dependency

Jill Doerfler: Defining Citizenship: Blood Quantum vs. Descendancy

Producer
William Mitchell College of Law
Year

Scholar Jill Doerfler (Anishinaabe) talks about the colonial origins of blood quantum as a criterion for determining "Indian" and tribal identity, and explains how the federal government imposed that criterion upon the White Earth people in order to divest them of their land. She also stresses the need for a return to citizenship criteria that protect, enact and strengthen Indigenous cultural core values, and details White Earth's recent effort to abandon blood quantum in favor of lineal descent as the primary criterion for determing citizenship.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Bush Foundation.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Doerfler, Jill. "Defining Citizenship: Blood Quantum vs. Descendancy." Tribal Citizenship Conference, Indian Law Program, William Mitchell College of Law, in conjunction with the Bush Foundation. St. Paul, Minnesota. November 13, 2013. Presentation.

"[Anishinaabe language]. Thank you so much to the Bush Foundation and also to Sarah and Collette for helping with the organizing today. I'm really honored to be part of the program. As Sarah mentioned, I did grow up at White Earth, that's where I'm from. I'll just make a note that I'm not a White Earth citizen. I'm what we call a first-degree descendant, which is that my mother is enrolled at White Earth and I am not enrolled due to the current blood quantum system. So that's part of my legal political identity, my personal identity as Anishinaabe transcends political boundaries I think in many ways.

We've heard some wonderful presentations so far today and today what I'm going to do is talk a little bit more about blood quantum, a little bit about the history of blood quantum and what's been kind of happening at White Earth the past few years. My research is on citizenship and identity and I've been working on it for a number of years. Ultimately what we know and I think what we'll come to talk about in our discussions is that there's no perfect system. All of these systems have pros and cons and we have to think about what can we work with that works best for each individual tribal nation and that is your decision to make so we're just here to share some information.

I always like to start out with, what is blood quantum because even though it's something that we're all familiar with and probably everybody here could sort of go around the room and tell us your blood quantum, what it is officially and then maybe what you think it is correctly, what the Bureau's [of Indian Affairs] gotten wrong. Ultimately, blood quantum is this western concept. Initially it was a literal concept at the turn of the 20th century where scientists thought that they could literally measure blood. Today we're sort of slipping into maybe a little bit more metaphoric understanding of blood quantum. We understand that blood can't literally be measured in that ancestral sense, but that it's a metaphor for affiliations that our ancestors had historically that then parcel themselves out through time and genealogy. So it's literal, it's metaphoric, it's a measure of race, maybe politics, maybe nation, maybe Anishinaabe blood, maybe White Earth blood, maybe...so there's that slippery concept as well between Indian blood, Anishinaabe blood, or White Earth blood. How is all of that measured out? How does culture fit in there historically? It was thought that that was part of the measurement that those kind of cultural affiliations and loyalties were literally in the blood. Today we don't believe that so much, but it's part of the history of blood quantum.

So originally, it's a scientific calculation of degree of percentage of an individual's either racial and/or national ancestry. It assumes that cultural beliefs, language, intelligence, political loyalties, all types of certain behaviors, all of that was thought to be transmitted biologically and to be held in blood quantum, and so blood quantum assumes that those things are transmitted literally or metaphorically in the blood. And as we've talked a little bit about, it's an attempt to racialize American Indian identity. It's an attempt to kind of undermine political status and turn the tables and say, ‘Oh, you're really a racial group. This is really about race versus about political identity.' So how is and how was blood quantum calculated, how have we seen this change over time to some extent? I'm going to share here a little bit of the history of White Earth and I would encourage each tribe to think about their own history of blood quantum, how they got their initial blood rolls and to look at how that happened.

This is a photograph of Ransom Powell, who was an attorney and hired as a special investigator by the United States government to look at blood quantum at White Earth and figure out the genealogy and the blood quantum of 200 families, about 5,000 people at White Earth at the turn of the century in the 1910s. And so here he is posing with three ladies at White Earth. And he came to do this investigation, to figure out White Earth blood quantums because at that time it was tied to land and so that's what it was about: figuring out who was a 'mixed blood' and who was a 'full blood.' The legal definition at the time was a mixed blood meant any drop...one drop of white blood meant mixed blood and so that's the definition that Powell was working with and he's sent to do this investigation and figure out who's a mixed blood and who's not. And so what he does is he starts by asking a variety of questions to people at White Earth, asking them about their blood quantum or the blood quantum of people that they know. Was Person X a full blood? Was so-and-so a mixed blood? And the answers that people gave at White Earth I always say are better than any answers I could ever even make up. So the historical record on this is very rich. So Powell asked these questions, he and his little team of investigators, and what people would do at White Earth is basically avoid his questions or refute them time and time again. So I'm just going to share a few quotes from the investigation.

One person said -- in response to these questions about blood quantum -- she said, ‘There was never no question about blood in them days, no sir.' Not just within recent years talking about blood, so here the lady who is on the stand is saying, ‘This is something totally new, we haven't really talked about that before. It's only come up within recent years, only within allotment years when blood quantum is coming to matter for land sale.'

Here's a nice quote where we see the investigator being quite accusatory saying, ‘Many of those...isn't it true that many of those who are known to have White fathers were living as Indians and considered in the tribe as Indians just as though they had no White father?' So you see here the investigator trying to get somebody to admit that there are people at White Earth who have White fathers and they're just like other Indians at White Earth and one person says, ‘Yes, sir.' And we see this time and again in the record. In fact, there are many people in 1910s at White Earth who had white fathers who were living in the tribe as Indians and they weren't excluded for that fact.

Another person asserted that there was no mixed bloods, that there's no such thing. That wasn't a concept or category. Part of this is also translation that's going on here between people who may be speaking Anishinaabemowin and English speakers and translating. It may also be refuting the category, that that's a U.S. government kind of category and we're not willing to use that category here. There's no such thing. That's something the U.S. made up. So there are different possibilities for interpretation on those.

Other people talked about how Anishinaabe people created their identity, they made themselves who they were through their actions and so a woman was being asked about her husband in this case and she says, ‘He was a full blood. He made himself a full blood.' And the investigator goes on to ask, ‘Oh, you mean by living like an Indian.' And she says, ‘Yes,' and they go on and she explains that through his actions he creates his identity. It's not something that he's born with, that he's locked into, that he has no control over. He has the control to create who he is by what he does.

