can't tell me that.' And then they said, "˜Well, when government people come to see us, they better address us the right way.' Now they're growing in confidence and so whenever we had to meet with external governments, Department of Indian Affairs and provincial governments, authorities, etc., they sat at the table, we explained to them, "˜We don't want to hear that anymore and so if you say that, you're going to start donating.' And to everybody else on the table, "˜Yeah, [you] better do this.' And we would catch them. But attitude changed. The mindset changed. You start looking at your community differently. And that was the positive part. But trying to pull everything together that the staff would think different, that your council would adopt a different attitude, you've got to think community. So that was some of the initial things. It's still going on 20 some years later, just introduce new council members and they tell them, "˜These are certain things we want to watch out for in terminology. They're going to...external government's going to come and talk to you, you better watch for these things,' and all. So I'm noticing...and then it affected community members at large. Nobody says "˜band' anymore in the territory. If they do, if you say it inadvertently, somebody will catch you. That got everybody pretty well thinking on a collective basis.

Now going back to the governance part, we started having more public meetings, put out a newsletter to report on council activities and in the first year, any issue that was controversial, "˜Okay, let's go have a public meeting.' And mostly it was me going to the community saying, "˜This is what you need to know.' There was a big turnaround and leadership; Indigenous leadership goes in different format. Some are accustomed to doing things in a closed manner. The secret to success is you start opening up and report what you can. And as I... I'm explaining this because there are some things like let's say social welfare. Well, you don't have a public meeting about somebody... what they're going to get for welfare, if they're going to get a social job of some sort. So there's a need to keep confidential and we tell them, "˜There's things that we can't tell you but there's things we can.' And people understood that. After a while they would ask questions because in a community you're wide open, they'll ask you anything and that's why a lot of councils don't like to have public meetings. We have a radio station in Akwesasne and I make full use of it. Any kind of announcements, put it on the radio. Want to report something about a meeting, get on the radio. Get that information out there. And soon after it became settled in, that that's what leadership was about. It's subtle, it's not any secret or it's not any formula that's magic, it's just common sense and you see the turnaround in the community when they recognize the sincere efforts leadership is making."

Ian Record:

"Well, I think too, from what you're saying, they get on board, they jump on board that nation-building train when they feel like they have stake in it. Finally, after all these years of having no voice in governance, they have a voice again and the leadership is working with them to make sure that that voice is heard."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Well, in the training I can offer this. There's always opposition, you always have opposition no matter whether you're well off or you're the poorest, and once they get an opportunity, people in the community, that they have a voice, you're always going to have a few that's going to be at every one of your meetings and they're going to grill you, and I've seen a lot of that happen. Most of the time you'll see people that all of a sudden, "˜Geez, I can ask questions. I'm going to come to the next meeting.' So in the leadership training, you have to know how you're going to address them but always make time for those people who come to the meetings who didn't get a chance to ask a question, because if it comes up that they feel somewhat of elitist themselves, they start hammering the council members and that's what a lot of council members are afraid of is, "˜I don't want to get hammered like that. I don't want to get insulted like that. I don't want to have a shouting match.' Well, you don't have to and now it's ingrained in leadership that you owe it to report your activities as a leader and they're not going to go back to any more closed-door sessions. And that's what separates good leaders from bad leaders is their willingness to say, "˜This is the way it's going to be.' And for young chiefs, young leaders coming in, sometimes they say, "˜I got elected to have more housing here and that's what I'm going to do.' "˜Well, I'm sorry, but there's 20 other things that also has to be done for this. We've got to worry about the roads, we got a lobby to our new facilities, there's a lot of other areas of responsibility.' "˜But I got elected on...I made that promise I would improve that.' You're always going to run into that.

So how you get people on side back home...it was sort of a tradition with the Head Chief that everybody went to him. Well, on council we have 12 district chiefs. Everybody was assigned a portfolio. If I'm going to go look for money and I take a portfolio with me, whether it's education or housing or economic development or justice, policing, whatever it may be, is that I don't have to take the whole council. I'll take the portfolio holder, I might take the staff, I might take an elder from the community and we'll go out for a few days to deal with the meetings. We bring a report back of those meetings, the results of those meetings, and then council deliberates it. And everybody has always to be ready to go out. So public speaking becomes a requirement. You can't just sit on the table and say, "˜Well, let him speak.' You have to learn how to present; very important to be a leader that you can stand up and make a report, deliberate, talk to government, be a public person. If you weren't that when you got on council and you're only going to do that one thing, you better think different. And that's what makes for good teamwork because now you're part of a team. And in the council makeup, they all have to think like that. This is a team and it's not just the council that's a team. Your team extends to your administration, to your staff. It also extends out to people in the community, that you're going to see that they're going to be able to...that we're part of this layers and layers of team and we're in there somewhere. They all have to be able to have an avenue to talk to leadership and that's why you have meetings and different portfolios. Anyway, it's...a lot of it was common sense. A lot of it was based on tradition.

One of the things that really didn't work for us, and it wasn't working when I became chief, was the term; we had two-year terms. And most tribal councils, chiefs, councils both in the States and in Canada, you'd be surprised, they still operate that way, two-year terms. And then you hear them, "˜I just got used to how I'm going to be developing, how I'm going to contribute to council, I have an understanding...' Boom. Time to have a...go back on the campaign trail. 'I've got to make a lot of promises, I've got to spend council's money.' How do you maintain a certain level of responsibility? How do you keep a level of your target that you want to hit, not this year, but you've planned that for three years, five years down the road, because you're going to have to have a joining of other ideas, other funding sources, so it doesn't happen right away. So what we did is we wanted to get out of Indian Affairs-controlled election, and so very early we opted out to develop a custom community election. And for the most part of that first term they went door to door and sat with people. And they had a discussion and I told them why a two-year term is not working under the Indian Act and if we opted out, do you want to see a three-year term or four-year term, a five-year term and also you had all that, people were commenting and at the end they settled on three years. And if the leadership is good, we can always go back, because now it's ours, if we want to extend that to four years the community will decide that. So we kept telling them, "˜It's your decision.' And then we had a massive vote after the first term and they brought it home.

Now back home there's a traditional side and they don't vote. So we got a letter from their council, the traditional council, that they liked the idea that we would bring an elected code, election code back home that would belong to the people, no longer controlled by government. And so those people who are always protecting, filing injunctions, "˜I want to go to court. I should have won. I want somebody to hear this. That guy cheated,' whatever it is, fine. We now have our own court, file with them. Matters will be decided here. If the community sees that you're way out of line, you'll also know about it. And so this is how our justice system became important to us, our courts became in handling these kind of situations. Now all of that is important. There's no one magic formula. It takes a combination of ideas to get people involved and that was some of the things that was done back home."

Ian Record:

"The title of this program is 'Leadership for Native Nation Building.' If you had say 10 minutes sitting down with newly elected leaders or young people, young Native people who are thinking about getting into a leadership position somewhere down the road in their lives, contributing to the nation building efforts of their own nations, if you had 10 minutes with them, what would you tell them about how to be an effective leader?"

Michael K. Mitchell:

"I would tell them that language is very important. We've had two generations of external forces telling us we've got to get an education. "˜Your language and culture, tradition is not important.' So we're the end product. Young people now don't speak the language anymore so they're not aware of the traditions and then there's elders and there's community and there's people that all has steps. If you're going to be a leader, always support the culture and tradition of your community. And the wisdom that comes from the elders in the community, when they give you support and they recognize that you're going to be respectful of your traditions, then support comes and follows after that. And don't be a person who is going to talk it, but don't walk it. You have to show community...and you do it by a number of ways. If you don't speak the language, then try to say the most important things. In my language it's [Mohawk language]. "˜Hello, how are you, how are things going?' And you learn the basics and let people know that those are the first things that you're going to offer back is culture, tradition, language. Know the history of your community, know the history of your nation, because you're expected to know that if you're going to be a leader. Know it well. If there are things you haven't learned from the dances to the history to the songs, then support it. They don't have to be all that instant, but it certainly helps to support things that are Native. And there are times when you have to speak out, learn how to speak well. And if you can't speak in your own language to your own elders, you're going to hit a bump right off the road, so communication. And the most important part isn't coming from Harvard or some other place and come home, "˜Now I'm going to be a chief because I got a degree.' The most important thing is what's in here, what's in your heart, what's in your mind, because that's what's going to go out. And within six months, people will know what kind of leader you're going to be. If you're dedicated...

The chief that got elected for saying, "˜I'm going to get more housing,' there's a set thing in place that's already pre-decided what you're going to get. Unless you have a magic wand or you've got a lot of money you can throw to the community and say, "˜Here,' it requires teamwork. On any issue it requires teamwork. So you have to work with different people, you have to work with your staff. Don't bully the staff. They know what they're doing and you're going to need their help to pull things together, to plan, to write a proposal, to write a report, to prepare a strategy of what you're going to say when you get out there. Don't be ashamed to take your staff with you when you have to travel somewhere, you have to negotiate something or you have to sell something. And that teamwork is very important. We had a leadership course just a few days ago and I heard one example after another, staff's not respected, they don't listen, and then they're polarized. Secret for success for new chiefs: recognize the abilities of people that are there.

And the other thing that's always important, especially for the younger ones, for some reason reservations right across the country, territories on the Canadian side, small or large, we all have our enemies, we all have people we don't like, so don't take that with you if you're going to be a leader. You have to serve all the people. You have to let them know by your decisions that you have looked all over and you have served them well. It might not reflect right away but people will know that you're going to be a leader that's going to be for the community. Not just your family, not just your friends, not just the faction that you belong to or the people that say, "˜We got you in.' But when you're in that spot, make sure you're speaking for the whole community and expressing thoughts of the whole nation with respect. You don't go to school for that. They'll teach you...elders will teach you to have that kind of respect and so always have respect for your elders. Know the way to the temple of your nation, how far the way things are going because you can spot them. You don't have to be a politician to know there's factions, there are Hatfields and McCoys almost in every reservation and as soon as you get on, make sure that you pronounce yourself, "˜I'm here for the community.' And they might not like it, but by your decisions people will have respect for you.

The ones that say, "˜I've got a certain thing I've got to do here and that's all I'm going to do,' most times they will last one term, maybe two terms and that'll be it. Or they'll leave, they'll exhaust it because a lot of frustration, if you're going to look at things in an individual basis. See, everything with us is a collective. We're a collectivity. I don't know if that's proper English, but that's how I look at it. Sometimes I make up my own words in English, but our treaties have to benefit the collectivity of the nation. Our rights are for all of us, not just an individual, not for you to say, "˜I'm going to make money off my right,' because I see a lot of that happen in my time. You have to ensure that the benefits are equal. That's on any given subject -- opportunities for education, opportunities for employment, a vision for education, for a school, for an arena, for recreation, for elders -- but it's the collectivity and that's the mark of a young leader when he sees that, that's the nation I'm thinking about."

Ian Record:

"You've talked...you mentioned this chief from your own nation who kind of came in on this campaign platform of housing, "˜I've got to get housing for the people,' and was kind of taking that narrow view of what his job was essentially. In the work that the Native Nations Institute does cross Indian Country, we see...we see this mentality that often incoming councilors have, incoming chiefs have, of "˜I've been elected by the people to make decisions.' And that's kind of the extent to which they view their job and when it's really much more than about, "˜I've got to make all the decisions, I've got to have my hand in everything.' From what you've been saying in terms of what's really powered nation building at Akwesasne, it's a much broader view and a much more multi-faceted view of leadership in terms of what leaders have to be in order to serve their people and their nation."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Don't be ashamed to say, "˜I got stuff to learn to be a politician and I might take the first six months and learn my leadership craft well. I need to consult with more established leaders, I need to talk to the staff, I need to go seek feedback from community people, from elders.' You spread yourself out there and tell them you're not here to make decisions right away, because if you don't know what kind of decisions you have to make and you're making decisions, it's liable to be wrong, it's liable to be selfish and it'll come back on you. So give yourself a little bit of time to know what people...what things are in place and what people are feeling, what's on their mind. And for a good leader, he'll always go around the first six months of his term and listen. And it's not a crime to stand up and say, "˜I've got a little bit to learn here and I see some chiefs here that have been here for awhile. I know some people here that used to serve on council and I'm going to make sure I learn my craft well.' You get a lot of respect in the community if you can say that. On the other hand, yeah, I've seen the ones that pounded the table, say, "˜I'm here, I was elected, I'm going to make decisions.' "˜Well, you go out there and you look for money then.' "˜Well, the staff should be doing that. I'm going to tell them to go.' It doesn't make for that teamwork building that you're going to do. You might be mean, you might be tough, but six months down the line, people can't stand you. So what do you do after that? You're always on the outside because now you isolated yourself. So be a team player when you come into leadership, the most important thing."

