cultural education

Determi-Nation podcast with Darrah Blackwater

Year

Determi-Nation is a series of conversations with Indigenous people doing incredible things to strengthen sovereignty and self-determination in their communities.

Resource Type
Citation

Blackwater, Darrah. Determi-Nation. Podcast series. Spotify. 2021. https://open.spotify.com/show/4u4xUXS3JLuhWroYoDd7xx

Transcript available on request. Please email us: nni@arizona.edu

Stephen Roe Lewis: Effective Tribal Leadership for Change

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Stephen Roe Lewis has been serving two terms as the Governor of the Gila River Indian Community. He follows a strong tradition and family legacy of leadership for the Akimel O’otham and Pee-Posh people in this desert riparian region of Arizona. Governor Lewis has worked on numerous political campaigns and organizing projects throughout Indian Country including Native voter organizing and Native voter protection in 2002 and selected as an Arizona delegate and Co-Chairing the Native American Caucus for the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. As well as, serving on the Board of Directors for the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), the Executive Board for the National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA) and the Board of Trustees for the Heard Museum of Phoenix. Governor Lewis has wroked with his community to create solutions for resources and education in the Gila River Indian Community. The Management Aquifer Recharge site (MAR-5) project brings together the need for access to water while restoring the return of the Community's riparian area which is vital for farming and the return of wildlife to the Community, and developed a new eductaion reviatlze program to construct a Bureau of Indian Education replacement school and then lease that school back to the federal government. His longstanding work to create a strong Native Nation for the Gila River Inidan Community and making tribal eaderhsip work for change is told in this interview with Native Nations Institute. 

Resource Type
Citation

Native Nations Institute. "Stephen Roe Lewis: Effective Tribal Leadership for Change," Leading Native Nations, Native Nations Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. January 14, 2020

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

Governor Stephen Roe Lewis Distinguished Tribal Leader Lecture

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Governor Stephen Roe Lewis of the Gila River Indian Community visited the University of Arizona to speak at January in Tucson: Distinguished Tribal Leader Lecture sponsored by the Native Nations Institute and held at the Indigenous Peoples Law & Policy program at James E. Rogers College of Law. In the tradition of his family legacy of leadership for the Akimel O’otham and Pee-Posh people of this desert riparian region of Arizona, Governor Lewis has been a steady leader in the Tribal Government of the Gila River Indian Community through several successful initiatives centered around revitalization of the Gila River and new Gila River Indian Community schools. His approach to Native Nation Building is exemplified in these examples as he shows careful planning and consideration to creating innovative ideas, strong capable institutional support, and centering cultural match to the outcomes. This dedication to a vision of self-determination by leadership in the Gila River Indian Community as shown by Governor Lewis presents an example to the potential of Native Nation Building.

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

Vernon Masayesva: Self-Governance and Protecting Water

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Former Tribal Chairman of the Hopi Nation and Executive Director of Black Mesa Trust, Vernon Masayesva relays his thoughts about advocating for self-governance and protection of water rights for Indigenous people. His pursuits in holding accountability of mining in Hopi territory has made Vernon into a leading respected voice on maintaining the sovereignty of water for tribes and intervention toward both entities and pixies that threaten environmental harm on Native lands. Vernon describes his efforts through the creation of Black Mesa Trust and their activities while continuing to be active in keeping the Hopi Nation focused on self-governance that matches the sacred values toward natural resources.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Native Nations Institute. "Vernon Masayesva: Self-Governance and Protecting Water." University of Arizona Water Ethics Symposium, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, October 20, 2018

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

Daryle Rigney: Asserting Cultural Match and Native Nation Building in Australia

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Daryle Rigney brings his expertise and first-hand experiences as a citizen of Ngarrindjeri Nation in South Australian to share his thoughts about Native Nation Building for the Ngarrindjeri Nation. He is a Professor of Indigenous Strategy and Engagement at College of Humanities Arts and Sciences at Flinders University, Board member in the Australia Indigenous Governance Institute, and member of the Indigenous Advisory Council for the Native Nations Institute. Daryle has spent better part of the last two decades supporting and directly working in efforts to bring the Ngarrindjeri community into a Regional Authority that governs using Native Nation building principles. In this interview Daryle explains the ways that Ngarrindjeri negotiated their self-governance with South Australia and implemented there own governing process that aligns with Ngarrindjeri cultural practices. Daryle has also been at the forefront to understanding the challenges and work behind protecting aboriginal cultural heritage and property through his involvement in protection of Ngarrindjeri people, traditions, burial sites, and ancestral materials.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Native Nations Institute. "Daryle Rigney: Asserting Cultural Match and Native Nation Building in Australia.” Leading Native Nations, Native Nations Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, January 11, 2019

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

Vernon Masayesva Keynote: Water Ethics Symposium

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Vernon Masayesva (Hopi) is the Executive Director of Black Mesa Trust and leading advocate for protecting water resources for the Hopi Nation. He's a Hopi Leader of the Coyote Clan and former Chairman of the Hopi Tribal Council from the village of Hotevilla who has worked for decades on bringing awarenes and action toward the damaging effects that nearby mines have had on the precious water systems for the Hopi people. In this video, Vernon gives a keyntoe speech at the 3rd annual University of Arizona Water Ethics Symposium on October 19, 2018 focused on Indigenous Water Ethics: Sacred Waters Connecting Culture, People, & Place.  The perspectives of culture, water rights, traditional knowledge, and leadership are revelaed in a Hopi context.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Native Nations Institute. "Vernon Masayesva Keynote Water Ethics Symposium." University of Arizona Water Ethics Symposium, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, October 19, 2018

Greg Cajete: Indigenous governance and sustainability

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Greg Cajete, Tewa of the Santa Clara Pueblo and a renowned scholar and author on indigenous education serves as the Director of Native American Studies at the University of New Mexico. His works have merged native history, cultural practices, and knowledge into the cross section of education fields such as Science, Ecology, and the Arts.  Dr. Cajete has built a wealth of curriculum for indigenous educators and advocates for bringing sustainability into focus when creating indigenous governance. His thoughts on the matter of indigenous education and governance as well as the importance to address climate change are explored in relation to Native Nation building. 

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Native Nations Institute. "Greg Cajete: Indigenous governance and sustainability." Leading Native Nations, Native Nations Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, February 22, 2018

For a complete transcript, please email us: nni@email.arizona.edu

Regis Pecos: Resilience of Culture and Indigenous Heritage

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Former Governor, Cochiti Pueblo Regis Pecos speaks to the Native Nation Rebuilders Cohort 2015.  He highlights the strength of indigenous heritage and resilience of culture for Native nations to govern themselves.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

Pecos, Regis "Regis Pecos Addresses Rebuilders Cohort," Native Nations Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ,  December 09, 2015.

Regis Pecos:

Good afternoon to all of you; in my language... Greetings to elders in this room…  Hello to my brothers… to my sisters… my friends… my relatives... I want to thank you for the honor of listening to your introductions this morning and sharing with all of us the beautiful gifts and contribution with children, with the way in which you embrace others, the way that you protect people as a part of your contribution; the way that you extend to others the need to be healthy in what we choose to eat. One to share the humor that you shared in your introduction or prevented you from your introduction and to people who give themselves. Coaches have a special place in my heart because of what they’ve meant to me in my life and so I appreciate very much what a number of you shared in your passion. All of you shared something very special that speaks to who you are, who we are collectively. I want to begin in a reflection about who we are as the first part of my presentation; to really think about who we are today and who gifted us that inheritance because in every message you shared this morning. It is a very personal connection that you shared in terms of who gifted you with something so incredibly valuable that defines who you’ve become; that defines what you do in your life that is about the sake of children especially but the sake of all people collectively. That is a precious gift and we have to acknowledge, as you shared these gifts, that I translate into essential core values that defines community, that contributes to the vibrancy of community. It takes people like all of you with all of these beautiful gifts of contribution to create the vibrant spirit of community that we love so deeply or we wouldn’t do what we do in our lives, right? Because it matters what our contributions are because it’s community.

 

 All of us that become the caretakers for the children and like what we share across all indigenous culture, prayers often end with those words, for the sake of the people, for the sake of the children, for the sake of those yet to be born into this world that are still part of that spiritual journey. In all of our indigenous cultures, story telling is a very important part of how we share our experience in life that become teachings in our life, as one of you shared, how we transfer life experiences into knowledge that contributes to our collective well-being if we choose to take this life experience in very positive and constructive ways. Imagine this: think about when you were a little girl, a little boy and think about the first stories that reflect love and caring in your relationship with others in your family or community. You likely will share in those stories the beauty of the gift of grandma’s and grandpa’s in our lives. I can recollect how we would love to go visit my grandpa and grandma. We would run to see who would get to grandma first because it was always so special to be sitting by grandma because grandma would do this or grandma would take your hand and like your hair go like this and it was something very special. I get emotional about it because those are very beautiful times and experiences of love, caring and nurturing. Think about this: you are now where you are in your life journey, a father of 7, a mother embracing others as a part of your family, and you all shared the way in which you struggled through school with families.

 

 Life is all about story-telling, but as indigenous peoples we all remember these stories from our grandparents, from others in our extended families, telling us of the special connections to places. They gave us words and they gave us stories and so now at this stage in our life, in our life journey, we have to start asking the question, ‘What kind of stories will I tell my children? What kind of stories will I tell my grandchildren? Will I tell them of the story of origin? Or can I tell them of a very special place, a landscape of connection, what happened there and why we feel so deeply about place and belonging? If we’re blessed along our journey, we will also tell them stories about how elders in their life journey will become one with creation at some point in our lives. So these become very critical times in our life journey and where I want to start in my presentation that will take us through four different parts of our reflection. This first part I want to talk about is origin or creation, or for us, Joan and I among the Pueblo People, emergence.  But it’s that time as our people travel in the spiritual people and came to be in this physical world. It was a time when we were gifted by our creator some very special gifts to sustain us among our journey that we continue today. So whether it’s about emergence, origin, or creation, for the Diné who are here with us, it’s the beauty way. For people of this place and of this region, medicine bundles become the carriers of these important instructions of the way of life, about how to be, about how to live.

 

 Oren Lyons, who I have had the honor of sharing much time with in our relationship with the Native Nations Institute and Honoring Nations, calls this time a time when the creator gifted to us as indigenous people, the original instructions. The original instructions of a way of life. I start with this core values paradigm because these gifts area really about what you shared this morning that binds you together as a family as part of a community. Where I begin in establishing that foundation. I also want to then share with you what was prophesized in all indigenous cultures that through our life journey that there will be others that come upon our life pathways. Who would threaten these gifts of the creator and each generation in our life journey would be vested with a sacred trust to be the protectors, to be the guardians, to be the stewards of these gifts by the creator. We’re going to go through what history reflects, that the United Nations recently defined that these policies and laws, those of you who study policy will appreciate, are among the worst crimes against humanity. For why they were conceived, driven by doctrines justifying their oppression against our people, but that was predicted; that there would be generations along our journey who would be challenged with our existence. The true love to these gifts of the creator, that I will share with you momentarily, is what each generation does to respond to these challenges. Some in our history gave their lives. Our fight today is sometimes from within, and that too was prophesized. That some time along our journey, if we are not mindful of our past collective experiences, that we could become our own worst enemy. It’s moving away from the fulfillment of this sacred trust and the maintenance of our core values that guide our lives.

 

What I want to share with you to appreciate what our forefathers overcame in their time that should cause us to celebrate the profound resilience of what they overcame sometimes dying in their sacrifice to define for us our inheritance. The question of future generations will be what we do today that defines their inheritance. An important question for all of you and us in this day is, how will future generations reflect on us of this time? Will they too celebrate and honor your resiliency by what you do and your contributions? Or will they reflect upon this time, those unborn, to say, ‘only if our forefathers, our foremothers,’ all of you in this time, ‘did what they needed to do to define our inheritance.’ Does that make sense?

 

So, I want to move from that to the next phase and that is, how did we reclaim, in a really recent period of our history, all that our forefathers, our leaders and all of you in your own ways have contributed that defines this time of self-determination? But, ‘what have we done in this time of self-determination?’ is an important question. What are we doing differently in this time of self-determination, when supposedly we are in control, different from the times that we weren’t, that we were critical of? Because in our research and study, we find out that what we have done for the better part of this period of self-determination, 30 to 40 years now, with rare exceptions of some communities driven by core values in their decision-making that are resilient in their own ways that is strengthening their core values in the decisions they make today. Where I want to end up is what was also prophesied and that is this is a very special time. You are a part of a very special time doing the work that you share as an important part in rethinking and redefining policy in a place where very little of our people are. That makes your work and contributions so profoundly important in rethinking our strategies and approaches to define what future generations will inherit from us.