Then those questions aren't going that well for Powell, right? This is like not helping him create his blood roll so he's like, ‘Let's move on. Let's also think about phenotype. Let's start asking some questions about skin color, complexion, hair, that type of thing.' And he gets an equally array of colorful answers. Here's an example. The person was asked, ‘Is so-and-so light skinned?' The person from White Earth says, ‘Yes, she was light. Some Indians are light, but she was an Indian.' And so here again, not using a category of mixed blood or full blood, just using the term 'Indian' and just saying that skin color doesn't necessarily determine identity.

This one is similar, but the person does choose to use the term 'full-blooded.' So in this case the man says, ‘Yes, he was light but he was a full-blood Indian.' And then there are an array of answers where people say, ‘I never took particular notice,' ‘I can't remember,' ‘I can't recall,' ‘I can't say what they were,' ‘Who knows,' ‘They were a medium shade,' and so there's all kinds of evasive answers going on and Powell is not getting anywhere really with these questions either. And so ultimately what has to happen is we need some anthropologists, right? We need somebody to come in with some scientific knowledge and help.

So Powell brings in Dr. Ales Hrdlicka and Dr. Jenks and they come and they do physical examinations. They measure heads, they scratch skin, they do hair analysis. Hair analysis samples were sent down to the University of Minnesota to the College of Ag [Agriculture] and Animal Sciences to be analyzed and they start working on their blood roll using that because they're not going to get the answers they want from the Anishinaabe people at White Earth. So ultimately we get our base roll via that process and then once you have your base roll you are free to calculate your blood quantum...here's a handy chart created by the Bureau if anyone wants to utilize this, it's available to them. So you have your base blood quantum and then you take both of your parents and you calculate on down the line and that's how we've gotten our blood quantums. I know other tribes have similar stories. You got a base roll somehow and then you calculate from there.

So, what meaning does blood quantum have? That's a big question for tribes to think about. Is this a good system? What does it tell us? How can it...is it useful in citizenship? What meaning does it have? We can think about people with an array of different blood quantums, maybe they have Oneida blood, maybe they have English blood, Ojibwe blood. What does it tell us about that person or Person B who has a little more variety of ancestry here? What does it really tell us about Person B? Do we know where they live? Do we know what their belief system is? Do we know what language they speak? Do we know how they were raised? No, it gives us this ancestral kind of picture, which may be useful to some tribes, but it doesn't really give us a whole lot of information.

What does blood quantum do? How has it functioned? Practically, it's functioned in a variety of ways. It's ultimately designed to erase and eliminate American Indians. The feds used blood quantum to try to reduce the numbers of people that legally are native. A couple of quick quotes. Scholars have done lots of work on how blood quantum has functioned and what it's done. Eva Garut has said that the ‘ultimate and explicit federal intention was to use blood quantum standard as a means to liquidate tribal lands.' Definitely the case at White Earth. ‘And eliminate government trust responsibility to tribes.' Dr. David Wilkins and Dr. Heidi Stark have said that ‘blood quantum is a new form of federal termination of Indians who are eligible for federal aid and services.' We also heard some comments about that earlier today.

So, nations are faced with those questions about blood quantum. What is it, what does it do, how does it work? And in looking at citizenship requirements, we've been, as was mentioned, we've been going through a process at constitutional reform at White Earth. The current effort started in 2007 although there were other efforts in the late ‘90s and also previously in the ‘70s and ‘80s as well at constitutional reform. But the effort I was involved in got started in 2007 and when we talked about citizenship, we talked about the history, we talked about how the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe came and White Earth came to use blood quantum in the ‘60s, what happened before that, look at that history, think about our values. And we asked many, many questions and here's just a few things that we talked about in our discussions. And citizenship was something that we probably spent the most time on during our constitutional convention process. Delegates found this was an emotional issue, it's an issue that impacts everyone and it really sets the foundation for the nation: who are we, who do we want to be, that type of thing.

So we asked questions like, ‘What kind of citizenship requirement will put our beliefs, values and culture into motion?' ‘How can we enact those values?' The things that John was talking about today, those big picture things, love...we talked about love as one of our primary values. How can we put that into action? How might our values of love and family be expressed in citizenship regulations? Which citizenship requirement will strengthen our nation? At that time we had a variety of options in front of delegates to take a look at, but these are the types of questions that some of you are thinking about changing citizenship requirements, replace your values in there and think about what can we do, how can we best express these things. Ultimately, the constitutional delegates at White Earth felt that lineal descent was the best option, that it allowed people choice where people create their identity, they have the choice to apply for citizenship provided they can bring the documentation necessary, but it puts that back on families, it puts a focus back on relationships in families. Is it by any means perfect? No, but that was the route that was decided to go with.

Sometimes we get this question when it comes to lineal descent. Won't there be too many of us if we kind of go with lineal descent? And here's a round dance event with lots of Indians. ‘Isn't this too many Indians here?' That's something for tribes to think about. How do we think about citizens? Are they assets to the nation? In what ways can a larger population be a positive thing?

What about resources? This is the other thing that comes with lineal descent. What are we going to do? We can't...we don't have enough for everyone as it is now, we're not going to have enough for more people. Citizenship and resources, entitlements, programs have to be to some extent divorced and they are already in tribes now. All these programs and services generally have requirements, an income requirement, a residency requirement, why not do a nice reciprocal requirement where if you're going to get a scholarship you have to volunteer a number of hours at the tribal pre-school in the summer? Why not require learning the language? Why not require taking courses on history? So I would encourage tribes to think about how qualifications for programs can be a little bit different than citizenship and how those can be parceled out, because not everyone is entitled to something and the chairman shared earlier the entitlement issues and that came up at White Earth as well. ‘Well, how are we going to have enough houses for everyone?' Well, the tribe isn't responsible for providing everyone a house. As Anishinaabe people, we have the responsibility to take care of ourselves and we have the responsibility to care for our families and so you end up bringing back some of those traditional values as well about our own responsibilities that we have. How can we keep our culture alive is something that we also talked about. We have to do that, speaking of responsibilities and actions and making our identity. It's not passed down in blood, it's not literal in that sense. That's our responsibility with our families and our communities to do that sharing and that teaching.