Ian Record:

"You mentioned earlier this issue of when...essentially the crux of the defining moment of when Akwesasne really went down this nation-building path was when first of all you took control. You said, "˜We're not going to let these external forces dictate to us how we're going to lead our lives,' but then you did this important institutional step, which is you said, "˜We're going to separate politics from the administration of our governance.' And essentially what you're talking about and it relates back to this point of leadership, which is leaders can't micromanage. It's not an effective way to do things and achieve our priorities and our goals and objectives. I was wondering if you could speak to that a little bit more about first of all the importance of that, separating the politics out of the administration of tribal government. And then second, what kind of message that sent to the community."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"You know, the sad truth that sometime in the history of leadership, could be any community, you're going to have leaders around the table who have come from the staff, who have come from some program, who have come from school and have moved back home and that now they think they know what it's going to take and when they sit around the table, that's when you start hearing, "˜I'm going to go over there and I'm going to do this. I'm going to make sure that I'm watching that guy. I think that's not being done right, I'm going to be going over there and making sure that gets done right.' You're not a leader anymore and the word is micromanaging when you do that. If you catch yourself and you say, "˜I shouldn't be doing that because if I'm going to be a leader, those people can report. I can ask for a report to come in, I can look at it, as a council we can look at it, see how things are going,' but if I'm going to stand over the shoulder of somebody who's going to say, "˜I want to see what you're doing,' that's micromanaging. If there's programs that you have an expertise and that could be in any capacity, finance, you're over at the finance every other day watching. "˜I'm going to be watching how you're spending money.' That's not what you're elected for. People want to see you make decisions and they want to see you do things that are going to benefit the community at-large. Read those reports, look at and be able to write reports, make sure those reports are going to be going out in some way that's going to reach the community. But when I meet leaders, that's the biggest complaint, members of council, somebody's always in there, running over there and it's sad, but we have to appreciate in all walks of life you've got people coming back either from a job outside and they're home a little bit, they run for council and because they don't like something or they come home from school and they say, "˜I want to get on council here because now I have an education, I'm better, I know more than anybody. I got a degree, I got something.' And that usually triggers off the wrong message and certainly you don't intend to be a micromanaging chief, but ask yourself six months down the line.

Now what do chiefs do then? If you let the staff do the administration part and let the people do the finance part, they know the system, you direct that to say, "˜We will expect a report on this,' and you'll have it, but you no longer have to be running over there, chasing after people, looking over somebody's shoulders. You now have time to look at the politics of your community and start doing...analyzing the reports that are coming in, do some forecasts, do some three, five years, 10 years, 20 years. Where do you want your community to be in 20 years? That's a good leadership question. And how are we going to get there, what is it going to take for us to get there? What kind of population would we have then? So what kind of infrastructure are we going to require down that line? Because we have to start planning. Community planning is very important. So there's enough to do for political leadership not to be running over there. There's always people on every council that's going to be like, unfortunately, but that's a fact of life. And the more that people can be groomed and told and kind of guided and given responsibility, it slowly turns around. Sometimes the chief, the veteran chiefs will say, "˜What in the hell's the matter with you? Get down away from there.' Or it could be them that's always going over there, but the general council has to be aware that good planning requires good teamwork and good planning will get you down that line when you have a vision that you can look further down the road where you want your people to go. Because if you only got about 3,000, 5,000, 10,000, then work with your staff that's going to say, "˜Where are we going to be forecasting 10, 20 years down the road?' Then you can start planning.

We've got things that affect us from the outside. It could be anything from the state, it could be from the town, from the municipalities. You could be trying to create good relations with them, it could be defending a land claim and how are we going to use that. There's an endless amount of things for good leaders to sit around and say, "˜Boy, we've got a lot of work to do.' You don't have time to be micromanaging. Unfortunately, though, it's very particular...I guess it impacts most councils, because I hear it a lot and on one hand it's sad and on another hand it's a fact of life and so when you can recognize it, if it's you, if it's your council, all you've got to say is, "˜Let's not go there. Let's not get into that rut that we know is going to happen.' But unfortunately, somebody comes from a teaching background and they're going to be on council, so right away they say, "˜I'm here to make sure that those education...it's going to change over there. I'm going to be going over there and I'm going to be watching them,' or some other. You've just got no time for that. Good leaders start from the day one and they ask, "˜What are the things that we have to be concerned about?' And teamwork works best."

Ian Record:

"You and I both know that the governance challenges facing Native nations seem to get more and more complex from one day to the next. And what it sounds like you're saying is that teambuilding as you've mentioned several times is not just a goal, should not just be a goal, it's in fact a necessity if a nation's going to really move forward in an effective way. The idea that essentially councilors can't do it all by themselves anymore."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"I tell you why I like the word 'nation building.' You live on the reservation, you could be Lakota, Sioux, you could be Cheyenne, whatever nation you belong to, but there's seven, eight other communities that you belong to the same nation further recognizing you're not the nation. So you look at that and say, "˜But if I'm in a nation-building mood,' and I would always consider the whole nation first, 'I will impact for your benefit the nation. I will do things and make efforts to bring goodness and pride to everything that we're going to do.' Selfish thinking is, "˜Well, what do I want to get out of this in my time? What can I do for myself?' So nation building prepares you right off the bat that if you're going to be a nation leader, you have to think of everybody and the decisions that you're going to make has to impact for their benefit.

Leadership on a nation basis is that collective thing that I was talking about, it impacts the general benefit and it's the general interest of everyone out there. And it's not easy because nowadays we're like this: Some people have a casino, they've got good revenues coming in, good streams of revenues, they lease land, they've got good income and capacity building. You can have that very important ingredient in between that calls for good leadership mind, that's good planning. But let's say you don't have any of those things and you don't know where all your money's going to come from. Can you still have good leaders? So we're here and we're here. Yes, you can. And I think the true test of a leader is when you don't have all those things and you set those goals, you set those targets and along the way you find, yeah, there's something over there, there's a little bit over there and there's a little bit over there and as you collect them and as you develop teamwork, all of a sudden things start to move. But if you're a council that's going to be arguing all the time and those arrows are flying back and forth and sometimes it lands on your back, most cases it might happen, it could come from your community, it could come from your council, it could come from your staff, but the true test of a leader is to consider the farther, greater majority and do some community planning.

If you're shortsighted and it's that same guy that's going to say, "˜I was elected to do this,' well, it isn't going to happen. And we've seen it too many times in past events that they come and go. But there'll always be a spot for people like that and it's up to the other council members to influence them and say, "˜Here, we've got a lot of things, you're welcome to come and work with us and let's share some of this responsibility,' because portfolio, you may be the head of education, but other chiefs may come and help you with that. You may be the head of justice, but you can have another group that's going to work with you. It's not a one-man operation. Nor is the...sometimes you call them the Grand Chief or the Head Chief, the 'big chief,' whatever people would be referring to, it's just a man, it's just a woman and got a lot of responsibilities and for the Head Chief, he's got to hold everything together, he's got to make sure he's not the king, he's not the queen. It's a responsibility that is shared and that's the secret to good success."

Ian Record:

"From what you've been saying, Mike, one of the keys to Akwesasne's success over the past 25 years or so has been instilling transparency and accountability in government where none essentially existed before. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the importance of transparency and accountability to empowering a nation's leaders to do their jobs well."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Sometimes a chief will feel he's got to do everything so that he can get the credit for it and he'll want to have hands on personal charge of something. The secret to good leadership, if...let's say you are that person that can do it well, you can speak well, you can write well, you can articulate, then pull other people in with you. And the staff, there's got to be somebody in that particular area that you're talking about that will fit. You introduce the topic and allow for other chiefs to contribute, allow an elder or a staff person to be part of that team, because if you want to do everything yourself and you think that's the only way it's going to get done -- unfortunately that's very true with a lot of our people -- it doesn't always work because your own team will begin to feel like, "˜Eh, he's a big show-off. He's a know-it-all. He's the only one that can do it.' You're not part of that team and sometimes we don't see that. You go home thinking, "˜Boy, I sure gave it to them. I sure made a good speech. Boy, they must have liked me for things that I was able to say,' while in reality they probably said, "˜That guys was hogging the whole...wasn't a team player and he spoke way too long and he's very selfish in his attitude,' etcetera. So you have to analyze the situation and put yourself in the place where what do you want to do with the gift that you have.

The elders will say when you're born and as they've been watching you grow up and they put their hand on you and they say, "˜I saw you dance, you're going to be a good dancer. I heard you speak.' And as you're growing up, they'll say, "˜You're a good hunter. You have a gift.' And as you grow up a little bit more they'll say, "˜You're a good speaker. You'll be a good leader someday.' Use those abilities well. They didn't tell you that you're going to be the only one speaking. They didn't tell you you're going to be the only one singing because it requires everybody to sit together to make good music. It requires you to speak well and blend and carry people and work with them and that will resonate, that will have strength. In Iroquois teachings, when the Peacemaker came to the Mohawks and when they were doubting his message, he gave them one arrow and he says, "˜Break it.' So that Band councilman, he just crunches it and throws it back at him, show him how strong he is. He turned around and he took five arrows in a bunch and he says, "˜Now break this one.' So he's there trying to break it and it wouldn't break. The message that he was telling him was when you have people working together, when you have nations working together, the restraints there and it won't break. So these are things that are taught to us to say it's far better to concern yourself in working on a collective basis, working together, achieve your goal and if the nation has to fight on issues, it's better if we're all on the same side and going the same way. If we can't settle that, then we don't go fight. We manage to settle it at home. Make sure that by the time we get done we're going to go in a certain direction. So those are all important things to know."

Ian Record:

"How important an asset has an educated community been for Akwesasne as it's moved down the nation-building path?"

Michael K. Mitchell:

"What's that?"

Ian Record:

"How important an asset has an educated community, an involved community, been as Akwesasne has moved down this nation-building path?"

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Well, we covered it a while ago. It's easy to regress. When leaders...you have to allow for leadership to change. In my 25 years there were times when I left and made room for others to try it. Some will last a year, maybe they won't even complete their term but they will say, "˜That's a tough job.' But you always room for people to learn. Some are members of council. "˜I'm going to try that.' And then you appreciate how difficult it is because it's not that it's so difficult, it's what you do with it when you're there and how do you involve people and get them working together because if you don't do that, then those micromanaging minds come back again. And so with us it goes up, it goes down, it goes up. And when you have people that are fairly new, you're always going to have that problem because they're going to look at what they do well. And they will always say, "˜We need a lot of training. We need to know the issues.' But some will say, "˜We can't, we can't, we can't let people know we don't know a whole lot so we're not going to invite anybody. We're just going to drift in and we'll watch the house.' So nobody goes lobbying, nobody goes to meetings, nobody negotiates, nobody takes on the hard issues and you get to the end of the term, boy, the community says, "˜Geez, they didn't do anything here.' "˜We didn't have a crisis, we didn't get into any trouble.' "˜Yeah.' "˜We didn't go too far either.' So there's another change. So to me, it's always nice to see a blend of experienced people, new people coming in, elders, young people coming in, and with that blend you can do a lot. So I'm not going to say...and the reason I was a little stunned by your question, we're not in any degree in Akwesasne up here. It goes up and down and you learn as you go along.