 

I’m going to move through that process so that we can also have some time for questions.

 

This is very Pueblo-centric; this is a depiction of one of the oldest dances in Pueblo ceremony. But here are three critical circles that I want to share with you, and I would challenge you as fellows in this cohort to take the same format and tailor your own reflections and knowledge of the same, very specific to your indigenous community and culture. How can we honor the resilience of our forefathers if we don’t know our beginning? How can we make sense of the challenges we face today if we don’t appreciate history, right? To make sense of the challenges and how we move forward defining what your children, what your youngest, 4 years old, will see in their experience. You have a direct contribution to make by what we do collectively to support you in defining that future. So it becomes a critical part of recognizing that in this time of origin or creation or emergence, is this first circle that we all have to consciously connect to that defines our responses today and it is this gift of our mother earth. That in all of the migration stories to the places that we now exist are the stories of our ancestors and where events took place that challenged their survival to come to this center point of our existence where we are today. Land is what provides for our sense of connection and belonging in this physical world. It is a very significant contributor that defines our identity to place. Language is a  very beautiful gift we heard today, shared by many of you, handed down by members of your family and your community. And to celebrate that even in the face of the policies and laws to kill our mother tongue, the language of our people survived that we ought to celebrate. This defined way of life, which is our spiritual existence, is this gift that mainstream calls religion but our elders remind us is a way of life. It’s the way of conscious existence for us in this world through these teachings. Laws and customs of our people were provided as a way to maintain balance in our communities. As a person engaged in law enforcement, this is one of the great challenges for our community, knowing the welfare and the wellbeing in what you have devoted your life to is necessary for communities well-being. But in the midst of that have been the challenges to undo it in ways that make it difficult for indigenous laws and customs to exist through no fault of anyone. But how do we transform this incredible contribution that you give to people in your community to compliment the teachings of indigenous laws and customs to create a sense of balance in how we deal with one another for the maintenance of relationships among not just human beings but all living beings important to our existence? As governance is a process of engagement and maintenance in these relationships using the tools of customary indigenous laws, one for the maintenance of this balance as a process of engagement. But you know as a policy person, those of you engaged in this kind of work, the way in which infringement upon traditional governance system transforms it in a way that creates foreign framework of governance that sometimes is a complete contradiction to the ways in which these original gifts from the creator were intended to maintain harmony among people and living things in our community. Family, as many of you shared the incredible gift, family is the entity that receives as she will as a mother here soon, the gift of this sacred spirit into this physical world that you and your family and your community will embrace. Family is the receiver of the continuance of our existence. All of us as members of our community become important contribution to the well-being of this unborn child. You know, when I heard you all introduce yourselves this morning, I took several pages of what you shared because they’re so beautiful in terms of the spirit and the generosity that one of the questions I put here, thinking about what you shared to ask all of you, is this: Given all that you shared, who would not love to be part of a community of people like you? Right? Wouldn’t you love a community for your children to be surrounded by this kind of spirit as members of a community? Who wouldn’t want that? One of you shared that there is no end to learning, it is a continuum through all the ages even as grandparents. We continue to learn about life. But in all that you shared, the question becomes, who wouldn’t want the generosity or the spirit of this community? Who wouldn’t want to be a part of this community of people? Profoundly beautiful in what you shared this morning that it gets to become something very emotional to hear of your commitment that defines your passion for contribution.

 

As we move through this circle, community is really something that is the spirit of our existence. So the question becomes, what are we willing to do to contribute to maintain this enduring spirit of the community that we want to belong to? We ask this question in our leadership institute: Young people, elders in our community, what do you love most about where you come from? Language and culture. And what threatens what you love most? The lack of commitment to it. And then the question becomes, what must we do to change that? It’s the ultimate challenge, right? It’s the ultimate challenge of response to what you love most, what you love most about where you come from when you ask the question, ‘What threatens what you love most?’ Then the question becomes, what are you willing to do about it? What is the most desirable future that you want where you want to raise your children? What stands in the way of achieving that most desirable future that defines the barriers that we have to overcome? And then we ask ourselves who will champion this cause to overcome the barriers to achieve what we desire most for the children that you’ve embraced? That can be supportive of them; of you in this community that you desire? What are you willing to do to fulfill and overcome these barriers? You’re doing something that’s an old tradition of looking at wellbeing and the health of community conceptionalized as a credit union today. When we look at the history and cultures of our people all across Indian Country and in this world, indigenous people have always had the thinking as an important core value to think multiple years in terms of reserves so that in the case of weather, in the case of war, in the case of all kinds of factors beyond their control, that they would have the benefit of surviving because they have thought out years down the road to sustain themselves. So, how do we transfer these old concepts into new forms of thinking to maintain these precious gifts of the creator? The natural resources the creator gave that comes in multiple ways throughout Indian Country. From the northwest, their culture is built around fish; as a giver, as a gift to sustain their life ways. All across this end, the rice that is produced as a form of sustenance. The four-legged in the places that are mountainous were gifts for our sustenance. The buffalo in the plains were gifts for our sustenance. The beans and the vegetables of the southwest in an agricultural environment were gifts of the creator. All over the world are these incredible gifts of resources symbolized by water, the giver of all life. The sacredness of this gift that we are all collectively responsible for the maintenance in order that it continues to give and to sustain us as the creator intended in this time of our existence in this physical world that this life journey continues today.

 

The second circle you defined in many ways this morning by the gifts that you bring that translates into core values. You talked about love and you talked about respect and understanding and empathy and commitment and health and compassion. All of the things that provides for defining how passionately you are in what you do in your life for you people, embracing them to be a provider of these gifts that define who we are in our lives, that defines what we do that makes you exceptional individuals. But here’s the question I want you all to think about is who gifted to you that core value? Who gifted to you that core value that defines your passion, that defines what you do in your life in the way that you do in your life? Because the answer to that question becomes a very intimate connection to those in your lives who gave you these core values to embrace you, to nurture you, to express the deepest form of love for you to guide you in this life journey. When we think about who gifted us that core value, what you brought this morning and you shared, that somewhere under here you might have a bag of additional gifts of these core values, rich in that kind of gift by loving family and extended family and community, you are in what you shared this morning. But in recognizing who gifted you that, begs the question that in your life what will you gift to those you love? Because in their lives they will refer to potentially you, or you, or you in your life journey… that it was you who gifted them this core value that defines what they do in their life. As we become older in our lives, how beautiful it would be if you could hear a young person reflect upon Coach Williams. Coach Williams gifted me this core value that defines what I do in my life and what I’ve become in my life. Do you understand? The deep connection in who we recognize and stories go, how will children in your midst, in your family, in your community…who will they turn to when asked, ‘who gifted you that value? Who gifted you that core value that defines who you are, what you’ve become and what you do? Why are you so passionate about what you do? Because someone in your life defined the love of that passion that defines your commitment that reflects your contribution in all that you do. When we make these personal connections it becomes an important recognition that in our own lives as we tell our stories that you too will have to answer to the creator when you return. Kenneth, what did you leave behind for others to follow? What teachings did you leave behind for them to be guided by? Because in this kind of framework and paradigm, the teachings go that when the time comes and we all return to our creator, the creator will ask if we come back with a full bundle of teachings and values on our return. Why did you not leave these values and teachings for others to benefit from? When you come back to the creator empty-handed, the creator will embrace you that all that you have been given in your life, you gave to others – generously gave to others. In this way, we celebrate – I won’t call you Robert, BJ… you’re not in trouble – we celebrate and honor people who have given us all that they have that defines who we are. Now in our time, at this stage in our life journey we now assume that responsibility to tell those stories of connection, of origin.

 

The third circle is something that is critically important because Dr. Manley Begay, who is a friend and a brother to me that I hope will come somewhere to join you along this journey, shared with me sometime ago that when we all wake in the morning into consciousness, our elders teach that we take what we think – the good things that we think, that we expect to experience, that we are hopeful and faithful to experience during the course of our travels in day with all who cross our path – to use prayer as a way to articulate, asking for guidance to live by these core values that all who come upon you in your path might be met with the best core values reflecting who you are in what you do and how you do it. And that that guidance is part of a necessary conscious engagement for us as given to us by the creator. So, this connection to this traditional calendar, that is a spiritual calendar of engagement, and it moves in cycles and seasons that we know very well. Ask yourselves this question, when do I feel the most at peace? And when do I feel the tranquility of love and joy and happiness? You’re going to reflect upon ceremony or a place in this environment that epitomizes these connections because why? Because when you are engaged in these places people are at their best reflecting love and joy and respect and graciousness and generosity with which they embrace. You hear the laughter of children and grandpas and grandmothers; that’s the center point of our existence. It is the validation of this connection of spirituality in these ways of our existence. The fulfillment of the original instructions of how to live, of how to be to one another and all living things…our elders say that the original instructions are very, very simple. These reflect the simplicity of a complex world that we live in. But this – if you understand these connections of our existence, you’ll appreciate why every generation since the beginning of time, that our elders say since time immemorial it is this time of origin, of creation, of emergence. When our people receive the gifts with which to be sustained in our life journey recognizing that in this life journey would come many, many different challenges to undo and to take from you these precious gifts. These tenants and covenants of the original instructions and our sacred trust is to be the protectors and the guardians, and the stewards of these gifts because that’s what defines who we are from where we come from. To the many generations who have defined our inheritance of our identity, of our connection to where we come from that we define what we love most.

 

Here’s a photo of representatives on Capitol Hill responding in their time. Can you imagine in this time? Put your own elders and leaders in this framework and in this photo. They travelled likely by train to the nation’s capitol to respond to the threats and challenges of these gifts, potentially our land most likely in this period. But imagine with limited resources what they…how they responded to the challenge of the time.

 

Here’s something I’m going to move through quickly but I would also challenge you that, as part of the Bush Cohort, develop your own tailor-made timeline to similar challenges off of this timeline to appreciate from your communities, that you love how those same communities were threatened, to appreciate what your elders and members of your community did to respond to be the stewards, and the guardians and the protectors, defining your inheritance. You defined language and culture as the thing you love most about where you came from. Think about the ways policies and laws were created to one purposefully conceived to detach us from our lands, to kill our mother tongue, to transform our way of life, to undo our indigenous laws and customs and our governance; to dismantle family, to undo community, to detach us from our natural resources. That’s our history. But what we have to celebrate, if we know our history, is the resiliency of our forefathers to respond in ways that we all still have much of what the creator gave to us that defines who we are and how we respond to challenges today. Look at all of this alignment of policies over the course of several hundred years, purposefully conceived creating a time and a policy when our religious leaders were persecuted. When we were prevented from practicing our own religions. When we were prohibited to speak our own languages. That a group of people would create for dismantling family by one, taking our children because the mantra was that they’re better off somewhere else and not with their families and their communities, right? The great American adoption was a program to do just that. Look at all of the ways in which those were imposed.

 

The reason for one reflecting upon this timeline is to appreciate not just the resiliency, to celebrate and honor our forefathers; but, to remember that in that statement and teaching, if we’re not conscious of our past collective experiences that some time in our life journey we can become our own worst enemy. That is to internalize the worst of the kinds of actions of oppression against our people. To now become, at some point in this journey, our own oppressors of our people…right? That’s the message in this reflection of this timeline. Look at what it took to reclaim all of these impositions. A time when we were forced into segregation with boarding schools that changed the concept of education, culturally defined education that is one) about schooling, about facts and not about life and how to be a good person, a good human being in your communities. These are fundamentally too different kinds of processes called education and look at how it has changed how we act and how we behave imposed upon with conditions with overtime that today, we’re not comfortable, we’re not confident that even as we have control of education, we still react and respond by the years of conditioning that someone else knows best what’s good for us even in this time of self-determination. Headstart is a classic example – In the 60’s, late 60’s, was introduced. But, what we failed to ask as we embraced Headstart – and this isn’t a criticism. You know, you were focused this morning on early childhood because of the love and what it means for little children to be embraced with our identity and values that define who you are as a people from your communities. So please, not a criticism, not a criticism at all but the result of the years of conditioning that when we embraced Headstart programs, we failed to ask a head start to where? Right? If not an earlier acquisition in the fluency of English and at what expense? Our own mother tongue, right? So how is that different from the 1890’s when the government introduced boarding schools, took our little children from their families and communities because the mantra at that time was the way you kill language and culture is to remove the children from their culture and deny those children their culture, right? Important questions in this time to understand that knowing how policies and laws were conceived, not for our benefit, as education has been defined for what purpose? To assimilate us, right? So if we do not rethink the purpose of education, are we still contributing to our own demise in these times? Or how as we rethink education in a way that many of you have shared that have contributed to what you do in your life today, to be doing exactly that. To be conscious about what you do and because education programs for our purposes is not a part of the public schools, not a part of higher education…what do we then do consciously? We create our own places of engagement, right? And all of you in your own respective ways are doing that but imagine that it takes a critical nucleus of people like you and what you do in your respective areas to create movement, to create rethinking. That’s what the Bush Foundation Cohort is creating is the opportunity to consciously think about the past; to recognize and be fully cognoscente of what we cannot be doing to ourselves in this time of self-determination. What must we do to respond in similar ways so that future generations honor and celebrate us of this time. It’s thinking about how we reclaim indigenous core values, how we reclaim indigenous education, how we reclaim the vibrancy of community because in all of the destructive forces that have been part of several hundred years in the making to get us to where we are today, it’s going to take that kind of engagement that you will contribute to recreate this.