A few bits of information: how to move forward with your decision. Ultimately, I think what helped us was an inclusive and open process. All of our meetings were open; people could say and share anything they wanted. We looked at the history of citizenship in quite a bit of detail and then we looked carefully at how we could practice values within governance. And then ultimately patience and perseverance, right? This isn't an easy decision; you're not going to figure it out in one day. We worked on the initial constitution for two years, even though we had drafts from efforts previous to that and then of course now the decision is in the hands of White Earth citizens who are voting as we speak. It's a by-mail voting process that's going on right now and we'll be counting our votes next Tuesday to find out if we will move forward with a new constitution or if we will continue under our current structure. [Anishinaabe language]."

Karen Diver: Nation Building Through the Cultivation of Capable People and Governing Institutions

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

In this informative interview with NNI's Ian Record, Chairwoman Karen Diver of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa discusses the critical importance of Native nations' systematic development of its governing institutions and human resource ability to their ability to exercise sovereignty effectively and achieve their nation-building goals.

People
Resource Type
Citation

Diver, Karen. "Nation Building Through the Cultivation of Capable People and Governing Institutions." "Leading Native Nations" interview series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. September 17, 2009. Interview.

Ian Record:

“So I’m here with Chairwoman Karen Diver, who is the chairwoman of Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. And previous to that, she served as Director of Special Projects for Fond du Lac, so she has a wide range of experience, which is precisely why we’re having her sit down with us today.

The first question I’d like to ask you is a question that I ask everyone I sit down with and that is, how would you define Native nation building and what does it entail for your nation?”

Karen Diver:

“It’s almost straight out of the textbook: aggressive assertions of sovereignty backed up by capable institutions. You come into tribal government and it’s at different phases in its growth. And given that most tribes have really not been self-governing for that long, often times, we’re plugging the gap or reformulating. But if the basis of your decision is always putting self-governance first and self-determination, generally you can always plug in the gaps of your institutional capabilities along the way. But it’s the legitimacy of the actions and then backing it up with the way to actually implement them.”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned 'legitimacy in the actions,' and the Native Nations Institute and Harvard Project research holds that for Native nation governments to be viewed as legitimate by the people that they serve, they must be both culturally appropriate and effective, which is a double-edged challenge for a lot of nations, particularly those that have not governed, essentially been in control of their own governance for a very long time, and had that determined by outsiders. So how do you view that assertion that for governments to be legitimate, they have to be not only effective, but also culturally appropriate?”

Karen Diver:

“I think for tribes, we’re not as removed from government; government is very personal. Tribal members can walk in at any time, we employ our tribal members, we’re related to one another, so it’s not impersonal in a way that I think traditional government is. And when you’re decision making, the actual impact on real people in their real lives really has to be primary. And for that to work, you have to take into account the circumstances in which they live. It could be as simple, for us, making sure that our policies and procedures account for the ability to participate in cultural activities like wild rice leave, for example, is actually in our personnel policies. It’s a week-long endeavor; people need to do it when the crop is ready. Or it can be as broad based as, what do your family leave policies look like? Recognizing we have extended, large extended families, the grieving process is a community process. So just giving a bank of leave time might not be something appropriate. You might want to have some flexible use of leave to take into account that our families are large, complicated, and primarily their employment serves to take care of them and their families. So you have to have that balance. So cultural traditions matter, and to balance those with the needs of both governmental and the economic entities that we serve; that’s the only way we’re going to have a successful workforce.”

Ian Record:

“So I want to next run a quote by you that we reference often and it’s a quote by a Native leader who once said, ‘The best defense of sovereignty is to exercise it effectively.’ Can you speak to that statement?”

Karen Diver:

“To me, that really means once again building up those capable institutions. Everybody likes to know, ‘What are the rules that we’re playing by?’ Especially if you’re dealing with outside entities that you do work with, whether it’s governmental or through your economic development efforts, but also that you’re defining what those rules are and whether you’re dealing with a local unit of government, the feds, bankers, auditors, they don’t get to define the playing field. You’re defining the rules, you’re communicating them, and you’re saying that, ‘Your work with us is going to be defined by us.’ A lot of that is understanding the tenets of Indian law and explaining it to people and making distinctions between, ‘Who are we as a race?’ versus our political status and those are often confused by many people. So as long as you keep your political status separate than our cultural traditions and who we are historically and currently as a people. To me, that’s real basic and that’s really one of the main elements of sovereignty."

Ian Record:

“You, as I mentioned at the outset, you have served your nation both as a senior administrator and as currently, as chairwoman. I was curious to learn, what, based on your experience, do tribal bureaucracies need to be effective?”

Karen Diver:

“Well, that’s real key. We all know when it goes wrong. It’s the deviation from what is normal and it’s viewed as political graft or having a brother in power so to speak and that’s where…for the average citizen they feel that tribal government isn’t really serving them; it’s inequities in service delivery or access. And sometimes that happens at the service delivery level or the program level or institutional level with hiring and things like that. I think for tribal government, monitoring those activities, putting those systems in place, building accountability and transparency of the rules ends up being key to having equitable service delivery and equitable systems. And for our band members, the expectation that it doesn’t matter who you elect, the level of service you receive and your opportunities are the same.”

Ian Record:

“So it essentially supports stability and expectations among the people when they don’t…they see consistency. They see fairness and they can see consistency across administration so it’s not just, ‘Oh it was this way for this term,’ and then the new term comes in, new administration comes in and things change.”

Karen Diver:

“Well, you’re proving capability in government, too, because the reason you would elect people changes then it becomes about their effectiveness and their skills and ability to do the job rather than your personal connections and how you might gain from that. So it changes peoples’ I think reason for how and why they may vote for tribal leadership.”

Ian Record:

“And being a chair of a nation, you must experience this firsthand, this challenge of the dependency mentality. Where the expectations, at least on part of the citizenry, is rooted in, ‘What can the government do for me?’ or, ‘I’m going to go to the government and get the goodies,’ rather than really viewing that government as serving the nation, as advancing the nation’s long-term priorities. Is that something you struggle with and how do you do you work to overcome that?”