I'll talk a little bit about my community. This long table, if you separate it in half, that's Akwesasne. This side is the United States, this side is Canada, and you separate what's on the Canadian side to two-thirds is in Quebec, one-third is in Ontario so that's five jurisdictions on the outside. Then you have a tribal council for the American side, then you have Mohawk council elected government on both sides. You have a nation traditional council that governs in a traditional way. So there's three governments and five governments, that's eight governments. I always think of the community, do they understand everything that goes on? And try to get as much information out. So it goes up and down and we have our share of crises because of all those borders, it's inviting for criminal organizations to say, "˜Ah...' There's the St. Lawrence River -- let me clarify -- right in the middle of our territory and for policing authorities, it's a "˜no-go' zone because these borders, the international border zigzags around islands so the law enforcement is virtually impossible on the river and people hear about that and so they take advantage of it. And people come and entice our young people to say, "˜Take things across for me and you'll make some money.' So it's always a battle to have a law-and-order society. It's always a battle to keep your young people on line.

Educated? Young kids will say, "˜Why the hell should I get an education, I'm making $5,000 a week?' Years ago, it's still going on, the greatest pride was for a high steel worker. "˜I work in New York City, I work in Philadelphia, I work in San Francisco.' Anywhere there's a big building going up, there's Mohawks on there. That's our skill. And we all aspire when we're young that that's, 'I want to be like my uncle, like my father, like my brother.' So that's the thing that's still ongoing. But now this new thing has come in that has influenced and it's not just cigarettes any longer. There's drugs going across, there's guns going across, and so it's becoming a real dynamic criminal activity and there's major players on both sides. So leadership is hard. It's hard to stabilize; it's an ongoing battle. Having said that, then knowing all that then you say, "˜Okay, well, what makes for a good leader, then?' It's all those things that you have to apply. And people go in and they say, "˜Well, that guy that got elected to look after the housing issue?' There's guys that went up on council to look after the smugglers, protect them or some other issue, and he winds up on council.

So it's...leadership is tough and it's as best as everybody else is going to work together and keep things moving. And it might be that someday be down or it could be just as hard for other leaders on other reservations, it's never easy. Historical, current, future leadership, Native Americans, never easy; but what you do in your time to be a leader, you leave a mark and if you want to leave your mark and if you've been on council a long time, how do you want that people to make their mark? It's nice for them after you've left council, people come up to you and shake your hand and say, "˜I'm really grateful that you've come home and dedicated your time and there's things that we see here that you've contributed to,' and you feel good inside. Or you can be selfish and say, "˜Well, I did my thing. I got some houses there. I did my thing and that's it,' and you have this empty feeling. So it's a lot of work, it's a lot of responsibility, and sometimes there's hardly any pay or very little of it so devotion as a commitment comes into play."

Ian Record:

"Your discussion just now brought to my mind a comment that one of your colleagues, Chief Helen Ben of the Meadow Lake Tribal Council, once said. She said that, "˜My job as a leader is to make myself indispensable.' I'm sorry, "˜To make myself...my job as a leader is to make myself dispensable.' And really what she was referring to is how important it is for leaders to govern beyond their own term in office or their own potential terms down the road, however many terms that might be, to really govern for the long term. And you've talked about that. I was wondering if you'd talk a little bit more about that and how that should be foremost in a leader's mind."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Well, when you work with your staff and figure out where you're going to be in 10 years, 20 years down the line and you start planning for it and you say, "˜Our population is going to double in that time and so we need infrastructure, we have to build new roads and all, we've got to allot some land, we've got to have a community center expand, our school programs, our buildings are going to have to expand so we have to work for those things.' After you leave, whether it's one term or 10 terms, but those are the kind of things that people will be grateful for, that you've had that wisdom and you'd had that long sight to say, "˜We've got to look at the future as well.' It is so important for leaders to gauge the present and where they came from, to where they are, to where you need to go. And if you're in a community where you have neighboring reservations and you can work together on something, not compete with each other, but whether it's solving a land claim, having an arena you can share, or a justice system you can share and the more things that you do, it extends beyond where you live. If your cousin, relatives are close by, there's eight reservations and you're all the same nation, then do that long planning, "˜What could we all do together?' Because maybe as a result that the collectivity of all those territories, it might be 40,000 and then in your planning you say, "˜Well, what do we need for 40,000 now?' So maybe we need a judge that's going to be trained or a number of them that'll be able to go around and hear cases for all of us and then we can all have a justice system, we can all have our court system, we can all have those laws that'll be for our people to provide for that law and order. But on my own, "˜I've only got 800. I can't afford to do that. But if we all chip in, what could we do?' So when somebody says, "˜I dispense myself to this community and to around,' that's what I see, the ability to well, work on issues from your community to your own region, your own area to national and international because you can go to a national chiefs meetings, National Congress of American Indians to Assembly of First Nations and you get to know the issues. It's always time well spent. What are the national issues that are affecting us? And to have that experience, to know it well and before you go, what are they talking about over there. So I'll just do a little bit of reading to know what's all the stats in regards to education, what are the funding, what are the national housing dollars, health situations and if you don't have it when you go up there, make sure you go around and you ask for that information so you can bring it home. Knowing data, have information on the national trend. Even if it's how many of our people make up the prison population? How many of our own people are dropping out of school, suicide rates? A leader needs that information because wherever you're going to go talk, you have to be able to quote statistics. You have to be able to know how we're impacted. Know the other side, too. A lot of our people are now going to school and graduating. A lot of people are now coming home. They're our doctors, they're our lawyers. Well, how many is that? How many from our area? What's the national trend? Those are things that leaders have to know, it's good to know to have in your pocket so that when you're talking to a government person on the side and he says something, there's no greater satisfaction if you can put him in his place with statistics. But if you know what you're doing, it'll certainly help."

Ian Record:

"So essentially what you're saying is it's critical as a leader to know your community and not just know it well and systematically, so you know for instance what problems and challenges your community faces -- whether it's drug use, alcohol use, whatever it might be -- but also on the flip side knowing what your assets are, knowing how well educated your community is, who those recent graduates as you said are. That can be critical as you try to apply those resources towards what your goals are."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"That long-term planning is knowing how many of your children are going to be coming back from college, university, having...all this time, how many are in a certain level and their career planning and you reach out to them. "˜Don't forget, we'll have something in place you can come home to.' The saddest part for all of us is that we have nothing to offer them when they get an education and the other sad story is that they graduate and they keep going and they say, "˜Well, there's nothing for me at home. So I'm going to marry off the reservation, I'm going to live off the reservation and I'll still maintain...I'll come home once in awhile,' and you get disconnected. So maybe not here, but maybe that other reservation needs a doctor, needs a lawyer, they need something. That's why I'm saying, make sure that on a collective basis you know what your stats are, what your numbers are, and where people are going and what they're learning and amongst yourselves create that team. The team isn't just around the council, isn't just around your community, it's your whole nation and even beyond and knowing the organizations that are out there. Could our children land in some institution, some organization that they could work for that would still benefit us, because they're always just a little jump to come back home."

Ian Record:

"Really what you're describing, and we see this in so many Native communities on both sides of the border, is this issue of brain drain, where your best and brightest young people go off, get their educations and then when they finish there's no opportunity for them. And what we've seen is where leaders, where nations do the due diligence of creating stability in their nation, stability in their governing systems, it tends to foster those opportunities where those young people can then come back and become a part of the community again and not drift away."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Yep. Let me point a few things out from experience. This is for young leaders and I'm thinking, "˜Well, I want to be a good leader, what should I do?' You get on council, get a list of all your students that are out there in college, universities that are far away from home. Write to them, tell them you're on council and get their thoughts, get their opinions. Tell them, "˜Your council would like to know and they'd like to keep in touch.' You don't know how it impacts a student that's far away, that's going to keep going unless somebody goes out and say, "˜Hey, I care and we're thinking of you and we're hoping that when you get an education, we hope during that time you're getting an education that you're going to maintain contact with us.' And it's never a bad idea for leaders to go and visit the schools where their students are going to school. Activities. Those students will probably have, if there's a bunch of them, will have some kind of a Native student activity going on. Leaders should go to those things. We only look at the statistics. How many people we lose, not dying, not suicide, not drugs. We lose our nation members because when they get outside and they learn and they don't want to come home because we haven't maintained contact with them, we haven't kept in touch with them, we haven't told them we care about what they do. And so they marry off, they marry somebody in the city and then they come back home and they say, "˜Hey, you're not one of us anymore.' And all those other things start coming into play. So the wisdom of a leader is gauged not just what goes on in his community, but with the youth and what is going to impact them down the line and that connection part. Sometimes we only concern ourselves when a person comes home and they're married to a non-Native. And it's, "˜Ah, damn it, they have no rights here. They just want our gaming revenue, they just want our education fund, they want our status.' And nobody maintained any contact and that's not exactly a welcome home. There's elders around and we haven't made that connection. So there's all kinds of reasons, pros and cons, but isn't it better to be proactive and maintain contact and tell them...your young people you care and give them that traditional and cultural and spiritual support so that they value who they are and they know who they are and that they will come home?"

Ian Record:

"And also creating the opportunities for them to come home, to follow those careers that they went off..."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"You want to be a good leader? Well, let's see. Let's build another school, a higher level. We need teachers now. What about our health institutions? We need our own nurses. We need our own doctors. That's the challenge of being a leader is what institutions can be facilitated and be homegrown and communications with your young. If you trained for this, there's something for you at home. And then when you do those things, well, then somebody's got to build those schools, somebody that's good with their hands has to build those schools so there's jobs at home, so a lot of community development."

Ian Record:

"Where we've seen this issue of brain drain really rear its ugly head is when you have a high level of political instability, meaning one administration replaces the previous administration and the new administration fires everybody and they put their own people in and very soon the message is clear to everyone in the community that -- and particularly those that have gone off to get their education -- if they've come back, they've invested their education, their skills in the community and suddenly they're out of a job. They say, "˜Why am I going to stick around for this?' We see that so many places and I was wondering if you could speak to that a little bit. You're starting to laugh I see."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Man, I've seen enough of those. I guess I could cry. You feel bad about seeing those things. I've seen them at home. Fortunately, it's recent past and as we develop more, there's less and less of it happening, but it still happens and attitudes like that. And so nowadays you always have to have a balance from the youth and family and elders in the community that is going to have to say, "˜We need good leaders.' It is who you put in, because the ones that get on and unfortunately somebody has an idea, he might either buy his way on, he'll garner the votes, he'll get on and he'll take the community to a certain direction. I look at it say, "˜Well, it goes on, it's like that all over the world. You have leaders of nations that are like that but why do we have to be like that?' And I guess it's just dialoguing, it's just communicating. When you give an example like that, you tend to turn around and say, "˜Not my community, we're not like that.' And you get home and you say, "˜Well, we were like that five years ago. This council's like that but do we want to be that way.' It's a lot of thinking, a lot of soul searching and when you hear of things like this, you tend to think of your home community right away. "˜What are we like over there? How much of this nation thinking goes on at home?' And that's the most important message. And it's controlled a lot by the people that don't even have that recognition or the thought that, "˜We're the ones that are in power here.' And we could take them out of power if they don't behave. But they don't go vote, they don't want to get involved. They're sick of the way the leaders are, but they don't do anything. So it's a society thing. But those thoughts have to be transmitted and I always try to go to the younger ones that are saying, "˜You can impact it. You can go home and...' "˜Well, there's nothing to go home to.' They say, "˜You ought to see my leaders where I come from.' Well, then, how about changing it. So I've heard all the different views, I've seen a lot of situations like that and sometimes I'm asked to sit with them and just by communicating they kind of recognize where they're at. You see them at national meetings, where a guy's up there and he's talking about how sovereign he is and then he goes home and he does his BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] thing. He falls into the system. How do you get out of that system? Nation building allows you to think on a broader scale. When you're thinking of the whole nation, you're thinking of the young people and the elders and the families, you're thinking of your community, you're thinking of your nation and then the challenge goes on from there. Man, there's lots to do for a leader without having to micromanage, without having to have bad feelings against one person or another or a group or to represent just a few. But let's face it, in reality it's like that."