 

This isn’t a target…and I would stand on the other side.

 

That sometimes you might feel as you do your work that this is what’s on your back or on your front. But here’s something that is a very part of this movement. In all of us is this inner spirit that either we nurture consciously by prayer, by engagement or that spirit becomes hollow in our existence. When we nurture this inner spirit that is encapsulated by all of you physically, it helps to guide your relationship with family that contributes the vibrancy and the spirit in which you become part of the community. That creates ultimately this incredibly, profoundly beautiful environment of existence where all of you individually and collectively are contributing to the maintenance of this connection in the most beautiful way that continues since that time of beginning.

 

Here’s another thing I want you to remember; that what ideas and concepts you think of that is a direct response, in your case creating capitol by way of a credit union to allow those who cannot access capitol for their wellbeing, you’ve created something that provides access in ways not possible in the larger society. For some exceptions to this symbol, this symbol is reflective in the story of our own life journeys that all of you should be mindful of. That what you start in a movement in your own community, you might not see the full benefit of the realization of your contribution in your lifetime. But, if you do it in a way that helps to create a pathway, seven children will follow that pathway that you create for them. As you’re blessed with grandchildren, they will become a critical mass of others to follow along that pathway. You may not see it in your lifetime but your children, and your grandchildren, and your great grandchildren would become the beneficiaries of your contributions in this time. So as you’re thinking about leadership, as you think about how you contribute to the ultimate wellbeing of your people that you desire deeply. That you have a spirit of the most noble calling in this existence: to serve your people, to be of service to your people by giving totally of yourself for their wellbeing is an admirable vision in your life that we all should embrace and thank you to express appreciation that there are people who are strong and courageous with a sense of vision to commit one’s life to that cause. So remember this in what you do; to not be frustrated, to not be disappointed, to not be impatient that what you begin as your contribution through this fellowship you may not see in your lifetime, but others will become the beneficiaries of your effort. No different than how you have been a beneficiary in the efforts of many from where you come from, the community you love most. As you respond to what threatens what you love most about where you come from and you respond in a way, don’t be frustrated. Don’t be disappointed and don’t be impatient because as long as you’re contributing to that vision, fulfilling your mission of the sacred trust in the fulfillment, utilizing your gift that you have been given others, no doubt, will benefit. I will put money on that, that others will benefit by your contributions.

 

So in Pueblo country, we are very close to the prophecies of Mesoamerica in South America because we share relationships so deeply about the beginning of the existence, about time. Remember a few years ago there was this huge uproar that this world was going to end in a ball of fire in 2012? You know what that prophecy is about? The prophecy is about this time. The prophecy is about rekindling the fire. In this revitalization of purification in this time, that something extraordinary would happen and is happening and you’re a part of it. That is that in this time of rekindling the fire for seven generations, as that prophecy reflects, is that there would be a convergence of old ways and new ways of thinking. That it would be a time of extraordinarily profound significance to secure the future of seven generations forward. This is that time. And you are all a part of this time in articulating the convergence of the spirit of old knowledge and new ways of thinking to contribute to the enduring spirit of community by rethinking education, rethinking the transfer of knowledge, reestablishing intentional relationships in family that strengthens the spirit and vibrancy of community. To revisit the laws and customs, to revisit the traditional governance systems that brings people together in contrast to the kind of isolation and factualism that has been created over time. This is that time. It’s an extraordinary time that all of you come together.

 

I’m a coach and mentor in something very similar that’s happened with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation as they have one) identified their focus and investment as Bush has in five states. There are an incredible group of Native people form our communities in New Mexico in this larger, 150-cohort nationally that we have been talking with, Jamie, about how we bring those fellows together with all of you to share something extraordinary.

 

I’m going to end with this. How do we take what you’re doing – if this is community – how do we take what you’re doing whether it’s in education, the environment, child welfare, in health, in economic development, care for the elders, care for the children, education, economic development and so forth. This is a time unprecedented in our communities. But I’ll bet that every one of you in the work you do will attest to the fact that all of these programs intended for the well-being of community and members are in isolation. How do we create for connectivity this way so that it becomes a collective and comprehensive response to the challenges of our communities? How do we take other folks form outside of the region to talk about how they’re responding that we can all learn from to further strengthening our collective response? I’ll say that this model of a cohort is really the beginnings of fundamental change in Indian Country. The way that we return to come face-to-face with the challenges that we reflect that we are becoming our own worse enemy by one moving so far away. Look at all that our forefathers have overcome; isn’t that incredible, that we should celebrate and honor how education was intended to transform us? But here’s the maintenance of our connections that we have to be conscious of. If we don’t contribute to the maintenance of this connection and there’s a disconnect, sociologists in their research reflect that it only takes two generations to be disconnected that in the future generations of our own great-great-grandchildren, that this kind of discussion about our own collective wellbeing connected to language and culture that define our identity won’t even be in the realm of their consciousness. If that were to occur, then the ultimate disconnect from everything that defines who we are is gone. Will that be our legacy? Or will our legacy be one of conscious contributions to these questions? Are the decisions we are today strengthening or weakening our core values? Or are the decisions that we’re making contributing to the movement away from the core values that contributes to the kind of isolation and dysfunction and detachment from the core values of the connections of the gifts of the creator? Does that make sense?

 

That’s what we want to prevent from happening is that disconnect. I’ll end with that. What will our children inherit from us? And what will be your contribution? I hope that this is just the beginning of thinking deeply about our sacred trust and responsibility to what the creator gifted to us in the beginning and what generations of our forefathers has contributed to maintain and sustain. This timeline that reflects 100 years of state and federal policies that impact us as individuals, as families, as communities, as nation is meant to have a personal connection of what happened in that 100-year timeline. Where we stand today is also the question, what will the next 100 years be like? And you know what? For those of us who stand there today with our children who have children, grandchildren – how many have grandchildren? Soon, great-grandchildren will be in the mix. So, the next 100 years isn’t some far, distant time in the future. The next 100 years has already been affected by the decisions we made today. It is useful to know what it took, 100 years in the making, to create the challenges we face today and then make sense of that; to respond to these challenges that defines the future of children already here, a part of us. The children yet to be born are already affected by the decisions we make today and why the question that becomes profound is, are the decisions we’re making today strengthening our connection to the core values to the gifts that you have or are decisions we’re making today taking us further away and in this way becoming our own demise?

 

So, Jamie, I’ll offer this to you all; that in this type of sequence to the responses to the challenges, if there is another opportunity I will walk you through the ways in which we have attempted to respond and what we have developed to think about this in all you’re doing. Think about this; think about how you consciously create a critical nucleus of people for change that you desire that consciously then builds a critical mass of people in your community that that critical mass then becomes part of a movement to achieve your desirable future. Is it possible? Of course it is.

 

Take a look at this place here. If you look at the video and the history of this place as told by the people of this place, who would’ve ever thought 25 years ago that this was possible as part of their vision? What did it take for them to bring what was necessary to create this reality? So the things that we love most about where we come from…what we love most about where come from, our families and communities, ask ourselves if they are worth our investment to contribute in similar ways that they’re deserving of? Of course they are. That’s why you do the things that you do. I will commit to whatever time that is helpful to one) to make that sometimes impossible challenge become possible by using all the examples of Native Nations Institute of honoring nations and the multiple responses across Indian Country that will compliment and support your efforts. Don’t be impatient. Don’t be frustrated. Don’t be disappointed because what you begin, each of you, you may not realize in this time that you have along this journey, but others will benefit by your convictions and your contributions and your commitment. I thank you for the soulfulness that you bring here that is about the deep love for where you come from. How will children know that deep love without you, for their language and their culture and the community? What future generations inherit will from us depends on what we are willing to do and commit ourselves to.

 

I’m going to end with a prayer but not yet, if we have time for questions.

 

Any questions?

 

Let me just share with you that in New Mexico we founded, now 20 years ago, the New Mexico Leadership Institute that I’m Co-Director of now. It’s very similar to this effort of creating movement. We do community institutes. Some of the hardest work, bringing people from our own communities into a sacred space away from their communities for very frank and honest discussions about the things that we don’t like sometimes in our community that threaten what we do most. Sometimes having these very frank and honest discussions about the things most relevant in our lives and our people are impossible to discuss in our communities. We take this process, engage people, and then return those people into the communities armed with the articulation of responses and why these responses are important to shift the way we do things, to respond to the challenges in our community of our collective wellbeing of the contributions for the maintenance of a healthy mind, body, and spirit. When we are mentally, physically, spiritually healthy, we are at the best in how we contribute to the collective wellbeing of our people. To date, we have taken 5,000 people through this process; created a network of people like yourselves over that time. We have five different approaches to dealing with young people. A summer policy academy for high school kids that engages them in this very dialogue, a summer policy academy two that takes them to the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs to study how these federal policies affect what they feel most relevant in their communities to be. We take them to engage with the domestic policy advisors at the White House to hear what young people think to our congressional delegation which eventually comes back to tribal leaders. All of you are familiar with something called the Tribal Priorities Allocation Process that under self-determination attempts to create where tribes prioritize their investment of resources as defined within the bureau. Our young people challenged why there’s not a place for the investment of young people if in fact they are the most precious resource of our communities. How do we rethink these approaches to break the mold and rethink what becomes a necessary part of investing for the rebuilding of indigenous communities for our collective wellbeing? We now have a Pueblo PhD program in partnership with Arizona State University. We graduated the largest cohort of PhD’s in this country last spring. We just started another cohort of 10. You know what the unique part of this is? That those candidates never have to leave their work, understanding that one) when we plug our human capital out of places important in the work they do, the likelihood that they’ll ever come back is diminished significantly. The work that they do becomes part of their doctorial work so in the process we create research for the first time through our lands to respond to the challenges much like you’re defining. So that indigenous research in our own communities becomes a very important contribution for how we undo the long history that creates the parameter and mold that we otherwise have to work in, to break those molds and education becomes an incredibly important part in rethinking approaches and rethinking strategies in ways that is more consistent with the core values that sustain our connections and our identities. In 2012, we convened the largest Pueblo gathering; some say since the Pueblo revolt and the Pueblos ousted in their revolt the conquistadors in their colonization of New Mexico. In this process, we began with a critical nucleus much like you, consciously expanding that nucleus, this now being the seventh cohort, to build that critical mass, and now it’s become a large mass movement at multiple levels and all fronts horizontally. It’s that kind of engagement that I am hopeful you will become a part of, consciously contributing in ways that future generations inherit by your courageous and visionary contributions to the maintenance of the wellbeing of all future generations, those yet to be born. That is our sacred trust and responsibility. Lot’s of examples to strengthen you, to validate you and reaffirm the work and your contributions that we must all share in. I am willing to share as many people along your journey that you find helpful in these discussions to reinforce the work you’re doing.

 

Here’s the last point I’ll make if you don’t have any questions. Community maintenance, revitalization, rebuilding, isn’t something that begins here and goes through a timeline and then finally at some point says, ‘ah we’re finally finished rebuilding communities.’ It doesn’t happen that way. Community building is forever, it’s perpetual. The very nature of the challenges over time, what is at the heart of the spirit of the vibrancy of the community that creates healthy people – healthy mind, body, and spirit of those members of those communities – is the adaptive response to the challenges that we face. Our history is full of examples of adaptive responses by our forefathers that we all should honor and celebrate. I’ll end with that note that you are and we are part of a lifetime journey of contribution for the maintenance of the spirit and vitality of community for the wellbeing of all people, especially the children.