Karen Diver:

“Yes, I’ve struggled with it, but I’ve struggled with it in terms of, once again, how do we build those systems in place so that they serve the needs of our citizenry, but also changing the expectations of our citizenry? And the current tribal council has been a part of kind of changing the mentality of, ‘What our citizens should expect from their tribal government?’ And I usually say to folks, ‘Don’t ask me for a handout. Ask me for a job, or if you’re not ready for that yet, why don’t you tell me what you need to get there?’ And the framing of it is fairly simple. What I tell people is, ‘I care about you enough that I’m not going to put a band-aid on your issue because it’s going to come back. Unless I know what’s going on, we need to create or refer you to something that creates a long-term fix because I don’t want you to have to come back.’ And I really feel that promoting dependency within our own community is a part of the reason why we haven’t been able to move as forward as we could be yet because I’ve turned into a social worker now instead of an administrator, instead of someone who assures that there’s good systems. And I also think it’s not fair to our people to say to them, ‘The way that you get services is by telling me a lot of your personal problems that are going on.’ I need to know them to the extent that I need to identify any gaps in our system, but I also shouldn’t put my own people -- if I care about them -- in the position of having to beg, and there is a difference. I’m not doing it to satisfy my ego because I can feel really good about what I’ve done for you. I care about you enough to say, ‘Let’s look at a long-term fix instead of a short-term band-aid.’”

Ian Record:

“Right. So it’s essentially, ‘Let’s look at the root cause of your problem or your challenge,’ versus just simply addressing the symptom, which will be sure to reoccur at some point.”

Karen Diver:

“Right. And it helps me identify where we might have gaps in service, whether it’s combined case management, stabilizing your housing, where you really need some service delivery, whether it’s health issues, we should make sure that each of our systems are coordinated enough that there is a holistic response to the issues people face in their day-to-day lives.”

Ian Record:

“You mention this issue of building a holistic response, or the capacity to do that, to whatever issue is at hand or that you’re facing. And this really gets to this issue of developing a systems-based approach to service delivery, which we hear about more and more, and we see a lot of that sort of activity in Indian Country with nations saying, ‘The status quo is not working. We’ve got our programs and services going a million different directions, they often duplicate one another. We’ve got to take a systems-based approach that gets at these root causes that you discuss.’ Is that something that you’re working to do, take care of?”

Karen Diver:

“Oh, actively. And both as a staff member and then once I got elected. I’ll give you an example. One of our projects that we’ll be breaking ground here within a month is supportive housing. Supportive housing is what transitional housing used to be. It’s for folks who have had a hard time getting on their feet and for every step forward it might have been two back, chronic homeless, multiple episodes of homelessness. Well, homelessness isn’t the lack of a house, it’s a circumstance, a set of circumstances going on that are preventing people from being stable. In order to do supportive housing, you not only have to build the housing, but you also have to develop service delivery that looks at what are the needs of the family and they may be multiple. You’re also committing to staying by them whether or not they take that step forward or step back, and that’s why they call it permanent supportive housing, because unlike transitional housing the two years are up whether you’re ready to be independent or not. And what it really does is say, in terms of case management, what does the whole family need and it’s self-determined by the family. So much like for tribal government, it’s saying for families, too, to say, ‘What are my needs right now?’ and their needs might be simple in the beginning. It might be having adequate health care and getting their diabetes under control so they’re not facing chronic health issues. It might mean helping the family say at some point that they’re chemical dependent, coming to the realization that it is fueled by underlying mental illness, but there’s a safe place to be able to say that and get at the root causes of why people anesthetize themselves with drugs and alcohol. And what you’re trying to do is reduce the episodes of homelessness and instability in the family so that children can stay in longer, the same school longer, they can maintain their level of health care and what you see over time is school social workers are talking to mental health case managers. We know that health outcomes are affected by the lack of housing; we know that school performance is affected by that. Working together stabilizes the need for service delivery by multiple systems, but they all have to be at the table and integrated together. It’s a model that’s been shown to work outside Indian Country, not yet being implemented to a big extent within Indian Country. The model’s perfect for us because we know our families best. We need to be talking to each other and the family will be the one that hopefully will move forward because of it. So it’s an example, but we’ve built silos in Indian Country, much like we’ve bemoaned in larger systems that are out there, but we’re better contained within ourselves to actually break those down.”

Ian Record:

“So you mentioned you know your families best. And hearing you describe this approach of supportive housing, that requires an intimate understanding, intimate awareness of what’s going on in your community, what their needs are, what their challenges are, what their priorities are, what they need from the tribe in order to be made whole, or put them on the road to self-sufficiency, whatever it might be, that’s not an approach that an outsider can develop and implement. Is it something that has to be done at the local level by the people who it’s designed to serve?”

Karen Diver:

“Absolutely, because at any given point in that service delivery or that plan that the family develops, you’re going to have to have culturally competent service delivery. You’re going to have to understand that for a family to break their cycle of chemical dependency that it might be isolating to them for some of their other family members, and that’s a hard thing to do. So you’re recreating family systems and showing them a healthy way in a way that doesn’t deny their ability to still remain a part of a larger community. It’s understanding that children are served best when they’re with their families and an easy fix isn’t putting them in out-of-home placement, but intensive services for their extended families. It’s building even the actual facilities in a way that understands that we tend to congregate together and you never know when you might have a niece coming to live with you, and it shouldn’t upset your household composition because that’s what your housing rules say. So it requires us to be flexible. And I think that’s one of the beauties of self-governance is when you determine your own rules, you can be flexible enough to meet multiple demands, but in a way that’s also accountable so that everybody has the same access to that flexibility.”

Ian Record:

“As I mentioned, you were once a senior administrator of your tribe and now you’re the chairwoman. And I was curious to learn, having served in both of those capacities, can you speak to the importance of delineating clear, distinct roles, responsibilities, authorities for each of those key decision makers, implementers? And what happens when those roles aren’t clearly defined?”