Ian Record:

"Really what you're speaking to is that while it is really important to elect good people that have, as you said, in their heart the entire community in mind when they make decisions, it's also jobs...the job of effective governments to put in place those rules that either discourage or punish those bad leaders for acting in ways that only advance their own interests and not the nation's."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"In about our second term, we started recognizing that that might be a situation with certain leaders coming down, whether they're on council now, or we've seen this happen or you'll say, "˜We don't want it to happen.' So we put together a code of ethics for chief and council, how they're going to behave. One of the things that you don't do, and if you do, what does the community have to empower to take you out or discipline you or suspend you or remove you from office? And we went out in the community and got all that feedback and then they put it together. So when you are installed into office and you sign a commitment to the community, your pledge, you also sign a code of ethics that you're going to be a good leader. That's what I was saying a while ago that we've seen it and we learn from experience. If we don't want to go down that road, put things in place in your community so that when you have situations like that and all that is based on something that may have happened before, you see it, or you even have a fear that you don't want to go down there and you put things in place. And when leaders go into office, they will make a commitment that "˜this is how I'm going to serve.' They won't be embarrassed to say, "˜Yes, I will sign a pledge, I will sign a commitment, I will sign a code of ethics how my conduct will be while I'm in office,' and I've seen a few people taken out of office when they violate that, but that's the rule. And if there's communities that need to work on things like that, involve the community, they'll give you a lot of good ideas."

Ian Record:

"What would be your advice to nations, Native nations both in the United States and Canada who, for example, have been operating under either Indian Reorganization Act governments or Indian Act governments where it's essentially created this system where outsiders are calling the shots, where they're kind of stuck in this dependency mode and are searching for a way out or searching to begin to rebuild their nations as nations. What would be your advice to them in terms of where they might begin?"

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Sometimes you are impressed by something you've heard out there, it could be a national chiefs' meeting, it could be a regional meeting, it could be out there or another tribe that's, groups that have made a presentation and you bring it home. I guess the first point of contact is if you find people out there, bring them and introduce them to your council. If you have a thought that you say, "˜Geez, that's different thinking. They talk of different ways than we're doing,' invite them. And it's that thought that it's not just you because it's frustrating when you're the only leader that wants to change and everybody else is locked in. We call that the Indian agent mentality or the mode. If you find people that have these ideas or you've learned of some community that has done things a certain way, invite them or go visit them. Take a delegation, go visit them and bring that information back. It's productive. It can do wonders because a change in attitude, sometimes they don't know and they've got consultants, they've got lawyers running their business. There's nothing more adventurous and more satisfying than to have a community try something or leadership try something and say, "˜It'll get us far better results. Tradition, we haven't been doing that. We haven't gone down that way.' Well, there's always room for leadership to try something. If you've got an idea, bring it to council and if it's something that you can try...nation building is, sad to say, is still new. People are engrained in a certain mentality, locked in a certain way that they're going to do business. It's hard to change them. And as younger people come on and the more they see the outside and they have a broader perspective of things, those are the ones that will say, "˜We'll try it.' How do you change it? I guess we just have to try to advance more people out there, spread the word more. But there's...yeah, I know what you mean. There's a lot of councils out there that are still locked in and it's very unfortunate, but I get a lot of letters from chiefs across Canada asking about the same thing. "˜Can you direct us somewhere or somebody could come you can recommend?' And I recommend a lot."

Ian Record:

"So really what you're saying is, it's learn as much as you can about what other nations are doing in nation-building ways so you can then start a dialogue within your own community, because it's not going to happen overnight."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"As we were developing, in the first couple terms in Akwesasne, I started signing agreements with First Nations and they weren't just Iroquois communities. West Bank in British Columbia, that's at the other end of the country, we signed an agreement with them to exchange information, to share resources, to exchange thoughts on leadership, on issues, land claims, nation-building ideas, and as far as we have been separated we're always exchanging ideas. And they're one of the very few communities in Canada that have settled a self-government process with Canada and they created a constitution, a charter that was drafted by the community and now they're trying to, understand this isn't easy, with all kinds of things in here that are accountability factors that we haven't done before. Sometimes they'll say, "˜Can you fly up here and talk to our community?' Or if they're in Ottawa and I invite them to come and visit us. And they're not the only ones. There are others.

We had a trade treaty with Mayans in Guatemala. I heard what was going on with a tribe over there and they had finished a 30-year war and when they got home they got about a tenth of their original territory, they had no economy, but they're in a warm climate, they had access to coffee. We flew down there and said, "˜We'll buy coffee from you.' But I went to the government and I told them, "˜We're buying coffee from them. We don't want you to come in here and say I'm going to take the percentage off because I want to do this treaty with them that's going to say fair market.' And it ran about five years and it went quite well. A lesson we learned is, when is the proper time to take something like that and turn it over to a private entrepreneur and let him take that off? You've created the opportunity, but our council was saying, "˜Gee, that's our idea. We control that.' Well, it was up there, a lot of nice things being said and everything, then it came crashing down because as leaders changed they don't know what's going on, they're not so committed to it anymore. It was a wonderful idea. I advocate trade amongst First Nations, among Native American tribes and it was a longstanding tradition. It's like that for all of us. What could we do to improve our economies? What could we do for our youth to have, secure good employment? So it's something that's not on the table, but I would advocate to any nation-building group to think of those things because you share resources, you develop resources, you develop good nation people and they'll stay home, you create opportunities. I just throw that in there because that's something that's starting to scratch the surface.

I went through the Supreme Court in Canada on trade. All they asked me, the government in Canada, "˜Can you prove that you have an aboriginal right to trade by some treaty or some Aboriginal right? If you can prove in a Canadian court, we'll accommodate you, we'll implement it, and we'll negotiate the exercise of that right.' So we set up a test case. Four or five years later, it finally gets to court and I win everything. The government is so thrown back. I says, "˜You asked. This is a test case and now you have it recognized in a Canadian court.' Well, six years later, ministers have changed, government people have changed, your justice people are paranoid to no end. "˜We've got to appeal. We didn't think you were going to win here.' Well, it went to the next level. I won there, too. So now a new government is in place and they don't like it. "˜Well, we don't know who made that commitment,' but isn't it typical of our history? "˜Oh, that group made that treaty with you. We're no longer responsible for that.' So they went to the Supreme Court and then they altered, restructured the argument. So I lost on a 'no' decision. They didn't take the right away that we could cross back and forth, they didn't take the right away that we could cross with our own goods duty free, tax free. The only thing we were concerned about was the trade, with that decision you could threaten the sovereignty of Canada. With that decision you could threaten the financial institutions of our country because you could set up all the reservations with goods crossing back and forth. I says, "˜That's not what the argument was about. The argument was about the right for Native Americans to conduct trade amongst themselves. It can be regulated. It can be controlled. We can do it across the table from you but we have that right.'

So I got gypped, as all the lawyers in Canada would say, "˜You got robbed.' So I took them to the International Court and we've had the hearing, we're waiting for a decision so the adventure goes on. It's always a good fight. It don't have to be with spears and bows and arrows or AK-47s. The fight continues when you have spirit to advance those things, but the most important part, what can be done in Aboriginal trade that would really benefit our nations? It's unknown territory and yet we haven't realized we have a lot of resources, we have a lot of potential and that's the next frontier. So we can stay in a socially deprived, in social conditions or we can say, "˜We've got to do some nation building here and we've got to take that challenge up.' And I give that message to all the young leaders that want to build. It don't necessarily have to be right from home, but you look at layers and layers of processes of nation building and it's a lot of satisfaction. If you're going to be a good leader you'll last a long time because there's so many challenges out there for leaders to think about."

Ian Record:

"So the moral of the story is think outside and work outside of those many boxes that the colonial forces have created for Native nations and begin to forge your own boxes and your own opportunities."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"I had an elders' council advising me most of my time on council. And I would always ask them what did they think of something because sometimes they [slap], "˜That's bad for us.' "˜All right, well, let's talk about it,' and we'd get a bigger discussion going. And all of a sudden, "˜Well, it's bad for us now. What do you want to do with it?' "˜Well, I don't know. I think we should build an arena to have a place for our youth to gather rather than hanging around the streets.' Pretty soon other people join in and discussions flow and the next thing you know it turns into a better idea, but you have to be able to discuss the pros and cons of anything I guess, but I always liked the idea of taking matters to elders and running it by them. And after a while, anything new I would always go to them and say, "˜What do you think of us?' and get that feedback. And sometimes they'll say, "˜Well, wait a minute. This is an issue that our daughters, the women folk should know about. This is something that the men should know about.' So we'd call a men's meeting and get that feedback, especially if it means you want to build something and you know they're going to say, "˜Well, there's employment there,' but there's also unions and there's also these other things. So it's better to have that support if you're going to go out there and say, "˜I want that employment for my people in my reservation, I want the most, I want to be able to identify how much of that can best be turned around and have our people employed.' You're never wrong if you go back to your people and say, "˜What are your ideas and what's the feedback?' And when they understand it, they'll give you a good decision."

Ian Record:

"Well thanks, Mike, for this very informative discussion. It's been very enlightening for me and I'm sure for Native nations and Native leaders across North America."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"[Mohawk language]." 

NNI Indigenous Leadership Fellow: Michael Kanentakeron Mitchell (Part 1)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Grand Chief Michael Mitchell of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne provides an overview of the nation-building work his nation has engaged in over the past four decades, from its decision to move away from the Indian Act to its systematic development of capable governing institutions designed to exercise true self-determination and self-governance.

Resource Type
Citation

Mitchell, Michael K. "NNI Indigenous Leadership Fellow: Michael kanentakeron Mitchell (Part 1)." Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 1, 2008. Interview.

Ian Record:

"Well, we're here with Chief Michael Mitchell, the former Grand Chief of the Akwesasne...Mohawk Council of Akwesasne and Mike is our first ever Indigenous Leadership Fellow of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the University of Arizona. Mike, if we could just have you start off by introducing yourself. I'm sure you can do a much better job than I just did."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"My English name is Mike Mitchell. My Mohawk name is Kanentakeron. I belong to the Wolf Clan. I'm a faith keeper in the Longhouse on the traditional side. I was born in Akwesasne, which is located on the New York State-Ontario-Quebec border. Half, half the reservation is in the [United] States, the other half is in Canada, and two-thirds of what's in Canada is in Quebec and the other part is in Ontario. So we have...if it's anything like this, it's five jurisdictions on the outside and in the territory on the Canadian side is the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, on the American side is another elected government called the St. Regis Tribal Council and historically we have our traditional Mohawk Nation Council. So there's three internal Mohawk governments. And the population, probably right now, it's closer to 17-18,000 and 10,000 are registered as resident Mohawks on the Canadian side of Akwesasne."

Ian Record:

"So that makes for a pretty complex governing situation, doesn't it?"

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Yes, it was, it still is, but it's...we've been able to resolve a lot of the issues, complex issues by taking over a lot of the authorities, programs and services and run it, operate it ourselves."

Ian Record:

"You've been involved with your nation's self governance for more than two decades now. I was wondering if you could provide just a general overview of nation-building efforts at Akwesasne since you became involved."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"The first time I got on Council for what was known back then as the St. Regis Band Council was in 1970, and I had just returned back from Alcatraz and just to start a few things back home, we started taking over islands on the St. Lawrence River. That kind of got people talking, "˜Maybe you should run on council.' So I served one term in 1970, but it was difficult because I was going to school at the time, ironically, film school at the National Film Board. We had our own Native Indian film crew that was doing documentary work. So it was really in 1984, well, I ran and got elected as a district chief in 1982, served two years and figured out that there's just too many outside government interference. Council was in a drastic deficit, probably half their budget of $5 million they were in a deficit and everything was controlled from the outside, which led to a lot of personality clashes within council. We're governed by the Indian Act in Canada, so we have to adhere to a lot of their regulations, codes, etc. All authorities were dictated from Ottawa through the Department of Indian Affairs. So that was sort of like an introduction. I didn't like it, I didn't want to run again, but the fact that I survived it and they were saying, "˜You should run for the top spot,' which was the Head Chief of the St. Regis Band Council.