Leroy Shingoitewa: Self-Governance with Hopi Values

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Native Nations Institute
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Leroy Shingoitewa, member of the bear clan, and served as chairman of the Hopi tribe and since January 2016, has served as a councilman representing the village of Upper Moenkopi.  He recalls the intricacies of governing while maintiang Hopi values and traditions.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Shingoitewa, Leroy, "Leroy Shingoitewa: Self-Governance with Hopi Values," Leading Native Nations, Native Nations Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, March 01, 2016

Verónica Hirsch:

Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I’m your host, Verónica Hirsch. On today’s program, we are honored to have with us Councilman Leroy Shingoitewa, who is a Hopi tribal citizen and a member of the bear clan. Councilman Shingoitewa previously served as chairman of the Hopi tribe and since January 2016, has served as a councilman representing the village of Upper Moenkopi. Councilman Shingoitewa received his bachelor’s degree from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, earned his master’s in Educational Leadership and Administration from Penn State University and has over 30 years of experience as a teacher and principal within the Arizona public school system and Bureau of Indian Education schools. He served as the first Native American principal for the Flagstaff Unified School District, helped establish the Hopi tribe’s first tribal grant school and currently works with school boards, schools and their staff and tribal organizations to find, develop, and train effective leadership. Councilman Shingoitewa, welcome.

Leroy Shingoitewa:

Thank you, it’s an honor to be here.

Verónica Hirsch:

I’ve shared a little bit about who you are but would you please begin by telling us a little bit about yourself?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

Well, I’m from the Hopi tribe, live in Moenkopi, was born and raised on the Hopi Reservation at Keams Canyon, Arizona. Grew up knowing and living in the traditional Hopi way with my father, my mother, and my grandparents, and all of my extended family. I’ve lived away from the reservation as well in the outside world so I’ve learned how to become balanced living in both cultures. I feel that whatever experiences that I’ve had hopefully will be of benefit who may hear today’s interview.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you. I’d like to begin by asking some basic questions regarding this topic of Native nation building and my first question is, in your opinion, how do you define nation building?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

I guess there’s two forms to me of nation building. First of all, there’s your own tribal affiliation like me with the Hopi. I believe that in building of the Hopi tribe there needs to be strong partnerships with the 12 villages we have, partnerships among the tribal council of men that serve, and strengthening the way governance is operated on our reservation. That’s a quick synopsis of our local government. On the other side in the United States and probably in other areas like Canada and Mexico, in order for tribes to become strong, we need to start to learn how to work together. In other words, we can belong to our individual tribes, when it comes to national issues we need to band together to show strength in that area of concern or issues that will affect all of our tribes. To me, this is called nation building. If we do not come together as a nation, we become individualistic and we lose out on a fight that has died before our people.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you. I’d like to ask a little more in depth question regarding part of your answer of what nation building entails for the Hopi tribe, and what does it entail?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

For the Hopi, it pushes us or makes us think more realistically going beyond what we call our traditional form of governance. We’ve adopted a way of governance in 1936 when the Indian Reorganization Act was passed. It made it so that as a tribe we were able to have a relationship with the United States government on a government to government relation. Our role is a find a way that we can effectively operate in that manner without pushing ourselves to a point that we, as the 12 villages are, would become individualistic in what we want to do. For us in the Hopi tribe, it is very difficult; we have 12 different villages, each individually with their own form of government in their villages with operation of their own village. With a tribal government, we must then consolidate all 12 villages, bring them together and become one of mind especially on the ordinances or laws or issues that face us. It will protect and save all the people involved. In a lot of ways, governing as a group takes a lot of effort. You may have an individual who serves for their village but also once he comes to college he must also change his mind set to serve all the Hopi people.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you. I’d next like to ask, in your opinion, what do nation building leaders do? By that, I mean how do they conduct business both on a daily basis and with a long term perspective in mind?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

This is a challenge for both since I served as a chairman and now as a councilman that you have to have a vision of what you’re looking for. Once you have that vision, you find a strategy on how to achieve that vision with the help of all the other members of council. In turn with that you must also not forget the people you serve. You must be able to go out and search and talk to people away from the tribal government, asking of their opinion, asking if the vision you’re looking at is going in the right direction. On a daily basis, you must be willing to listen to people; You can’t go out and say, ‘Well, this is the way it’s going to be.’ Not only that, you’re going to have to love what you’re doing. If you don’t love serving people, then you shouldn’t be in the service of a councilman or chairman because it’s just a title, it doesn’t make you all everything. In order to be the most effective, you have to be willing to allow yourself that flexibility to listen and once you’ve listened, form a plan on how you’d like to go forth and get that plan completed. I think a lot of times you have to forget the title you have and become part of the group that you serve and that way when you talk to them you’re on equal levels. Many times, even today, a lot of people are still a chairman because serving that capacity but on the other side because I’m not in the position they approach me very differently and say, ‘Well, you’re one of us now.’ In many ways every day is a challenge. Every day when you wake up, the first thought in your mind is ‘Ok, what can I do today? Who will I go see and who will I talk to?’ Your daily basis – as a councilman, you serve on a daily basis and I’m talking 24/7. You can’t take your hat off on the weekend because you’ll always be approached by somebody. Anywhere you go, you will be approached and someone will have something complimentary or they may be concerned about issues. To me, serving in that capacity, if you do it with enthusiasm and with a zeal of accomplishing something, it’s a good way to go.

Verónica Hirsch:

Based upon your experience, what are the unique challenges of serving as an elected councilman? You mentioned a moment ago about how people might still approach you and bearing in mind your former capacity as Hopi tribe chairman but are there any differences between your former position of chairman of the Hopi tribe and your current capacity as councilman representing the village of Upper Moenkopi?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

There is a big difference. As a chairman, people look at you as being the leader of everybody. You are showing the face of the Hopi people, when you go out to meetings you are the representative of the Hopi people. When you go out to the counties or the cities or the state or even the national level you are the one they will ask questions of. What you end up doing is you have to project what Hopi is and to go out and become an individual that says, ‘Well, now I’m the chairman and I can say whatever I want’ and that’s not true because you learn to become very selective in what you say and you have to think about it before you speak your mind because in that capacity anything you say to some people says. ‘Ok, here is what the Hopi people stand on.’ Now as a councilman, I’m a little more of an individual, I speak for our village at Moenkopi so I’m probably a little more specific on what I say. I’m not fearful of saying something in a meeting because as a councilman I’m one of 22 people and I have an opinion. I can express my opinion and I also have a vote in a decision. As a chairman, you don’t have a vote. There’s a misconception that the chairman is the chairman so he is the government of all; but in our system of government, the tribal council is the decision making body. All of the councilmen have a vote and the chairman doesn’t. The only time the chairman votes is when there’s a tie in the council, he breaks the tie. In that respect, there is a huge difference in the capacity and responsibility of what the chairman does but his main role is to serve and show the true face of the people he serves, in other words the Hopi people.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you. I’d like to ask you now a question reflecting back on your experience as Hopi tribal chairman and then also your current capacity. What do you wish you knew before you first began serving as an elected leader of the Hopi tribe?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

I wish I knew that it was hard to serve young people. If anything, that was something I came to a quick realization. Also, I felt that sometimes you have to be able to be aware of all the things that’s happening around you, all the issues that occur. You have to be ready to explain immediately when somebody asks you a question especially at the state and national level. I find that if you surround yourself with resources, with expertise, with people who are experts in those areas of concern; they will feed you information so when you go in you’re ready to answer the questions you’ve been asked. I find that those who are not ready for this begin to look like, ‘Wow that person doesn’t know anything’ or ‘He’s fumbling for words.’ The biggest thing that I learned quickly was that you have to study the things in front of you. You can’t just go and say, ‘Ok, we’re going to talk about this today,’ and if you don’t have the understanding of it you have to be careful that you don’t look like you don’t know anything in front of all the people you’re going to be there with. As a councilman, it’s still the same way. When we have issues with land, with water, housing, with a village it concerns…all these have the same bearing that you have to be willing to go out and understand and learn the issues that are in front of you. In the long run, the positives are that once you learn, you build on those reserves that you’ve found that you have the knowledge of. Example, all those things I learned as chairman now as a councilman, all those things that I learned are now coming out to help with the present issues; water, land. Example, a thing called the Snowbowl Ski Resort in Flagstaff. Learning about the issues of the local towns. These are the things that I found for me were very positive because now I’m probably a lot more knowledgeable now than I was when I first went in to serve my people. I’ll tell you the greatest joy was being able to serve my people, being able to and say, ‘I did this on behalf of my people.’ For me – see there’s a history with me – my father was a chairman in 1940 and ’41. In some respects, I grew up with the knowledge of what our Hopi people were hoping to learn and have. For me, maybe it’s a different type of commitment because I saw my father go through these; I saw my father when he was a first member of the tribal council, first secretary, first interpreter for the tribal council, law enforcement officer – all these things had a bearing on my commitment to come back and serve my people.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you, thank you for sharing the legacy of your family’s involvement with service to the Hopi tribe. I’d like to now transition into discussing what Hopi traditional governance looks like and my first questions is, what does the Hopi – and I’ll call it “indigenous constitution” – or traditional form of governance look like?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

Well, like I stated in Hopi we have 12 villages and traditionally the Hopi villages each had a leader that was trained and was appointed by the leaders of that village…chosen, trained, and nurtured to take over that role which became a lifelong position. It wasn’t just for one or two years; once you were put in that position, you stayed there until you moved on from this world. That was the traditional form of government. Because of that, when the constitution came in there was a discussion, probably among our people, that how do we make these two governments work together. What I hear from like my father and my grandparents and those other older leaders that I knew, that the traditional form of governance state in the village that whatever way they were going to govern, they chose to do so in their village. In that form, the kikmongwi was the leader in that village but around him he also had a council – if you want to call it – of religious leaders who sat with him, who provided him with information when there’s issues in that community that came up in that village, they would discuss it and come to a consensus. At that point, the leader then would make his decision but also that community as whole, as a village, involved the people themselves. That was the village form of government and that form of government is disappearing from the Hopi. At this stage there are probably two villages that try to possess that type of government and right now leadership is chose by the few who still try to practice the way of life. Again, that type of life is slowly disappearing because out of the 12 villages, 10 of the villages have their own board of governors – board of directors if you want to call it – maybe a governor or maybe a chairperson of that board who then makes decisions on behalf of that village as a whole. As you see, we’ve moved from what traditionally we lived by on a daily basis to now a more modernistic type of government, which we learned from the outside world.

Verónica Hirsch:

You mentioned that some of the format that you described of Hopi traditional governance –  that it has diminished in more contemporary times. My next question is to what extent does it operate today? You mentioned two villages in particular have made consorted efforts to operate in the very same way, do you see elements of traditional government apparent in the other 10 villages?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

In watching them, they internally – and they really try to separate them but sometimes they’ll combine them and some of their decision making – but in the long run there is still an attempt at the separation of church and state. In the villages, they will have their decisions in a village board meeting then it comes to a traditionalism type of activity that transitions to what we call a kiva. That’s where all the men gather, that’s where ceremonies take place, that’s where religious activities take place that are based on our Hopi way of living; our values, our traditions, our beliefs. Even within the villages there is a separation but when it comes to issues like water, like housing, like land, that takes place in the village board of directors meeting.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you. You mentioned, Councilman Shingoitewa, briefly about how in traditional context leaders would be identified and trained. I’d like to ask you a little bit more about that point and ask, traditionally, how were Hopi governance roles and responsibilities allocated?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

Well, depending on which village it was, there were certain clans that were identified in the leadership role. I think some tribes throughout the United States also have that type of structure. An example is in certain religions; the bear clan was considered the clan that was on the top. They were believed to be the leadership of the Hopi people and traditionally they are considered to be the father of all the Hopi people. An example, that’s what I believe in myself as a Bear Clan; my responsibility is to the people and therefore I believe in my mind that I am a father of the people so therefore my commitment goes to serving the people. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I become the kikmongwi or the chief of that village; its only upon the fact that if they find me worthy enough that I were to be designated with that role that I would play that role. There are other clans within the tribe that hold certain roles and responsibilities that they must fulfill in the religious portion of daily life or in their role of serving the people. Again, each of the clans play their role. To give you an example, my father’s Sun clan; his role was to protect the people. He believed he was there to protect our people from harm and he was – I guess the other word would be a soldier – his role was to just be out there, stand guard, and make sure nothing bad happened to the people and that if he didn’t do it right, he would’ve failed in his role. So we in our way or thinking and our values structure believe that our clanship plays a huge role in the way we conduct our life. But as time goes on and our younger generations have grown and are growing, sometimes we forget to train our young people what their roles are as clan individuals. Now, the dominance of tribal governments – that seems to be taking a little more stronger role than what the traditional governance once was.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you. You mentioned how among villages there might be some differences in terms of how leaders might be identified or what specific roles might be ascribed, for instance, to particular clans, but I’d like to ask you perhaps a general question, and if you have examples to offer, we’d appreciate hearing from you. How were Hopi leaders traditionally identified and then held accountable?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