Karen Diver:

“It’s an over-used phrase, but I think many people have heard it. If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter which road you take. I think that for both tribal government and tribal administrators, it’s all about the plan. Where do we plan to get in two years, five years? I’m a big fan of strategic planning. I’m a big fan of understanding who is responsible for the items in the strategic plan. Who’s monitoring the outcomes and making sure that we’re holding staff accountable? Has there been community input to the plan so that we’re actually serving them and going in a direction that they care about? And we are just starting to undertake now a whole community-wide strategic planning process that will inform tribal government and it’s a difficult transition. Last year I thought, ‘I’m just going to get the staff kind of primed and say give me a few goals and objectives for the year,’ and I almost started a mass revolt. I had the flurry of emails saying, ‘What did you mean by that?’ ‘Well, I want to know what you plan to do next year. This is not a trick question, what do you plan to do,’ because at the end of next year I’m going to say, ‘Did you accomplish what you had planned?’ And you’re actually going to maybe make presentations to tribal council about that. Also understanding your role, there’s a plan and each department should understand who their stakeholders are. Human Resources, for example, they think of the applicants and employees as their stakeholders, but they don’t necessarily think of their other divisions that they do the work for as their stakeholders and at the timeliness of their work and the quality of their work can have a big affect on operations. So right now, our tribal council has three of our members were in administrative positions before so we were on the other side of the tribal council table. It’s made a huge difference in terms of our understanding of the importance of their work, not frittering it away, making meeting time productive time and they’re happy. They’re happy because being accountable to us is different. It’s in terms of decision making, not necessarily these huge processes that takes up a lot of their time but doesn’t necessarily accomplish anything. So very important on both ends to understand, ‘What is our role?’ We’re an approving role, they’re doing the work and they’re bringing us their recommendations.”

Ian Record:

“So it’s essentially -- and this gets to what my next question’s about -- what are the respective roles of elected officials and those administrators and bureaucratic employees because you’re seeing it less and less, which I think is a good thing, what you see in some Native communities is still the mentality among the leadership where they have to do it all, and a reticence perhaps to delegate authority. And I’m curious to learn from you how you envision the roles and the separation of those roles and where does one’s work stop and the other’s begin, perhaps?”

Karen Diver:

“I think we’re fairly typical of every tribal government and it comes up during campaign time and when we have our open meetings with our citizenry, they say, ‘The reservation business committee, they micromanage.’ And what I tell people is, ‘You expect us not to micromanage, you want us to take big picture, our appropriate role is in policy making, procedure development, setting vision and long-term direction of the reservation.’ I said, ‘But you want that until the issue involves you, then you expect us to micromanage and fix your problem, and if I go back and tell you you have the ability to provide a grievance or you can talk to the program manager and resolve conflict that way,’ you say, ‘you’re not taking care of my issue.’ So it goes back to that, how do you balance the personal aspect of tribal government, because we are all interrelated, we’re a community, a tight-knit community with the ability to put good governance systems in place and good business systems in place and there’s no perfect science to that, because first of all you’re never going to develop a policy where you’re going to expect to hit every possible outcome or gap. That’s why your policies are a work in progress and need regular review and updating. Also people come up with some really personal circumstances that you may want to accommodate. So I think that there’s a balance there.

The delegation of authority ends up being a lot about control and hiring capable staff and letting them do their job is really key in getting all of the work done because tribal government has a breadth unlike any other form of government. We are corporate, we are government, we are like non-profit service delivery agencies, environmental, education, health. We have to rely on content-area experts. However, I also think being a context expert, they don’t always recognize the big picture they operate in because they’re looking at it from their silo of expertise. So I think tribal government role -- if you look at it in terms of dialogue and challenging each other -- we can help them see the big picture, they can help us understand the peculiarities of their particular area of expertise. That’s where you come up with the win-win. It’s when it’s directive or when you impose upon them, but if you set up the right processes, we often say government-to-government consultation, well we need to have consultation within our organization as well so that we can come up with the best possible scenarios up front and tweak them along the way and see where we may have missed something.”

Ian Record:

“So you mentioned in part of your previous response about the expectations of citizens, particularly come campaign time. For instance, where internally between elected officials and administrators, bureaucratic employees, you may have a clear understanding of who should be doing what, but then there’s the citizen’s expectations that are always causing friction against that. How important is public education about the separations of authorities, about the checks and balances, about the delegations, about who does what? That it’s incumbent upon Native nation governments not just to have a clear internal understanding, but also to make sure the community understands so that it allows you to keep your momentum going?”

Karen Diver:

“It’s a difficult process, I’ll be very honest about that. And one of the ways I characterize it in some of the one-on-one conversations I have with tribal members is if all of my wishes could come true for our own people, one of them would be that it really didn’t matter who you elect, because it didn’t have relevance in your day-to-day life. That as an individual and as a leader in your family, you were able to get and/or acquire those things you need to meet the needs of your own family, whether that’s through employment educational opportunities, social services, that you knew what was out there and you could access it and you were using those resources to build your own self-sufficiency to the point where once it came to the ballot, it was much like traditional forms of government. Who has the skills to do the job? Do they have the background? Do they have a plan? And it changes your expectations. So I think that’s something that comes over time. But also, when people understand that in their best interest, they can self determine their own needs and you’re creating the systems for that to happen, I think it’s going to change the dynamic of what individuals expect out of tribal government.”

Ian Record:

“And isn’t that where strategic planning is very important because the community understands, ‘There’s a larger goal at work here. It’s not just about the now, it’s not just about what I need personally or what my family needs at this moment, but it’s about where we’re trying to head as a community.'“

Karen Diver:

“I think the economic crisis has really changed that a bit. I think in Indian Country -- especially for tribes who have been building a private sector economy within their borders and really using that as a surrogate tax base -- you’ve been able to plug in some of the gaps and funding in order to create programs or supplement them and access other sources of funding. And I think that the downturn really let people know that it’s not a given that tribal government’s going to continue to grow, it’s not a given that the things that are here now will remain. And we’re a per capita [distribution] tribe, so that’s one of the things we’ve been able to do purely as a poverty reduction; nobody’s getting rich off it. But people understood that maybe that isn’t a given and that we have to be smart about our resources, and maybe the best use of tribal government time is looking at economic and governmental stability and not necessarily the day-to-day issues that arise in tribal council’s life. They’re taking a little bit more ownership and more what we’re doing is more information and referral, ‘Did you know that this is available to you and this is available to you?’ rather than direct service, one-on-one."