Back then, the people didn't really elect the chiefs. You all got elected from your districts of which there are three. There's Snye, St. Regis, which is in Quebec side, and Ontario side is Cornwell Island, and each elect four chiefs they have a total... they had a total of 12. And among the 12, they would elect amongst themselves one head chief. So I had figured out, well, obviously you have to run not as yourself but you have to run with a party enough that you would control council and then make sure you have enough votes if you want to run for the head chief, which is what we did in 1984 and the person that I replaced had been head chief for about 16 years, so this wasn't easy. He had pretty well control of the community, the Council and ran it the way he wanted, the way he saw it. A lot had to do with the way the government ran things, too. So there was a very narrow causeway in terms of accessing information back to community. But regardless, we had the election in 1984 and I won by a vote of seven to five. So it wasn't expected; people were surprised. I was young back then, but I thought...ready for a change. I went about in the community and introduced myself as the new head chief and a little bit of surprise in the attitude in the community. They said, "˜You're only head chief of the council members that elected you. We didn't elect you.' And that stayed with me.

Then I ran smack into Indian Act regulations, how you run and service a community. You always had to ask for permission from the Department of Indian Affairs. So I took about less than three, four months before I recognized that we have people to bow to on every issue, on health, education, housing, economic development, and a lot of people are on welfare. People didn't have a high regard for council and it was stagnant. So I figured the only way out of this is you better cut a fine line as to where you're going to make your stand and proceed to make some changes. Right after I got on council, the person I replaced filed an appeal, went to court, and because it was a Canadian federal legislation, the Indian Act, there's many loopholes. It's pretty old. It was put in place in 1867 with very little changes. So if one wanted to mess around with it, there's a lot of legal things you can do with it. And there wasn't a whole lot of honor in the council system the way it was set up because it was controlled so much by the Canadian government. And about 10 years had gone by since the Indian agent had left because he used to run everything. So all this was fairly new. When I said it stuck in my mind when people were saying, "˜We didn't elect you,' and considering that I had to go through a Canadian court just to retain the chieftainship because being that it was so controlled I had pretty well said in my mind, "˜We've got to get out of this Canadian-controlled election process.'

I also found out I'm not supposed to release minutes of the meetings, so the community weren't really appraised that there was so much deficit in the council. Strangely enough, the Department of Indian Affairs, they came and chaired the meeting when I became...counted the votes to be elected chief, was the same person that came back a couple weeks later and he said, "˜We were about to lock up all your offices and put your community under third-party management because of your growing deficit.' So that wasn't a real good introduction. It seemed like every other week my office was occupied by my opposition. Where I lived was on Cornwell Island, Ontario and to get to St. Regis I had to go through the American side and once I'm in the village, if I want to go to Snye, I've got to go back through the American side to get back into the Canadian side of Snye. So we cross the border about 20 times a day just to service our people. Well, all those factors came into play rather fast and they had been operating this way, I would say about 50 years that they had been controlled. They had a system, delegated authority they called it, and everything that we were to do we had to ask for permission, "˜Can council do this, can council do that?'

Being that I was more used to blocking bridges and taking over islands, I took all that energy and started studying what had to be done in the community. We started doing house-to-house survey asking the community members would they like to see an election code that would be developed by the community, for the community and let's opt out of that Indian Act so that they would be the ones that would control it. And we started working out the mechanics after getting the feedback. So in that one term of two years, and that was the other thing I was upset about because I found out that two years is a very short time for elected leadership and a lot of things can happen in that two years and council members, if they want to get anything done they'll take the first year to learn the ropes. By the time the second year comes around, you're already getting pressured to provide money for such and such a person, for housing or more money for education and it's really money that set the limit, budget. Anyway, if you're going to make changes, it had to be done.

So I went to Ottawa and asked for a meeting with the Minister of Indian Affairs and I told him, I says, "˜Listen, this system that you have in place isn't working and we're going to have to make some drastic changes if the community is ever going to come out of a deficit and learn to govern themselves and look after themselves.' And the Minister's name was David Cromby. He got very interested. He said, "˜Well, you know, you have a lot of audacity to come in here and say we want to make some changes.' He said, "˜There's a system in place,' but he says, "˜I do worry about the deficit because it's not just your community, there's many other communities in the same situation.' He says, "˜What do you want to do?' And I says, "˜To improve the attitude and the atmosphere of our community, we want more of our people to take over the administration of programs and services. We want to change the election law so that we can govern ourselves and put the election process through under our own authority.' I said, "˜There's a whole history here in Akwesasne of every time somebody loses an election, you're in court, either Indian Affairs is in court as well as the council.' So he listened tentatively and he says, "˜Well, what about the deficit?' I says, "˜I'll do a deficit retirement plan, but I'll do a separate management plan and we'll wipe out that deficit within five years, but you have to agree to let us run our community.' So he went, left the meeting for awhile, he came back, talked to some people and he said, "˜They say that I can't do that, that we have a system in place,' he says, "˜But I say, we should let you try it.' He said, "˜The only other alternative is I've got to send more people, pay more money, put more money into the community and for what? There's always going to be a deficit, there's going to bad attitude.' He says, "˜I want to try this experiment.' So that was a start.

If you want to get education dollars, the ultimate authority was somebody in Indian Affairs, if you want to build a house and you need housing dollars, somebody's going to come down and take, do papers for you, applications, etc., social services, welfare, the same thing. So I asked for all these people to be sent back to Ottawa, sent home and we hired our own people. I went around and got a list of nominees...they were already working somewhere, either Ottawa, Washington, Syracuse, Albany, Toronto and we needed an administrator, manager, program directors and whoever had the qualifications, we called them, talked with them and told them what we had in mind and I said, "˜I'd like to see more people return home. You'll have a job. Bring your senior experience, your management skills and help your community because we're going to turn this around.' For some reason it caught on and people started coming back and we put together a management team to take care of the administration and I had one policy. I didn't think we had any business running the administration side -- we're politicians. So I had discussion with council saying, "˜Let's do our politics and we hire these people, let them do their administration.' So separating administration and politics was one of the first objectives and it worked. We set out a goal to analyze the political situation and carved out a period of time that we would achieve this.

And the other thing, you had to stabilize the community. The internal politics had to be taken care of so we did, it was done Mohawk style. Obviously the man that I had replaced...we had to find a way to stop the occupation. If I went to work on the American side, chances are they would cut me off over there and punch me out a few times. But there was a great hope riding on this thing about taking over. The community dealt with him. They had to settle it the Mohawk way, going out and have a little fistfight and the winner came out and they said, "˜Okay, Mike's going to have the opportunity to run this community.' And so I had that opportunity, but the greatest strength...the way I was brought up, because this is my introduction to elected system; I was brought up on the traditional side. And maybe I should take a few minutes just to acquaint everyone that on the traditional side, the women put up the leaders. And it was said that the women knew who the leaders were from the time that they crawl on the ground to when they walk to when they hunt to when they marry and have a family -- the women already knew who's going to be a good leader, who will be a good provider, who has integrity, who has good characteristics. So among the various clans of which in the Mohawks we have three major ones: Wolf, Turtle and Bear. I'm a Wolf clan, remember. My mother's a clan mother in that system. My brother's a wampum keeper in that system. So that's the family I come from. My grandfather's a faith keeper. So this whole idea of being involved in a modern, elected tribal system was new and you didn't have much authority, so if you're going to establish yourself under certain principles, I borrowed a lot of that from our traditional custom.

I found out very early that the community was ready to make changes. You raise up the optimism, people wanted to feel good about themselves and it seemed that it wasn't...it hadn't happened for awhile. I'm trying to be very polite when I talk about the Indian Act, but it is so...to me it is so evil, so dictatorial and delegated that they didn't serve our interests because we were used to perhaps more of an honor system. Do things and people looked at you for it so I borrowed that. And I says, "˜We're going to have to fight for our jurisdiction. We're going to have to fight to have our authority and if we can't convince the government that we should be controlling more services, more programs and more jurisdiction, then we have to fight them.'

Well it was only weeks away, there was some men at my office as I got to work; this is months down the line. They were fishermen and they had their boat confiscated and their nets and the motor by provincial conservation authorities. So I listened to them and I apologized to them that I had to have appointments made for me, but they were standing on the outside so I just invited them in. And this is on my way to work. Anyhow, I identified with how they fed their family. They're high steel workers and they take time off for a month and they would fish for their families and then they would fillet it and put them in the freezer and part of the traditions; people always did that. So when you have an outside government intrude on your tradition, what are you going to do? So I told them, I says, "˜Well, tomorrow I'm going to get some people together, we're going to go out on the river and if we find this conservation officer, I will talk to him.' And that sort of raised the interest of people saying, "˜You know what he's going to do? He's going to go out there on the river and see what might transpire.' So when I got out there, there was boats there already. They were ready to guide me and find this conservation officer and it didn't take more than about a half hour they spotted him leaving Cornwall [Island].

So we met in the middle of the river, right on the international boundary and we cut him off and we stopped his boat and I asked him very politely where the seizure took place. And as we're floating on the St. Lawrence River in our boats and we're talking, I said, "˜You know, around here, one minute you're in the States, the next minute you're in Canada, you're in Ontario, you're in New York State, you're back in Quebec.' I said, "˜The way the international boundary zigzags, I doubt very much if this matter was going to go to court that your charges, the seizure would hold up. So I'm going to ask you real nice if ya'll might want to just think about returning this boat to them.' And he was kind of mean. He says, "˜There's no way.' So I tried another way. I says, "˜Well, we don't need an Ontario fishing license to fish in our own waters. We have an aboriginal right, we have a treaty right, and it always says we don't need to have that when we're fishing in our territory.' He didn't buy that either. He says, "˜There's been changes.' So this went on for awhile, then my blood pressure started to come up a little bit and I told him, I says, "˜Well, in that case, sir, since you took their boats I'm going to take your boat.' And his jaw just dropped down. He says, "˜You're going to what?' I says, "˜We're going to seize your boat and I'm just going to keep it until I get their boats back.' Well, you should have saw the cheering from these guys. They said, "˜Well, let us help you.' So we dragged his boat, with him in it, back to the village. And once I got down there, we tied up at the dock and I went to the police station and I phoned Toronto, the Ministry of Natural Resources, and told them what had happened. So the rest of that day phone calls were going back and forth and as we were, higher departments, higher authorities kept calling back saying, "˜What's going on down there?' And it got to the point where the last phone call was one of their regional heads who said, "˜This could turn into an international crisis.' I says, "˜Yes, it could.'

And there had just been elections in Ontario, a new government had gotten in, and it usually doesn't work for us, but in this case it sort of did because the Premiere got on, the new Premiere of Ontario, Bob Rae. He got on and he says, "˜Listen, I know you people don't need provincial licenses to fish'. And he says, "˜But I'm more concerned about that officer that you have. Is he a hostage? Is he...what condition is he in?' I says, "˜Oh, he's sitting right here.' "˜Is he a hostage?' I says, "˜No, sir, he's not and he's welcome to go home, but he ain't got no boat so he can't go anywhere.' So he laughed. He says, "˜I see where this is going.' He says, "˜Well, let's get down to the brass tacks.' He says, "˜What do you need?' I says, "˜I need them boats back that your government confiscated from my people.' So we talked for awhile. He says, "˜You're right. I'll go look for them.' He called an hour back and he said, "˜Those boats are in Toronto.' I said, "˜Sir, that's four hours away. I want them boats back by 9:00 in the morning.' So there was a little bit of discussion at their end but the long story... short end of the long story he says, "˜Well, we'll have it back'. I said, "˜And I want that man that confiscated... this officer here to bring them back tomorrow morning.' He says, "˜I'll send somebody with him.' So they dispatched an official from the Premiere's office. Sure enough, next morning -- and I had no reason to hold this guy so they took him, allowed him to go home with his boat. But I realized early that the only language that a non-Native government understands is something drastic like that, where you have to really stand up to them and that was only the beginning.

The next morning they brought the boats back, the fishermen analyzed it, their nets, their boat, motor, oars, everything was all in there so they were happy, but that got me thinking, 'There's all these non-Native police on our waters. So how come our police aren't patrolling on the water?' 'Well, they're under the authority of the Ontario Provincial Police and so there's...work is confined to the mainland, patrolling the speed zone and accidents, etc.' 'Well, who patrols the water?' 'Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Provincial Police.' 'Well, what about that conservation officer?' 'Well, he's under our jurisdiction, under our...as well.' So it only took a few weeks for me to ask our police and they said, "˜Well, that's the way it's always been.' I says, "˜You know, we should have our own conservation officer out there patrolling, looking after our environment, the fish, the river life, the safety on the waters.' They said, "˜Well, that's never occurred to us that we should be doing that.' So diplomatically again I asked Ontario if they would consider training some of our people to be conservation officers and they said, "˜No way.' So then I turned around and I thought, "˜Well, maybe if I ask Quebec.' They said, "˜No.' Then I asked Indian Affairs and they said, "˜No. Criminal Court of Canada applies and it's the federal police.' They had no mindset that we would be out there exercising our jurisdiction and authority.