Well, of the village that I came from – Mishongnovi, which is one of the traditional villages that are trying to exist the way they were – there was a clan that would look and find an individual who they found worthy. When I say worthy that means the way they conducted themselves, their personality, their way of looking at things, patience, a listener maybe…different values they would look at. Then the present person who was in that leadership roles would say, ‘This person looks like he’s an individual who I think could take over this position.’ Then they would let that individual know and say. ‘You’ve been chosen to step in when the present kikmongwi, or chief, passes on so therefore we’re going to train you.’ They were not just put in there; they went through a regular ceremony in order to be designated to be that person. Again, they were selected with very particular values involved with them and once they were selected, they knew they would be in that position for life. The tradition commitment was life; it wasn’t just for one year or two years. Now, in the society that we live in, which is a tribal government, we’re looking at someone who fills the role for four years and a consulate for two years so longevity is very different from what the traditional form of government is. There are still religious leaders who have gone up through the ranks, earned their authorities as they moved up, and those are now in those positions in the religious and traditional way of life.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you. Councilman Shingoitewa, you mentioned some of these differences between the contemporary Hopi tribal governance structure and that of a more traditional context and I’d like to ask you two questions pertaining to that. How are governance roles and responsibilities defined in the Hopi tribe’s current govern acne system?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

Well, of course you got three forms of government. You have the executive branch, which is your chairman, vice chairman, your secretary and your treasurer, they form the one layer which is the executive branch. You’ve got your legislative branch which is your tribal council and what’s interesting is also even with that legislative branch, in our tribe the chairman and vice chairman are a part of that as well. Those two are the main groups that do that. The other form of government are all the other entities that are under that, the finances, the personal, all those form under the day-to-day type activity. The most critical ones in the tribal government is your two levels, executive and legislative. If you look at it, that’s how the government is formed in the United States and earlier we talked about the constitution. When 1936 came about, the United States government gave us a generic constitution and said, ‘Tribes, this is a constitution that you will form and use.’ So, if you’re going to go to many other tribes a day you’re going to find that their constitutions are very similar; the only thing was that they put the different tribe’s name in there. When they came to the Hopi tribe, ‘The Hopi tribal government and constitution will be…’ Well, the same one could be for the Lumbee, the same one could be for the Jicarilla Apache, etcetera. When we came into existence as a government under the United States, we were given a generic constitution to use. In today’s present government, it comes down to those two layers of government that now form how we operate.

Verónica Hirsch:

You mentioned the two layers of a three-branch system, what is that third branch?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

I was just trying to think and it completely left my mind. I knew that was going to come up…where did it go?

Verónica Hirsch:

Does the Hopi tribe have a court system? A judicial branch?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

Oh, that’s right, judicial system. You got it. We do have a judicial system. We have both the appeals court and the trial court. I think one of the greatest things that occurred was that when the United States government allowed us to change our law and order code. The Hopi tribe became the first tribe that changed its total system where the judicial branch now has BAR attorneys, they have to be barred in the state of Arizona. The judges, all of them, have to be certified barred attorneys and even those practicing in the court have to be attorneys. Part of it is because it allowed us to also – instead of waiting for the Bureau of Indian Affairs judicial system, the government system to come in and do felonies and misdemeanors – the Hopi tribe now gets to do it. We get to do longer sentences for felonies that are committed on the reservation. This has helped us. I think with the three branches of government that we have, the one that has to stay the most neutral is the judicial. They have to separate themselves completely away from the other two so they can be as fair as possible with the people that come through their system.

Verónica Hirsch:

You’ve mentioned the importance of the various branches of the Hopi tribe’s government structure and I’d like to ask, within that structure, what roles and responsibilities did the 12 villages possess?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

The roles that all 12 villages have is first of all they come in representing their villages. When they come in, their role is to serve that village that elected them. Notice how I used the world elected. Two of the villages at this stage or one other village has not elected their officials, they’re still appointed by their leader. The rest of us, we are all elected by the people of that village so our roles and responsibilities are to the people, not to governor of the village, not to village consul…we serve the people. When issues come up that will affect our village we are usually very adamant about protecting what is rightfully ours. We can come in there individually as a village but when it comes to a total issue of the total governance body of the tribal issues as a whole, we then have to know how to play the role and take our hats off. Not only are we just a village issue, but now we take on the total tribe issue. We have to play the role of what’s going to be best be good for our people. I think that maybe this is part of the issues that I see in tribal council. Some of our councilmembers don’t know how to play roles; they don’t know how to switch hats. As a political body, which I’m going to mention now, even in today’s United States government, people switch hats all the time to fit the situation you are in. That is our role as tribal council members. We have to learn to switch our hats. When we come off the reservation we have to know how to dress, we have to know how to speak, we have to know how to act around people. We have to conduct ourselves in a way that’s best going to reflect who we serve. Those are things that you have to learn to do if you’re an elected official otherwise, as tribes, we get labeled with different things that aren’t the truth about our tribes. As an individual for myself, when I come here, for example with you, I am doing the best I can to reflect what a Hopi person is. My role is to let people outside of our reservation know that a true Hopi is one that thinks the best for the Hopi, believes that what we’re doing in the best to serve our younger generation as well as our older generation and also to play the role that says we want the best for our people and we’re going to do everything we can to get that.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you. Councilman Shingoitewa, you mentioned previously the 1936 date of the Hopi tribe’s written constitutional government and I’d like to ask you maybe a few more questions on that topic. You mentioned how the tribe’s constitution at that time was a type of boiler-plate document but could you provide us a little bit more information on the origin of the Hopi tribe’s written constitutional government?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

Well, the origin came out when the Indian Reorganization Act was passed. Up until that point, the Indian nations really had no way of dealing with the United States government and at that point I’m sure many of our tribal leaders were very frustrated with the fact that they were being ignored because we were the first people in this country and yet we had no say so. At that point, the United States government said, ‘You know what? Maybe we need to start treating Indian nations in a manner that will be protective for not only us but also our Indian nations.’ If you recall, the history was basically the lands of Indian country disappeared with the western movement of civilization and we were put into places that probably no other individual would want to live but they felt if they put use there we wouldn’t survive and therefore we would disappear. We didn’t disappear but voices continue to be raised like we are a nation; we want to have relationships with the United States government. At that time, the ruling body to be said, ‘let’s put something together,’ because they were watching us as wards of the government, they were providing us some things but never one where we could go one-on-one with them on a government-to-government basis. In 1936, they passed that act; it gave the right for every Indian tribe throughout this country to establish a government and so we did. Because of that act, in that act it says that we now have the right to be recognized as a sovereign government. We have the right now to negotiate with the United States government on issues that would affect our people. Somebody in their wisdom, our leaders of old, never gave up and because of their fortitude and strength and bravery it happened. Because of that, today we still have that right. We still have the sovereignty of how our future for our people will look like. We still have the right to demand of the United States government, under the treaties they served with us, that they have the right and responsibility to take care of the health, education and welfare of our people. Sometimes, I look at what took place and I hear people complaining about the fact that tribes don’t give anything back to the United States and how wrong the people of this country are because we provided soldiers, we provided people who gave up their talents, the history of this country, came down and our Indian people opened up their arms and welcomed people into this country. In reality, Indian tribes were the builders of this nation, it wasn’t the pilgrims that came here. Maybe if we’d thought about it, maybe if the tribes at that time had known what would happen we might’ve said, ‘Turn your boats arounds and go back home.’ It didn’t happen that way so in a lot of ways this is where my pride comes from. I believe that our people were destined to do what they’re doing today. I believe that is a time that our leaders of our tribe need to step up and live by the constitution that they have so our children can move forward and be a part of this country because we are the true leaders of this country and we do have a place in this society.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you. I wanted to ask a question again regarding the constitution. When the Hopi tribe chose to adopt this constitution in 1936, you had mentioned that much of that language was very similar to another native nation entirely.

Leroy Shingoitewa:

Yes.

Verónica Hirsch:

Were there any features that were unique in the constitution? For instance, was there any language that specified that the 12 villages would still maintain a measure of their autonomy or was that not mentioned at all?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

It was. Each of the 12 villages were given the right to choose how they wanted to be govern; it’s in the constitution which gives them to the right to exist the way they have. It gives them the right to also be responsible over certain things in their village by constitution. They also have the right to decide who can be a member of their village. It gives them the right to provide permission to do certain things. For example, if there’s an issue with children that village has the right to assign those children to someone else to take care of them. There are specific things in that constitution that are given back to the villages. They have the right to choose whether they want the traditional way of governance or the way it is now today with board of directors or governors or whatever; those are stated in the constitution. It also identifies them as individual villages. Instead of saying the 12 villages it says every one of them, Shitchumovi, Walpi, Moenkopi, Kykotsmovi so forth and so on. All the 12 villages are named and it gives the tribe to right to develop another community if they so choose and which they did. By using the constitution, they are able to make changes within their framework that meets the requirements of the constitution.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you. I’d like to ask you, in your opinion, what governance challenges exists within the current structure of the Hopi tribe?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

I think the challenges we have is how do we use this constitution to do a better job and what is needed for our people. There are some limitations; that constitution says you can’t do certain things. In reality, a constitution is like any document or instrument, there’s ways of working with that constitution to make the correct changes. I know that the constitution hasn’t changed much since we started; if anything, our enrolled membership of the tribe has changed in the blood quantum. At one point – an example of what changes were needed – traditionally only the women’s side were identified as being Hopi, the children of the women. But as time went, the men folk who were full-blood Hopi, but were maybe married to another tribe member and their children still had at least half of blood quantum, were not allowed to be enrolled in the Hopi tribe. Then the blood diminished because only the women’s side existed and if the women continued to marry a non-tribal member the blood quantum got less and less. In the wisdom of some of the leaders at the time, we said, ‘We can’t let the blood disappear; let us now redo our enrollment for the Hopi tribe.’ So at that time, they then passed a law that says, ‘We are now going to accept up to a fourth of Hopi Indian blood.’ With that, that is how tribal membership is now recognized. This is a critical area because it’s not just with the Hopi tribe, I think every tribe is running into this now because of inner marriage between us and other nationalities.

Verónica Hirsch:

Councilman Shingoitewa, you mentioned this blood quantum threshold of being one-fourth; now, is that regarded on both mother’s and father’s sides?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

Yes, yes it is. Yes, it is. Fortunately for me, right now, all my children are full-bloods but after them some of them have married other tribes so they have the choice to enroll in a Hopi tribe or maybe another tribe; but, I leave that decision to them. For myself and for my children, I chose to be married to a Hopi so therefore all my children are full-blooded Hopi. I tell you this because right now in the Hopi tribe, 60 percent of our members are not full-blooded tribal members. It is slowly diminishing. In some ways, that concerns me because how far down the road will that enrollment of full-blooded people exist? I predict that it’s moving quickly to the other side but then we have no one to blame but ourselves; we chose to do that. Those of us who see this as a concern, we are trying to tell our children, ‘you need to look at Hopi girls or Hopi men.’ But again, it’s a running topic within our families but as our children grow they have to make some decisions, they choose with who they want to be a companion with.

Verónica Hirsch:

Councilman Shingoitewa, I’d like to return to a couple more questions on the current Hopi tribal governance structure and I’d like to ask, what aspects of the current structure effectively work?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

I think in most cases, most of the constitution works. It comes down to how you use the constitution on a daily basis. Interpretation is always the major concern among us in the tribal council. Sometimes, we forget we have a constitution so when decisions are made we have to look and discuss whether or not our decision met the requirements of the constitution. But like with any government, if you’re going to have a structure, you must follow that structure. Otherwise, just like the with the outside world, we have courts that help us interpret the law and if we don’t follow the law correctly, that law can be overturned or that decision can be overturned. Interpretation, understanding what’s in that constitution, educating councilmembers, educating the chairman and the vice chairman that yes, we are the ruling body or the decision-making body, but we are also held to the laws and rules of the constitution and you have to know what you’re looking at in order to make the right decision. I guess we’ve learned you have to be cautious about how you make that decision because if you want it to be a good one you don’t want it to be overturned. Again, this is learning an outside form of government that we had not had but are now using predominantly in our lives with tribal governance.