Ian Record:

“So I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about economic development. And a lot of what the NNI-Harvard Project research looks at is the two polar opposites when it comes to economies that we see in Indian Country. One, you have essentially the dependent economy, which is largely born of constitutions and governments that were imposed or systems of governments that were imposed by the outside. And then you have productive economies, which we’re obviously seeing more and more of as tribes take control of their own affairs, as they begin to launch and build diversified economies. I was wondering, from your perspective, how do Native nations move from a dependent economy, heavily reliant on outsiders, the federal government, to a productive economy where they themselves are in the driver’s seat of economic development? And in that process of moving from one to the other, what are some of the most important building blocks?”

Karen Diver:

“First and foremost, social capital. You need to develop your own citizenry to be a part of that. Talk to a lot of young people and say, ‘What are you going to school for? Liberal arts? Great. We need people to do services to our own band members, but gee, do you also know we need accountants? We need internal auditors; we need dentists and healthcare delivery people, teachers.’ So I think building that social capital so that the cultural competency comes from our own people serving our own community is real key. We can’t always use neighbors and people who aren’t familiar with our own community because then you miss that cultural competency piece. A lot of good people in Indian Country who are Native, but we really need to grow our own and provide the role models. The other part of it is purely regulatory. Do you have the systems in place where economic development can thrive? One of the gaps in our own system right now is we don’t have uniform commercial codes. So that’s kind of on the block. Developing systems of conflict resolution that are transparent and you know who’s rules you’re operating under. Once again, the tenets of Indian law, if you’re working with outside parties, do they really know what dealing with a sovereign is and the context with which this business relationship will be taken out? Regulatory control is also things as simple as what’s your background check policy? Are you going to be able to meet outside commitments that you’re making, for example, under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act? Do you understand their rules? If you’re in a banking relationship, what are their rules, their operating on and how do you mesh that with your own? So I think that a lot of homework goes into building a community where economic development can thrive. And part of it is do you understand your role in it and the role of your people and all of your different departments? For example, if you’re going to work with an outside agency that’s looking at some resources within the reservation, like mining, do you have your regulatory capacity there to look at environmental issues, for example? So, identifying those initiatives and seeing what you have within tribal government that needs to be involved, having them all on the table up front, and identifying your gaps, and either developing it or bringing in consultants who have it so you can have informed decision making.”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned this issue of, or the importance of investing in social capital, particularly among your young people. Not only finding out what their interests are, but saying, ‘Hey, we have needs in this area.’ That’s, but that, isn’t that the first step because then you have to make sure that the opportunities that are available are stable, that they’re consistent? That you’re not going to have the political turnover, ripple effect where the administration comes in and they clean house, which our research has shown causes this horrible problem of brain drain where people say, ‘I’m not going to invest my time and resources in the future of the nation because I can’t be certain I’m going to get a return on that investment.’ So I was wondering if you could speak to that issue of making sure that those opportunities are stable and that the environment in which you’re asking them to participate is reliable.”

Karen Diver:

“Once again, I think if you start to change and really have a conversation with your community about what do they feel is the appropriate role in tribal government in their day-to-day life, that then starts changing the stability of the workforce. And you’re right, we’ve invested heavily in education, both by creating our own institutions and through scholarship funds and telling people, ‘There’s a big world out there. Go learn things and bring it back home.’ Only for them to not be able to have the ability to worry about their sacrifices of their own stability in their family, and that’s sad. It’s sad and it’s unfortunate because you’re right, it creates brain drain. With the capable institutions, and with some emotional maturity and changing your expectations of what tribal leaders should be both personally and professionally, I think you get towards the bigger picture of, ‘If I’m here to serve my people, that means also dealing with my political detractors, as well as my political supporters,’ and they still end up being tribal members and deserve service whether they like you or not, whether they care about you or not, or whether they believe in you or not, you do your best by them. And I think it’s developing some political maturity to say, ‘Yes, I may not be meeting your expectations, but over time, can we find your place here within this community as well?’ So I think it’s a little shortsighted. We think we want to be surrounded by loyalty, but that’s a moving target. On any given day, you’re going to make a decision that may affect people in a way that they may not want, but it’s whether or not your transparency of government helps them understand why you’re doing it, that it’s not personal, that you were going to make this decision because it’s good for the whole and yeah, it might not work for everybody. So I think a part of it is just your skill at the politics of communicating why decisions are made and whether the transparency was there in the decision making so people understand why and then don’t take it personal.”

Ian Record:

“And doesn’t that really get to this issue of rules? The NNI/Harvard Project research clearly shows that rules are more important than resources in terms of building vibrant economies. Can you speak to that issue?”

Karen Diver:

“Yeah sure, it’s interesting because when I talk to folks and I’m in the unfortunate position of having to tell them I can’t do something for them, one of the things I usually preface it with or end with it is, ‘I know you want this, but one of the rules we follow here for this tribal government is if we can’t do it for everyone, we can’t do it for one. And so if…do you think if I ask the tribal membership if we should do this for you, what do you think their answer would be? Would they be supportive of this decision?’ And generally, when you put it in that context, people will understand that you are making rules for all, not the few. On the other hand, sometimes you come up with one where you say, ‘Geez, we should do something about that and would we be willing to do it for everyone? Maybe, maybe not because the circumstances matter, but it’s justifiable and you knew if you put the whole circumstances out there, our community would say, ‘Yeah we don’t maybe don’t want to make that a practice,’ but in this instance, for their set of circumstances, it’s the right thing to do because we do care about our community. But it’s justifiable in a way so you almost have the litmus test of community voting. And you’re saying, 'How would people think about this?' And if you constantly keep that in mind, and the fact that it doesn’t matter who’s in your office, assume you’re telling everybody because everybody will know. Your actions are public and if someone asks, ‘What’s going on with tribal government?’ you have to be willing to tell them. That transparency is what keeps government honest. So day by day, you take it as it comes and take each circumstances, but if you use that litmus test of, ‘If I put it to a referendum vote, or no matter who walked through the door, would you behave the same?’ generally, you’re going to get pretty close to what you need to a capable government whose rules are not only transparent, but consistency ends up being the biggest key.”

Ian Record:

“And when you have those consistent rules in place that are consistently enforced, isn’t that liberating for you as an elected official, because you then are in a position where you can say no to someone and have it not be personal? And say, ‘Here’s my reason. We have, for instance, a hiring and firing dispute, which I’m sure you encounter in an economic development entity of the tribe or within tribal government. You say, ‘Hey, we have a personnel grievance process for that. I’d be overstepping my bounds as an elected official to take on this issue, to even consider your complaint.’”