Well, it didn't stop there because being that our reservation is half in the States and half in Canada I had one other option. I phoned Albany, New York at the State Trooper Police Academy and they had a conservation program there. I says, "˜Would that be open to Mohawks from Akwesasne?' And he said, "˜I don't see why not.' So I asked for the course that I needed and sure enough they had a very thorough course. I says, "˜Can we send some guys down there?' He said, "˜Yep.' Well, six months later the two candidates we sent down there returned home. They're wearing a Stetson hat, nine-millimeter pistols; they're in uniform. They wore the uniform of where they trained. So it's very much unlike what they wear in Canada because they're used to those taxi cab hats. There was a district Ontario Provincial Police supervisor and he really took offense to their style of dress. He wanted to arrest them right there so we had a few words.

Now the time that they were away in the six months, we put together a conservation law. Again, in that six months, Indian Affairs just wouldn't hear about it. They said, "˜You're asking your community to control your water, to control enforcement.' I said, "˜That's right.' They said, "˜It's under the Indian Act. You don't have the authority to do that.' I says, "˜Then we're going to seize it.' Seven times we send, modified, and pretty soon we stripped all authority away from them. They still wouldn't pass it. So I took it all back, reformatted it and I went to the nation council and I said, "˜We're trying to claim back some jurisdiction here and under inherent right we used to control and take care of our wildlife, water life and all the animal life. We don't do that anymore. We're going to start doing it again.' So I gave a presentation, and this is an elected leader now meeting with the traditional leaders and they had always been at odds, never got along, and I explained to them, I says, "˜Well, you send me over there to create better relations of our own people in the community. Here's what I'm going to need.' Anyway, they took it to the Grand Council and they liked the idea of reclaiming jurisdiction back and they passed it as a community law for Akwesasne. Nothing to do with Canada or the United States, but it's a nation law on conservation and environment. So when the two conservation guys got home they had a law and at the same time we developed our Mohawk court.

Now we had judges under the Indian Act, very limited authority, but they were already in place. So we again started adding more, giving them more authority to hear cases higher, 'cause all they were doing is dog catcher's law, little municipal type things, so everybody was ready for it and they says, "˜Do it.' Well, it all fell into place. Community had watched the way the direction this activity was going to go. When they got home, we had bought them a boat and they started patrolling our waters, start advising our residents safety measures and there was hunting and fishing licenses by the Mohawk Nation. They went out, started telling the non-Natives who were fishing in our territory that "˜You need to have a Mohawk Nation fishing license if you're going to fish in our waters.' Well, that started an avalanche of protests, members of parliament in Ottawa start calling the Department of Indian Affairs, "˜They can't do this.' And our two young conservation officers wouldn't take no for an answer, "˜cause if you didn't have one, you were arrested and brought to our court and that's what they were doing. They were just bringing people in and our court got very active.

When they came in they said that, "˜This is a kangaroo court. It has no authority. It has no recognition.' And one of the things I had done in dressing up our courtroom, making the changes, is that we had a Mohawk community flag and we had a Iroquois Nation flag in the backdrop. Carpenters had done some work setting up -- you know how the judges kind of sit in a high place -- and they did some woodwork and got a principal's desk. I used to like to take my kids to flea market and I found some church pews, about half a dozen of them. So by the time they walk in there they saw an official courtroom and our lawyers that were acting for our land claims and adjudicating outside, brought them home and said, "˜This is your court now. This is where you enforce our law.' So there was a prosecutor and there was also a lawyer to represent them. So all this they saw when they walked in the courtroom and it dawned on them, "˜There's laws here.' There's a courtroom, the charges were read and they paid the fine. And on their way out, if they didn't have a fishing license from the Nation, they bought one. Two years passed. We knew at some point we would have to fight this in the Canadian court and as much as they were kicking and screaming, nobody ever challenged us because they knew that everything was done in proper order.

Well, anyway, the conservation officers made quite a name for themselves in the community. They were champions because things are now changing and I looked at our police force and realized they also had to change, first their attitude. They were referred to by the outside police forces as "˜window dressing cops.' "˜You look like a policeman but you don't act like one. You only enforce their laws.' So we started making more laws by taking provincial highway traffic laws and then we adopted them and we modified them to fit our community. So these things were going on and the provincial police dressed a certain way, so do the Mounties, and so our police force were dressed the same way as the Ontario Provincial Police. So I asked them, "˜Why don't we change that?' So we did a few more consultation meetings in the community with elders and with families and they gave us a lot of good ideas.

As it turned out, the community wanted them to be their police force but they saw them as, excuse the expression, "˜scouts for the cavalry,' spies for the outside police. They just were not theirs. So we were talking about what would it take to be a Mohawk police force? They had a lot of discussion, they made up a list. The style of dress, the police cars, the laws they would enforce, let them know that they're working for community. And when they changed that Ontario Provincial Police headgear, they ordered all their equipment from the United States and so they got themselves nice Stetson hats, shoulder flashes that says Akwesasne, emblems, badges that were their own, cars were set up a certain way. So it was distinctively for the territory. This was all going up very fast, changes were going and while all this was going on, community activity, we were changing that election code through our surveys, we were getting more ideas coming back. Anyway, at the end of the activity, we had encounters with the provincial police because they were saying, "˜We tell you what to do not...don't listen to that chief, he's got no authority.' I said, "˜It's not my authority, it's the community's authority. This is where they want to go.' So we had a few clashes along the way. The OPP [Ontario Provincial Police] arrested the conservation officers and confiscated their guns, so we went to court and we showed them everything that they had been trained for. The judge looked at it and he said, "˜They're well-qualified to enforce their laws because they trained for it. Give them back their guns.' So sometimes you have to fight through the system, through the courts or direct confrontation to keep advancing, so we were doing all this pretty active. And the Ontario Provincial Police appealed to a higher court. We won that one, too. So they says, "˜Well, here's your guns.'

Anyhow, the police started their program and they had their uniform changes and they started showing the community that they were community police, serving the nation, and the whole attitude started to change and that flag that I was telling you about started hanging out in the schools and in public places and in our institutions. And then I went to the Canadian Customs Building and I says, "˜Put this flag right next to your Canadian and American flag.' They weren't going to do it the first time around, so we went and put it up there. Then we went to the Seaway Building and said, "˜Put up this flag to fly alongside the Canadian flag.' They weren't going to do it, so we bought our own and put it next to theirs and dared them to try to take it down. It was Mohawk diplomacy more or less. So those changes were going on, but the community could see, they could see these changes were going on and it was for the better -- confidence building. So people had a different attitude and it didn't take long before they reflected in that law for elections because this went very fast.

Two years was up. I figured that's all I had to do was change the course because they had asked me, "˜We only want you to run one term.' And the strange part about it was, although I was from the traditional side, they don't vote in elections. So in order for me to become chief I had to be voted by the elective Christian side. For some reason they did because I was well known in the community to begin with and knowing that I would be very active in things and so they wanted to see what was going to happen. It was an interest thing for them, but they started liking when they see all these changes coming about.

The attitude changed in the community and they put that election code through with a lot of input. It became an Akwesasne election code. If you wanted to oppose or take action, you didn't like the way the turnout, you had a chance to appeal, but you appeal to our Mohawk court, not to a Canadian court or Canadian government or an institution out there, it was all settled inside. All this time the Minister of Indian Affairs was watching the way things were going and of all the skirmishes and things that would happen, he was happy because we were running our community by ourselves, we took responsibility for our finances, the administration, our programs and had a transparent operation. We started reporting to community by way of annual, semi-annual, quarterly reports, releasing minutes, giving an activity report of where monies were being spent, how they had...how they were coming in. And while this was going on I knew we needed more dollars. So I applied other skills, in this case it was lobbying skills, looking for the dollars and so we set up a portfolio system. I says, "˜this council has to change. The head chief should not be the one who is going to run everything. The head chief is the facilitator; he's a servant of the community. So the rest of you chiefs have to take far greater responsibility, because I'm going to go and start looking for opportunities out there, I'm going to do the fights out there, you look after the community.' So we decided to develop a portfolio system. This chief took care of the justice, education, health; everybody had responsibilities, and the community started to understand that they no longer had to wait to talk to the head chief. They talked to any of those chiefs, whatever problem you had you could see them and he will know and act on and convene meetings and try to solve any problems. So it took on a greater interest and a greater authority. Now prior to that, chiefs that served on council they called them councilors; we changed that. I says, "˜You're not councilors, you're chiefs. You're elected by the community. You're chief for your district.' So other than just the word, we gave them a higher level of importance and with that a job description of what they will do when they're on council and that was incorporated into the election code, Code of Conduct for Chiefs -- that was in there. If he done something wrong, you could take a chief out of office, if he violated the code of ethics -- that was borrowed from the traditional side.

We changed the name. We didn't like the name St. Regis Band. As a matter of fact I hated that because there was a band program, band council, band administrator, everything was "˜band.' I know the Canadian government had this as a mindset for us, to think of ourselves as a lesser people, because we don't mention anything about 'nation' anymore. The only ones that were always saying "˜nation' were on the traditional side and they had... they were in the minority, the government didn't pay any attention to them. So this whole idea of changing, we got rid of the word 'reserve.' You've got 'reservation' on the American side, but you've got 'reserve' on the Canadian side, and I didn't like either term so we said, "˜We're a territory. This is a Mohawk Nation Territory. We're not St. Regis, we're Akwesasne.' So again, we had a pooling of ideas, got feedback and started passing council resolution saying, "˜We're no longer going to refer ourselves as the St. Regis Band. So we became the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne. We became the Mohawk Territory of Akwesasne. There's no more band office; it's administration. And all those administration offices became Administration 1, Administration 2 and that language fit well in the community. And around the council table, some of these chiefs had been in office maybe two or three terms, four terms, some of them maybe even 10 terms, two-year terms. That new election code that we were now discussing says we needed three years because if you're making promises on your second year, you're up for election, chances are you're never going to control the deficit, you're never going to deal with it because you're forever spending more money. Took it to the community, they said, "˜That makes a lot of sense,' and so we revised it.

As far as those chiefs that were on council, sometimes they would say "˜band council' inadvertently. I said, "˜We've got to cut this out because we have to show an example to the community how we're going to refer ourselves and if we're going to change our attitude we have to change the way we refer to each other. You're a chief and we don't want to mention this band word anymore.' So I says, "˜Here's what we're going to do. I put a coffee cup in our meetings and anybody that says band for any purpose will have to donate a quarter into our coffee fund.' Again, it was non-threatening. It became a game and they all looked at each other, laughed and says, "˜Okay.' So, yeah, every other meeting somebody would get caught and put a quarter in there; pretty soon, we had a big jug and it caught on with the stuff. This is a whole different idea, it don't cost a lot of money, but to have you think of yourselves differently, to have you think of your community differently, your people differently we had to incorporate some things like that. So now you had the flag, you have a new council name, your community is under a different mentality. To get back to the election code now. We had finished it, we had a model and the community voted on it. Well, the government came back and said, "˜Geez, you need 51 percent of your total membership.' Mind you, families are out working in different places; we're never going to reach that. So I went back to the Minister and I says, "˜Well, I'll tell you what, would you be satisfied with a letter from the nation council because they don't vote, they don't get involved in these things and you're counting their numbers. So if they give you a letter saying we represent 800 people, that's traditional and we like what the Mohawk Council is doing, we like the idea that they bring their election law back to their community, would that be enough?' And he said, "˜Yeah. I could see that.' And that's how we got around it, just a little bit of innovative thinking. Next election it was under the control of the Mohawk community.