Verónica Hirsch:

You mentioned how this outside form of government has very much impacted the structure of the current Hopi tribe’s tribal council system; but I’d like to ask, to what extent has the Hopi tribe intergraded aspects of traditional governance into this system? Or has it not? I believe you mentioned earlier there’s this desire – I don’t know if it’s recent or it’s been a long time – to have a separation of the church and state.

Leroy Shingoitewa:

I think if anything we bring back into our governance at the tribal level is the values that we have. We remind ourselves that here is the values and morals that we live by. As far as the traditional form of government, it’s tied very closely to our beliefs and our ways of life, our religious portion. That has no place in the tribal government. This is what we’re told by our elders, ‘That form of government in only in the village, only by those chosen to remind us to practice that way,’ but when it comes the tribal council, as I remember being told, that’s the white man’s form of government that we chose to follow; therefore, we will not take those things that we believe that are personal into the tribal government. But when it comes to values, we still have to remember our values. We still have to remember who we are. A quick example that we have to be reminded of is if you have an older person talking to you, you don’t go and argue with that older person. You’re supposed to respect that elder for the wisdom he has. That’s a real conflict for our younger people who are now getting more educated, they want to challenge some things that we may have to say, ‘Well, they have to play with that value.’ That’s why I say, I guess this is what you call roleplay; you look at what the situation is. If it’s called that you must state your own opinion, then you have to do it in a way that is respectful to the person you’re talking to…these are the values. An example, right now I am the oldest in the tribal council so every once and a while I use it to my advantage when somebody is getting carried away. I’ll say, ‘Wait a minute, you’re younger than I am; listen to what I say before you answer.’ I guess maybe I’m playing politics at the same time; I’m intergrading the outside world with our own values structure. This is where that portion comes back into the tribal council so there is a trying to separate the beliefs from the government portion of our tribal government.

Verónica Hirsch:

Councilman Shingoitewa, you’ve mentioned previously efforts to address change in realities within the Hopi tribe, so my next series of questions has to do with any changes that the Hopi tribe has engaged in regarding constitutional reform since the adoption of the Hopi Constitution Bylaws on December 19, 1936; have there been any efforts?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

There have been some efforts. Like I said, the biggest change is the enrollment. That went through, that was taken care of. The next biggest challenge was approximately seven years ago when there was a move to totally revamp the constitution. It took us approximately four years, meeting with people constantly, taking the constitution, listening to the people. Once we listened to them, we would make the changes in the proposed constitution. We did approximately 24 revisions of the constitution when we finally went to the tribal council and asked them to hold a referendum with our people. Before we could do that, we had to have the approval from the federal government to hold this referendum to change the constitution. It went to vote and got defeated. Right now, there is a movement that people, once that got defeated, they realized that there were some things we need to change in the constitution. I think with the latest movement they’re looking at specific areas rather than an overall revision of the constitution. This is left up to the people and there is a committee that’s been put together that it working on revising the constitution. Personally, I think the constitution needs to be revised to meet today’s needs and demands; otherwise, we’re behind the times and if we don’t make improvements we will get further and further behind as time comes.

Verónica Hirsch:

Are there specific areas that you think need to be addressed to meet some of the contemporary demands?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

I think so. I think this comes down to the villages; what is their authority and rights that they have? I think the area of elected people to the tribal council…I think we’ve talked – some people said they want some educated people on the tribal council. In some respects, that’s probably true. Out of the 22 that sits on council, there’s only four of us who are what you would call college-educated people; meaning, the council members have never really worked off the reservation, they’ve always lived on the reservation. They want some council members who are more exposed to what occurs outside of the reservation. They want to see a portion that says, ‘If the tribal council or the chairman or vice chairman are not performing their duties as they had promised to do, then there should be a recall.’ This is a portion that has been looked at. There’s also the portion where it says that we need to have the ability to do taxes on our reservation and who we can tax. So, there are portions in that tribal constitution that do need to be taken a look at, do need to be revised and also would benefit the new changes in modern society.

Verónica Hirsch:

Councilman Shingoitewa, regarding previous constitution reform efforts, what did you learn from those experiences? What were your takeaways?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

What I learned was that you really need to work hard at explaining what the reforms were, not only in English but also in Hopi. You need to be mindful of the people you’re talking to and when it comes down to producing the product that you let people know that they were all involved in this process. One of the things that came out was that people said, ‘Well, it’s just this group that put this reform together,’ and yet it was all the people who gave suggestions, gave opinions where they felt the main concerns were. To me, what I learned was that from the start to the finish you have the people involved constantly. Those that have worked on this, if it’s a reform that’s going to happen again, bring them back in so they can tell you what they felt that they ran into. This is what I learned. I learned that being patient, learning to really listen, really learning to understand what the concerns were. This is something that I learned and it’s been valuable to me because that helped me in my role as a councilman and has now helped me when I served as a chairman. Those were values that I held very dearly, even to this day.

Verónica Hirsch:

Are there now processes in place to amend the constitution if other people, maybe people who were involved in previous efforts or others, perhaps even young people might want to become involved in any future constitutional reform efforts; what processes are in place for that to happen?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

Well, I think that the council has been talking about. We have heard young people’s concern that they are not allowed to be involved with tribal government and part of it is…let me give you an example of one of those areas that has come up and that has concerned me as well. One is that you have to be fluent in the Hopi language. Among our young people, there are very few people that would be classified as fluent speakers because they don’t know the language that well. They can speak it, they can understand it but fluency – interpretation and fluency – prevents them a younger person from running for the chairman of the Hopi tribe or the vice chairman of the Hopi tribe or a councilman because that is a stipulation that is placed in the constitution. I think the young people are saying, ‘We want to be part of you but you have to allow us to be part of you.’ Right now, I think that’s a hindrance, to bring the young people in to help us with the operation of the government. We have people who work within the departments, we have people in the outside world who work like here at the University of Arizona, Northern Arizona University, ASU, who are ready to help out but we have not allowed them to open the door so they can come in. I think constitutional reform is needed in several areas and I think we can do it. I believe this is where the people who are now clamoring to be a part of it, we allow it happen.

Verónica Hirsch:

If the Hopi tribe does choose to reengage in constitution reform and wants to revisit and perhaps revise its written constitution, what challenges exist? Are there challenges based on current government structure? Do you think there are challenges in terms of, let’s say, community attitudes or concerns regarding what reform might mean or how it might impact the Hopi tribe?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

I think the biggest requirement is commitment. Those that choose to want to do this, they have to be committed. If you want to be on that committee, you have to understand that you will have meetings on a constant basis, maybe covering anywhere from two to four years to take a look at what we need to change. Then, you also have to be willing to take the time to travel to those places. When we talk about 12 villages, you’re looking at a span of 100 miles within which those villages exist. An example, if I live in Moenkopi and I want to help present over in First Mesa, I must be able to go 75 miles just to go visit and meet and stay there for maybe three hours and then drive home after a long meeting. If somebody lives in Flagstaff and wanted to come up to Hopi to help, the commute from Flagstaff to even the tribal headquarters is 90 miles one way. Commitment to get this thing accomplished, time, is what’s needed. Many of the people that were involved in the initial constitutional reform – which I was involved in; I spent easily three days a week meeting at various communities in Flagstaff, Phoenix, down here in Tucson – the commitment of time is really critical. Also, the tribal council must be able to provide some type of funds to cover the paperwork, the taking of minutes, recordings, legal counsel…all these things are needed. Those are critical areas of, ‘How do we get it done? Who is willing to do it and when are we going to do it?’ I think that the question now, when are we going to do it? Somebody needs to be willing to do it, somebody has got to be willing to take the time. I know the people who did the initial constitutional reform with me was a group of about eight to ten people who constantly worked on this and they were representatives of all the villages plus other community people that wanted to make this happen.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you. I’d like to now ask…my next series of questions is pertaining to how the Hopi tribe currently lives within its own governance structure. My first question is, how does the Hopi tribe ensures that its written constitution, as it is right now, is followed and upheld?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

Well, I think this is where many of us who have worked with this constitution, work very hard to remind people on a constant basis, ‘Here is what the constitution says.’ Within the government, it is the responsibility of the secretary’s office, the chairman, and vice chairman to be aware of what’s in that constitution because that constitution also defines the roles of those offices. Those other councilmen have some rules in there but they’re very generic, representing villages. It talks about the conducting of meetings, how many times the meetings should be held, when we make decisions, who makes the motions, what rules are we following when we hold meetings, how long do we hold meetings… you know, those are decisions that are tied into that constitution. For those of us that go into the council and those executive offices, we have to make ourselves knowledgeable about that constitution. We have to pick up the constitution, we have to look at it. This is how the tribal government lives within that constitution because our responsibility isn’t only the ordinances we pass, the laws that we pass, the judicial portion of our tribal government, the departments that we allow and give authority to act on behalf of our government…these are those things that we have to work with. That’s why the constitution is law. If we don’t follow the constitution and we break that law, the question is, who is responsible? Ultimately, the tribal council is responsible. We are the law making body and we can’t pass that on to anyone else. Therefore, why is it critical we operate within those bounds? If we don’t, the rest of the people can do whatever we want because they’re watching us. If we can break the law, why not them? That constitution must be followed and worked with as a tribal government and we must know what we’re working with.

Verónica Hirsch:

If there are any infractions of the constitution, are there processes in place – you mentioned that it is ultimately the responsibility of the tribal council to ensure that the constitution is understood and followed – but, what might happen if there was an instance of infraction? Are there mechanisms in place to address that?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

Very limited. One of the things that many governments will fall into – and I’m not just talking about tribal government, even the United States government – when the fault of the legislative body makes a mistake, they use the protection of sovereign immunity. ‘Oh, we’re protected, you can’t file suit against us.’ The question is, can we file suit against each of those individuals separately and are they held liable for breaking that law? Those are legal questions that are now affecting all constitutions. Can we always declare sovereign immunity? Because when we do this, we also limit ourselves in economic development. In order for tribes to, in example, do gaming. I speak of this only as someone who has watched them and has looked at some of the rules in gaming that a tribe will wave some of their sovereign immunity so they can be held liable for any mistakes they make. If we go into deals with other entities, our tribal governments now must weigh how much of our sovereignty can we give up in order to progress forward in making example business economic decisions. Lands outside of our reservations; can we purchase the land and use it for other means? These are the things that are in the constitution. That’s the reason I say, you need to know your constitution. That’s why I say we can only go so long continuing to carry, ‘I’m a sovereign immunity, you can’t file this against me,’ because it does limit us and it hinders us sometimes in some of our dealings with outside entities.

Verónica Hirsch:

Councilman Shingoitewa, how are written Hopi tribal laws currently made and enforced?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

Well with how the ordnances are made and laws are made, we run through legal consult anything we want to change into a law. What they will do is they will look at it to make sure the language is done correctly. They will then bring that action item to the council and with it is a resolution that is acted upon. It is brought before us, we discuss it; we ask for assistance from legal consults or any other group that is representing to this. An example might be having to deal with a water ordinance, the water department will be there. They will tell us why they are doing this and once we’ve had a discussion, we will take a vote on whether we approve or disapprove. If it is approved, we will have the chairman sign the resolution saying that we, as a body, approved this law. Once he signs it, it becomes law. The only way it will change is if we decide to resend the resolution somewhere down the line, then it becomes a non-ordinance or a non-law at that point. So, there is a process on how we approve our laws that we make for our tribe.