Karen Diver:

“Very much so. It is liberating in a way and it’s something that the current tribal council, in terms of building our own capacity to govern and also for our own stability in making sure we’re all behaving in the same way even when we’re not in a meeting, when we’re having different interactions, is to actually have those conversations with each other, have a set of board norms, take some planning time and say, ‘here’s something that you don’t necessarily need a policy for, but it’s something we’re confronted with. How do we behave? Let’s be consistent, all get on the same page.’ Your answer then can be, ‘Gee, I hear you and I understand but the council made a decision that this is the way that we’re going to handle it,’ and speaking with one voice. A lot of this goes to whether or not you’re building a capable board that’s cohesive and all operating off of the same page, so speaking with one voice. You have those arguments. It’s kind of like mommy and daddy, you argue, but you don’t let the kids hear you kind of thing. We have that time where we work things out amongst ourselves but once we come to talking about them in a public way, whatever answer prevailed, we all stick with and support and so a lot of it goes to good governance from an internal perspective as well. And you’re right, it is liberating. It gives individual members a way to say, ‘We all stick together.’ You can’t go from one to the other and try to get a different answer because we’re all going to talk about it and then give you our decision as a whole rather than an individual.”

Ian Record:

“One final question I wanted to ask you, and it was interesting, we were interviewing another tribal leader earlier this morning, and he likened being an elected leader of a Native nation to drinking from a fire hose, which I’m sure you can identify with. I was wondering if you could talk about, how can leaders manage the often overwhelming pressures they face, in order to lead effectively? How can they manage that load, forge ahead, implement that strategic vision, guide that strategic vision, so that the nation can achieve the future it wants?”

Karen Diver:

“I think it’s management principles, and I think as we develop our own folks and they decide to serve through elected leadership, they’re going to bring different management capabilities to the table. And I usually tell new managers or people who are also feeling that -- because it happens all through the organization, not just at the top -- is prioritize, delegate and advocate. You prioritize. I liken it to going to the casino’s buffet. You only get one plate at a time, but you have all those choices so you pick that first plate carefully. When things are going well, you might even start with dessert, but when they’re not going well you might start with your meat instead of your salad. So you prioritize and pick that first plate very carefully. You put out the fires, but you pay attention to what precedent are you setting. Don’t just make it go away for going away’s sake 'cause you’re setting precedent, but you put out the fires first and you kind of look at your organization methodically. Right now we’re lucky; we have no fires. So what we’re looking at is that middle layer of management that is actually broader than the emergencies, but has more long-term impact. Does our organizational structure fit the service delivery we need to do, are there gaps, are there efficiencies to be found so you prioritize and you clip your way through it. Delegating is you don’t have to do it all on your own. You have a hierarchy in place. Make sure the hierarchy is working for you. Use content-area experts; hire them if you need to. I think one of the biggest failings of tribal government is to not admitting what you don’t know and asking and listening to those who do. I couldn’t have done a lot of the work in the last year without listening to my environmental staff, my education staff, my health staff. In many ways I take my orders from them. What are your priorities? What do you need me to talk about? Who do you need me to call? And let them do their jobs. Advocate ends up being important, because a lot of I think doing with tribal government work is educating people around and within you of the role of tribal government. What are our boundaries? How do we get partners in to do our work? We’ve been so busy building our self-governance, we forget we have allies out there, different funding sources, the legislatures, building relationships with townships and counties, which I think is actually going backwards lately because of cuts in local government aid and the economy and they see tribes not as partners anymore, but how do we get into their pocketbooks. So maintaining those relationships and advocacy sometimes happens in a crisis, sometimes in a proactive way, but really saying, ‘Hello, we’re still here, we have an impact, we have a role to play. It might not be the one you define, but there are areas of win-win, let’s talk about those,’ and telling that story. And if you can slowly clip through it that way, it becomes a little bit more manageable. What I usually tell people is tribal government, we’ve only really been self-governing in any meaningful way, probably for thirty years. We’ll continue to get better at it and we’ll make mistakes along the way, but it’s what works and so we have to prove that. So prioritizing and making sure you’re hitting those things and trying to prevent them from becoming those fires ends up being really important.”

Ian Record:

“Well Karen, I appreciate your time today and thanks for sharing your wisdom and your experience with us.”

Karen Diver:

“Thank you, my pleasure.”

Honoring Nations: Sovereignty Today: Q&A

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

The 2007 Honoring Nations symposium "Sovereignty Today" panel presenters as well as members of the Honoring Nations Board of Governors field questions from the audience and offer their thoughts on the state of tribal sovereignty today and the challenges that lie ahead.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

"Sovereignty Today: Q&A." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 27-28, 2007. Presentation.

Ethel Branch:

"Hi. Thank you all for speaking. It was really inspiring to hear all of your words. I guess my question is -- My name's Ethel Branch. I'm a student at the law school. I'm Navajo from Arizona. My question is, Indian policy, federal Indian policy has always suffered vicissitudes going back and forth from an era of termination, extermination, whatever, and switching to an era of revitalization, empowerment of tribes. We've been in self-determination for now over 30 years. Do you see a shift in the tide? What direction do you think the next era is going to go? If you could give insight on that, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you."

Floyd "Buck" Jourdain:

"Geez, I feel like Billy Madison up here. Anybody who's seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about.

Self-governance. We're a self-governance tribe and we no longer have a BIA agent and all that, we deal directly with our appropriations through the tribe. And it's [an] experimental thing that several tribes took on, but we feel it's working to our advantage; we're using it in a good way. And one of the things that we notice with the non, the tribes that are still under the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] -- they do get preference over us, so we have to really fight and arm wrestle every year; appropriations, negotiations, hearings. And it's almost like sometimes there's a safety net there that we need to grow away from. Self-governance is a good thing if it's used in a good way, and it's used correctly, and you have good leadership, and people are really on top of it. I think we just need to pry away from that old era and get away from that. And if it doesn't happen, then you'll see tribes, kind of, falling back into that, which is a dangerous thing.