I thought my job was finished back then because I had started these things. They said, "˜No, now you have to run because it's no longer the Head Chief, it's no longer the St. Regis Band Council, it's now the Grand Chief...' And the idea, the first time, the first week I went around when the community people were telling me, "˜We didn't elect you,' I pulled that Grand Chief position, I says, "˜The Grand Chief is now going to be elected by the community at-large, not by these 12 district chiefs or councilors.' That was the one significant thing and that's how the community know that we're going in the right direction. We empowered them. Anybody could run from the community for Grand Chief, but you had to be elected by the community. Well, my opposition, 'That man's crazy. He's from the traditional side, "˜They're not going to vote.'' So we had another one of those famous runoffs and I ran and I won again and council was strengthened even more.

We kept on the path for governance, for representation, for change. A lot of the changes that were going on were really back to our traditions, not necessarily changing so much on the outside. The Department of Indian Affairs stopped being my enemies because now they're taking lessons on accountability, transparency and they would come back and I noticed that every time we had a representative from Indian Affairs, he would try to sneak out our reports to the community, put them in their briefcase. Finally I just asked them, "˜Why don't you just ask us, we'll give you a whole batch,' because now they're taking it to other reservations, showing them, "˜See what they're doing over there, they're giving reports to their community membership.' And so they stopped fighting with me and we became partners in governance. I would give them ideas and say, "˜This is what we want to do.' And most of that time, mind you there were a few other bad apples over there, but for most of that time they knew that we were trying to survive in a community that's divided up into jurisdictions, into puzzles and it was hard to bring it back together. So that was a little adventure into Mohawk politics. It's still on a course, sometimes it slows down, sometimes it's on a crash course somewhere. I shut down ships because we're right on the St. Lawrence river, when I didn't like something that was going on or shut down the bridge, international bridge traffic, and pretty soon I didn't have to do those things. And I'm getting a little older now and people say, "˜You mellowed, you're not a militant anymore.' But all these things, when you have respect, you can sit at a table and negotiate solutions. The challenge doesn't stop. We did a lot of other things that brought us up, but the idea was for most of the leaders, have respect for the culture and tradition of your people, have respect for the language. When we were small, we all spoke the language and as we had children and they grew up, the mentality was if you're going to succeed get an education. That language is not going to help you out there, nobody speaks Mohawk in the States or in Canada. So that was the mindset. In the "˜80s we turned that around and said, "˜Our culture and language is important.'

And for all the hard time that I had coming from the traditional side, something had happened in my second term in 1984 when I became Grand Chief. The Pope came to Canada and he wanted to experience a Native ceremony. I don't know what he was thinking, but he had asked the bishops in Canada, the Catholic Church of Canada to say, "˜This is what I want to experience.' And years before that he had already known that the churches would bring out so many Indians and they would dress them up, put the western war bonnet on a Mi'kmaq or a Mohawk out east, put them on horses, dress them up the way you would see a Native American on cowboy and Indian and the Pope was, he says, "˜I know all that. And I know if I'm going to go to eastern Canada I don't want to see you dress up your Natives that way. I want to see what they're really like. I want to see the spiritual side and I want you to organize it.' So the priests from our territory wrote back, says, "˜Well, they just elected a traditional...' well, they referred to me as a pagan, but more diplomatic is, "˜There's a traditional Mohawk here, he's now the Grand Chief and he goes to the Longhouse, he goes to ceremonies, he's a faith keeper in that Longhouse.' So it didn't take long before they wrote back. They says, "˜Would you put on a ceremony for the Pope?' And I had a lot of difficulty from the very strong Christian side of the community. It was always a test. So I went back to the Longhouse and I told them, I says, "˜Listen, this has been an offer, an invitation has been given to me to do this and do you think it's a good idea?' They talked about it and the conclusion of their discussion was this, "˜Maybe it would lead to better relations between ourselves, us traditionals and Christians. So we're going to send you, but we're going to send a clan mother, an elder and singers to help you.' So that's how...this was 1984, kind of still fairly new back then and given a hard time by the Christian side and often be referred to as a pagan, the attitude was, "˜You look down on your traditional brother.' The Pope came to Canada, we put him through that ceremony, and he was so affected by it because I work with Ojibwe and Cree nations to put this on, but a healing ceremony consisted of smudging, they use sage and sweetgrass. I brought my sacred tobacco and put everything together, put him through the ceremony. One of our elders did the blessing with the eagle. But all along there they explained to him what we were doing and when the words and the songs were put to him as he was going through, I could see a tear coming down and he was totally committed to this experience.

Anyway, when it was over and he read his prepared speech, that man can say greetings in about 20 different languages so that took a bit of time and then he gave his address. It was broadcast all over the world. There was probably an audience of about 80,000 in this...if you can think about what a Woodstock concert would have been like, it was pretty well the same set-up; speakers all over, screens so that they would project all over the field. And then he digressed from his prepared text and from here he told them, he says, "˜The Church assumed when we came to the Americas that the Native Americans were godless and soulless people.' He said, "˜That's wrong. They have a very beautiful culture and traditions and thanks to us we've taken that away from them.' He says, "˜What I've experienced today, I will remember it and I want to thank the elders and the people who put this ceremony together and my message to all of you is I want to apologize on behalf of the church for what we've done, the damage that we have done.' So his message to his followers was, "˜Don't be ashamed of who you are. Don't be ashamed of your tradition, your culture, your traditional beliefs. Incorporate them into your church activities.' That was a big turnaround. It certainly led to my being more accepted in the total community and within a short while after this was all over we had all been home, my community, in the church they started burning sweetgrass and offering traditional chants, singing and dancing, even dress. And so they saw themselves as [Mohawk language] Mohawks and they were proud of it whereas before they had been taught to be ashamed of it. That was a stark difference. So situations happened in my early term that helped the path that I was pursuing. It was well appreciated. I was invited to speak to other churches. I went and spoke in their churches, something that was very new for me and it helped with a lot of the changes that were coming about."

Ian Record:

"You talked about the laws and the codes and the court system that you set up, and early on you found yourself right in the middle of it because one of your family members was one of the first violators of I believe it was your conservation code or one of those, right? I wonder if you'd tell us that story."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Man, I went all the way around not to go near that story. Yeah. The conservation officers, as new as they were, but the uniform was very distinctive, their presence was distinctive and the support of the community, they were champions because now they're out there exercising authority on behalf of the community. So everywhere they went the elders singled them out, shook their hand. So one day I'm meeting in the village with elders, we're talking about building a new nursing home and they walk in. This is just probably a few weeks after they had come from their training in Albany. And they said, "˜Chief, we need to speak with you,' and they got cut off. The elders just got all around them and they give them coffee and tea and cookies and all, made a...so they had to make a little speech and they were just adored by the elders.

So when they got a chance one of them cut away and he says, "˜We're here on official business. We need to talk to you, Grand Chief.' I says, "˜Really? What's it about?' He said, "˜There's been a murder on the island and your...somebody in your family might be involved in it.' Well, it hits you right here, huh? I says, "˜Well, excuse me.' I took them outside for a briefing. At their suggestion went outside and with stern faces they looked at me and looked at their report and they said, "˜There's been a murder up the hill where you live.' And I'm studying their face to see if this is some kind of a trick or humor. I couldn't find anything. Then I started getting scared. I says, "˜Well, what happened? Does it involve my family?' He said, "˜Yes, it does.' They looked at each other and then they said, "˜A pig was killed up the hill, farmer called in and it had piglets and they were all killed, too. And those piglets were traced down the hill to your farm. So the murderer, the culprit of this murder, is your dog, your Alaskan Malamute.' Well, then it started...I didn't feel as bad, because now I knew that this is their way of impressing how important their work is and their investigation. So I challenged them. I said, "˜Well, how do you know it's my dog? There's about three or four other houses that have Alaskan Malamutes.' They were just waiting for that. They pulled pictures out. "˜Behind your barn there's a whole, there's piglet parts in there. There's your dog, blood stains on his face and on his chest, and there's a trail down the hill, and so we know, we have proof, everything's documented. Grand Chief, you're under arrest.'

Now they scared me. I didn't know how to react so I went with them and they charged me. I'm the first one to get charged on a conservation law that our people put together and in the authority they carry, they singled the Grand Chief. So this created a lot of discussion in the community because I didn't have to go to court for two weeks and to prepare whether I'm going to argue it or offer a plea. So anyway, the charge was given to me. People either laughed about it or there certainly was a lot of discussion. To the elders they said, "˜Well, it's the Grand Chief's the one that's trying to find the money for this program. He sent them to school, he found a place for them to be trained.' Pigs die, even the farmer up the hill when he found out it was my dog he was trying to drop the charge. It was going both ways. My opposition says, "˜Well, is he going to pull strings and get out of this?' Two weeks came up, I went to court. I paid the fine. And people wondered, 'What was the result, what happened?' And I said, "˜I paid it.' And I guess it tells me that we all have to follow the law, and I just want to say the conservation officers did a thorough job investigating the murder on Cornwall Island.

And that was the result of the story. But weeks later, then I started getting some feedback. Apparently a lot of people in our community were watching to see how this was going to turn out and are we going to have respect for our own nation law. And if the Grand Chief is the highest authority, is he going to pull some kind of strings to get out of this or have the case dismissed or find a technical way to deal with it? And I didn't realize that there was such an interest in how this was going to turn out. But the law, the nation law applies to everybody and it all turned out well. It was a little embarrassing for me. I had to swallow a few times, too, but the bottom line is if you make a nation law, you better abide by it. It's not just for the non-Natives; it's also for us, too. And that was a little story about how the law applies and how you treat and respect the enforcement of law and justice in your community."

Ian Record:

"It's an interesting story. I think leadership is in many ways leading by example and that citizens of a nation are going to take their cues about what's going to be tolerated and what's not going to be tolerated in terms of behavior by how their own leaders behave."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"It was an example to the degree that there was interest generated and people knew that I could have it dismissed like that and it was just a thing that they were saying, "˜Well, how is this going to...?' And it led to everybody having respect for our program, respect for the nation law, respect for the police authorities, because it wasn't just the conservation. It applied to police in general and so it became a healthier thing. It was a good example to everyone and it taught us a lesson, because there were times when you had to stand up to the authorities on the outside, you might even have to disagree with them about how law is applied. That's how I looked at it. If you have to stack that up against your own laws or your own beliefs, if you violated a custom, tradition, that you want to defend it, sometimes you go to jail on principle. And it was those principles that became very important in our community. But at the same time, in your traditions there's also law, there's also justice and you better respect it. It doesn't mean that we can just do anything. That border that we lived on was inviting for a lot of criminal organizations and in my time, two or three elections later, it became a thing for smuggling of contraband going back across.

Let me try to see if I can demonstrate something here. There's three islands here: Barnhart Island, Cornwall Island and St. Regis Island. Here's the St. Lawrence River. Whoever set the boundary line back in the 1700s and 1812 must have been drinking somewhere because here's how it goes. Barnhart Island, New York State, it goes around this way and then there's Cornwall Island, Ontario and then it goes around, St. Regis Island, Quebec. You would think they would just go one way. Of course the water goes straight down. That's why I said one minute you're in Canada, the next minute you're in the state, you're in New York, you're in Quebec, you're in Ontario because that's how the international boundary line was zigzagging. And so the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigations] and the state troopers and the Canadian Mounted Police and the Provincial Police all said, "˜We'll never get a conviction on the water, so we'll just stay on the mainland and we'll catch whoever we catch on the mainland.' So this whole area became this, what they call this gray zone, and it didn't take long for criminal organizations to hear about Akwesasne, how it's easier to transport stuff back across. And it became very hard because they were enticing a lot of our people to say, "˜Run this across the river for me, boxes.' Well, it didn't take long for those cigarettes to turn into drugs, guns and when 9/11 happened, on CNN and NBC, ABC, CBS, we were watching and they had a map of Akwesasne and the first few weeks they were looking at saying, "˜Those terrorists must have had... come through Akwesasne.' We're getting to be famous for the wrong reason, but that's the scenario and that's what they thought happened. It took a couple of weeks to kind of find out that they didn't come through Akwesasne, that they were already in the country, but who do you blame first when something like this happens? Who do you point fingers to when criminal activities are going on? Both sides, they were blaming the people who live there and the customs security cracked down. They were checking every car, but they were checking the cars of the grandmother and the mother trying to get her kids to school going back and forth so they were very hard times for us.