Verónica Hirsch:

What body bears the responsibility to make sure those laws are enforced?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

Once we’ve approved them, then depending on which ordnance is passed whether it deals with the land or whether it deals with law and order, whether it deals with the water portion of it, those departments are the ones who are asked to enforce those ordinances and laws. Now, I need to make very clear that these ordinances are only for the total tribe…but what about the villages? Within the villages they may pass their own resolution or law that abides only to their law, to their village. For the tribal council, when we pass a law it’s for all the tribal land that we own therefore enforcement becomes reservation-wide, Hopi land-wide. Therefore, the villages have to then fall within jurisdiction of that law. But again, like I say, within the villages they have the right to create their own laws but the laws that they write will not supersede what we have passed at the higher level. That is kind of the limits that the villages will have.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you. To what extent do unwritten Hopi traditional laws and morals impact current Hopi tribal council decisions? You mentioned an example of, let’s say a particular village would create a resolution that would apply to itself alone but that in no instance would that particular supersede a decision that might be worded differently or have different intent on the Hopi tribal council level. Perhaps using that as an example, how then do unwritten Hopi traditional laws and moral impact, or do they impact, current Hopi tribal council decisions?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

I think the only way it impacts current tribal laws and ordinances is that it’s something we grew up with so internally we know ourselves what it means but when it comes the decisions of an ordinance or law, we may discuss it but it doesn’t become part of a written law. We will discuss the value of it, we will discuss the reason why maybe our elders, our people before us, put it there for us to think about. Once the ordinance or the law is made, in order to put it into the English language is the most difficult part. If we make what we call an implied law into the ordinance, then we will explain it that way. But using traditional what our beliefs are and putting it into that, that’s a difficult portion for us to do. In the long run, what we will do is we’ll talk about an implied understanding of that law ordinance. For example, I’ll talk about water. Water is previous to the Hopi people. Where we come from, we’re very limited in water. When we talk about wasting water, you won’t see a grass lawn on the Hopi reservation because we don’t believe in wasting water. When we pass a law on water we will make sure that it states that this water is for the use of plants, of animals, and our families. We will make a reference that this is to not be used for things that are not part of our way of life which is grass. It’s not written in there but we already understand what we’re talking about. In that respect, that is probably how we understand the laws we make because the law is a Hopi law, it’s not intended to be with anyone else. On the judicial side, when we make laws that govern the reservation we also will then take those laws to be applied to also outsiders as well. Again, it’s a check and balance system we work with. Yes, it some ways we do think of those things we were taught by our elders, our parents, and we will use those in our thinking patterns before we finalize any law or ordinance.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you. Councilman Shingoitewa, my last question is, how does the Hopi tribe relate to other peoples and governments including perhaps other tribal nations?

Leroy Shingoitewa:

I always believed that one of the things that’s truly a word that implies or is used with everybody is the word respect. In order for us to work with other governments, tribal or non-governments, in order to be effective you must respect one another in order to understand what we’re trying to accomplish. When I go into someone else’s world; example, when I walk into Tohono O’odham; one of the first things we’ll do is introduce ourselves to each other and maybe the next thing out would be, ‘what clan do you belong to?’ If they say, ‘Well, I’m an eagle clan.’ My father’s clanship was Sun and of course related to that was Eagle. The first thing I say is, ‘Oh, you’re my father.’ That breaks that barrier of saying, ‘Oh you’re a visitor. Now you’re family.’ That’s where the respect begins to happen. When you go into another person’s house, you don’t go in there to criticize the makeup of that house or what’s in that house. You go in there to accept what they’re offering you by opening their door to you. For example, when I deal with other tribal governments, I walk in with the fact that I’m meeting another person who is a good friend of mine, whether I know them or not, he’s a friend automatically. Same way with the federal government when I meet with senators and the house people, congressmen. I walk in with the understanding that we’re getting ready to break bread, we’re getting ready to talk with one another. What I must do is respect the person who holds that office because he has a title. That’s why I say that’s the difference between being a chairman and a councilman is when you walk into anybody’s office, if you’re the chairman the first thing they say to you is, ‘Welcome Chairman, it’s good to meet you.’ That’s the respect we give to one another. I think when you work with other people, respect, understanding and willing to commit to sit and talk and discuss what is of concern with all of us. All and all the total package is that how can we be partners in solving an issue that effects all Indian nations? If I’m working in Indian country, I go in with the understanding of what we will do to support one another. I believe that one of the biggest obstacles that we have right now among Indian country is too many times we forget that we’re all one people. We might have different titles as tribes but we’re all one people. If we will do that together we will become a strong nation. I think that’s one of the questions you asked me, how do you build a nation? How you build a nation is with people who will sit and talk with one another, that will take care of each other and with the vision and knowledge that we are speaking for the future generations. I’m not speaking for myself anymore because my life on this earth is very short. I’m very fortunate to have lived as long as I have. Verónica, you know you think about it, I’ve been very blessed with all the people I’ve met. In the long run, if any legacy that I leave for my people is that, ‘He did the best he could to make it better for our people.’ That’s the way I look at life today. Life is but a fleeting moment, and then we move on to the next world.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you, Councilman Shingoitewa.

Leroy Shingoitewa:

You’re welcome.

Verónica Hirsch:

That’s all the time we have on today’s episode of Leading Native Nations. To learn more about Leading Native Nations please visit NNI’s Indigenous Governance Database website, which can be found at www.IGovDatabase.com. Thank you for joining us.

Noelani Goodyear Ka'opua: The ongoing journey of Hawai'i sovereignty

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Dr. Noelani Goodyear Ka'opua from the Indigenous Politics Faculty within the department of political science at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa speaks about the particulars of handling the issue of soverignty in Hawai’i. 

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Kaopua, Noelani Goodyear "Noelani Goodyear Kaopua: The ongoing journey of Hawaii sovereignty," Leading Native Nations, Native Nations Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, January 08, 2015

Verónica Hirsch:

Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I’m your host, Verónica Hirsch. On today’s program, we are honored to have with us Dr. Noelani Goodyear Kaopua, who’s genealogy connects her ohana, family, to the Hawai'i and Māori islands as well as Southern China and the British Midlands. Dr. Goodyear Kaopua joined the Indigenous Politics Faculty within the department of political science at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa in 2007, where she teaches courses in indigenous and Hawaiian politics. Dr. Goodyear Kaopua, aloha and welcome.

Noelani Kaopua:

Aloha.

Verónica Hirsch:

And mahalo, thank you for joining us today. I’ve shared a little bit about who you are but why don’t you start by telling us a bit more about yourself.

Noelani Kaopua:

Sure, so I was born and raised on the island of Oahu and I was born to parents who were students at the time at the University of Hawai’i. They were student activists and I was born into a time in the 1970’s where a lot of social movement that was growing around protecting land and people’s connection to land. That really influenced me throughout my years growing up. When I went into the university to get my bachelor’s degree in Hawaiian studies and political science it was also a really ripe time for the growth of Hawaiian movements. It was the early 1990’s and it had some amazing faculty members who really taught me about how doing academic work was directly tied to living the political struggles that we’re thinking and talking about. I got my bachelor’s degree in political science and Hawaiian studies. I got my PhD at the University of California in Santa Cruz in history of consciousness and then came back to teach at the University of Hawai’i in 2007. Along the way, I also was really fortunate to be a part of a movement to establish Hawaiian-focused schools, so Hawaiian culture based schools. I was one of the people who got to be involved with establishing Hālau Ku Mana Public Charter School, where my daughter’s now a student and my husband works. Our family is very connected to the life of that community.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you, thank you for providing the story of your family and explaining how that grounds your professional work and also your personal commitment to promoting the efforts of kānaka ʻōiwi, Native Hawaiian people, and their work to define themselves and define the future. Thank you.

I’d like to begin by asking some general questions. My first question is this: How do you define kānaka ʻōiwi, Native Hawaiian sovereignty and nation building?

Noelani Kaopua:

What I’ve been fortunate to learn from many teachers about sovereignty and the way that our people understand it is through the concept that we have in our language, ea. Ea, as my teachers have taught me, Ea means breath, it means life, to rise up. It has a number of meanings that are all active, that all require continuous movement; they’re not possessions. They’re not things that you hold; they’re things that you do. Ea comes from our chance from – you know that have been passed down over generations and generations and generations and generations; Ea mai hawaiinuiakea, that the islands themselves rose from the sea. In the 1840’s that term became associated with political sovereignty with the formation of a constitutional monarchy, an internationally recognized, independent state. When that sovereignty had been threatened by Great Britain, by a representative of Great Britain, there were…to make a long story short, there were efforts to contact the rightful leaders in Great Britain and have them actually recognize and undo the wrong of their representative in the islands. That day when the Hawaiian flag was raised again in the islands and the British flag was taken down was called Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea, the day sovereignty is returned. So Hawaiian Sovereignty Restoration Day, Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea, was celebrated as a national holiday from 1843 onward for the next 50 years. There’s a really neat article in the 1870’s where a man named David Kahalemaile was answering this rhetorical question of what does this mean, ea, that we talk about when we talk about Ka Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea? What is this thing? He lists several different ways of understanding that. He says – and this is all in Hawaiian, I’m just translating to English – but he says, the ea of fish for example, is water. The ea of the earth is the winds, the ea of a canoe is the steering blade, the hoe uli. He ends this list of several things with ‘the ea of for us, the Lā Hoʻihoʻi Hawai’i is independent government, the aupuni; to live as independently governed people.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you. What aspects define traditional kānaka ʻōiwi, Native Hawaiian government with some of these concepts you’ve mentioned, ea. Particularly, some of the timeframe you’ve alluded to…the Day Sovereignty Returned 1843?

Noelani Kaopua:

I guess one place that I want to start with addressing that question is that there’s no single traditional kānaka ʻōiwi governance. Kānaka ʻōiwi have been in the islands in Hawaii for what our genealogy tells us, hundreds of generations. Over that length of time, governance has changed over time so there’s no single moment of traditional governance. There are some long-standing institutions that developed and that persisted over time even through the introduction of western forms of government through private property and to a certain extent even through the beginning and continuation of the U.S. occupation. I’ll talk a little bit about those things.

Over time what is consistent is that our governance practices are directly related to our relationship to lands. Governance was always and continues to be in many ways deeply tied to the that we divide or organize land and think about access to land and the access that people should to the resources that on the land and in the ocean. One of the enduring developments that developed in terms of governance is the ahupua’a system, which our genealogies tell us developed I would estimate probably about 400 years or so prior to the moment of intensive contact with Europeans. The ahupua’a system that develops is really part of a much more complex land division system. It’s just one of the ways of diving land or thinking about land. It’s not just a geographical division but it’s also a social and economic and political system in all of the ways that people relate to each other and the resources of ʻĀina. One of the basic ideas of the ahupua’a system is that people who are living within a particular area should have access to all of the basic resources for life. Within that system, those who are near the ocean and specialize in fishing and gathering from the ocean resources can freely gift and trade with people who are able to gather in other parts, like the uplands for example. What we know is that ahupua’a system develops at a particular moment in the history of our people where there was a growing population and there was really a need to innovate and think about more complex systems for how we could maintain a large population on a series of islands. I think another things that’s really important about this system is that people who are close to their resource and who are users of their resource and have intimate relationships with their – we use that term in English ‘resource’, but for us they’re kupuna, you know elders. There are many ways in which we are relating in a familiar way with all these beings.

Verónica Hirsch:

This is a system that helps define social, economic and political access to all basic life resources, as you mentioned the ahupua’a system. How that relates to this form of governance, of self-governance, of popular terms and certain disciplines, adaptive resource management, land-use management, land-use planning. You were mentioning how this is arising from a context that is very dynamic, where people at the time are realizing with population growth, with the possibility for political unrest over access to resources we must innovate according to values that support our philosophy.

Noelani Kaopua:

Yeah, now I remember where I was picking up is that I think one of the important things is that decisions were made by people who were close to, who were practitioners, who had a direct relationship with these places with the resources within those. That’s really important. There did develop overtime a more hierarchal, kind of chiefly system. That idea that Nō ka ‘oi ʻĀina kama’aina, the land is for the one who lives on it. It’s a very different kind of system than what we live on with private property today and particularly with the amount of foreign investment that takes place as well as all of the settler takings of land in the islands, that the land is for the people who live on it. Another saying we have is, He ali‘i nō ka ‘āina, ke kauwā wale ke kānaka, the land is the chief and the people are the servant. Even within our creation stories, like so many other indigenous people, the creation of the entire world and the universe, kānaka come fairly late on in the creation of things and thus we’re younger sibling so it’s really up to us to pay respect and love and care for our elder siblings rather than to sort of exercise dominion and subject those relations to our needs only.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you. So in this system that you described, I’d like to ask what aspects of ahupua’a, this system of relating responsibility and commitment to upholding these important relationships that you’ve mentioned and to see and so on. What aspects still persist into the contemporary context?

Noelani Kaopua:

That’s a good question. It’s been very difficult for that system to persist under private property for a number of reasons. Access isn’t thought of in the same way, the way that the settler government carves up geographic boundaries doesn’t think in the same way from mountains to ocean whereas in a system that’s truly respecting the ahupua’a, you’re thinking about how what happens in the upland affects everything down the watershed all the way into the ocean. Decisions are made with that in mind. The people who are planting upstream have to think about and be accountable that there’s enough water for those who are further downstream. That kind of thinking and daily recognition of the inter connection of how our actions in our particular place impact others is not the same in part because of the way the settler state breaks up jurisdiction on lands and also just doesn’t operate – it wasn’t based on that kind of island thinking. Despite that, I would say that there were many communities after the introduction of private property who really tried to maintain that kind of collective relationship to land. Large-scale extended families and beyond would sometimes form hui, which are groups that would claim title to land as individuals but then collectivize that basically. We call that the hui movement and many of those hui lasted throughout the kingdom time. Private property was introduced during the kingdom era but many of the hui lasted up until the 20th century. It has been increasingly difficult, I would definitely say, for that kind of collective work to happen just simply because of the onslaught of foreign investment and the rising cost of land in the islands.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you. I’d like to transition now to some questions and discussion regarding kānaka ʻōiwi, Native Hawaiian leadership. My first question is this: How are kānaka ʻōiwi, Native Hawaiian, leaders selected and held accountable in contemporary contexts?

Noelani Kaopua:

Well, we have very different kinds of leaders today because beginning with the U.S. occupation, the formal government had been basically crushed or usurped –I guess would be a better word –  by sugar plantation owners and their associates. Kānaka control of our kingdom government was usurped from us and then the U.S. takes over happens. Political leaders today, there are kānaka who are political leaders in settler-state electoral politics but they’re voted in by anyone who lives in Hawai’i. I think the true…I don’t know if I should use that word. The leaders who have the highest regard in the community among the kānaka are often people who are leaders in cultural senses and who are doing direct kinds of service in our community. Cultural leaders, for example, in the hula practice among the hālau hula, which are our schools for hula practice, there is a very specific and structured way that they learn and gain the knowledge and kuleana to become graduated as a master, a kumu hula, and then even beyond that continue to accrue the mana and the ‘ike, the knowledge and the power that allows them to rise to leadership beyond just their hālau but also among a larger community. Many hula practitioners, kumu hula, at least in my lifetime have also participated in political leadership. There have been really important movements among hula practitioners to politicize and understand the politics of what they do, what we do. Maintaining that relationship, for example with our mountain resources and the ability to gather when that’s threatened by the settler state, it’s important to organize. There are a number of kumu hula who came together in the 1990’s to form a coalition called ‘Īlio‘ulaokalani that was sort of a blending of their cultural and political leadership. Similarly, in other realms of cultural knowledge, there are very specific ways in which people achieve leadership and mastery that usually involve years and years and years of apprenticeship and being confirmed by your teachers and a wider community. I would say that there are also a number of people who gain positions of leadership simply through the work that they do, through the service that they provide to others and showing that they’re not just self-interested; that they’re working to build programs or other efforts for our people. They gain the respect of others but because we don’t have formal governing institutions, those are really the main ways that leaders emerge.

Verónica Hirsch:

You referenced an organization of traditional teachers and practitioners, kumu hula teachers, and how in previous eras there was an effort organize politically around topics that were considered pertinent at the time. I’d like to ask, from your experience and from conversations you’ve had with friends and family who might’ve been a part of that effort directly, are you aware how decisions might’ve been made in those types of context?

Noelani Kaopua:

I’m not sure how decisions were made within ‘Īlio‘ulaokalani but what I am more familiar with is how decisions have been made in various aspects or various organizations or segments of the Hawaiian movement that had to do with land struggles. For example, organizations like the Protect Kaho'olawe 'Ohana certainly have always relied on the advice and council of elders but then also made decisions really through council of consensus and not necessarily through elected leadership but really through a collective participatory process. Similarly, with organizations that have emerged to try to protect certain sacred sites or to protect kānaka to other particular places. In the community, at a local level, decisions are often made through that process of talking story and consensus. There are, of course, formal, non-profit organizations among kānaka that have boards that make decisions with bylaws and all those kinds of things but I would say our general sort of practice is participatory and talking and trying to build as much consensus as possible.

Verónica Hirsch:

Realizing that the general practice is more so participatory and the intent is to achieve consensus, what challenges kānaka ʻōiwi, Native Hawaiians, face with the current government structure?

Noelani Kaopua:

There are a ton of challenges that we face with the current government structure because for one, it’s not ours. We are living under the U.S. occupation, the settler-state government that was imposed upon us. There are certainly kānaka who participate in that system; there are plenty who don’t. It doesn’t fit us for a number of reasons, it doesn’t represent us for a number of reasons. At the same time, it controls our resources; lands that are a part of the corpus of lands that comprise the Hawaiian national lands, our crowning government lands. Of course, the settler-state government makes decisions about things like education and health and all the things that impact our people. We have to engage with it. The question was what are some of the challenges we face with it? One of the major challenges is that kānaka don’t represent large – basically in the settler system, kānaka are not in power. For example, in the public education system, we comprise the largest group of the public school students but a tiny fraction of the administrators and none of the upper level governance currently. There’s a single board of education in Hawai’i that’s governor appointed so we have no structural say in an institution that has huge impacts on our youth. That’s a major problem, just that we don’t have that power. Similarly, with the criminal justice system, our people comprise the largest group within the prisons yet we’re not in power within those systems as well. Those are what I would say are the biggest challenges. We’re not in those system and those systems were not built with our culture in mind; they were built with a different set of cultural values in mind.

Verónica Hirsch:

Thank you for sharing that and explaining the context of the difficulty that kānaka ʻōiwi, Native Hawaiians, have with being able to address the needs, the desires and the imagined future of their own families, their own children. On that note, I’d like to transition to a question about any efforts – local efforts, governance efforts – that have transpired to contest this governance system that does not adequately or appropriately address the needs of kānaka ʻōiwi, Native Hawaiian people in their own homeland, and ask you, what types of governance reform efforts, whether that involves drafting or revising a written constitution, as an example? What efforts have kānaka ʻōiwi pursued over time to create a government system that is by them and for them?

Noelani Kaopua:

I guess I would want to divide this into two or three different categories. There have been efforts to work within the settler-state system to carve out certain spaces of limited authority within that system. For example, I’ve been involved with the movement to start Hawaiian charter schools; that came out directly of the problem of governance with public education that I mentioned, we had no control over the schools in which our children were being educated. Throughout the various islands, there were multiple communities who took on the responsibility of creating schools that could be locally run under local school boards. It was a huge governance question because public education has been so centralized in the state of Hawai’i and it really was about returning power over schools to communities, to a community level. That effort really was really spearheaded by Dr. Kū Kahakalau, who was one of the founders of Kanu o ka ‘Āina Charter School. She then took that out to a number of different communities and other communities took that up. There’s efforts in specific areas like education but then there’s also recently been an effort to try to establish a native Hawaiian government entity that has been advocated by a particular segment of kānaka who are interested in creating an entity within the state system that’s state recognized. That’s ongoing right now. There are also efforts to rebuild the kingdom government structure outside of the structure of the settler-state government. There are a number of different kingdoms that have their own ideas about which constitution we should use or have had their own constitution conventions. Those efforts have really been about restoring what our kahuna built in the kingdom era in the 19th century. We’ve also had efforts to completely, from the grassroots, to create new governance structure. In the late 1980’s and 1990’s, there was a tremendous amount of effort, thousands of kānaka coming together to build an organization called Ka Lahui Hawai’i. They created their own constitution that was aware of previous constitutions in the kingdom era but not simply adopting it, so they convened constitutional convention. All of these various efforts at that sort of national level or Lahui level, as we would say, our people level, represent different parts of our community.

Verónica Hirsch:

I’d like to ask, to what extent does kuleana, or this concept of authority, rights, and responsibility, inform or influence these discussions that transpire in the various venues you’ve mentioned?

Noelani Kaopua:

I think one of the things that’s important about kuleana, which first means authority, right responsibility, is that an equally important question to ‘What is your kuleana?’ is ‘What is not your kuleana?’ Knowing at that level of practice that people who are practitioners in the ocean, who are fisherman, who are voyagers, who have a particular relationship with a certain area who often will have, but not always now-a-days, have a direct genealogical connection to that. The reason I say not always is that there’s been so much movement of kānaka from one island to another and displacement that sometimes you’re living on land that your family didn’t always live on. Someone who has a direct kuleana relationship will have the authority to make decisions in that particular area or about what takes place on a certain reef or near a certain watershed area. You also know it’s not your kuleana to go to another island and make decisions for them. That’s been one of the issues in terms of formulating a national that people come out of this perspective of like ‘I know my kuleana, I’m not going to try to speak for others’ We also have this tradition that Kumu John Ka'imikaua, who was a kumu hula from Moloka’i, described that particularly came out of their island of `aha kiole that represented councils of practitioners that would come together and make decisions knowing that one will have better knowledge about this particular area in the ahupua’a or this particular resource and another will have other kinds of knowledge about other resources. That’s one of the other sort of governing structures that I would say that have existed that are different from the state, not just the settler-state but even the Hawaiian state. One of the things that our people think a lot about in terms of that is how you can support the struggle of one community but also recognize your position, your kuleana in relation to that. It’s not exactly the same. I think it’s a really exciting time for us as kānaka because we’re coming out of 30-40 years of really conscious efforts to educate young people in our history and our culture, to live those practices, to understand our genealogical connection to Hawai’i; for particular families, their genealogical connections to specific places within the islands. To practice our ceremonies and protocols, those are the things that really have only become seen in the public again, you know, practiced in a way that people feel confident about doing that within my lifetime. Whereas for my parents’ generation, for my mom, it was still seen as being shame in some ways to be Hawaiian, to practice anything Hawaiian. By the time she came into adulthood that was certainly shifting. I’m of the first generation in the 20th century to be born into a time where people have actively cultivated pride in being kānaka and then I would say from a little bit after me, not just pride, but what is that pride founded on? What are the pillars or as we would say the Ni’ihau stones, the foundational rocks, that provide the structure that we can build upon? Our language, our ceremonies, our genealogies, our mo’olelo, our stories; we’re just seeing now…so in my children’s generation, the children are raised with that knowledge from birth. I think it’s an exciting time for us in terms of what can be built from the generations that grow up knowing that and just being immersed in it from the time that they’re young. One of the instances that we’ve seen that really powerfully in the last couple of years has been in the uprising of the Kū Kiaʻi around Mauna Kea. Mauna Kea is our highest mountain; it is also known as Mauna a Wakea, the mountain of Wakea, the broad expanse our Sky Father. Mauna a Wakea has been threatened over the last several decades with industrial astronomy development even though within the settler-state government it’s a conservation district. The University of Hawai’i was able to get a special use permit to develop an astronomy park there and has over the last few decades really expanded the footprint of that. The mountain has been threatened with the construction of what would we be the largest building on the whole island of Hawai’i; several stories high and several stories deep into the ground blocking view plains, destroying a sacred site that is what we consider a piko, a convergence point. Piko is also the word we use for your belly button and there are other piko in your body as well. There’s been a massive uprising against the construction of that telescope and what we’ve seen is that there are really key elders who have been involved in the legal challenges of that construction but the youth has been key in the blockade, the on the ground…that’s not to say there haven’t been elders, kupunas, who’ve participated in that as well. The leadership of the movement to just simply put our bodies in the street and block construction buildings coming up have been young people. What we’ve heard are that kupuna who were – in the 70’s they were those guys. They were in the streets or in the waters blocking the destruction of our sacred lands. For them, it’s really encouraging to see this generation because this generation is not only willing to do that and have the courage but they also have the ability to speak the language and perform the ceremony and embrace that political action from a very strong cultural foundation. I think that is a really exciting signal of where governance can go as we take what we’re learning from how that leadership is unfolding is social movements like the blockade of the 30-meter telescope on Mauna a Wakea and then apply that to how we would make decisions on a day-to-day basis. One of the really powerful and beautiful things that has come out of that movement is this practice of kapu aloha, which is a way of entering any confrontation and any sort of exchange with the idea that you have to have love which means not that you would shy away or that you just try to placate the other but that you recognize your opponent and you come face-to-face with them with respect and you stand your ground and that you speak your truth but that it’s not in an attacking, aggressive way. You know, I’m doing this motivated out of the love I have for my place. I guess I should say that kapu aloha didn’t originate in the movement around Mauna Kea but it has become popularly known and more widely practiced through that movement.

I think it’s also a sign of the influence that educational movements have had. For example, I know that one of the leaders of that movement, Lanakila, was a student of Kanu o ka ‘Āina, the school I mentioned earlier, and I know that was something important that they practiced at that school, kapu aloha. To see how that then comes to fruition in the context of a movement of people and how that helps to organize people in really contentious and potentially chaotic times is, I think, a powerful instance of Hawaiian forms of governance.

Verónica Hirsch:

And with that, thank you. Mahalo Noelani. We so appreciate your time. That’s all the time we have on today’s episode of Leading Native Nations. To learn more about Leading Native Nations please visit NNI’s Indigenous Governance Database website, which can be found at www.IGovDatabase.com. Thank you for joining us.

Noelani Kaopua:

Mahalo.