There was another thing that I was instructed to do was challenge Canada on our border crossing rights. They loaded up my truck with food and furniture, household goods, stacked them way high and I came across the international bridge. Everybody walked with me alongside the truck, about 1,000 of our community residents, got through Canadian Customs and I declared everything that I had with me and then I says, "˜I want to exercise my aboriginal right, I'm not paying the duties and the taxes,' which amounted up to maybe $370 some dollars. They wanted to arrest me right then and there and they...Customs verbally arrested me, but I kept going. Second line was the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] and they pulled me out, put me in their car and the women of our community went over there and pulled me back out, put me back in the truck and said, "˜Keep driving.' So somehow or another we got on this 401 that went to [Mohawk language], which is another Mohawk community further west and we gave the goods to them as a historic right of trade. And it went to court, it went all the way to the Supreme Court, because I was told in these meetings by high level government authorities, "˜Chief, if you believe your people have a treaty right, an aboriginal right to cross the border with your own proper goods, you have to win in a Canadian court. If you win in Canadian court, we will be prepared to negotiate how to implement, how to exercise that right.' So this was a test case that I was invited to participate. When I came home and I reported that, they said, "˜Let's do it.' And so this was the whole precedent setting thing that occurred.

Years later we finally hear the case and I win everything. So Canada was totally unprepared for how it was going to be done and the people that made those promises that I had to win in a Canadian court were no longer there, it was a new government there. They said, "˜We didn't make those promises, so we're going to appeal.' So it went to a higher level, they lost again. So a different Minister now getting really concerned because now their federal prosecutors are telling them, "˜You know, the Mohawks could bankrupt the financial institutions of this country, they could threaten the sovereignty of this country. Look at the decision what was awarded to them.' And we weren't asking for a lot, just to bring across our own community goods, our food, products, furniture, anything for the nation and to trade with another nation. That was the other thing that we had invoked. Anyhow, what happened was they said, "˜We're going to go to the Supreme Court.' I says, "˜You didn't say that. You said we would negotiate how to implement this right.' Anyway, they went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court heard the case and they altered the argument, restructured it and gave a decision, a 'no' decision.

So after all that time, this is about 10 years for this battle of recognition of inherent right, aboriginal right, treaty right. I wasn't satisfied the way we had been treated. The lawyers in Canada started holding sessions on how this was played with and there's a code...there's a code of honor among lawyers and legal institutions that there's some things you don't do, and this is what happened because they were so paranoid. I got home and I thought, "˜Well, I've been to the highest court of this country, it wasn't exactly...turned out the way I wanted to see it turn out, gave it my best shot and I was just going to proceed to do other things. And then somebody came to see me and they said, "˜You should try to take Canada to the International Court because what they done to you should have never happened and if that's the last resort, that's the last course, then you should submit it to the Human Rights Commission. There's no guarantee they're going to hear it though.' So that's the next thing that we did is we submitted to them and we asked for more documentation, they looked at it and here's a team of lawyers from Canada saying, "˜Don't hear it. It's been settled.' They examined everything and they said, "˜We're going to hear it.' It was heard last February and we expect a decision sometime in the next few months. It'll be the first of its kind, but when Canada holds itself up as a defender of justice, of human rights, this happened in their backyard and so I didn't want to do this, but you forced the issue; you're promised something and then they take it away. So that was one of the last things that I was...challenges that I faced because by now those two years turned into 25 years on council. I would take a break, but always the next term they say, "˜We want to bring you back.' So that was one of the last fights I had with Canada."

Ian Record:

"What I've been hearing a lot in your discussion thus far is essentially you moved, Akwesasne moved from a position under the Indian Act where your system of government really had no transparency and no accountability to a system where you're striving very hard towards and you're institutionally building towards a system predicated on transparency and accountability, not only within the government but also accountability of the citizens to the nation. I was wondering if you'd talk a little bit about that."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"In the early "˜80s, middle "˜80s, when the government controlled the purse, we were barely getting by with the monies we had to service the community. When we took over and we had a better grasp of what's needed, we were able to lobby for more dollars and by reporting the results of the expenditures and the programs that we had implemented we also had our own actual figures of what's needed. I'll give you an example in health. We took everything over -- the administration of it, started putting some policies of our own, hired our own people in-house -- it became a big regime. And so much so that Canada started referring to it as a living example of what would happen if First Nations took over like taking it from a self-governing position. I never lost sight of the fact that the only thing that we were doing is removing those government people away and putting our own people, designing our health schemes, putting accountability factors, implementing programs and services in the community the way they want to see it and then built in involvement from the community to give direction where the health programs will go and as a result we qualified for more dollars. The institutions that were built is the same for education, it's the same thing for other programs, and pretty soon when we started from $5 million, when I left in 2006 they had a budget of $76 million to administer and service the community. In between that, people had a chance to return home, have a skill and bring it home and find employment. But that wasn't the end all. There were other factors now that were available so it was more promising than from the time of the Indian agent or when the council was controlled by the Department of Indian Affairs. So the movement...what's indicative was the attitude change in the community. When you think better of yourself, you're more aware of your nation culture and traditions, you take pride in your community. Those are all factors that were crucial. They didn't cost a whole lot of money, because at the time when we were in a deficit I laid these things down and had a path to pursue. We didn't have a whole lot of money to spend, we couldn't make a whole lot of promises, "˜I'm going to do this,' but we did some confidence building, pride development and slowly the attitude started to fall in.

The elders provided the greatest support. They knew that this was their community and wanted to see a strong, healthy community. Now mind you, that didn't mean that we didn't get hit with a lot of modern problems. I mentioned smuggling a while ago. A lot of things that were going in and out would also stay. So drugs became prevalent, social issues became very prominent and hard to deal with, but we set ourselves with a way to deal with it because our programs were there and we could add anything that came, but we're able to deal with modern-day problems. Now that generation from the "˜80s and into now, the product, language has become very important, the curriculum in education systems have become very important, more involvement and teaching of Native culture and history and traditions, more language programs. We have some schools that are total immersion, Mohawk and all the subjects. Nobody would have thought back then that we could have done and built institutions like that. Our relations with the tribe, that had been our enemies in the past, now they sit together in council. They now recognize the Mohawk Nation "˜cause very early in my term, probably within the second year, we passed a resolution recognizing the Mohawk Nation council as our historic national government. We're a community government; they're a nation government. So now we're trying to find our way, how do we get everybody working together. The mindset was, and the trick from the outside is, get people fighting amongst themselves, make one side seem lower in stature than the other. You're the good guy, they're the bad guy, they're the pagans, you're this and that. Well, now everybody's saying, "˜Wait a minute. We're all traditional now and we're all proud to be Mohawks and that's going to affect the next generation. So we can withstand all the modern problems and difficulties that will come, we'll try to find a way to resolve them because those problems are great, they're coming at you from all directions. But now you've built your institutions, you've built your programs to service your people, you've also developed a character that will withstand all the negative, and also from the outside governments that try to influence them so you don't have that. You have it in your heart and your spirit to fight for those things. Your children will grow up fighting for the same thing. So it's been a worthwhile experience. I look back now and I say, "˜That was a good term. You learned something.'"

Ian Record:

"The last question I have is this issue of governing institutions, which you've talked about in detail. The extensive research of both the Native Nations Institute and also the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development have showed that across Indian Country in the United States, across Canada, Native nations are aggressively pushing for sovereignty, for self-governance, but has chronicled case after case where when nations do not back up that assertion of sovereignty with the building of capable governing institutions, they really can find themselves in the sorts of battles that they can't afford to lose. And I was wondering if you could just comment in maybe more general terms about the importance of reinforcing that push for sovereignty with those capable governing institutions."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"There's a very historic wampum belt that we all grew up with in all our Iroquois communities that we're taught, and this belt has two lines, two purple lines. And one line they say is a ship and on the other line is a canoe and the blue line represents a body of water. And they said on that ship is the non-Natives, the European newcomers, settlers and in 1664 they sat down in Albany and they talked about this, making an agreement. And from that experience between the Dutch and the Iroquois, later the English and the Iroquois, they had this discussion and on a piece of paper when they said, "˜My king will be your father and we're going to have a relationship here and we're going to do business in this manner,' is that they left that day and the Iroquois said, "˜We're going to come back the next day with our response.'

The next day they came back, they said, "˜We have made this belt. First our answer to you is we can't have a relationship because you're telling us the king will be the father and we're going to be the children. A father will always tell his son what to do. Our answer is we'll be brothers, equal.' And so they come to these two rows. They says, "˜On this one row will be your ship that you came from across the salt waters and from what you're telling us, you couldn't practice your religion over there. You didn't have a fair system of government over there. You get penalized for doing these little things and so you want to be free over here. On this ship we're going to allow you to have your own government. You're going to have your traditions, your culture, your language, your governance. It'll all be on this ship. In our canoe, we're going to maintain our traditions, our culture, our language, our governance, our jurisdiction. And we're going to go down the river of life together. Whenever you need help, we'll come over and help you, but we'll never interfere in internal relations of your people.'

So that was a solemn pledge they made to each other and they did help each other down the course, because when the settler governments first got to the Americas, everything was new for them. They weren't knowledgeable of the medicines that the Native people knew. They knew nothing of corn and beans and squash, pumpkin, maple syrup and the list goes on that we take for granted every day now as edible foods. That was all new, even tomatoes, beans. So in helping them with the foods that were grown in this world, Turtle Island, when I said they helped each other along the way, this is how they would help each other. We also were not privy to a lot of the diseases that Europeans brought over so they would help us in the other way. That was the relationship. My point is sovereignty began with us from day one when a clear line of understanding in the relationship the way it was supposed to go. And it's in our heart, it's in our spirit as we look after our people. Unfortunately, that was a traditional practice. So when they brainwash you into a modern elected system, you didn't believe any of that stuff anymore. One of our jobs was to go back to our traditional ways and bring that out and say, "˜Listen, we're Mohawks, we're Iroquois and that is our belief, that is our principles.' So now both...everyone adheres and abides by these principles whenever we talk to outside authorities and governments. That's the basis.

Now I'll tell you one thing in Canada, you can't say sovereignty. They just freak out when we talk about our sovereignty. Not that we don't ever stop. We just listen with interest because they're so concerned about Quebec separating from Canada and they call it separatists. And the Quebec people start talking about their sovereignty of their nation, which is Quebec. And so they've had a couple of showdowns, referendums. One time they come by one percent that they were going to leave. We never really concerned ourselves with it because three quarters of Quebec is Cree and the other part is Iroquois and so we would have just had a referendum of our own and say, "˜We're going to separate from Quebec,' and come back to our own nation. At least that's what we told them and they always freaked out when we told them more or less embarrassing them.

The idea of nationhood is now growing, finding it's way back to the nations in Canada, and I know as I travel around in the States they're always talking about sovereignty. As a matter of fact, I kind of get disillusioned at times because I see so many of our leaders go to a national chiefs' convention, stand up there, talk about sovereignty then go home and do their due diligence with programs and services that are administered from the outside, the social conditions are bad, they haven't moved their community, so it has become rhetoric more or less. So you see when people are really strong it's not particularly the leaders, it's the community that has to grow. They have to have the confidence and they have to have the ability to say, "˜We are who we are. We are a nation. We want to do this. We're strong in our traditions, in our culture, in our language.' And when you're strong there, you become strong in other areas because now you're not afraid to get an education, you're not afraid to get an occupation or train for something because you know who you are. That's the result of the residential schools, that's the result of the churches, it's the result of people that have changed our minds. So we want to go home. So my interpretation of sovereignty is strictly being...knowing who you are, what nation you belong to, the roots that you have, that's your tradition and culture, and you'll be a strong nation. The problem is that many of us have been educated to the degree then admitting to something else that we believe that we no longer have those roots of our nations. And back home that root took place and embedded. So I feel kind of confident in the next generation that we'll continue to have the fighters going in the same direction. I didn't quite answer you the same way as you'd expect somebody to talk about sovereignty in that way, but that's how we look at it."