Like I talked about today, the climate. You talk about the energy push in America, George Bush and the big oil companies. One of the things that -- our tribal treasurer goes to D.C. and brings back these horror stories about, 'There's going to be another huge cut. The [Department of the] Interior and BIA is going to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.' And you have all these issues in your Indian community. You have methamphetamine, you have homelessness, you have poverty but, 'Hey, here's the answer to all your solutions! Let us come in and build a power plant on your lakeside and that will really help you guys out and get you out of this state.' So right now it's been rights of ways issues, those are huge -- people wanting to build power lines and roads across our land so they can -- tourism can explode and those types of things.

So I think that tribes need to really grasp it, emphasize self-governance, and really use it in a good way, and be aggressive with it. And I think that if more of them start moving in that direction you're going to see a lot of self-sufficient tribes out there doing some pretty good things."

James Ransom:

"I wanted to stand up. I know some of the people over here can't see us over here. I just had two comments on the question.

A trend that I see happening and which is real obvious is one, stay out of court. That cannot be overemphasized right now. Anything that gets to the Supreme Court is going to be an erosion of sovereignty. You can almost be guaranteed that.

What that tells us though is we need to refine our diplomacy skills and we need to negotiate solutions to issues on the local level, on a state level, on the federal level but in a way that is protective of our communities. And again, that talks about responsibility. We need to work on that and bring that back.

I think that's going to be the key to the future is exercising our responsibilities in ways that non-Natives -- the larger society -- can understand and appreciate."

Michael Thomas:

"I can only agree first of all with what's been said in terms of our own responsibilities and how we should not allow a perpetual federal trust responsibility to us to foster dependency. And frankly, the 30 years of the [Indian] Self-Determination Era has, in my mind, fostered as much dependency as self-determination. And frankly, I think that self-determination can be an excuse for modern governments to avoid their trust responsibility to each and every one of the people in our tribal communities. And so it's a balancing act. I think that we will see the lip service toward self-determination continue, but I think that you'll see the pendulum swing back and forth between whether these people are walking the walk or simply talking the talk.

As you watch the composition of our Supreme Court change, the advice about staying out of court becomes more and more relevant. And that is the kind of long-term pendulum swing that we as Indian people can appreciate but the average American cannot. The reality is, unless you are subject to those swings in constitutional interpretation, and Supreme Court composition, and federal Indian policy, and all the other things that create the storm of politics within which we must live, you're not going to get consistent outcomes.

And so that responsibility that both other tribal leaders here have emphasized is critical. Because it's a different approach to say 'They will never fully meet this trust responsibility, therefore we must...' than it is to simply cry over and over and over, 'Meet your trust responsibility, meet your trust...' We end up putting our people in a victim's position, when the reality is that we have all we need to protect and advance our people even in the absence of that fulfilled trust responsibility. I think an increasing recognition of this by tribal leaders can only lead us to good places."

Ben Nuvamsa:

"I'm very humbled to be here among you leaders. Thank you for your teachings and validation of what I also believe in. Chief Ransom, as you spoke, I feel like you were talking about us.

At Hopi, we're going through a tremendous change. I agree with you, wholeheartedly, that along with sovereignty comes responsibility and accountability, and if we can exercise that in the correct way -- hopefully we don't get to the point where somebody tells us what sovereignty means to us, like the Supreme Court. Our constitutions that we have adopted, the IRA constitution -- at Hopi we're very different because of our traditional ceremonies that we are very still actively involved in, in that -- and our values are much different than what an IRA constitution puts forth. And that really creates some problems for us, that we have two different cultures always conflicting with how we operate. And I think that in the situation that we're in, we need to go out and we need to re-evaluate that constitution. And many tribes have done that. I guess what I'm trying to say is that good, bad, or indifferent, however our constitutions are, we need to interpret those in our Hopi ways, in our tribal ways, what does that mean to us in our local customary practices. That's what's going to sustain us forever. I think that's where we're at.

I'm also very humbled to be with a group of our representatives here that are very knowledgeable in our tribal government. Mr. Kuwaninvaya has been on the council for a long time and I look to him for guidance. He's very astute about when we get into a debate at the council -- and he has this unique knack to put things in proper perspective, and he brings our traditional values, our knowledge, and interprets that debate into how we are supposed to be. And it seems like it really clarifies the whole debate. It's very simple. Go back to what Hopi is. Go back to what our beliefs are. And I think that's what sovereignty means to us is who we are as a people, and what our beliefs are, what our customs are. And we speak our language; our language is what sets us apart also. That is our sovereignty.

And so I just want to thank you for the thoughts. We also have certain principles that you talked about. Sumi'nangwa. Nami'nangwa. Kyavtsi. Respect for one another, coming together as one people, putting our heads together and working together. Those are principles and kind of visions that we have, high bars that we have to achieve. But I think that's the kind of a process that we're in right now and we'll need to get to that point. And I just want to thank you for your words of wisdom all of you."

Regis Pecos:

"Thank you for that, what I think is a really profound question. If we go back into the past and reflect upon that time of federal policies dealing with extermination, and where that moved to assimilation, and where that moved to termination, and then the more recent federal policy that defines this time as the era of self-determination, we really are at a critical juncture to be asking some very critical questions with regard to, 'What are we doing differently now, when we are in control, from those times when we weren't and we were critical of that subjection to those federal policies?' Because if we're not careful, I think that we potentially become our own worst enemies at this particular time and juncture in our journey through life.

I really think that this next wave, to answer your question, really is going to be a return to the core values. And that the definition of sovereignty is really going to come back to be defined, redefined, internally and outwardly. And I think part of the celebration, with something as profound as what we've heard all of today, are the incredible redefining of approaches that is coming from and dictated by our return to those principles and core values. I think in this next wave it's going to be part of a process and an evolution that is using the core values to redefine the strength of tribal governments, and the sovereignty and the power of our peoples to define, outwardly, the interrelations of intergovernmental relations, if you will, but defined for our purposes. So that, as we take a circle, and in it are the core values of our land, our language, our way of life, our people, our resources, our water, our air that sustains that spirit of living, to examine the way in which we either are making decisions with governance and our jurisprudence that moves us away from the core values or reinforces the core values; and where decisions are made that's moving us away, how we're contributing to make fragile that institutional framework that otherwise creates for an operation from a position of strength. And if all we're doing in this time of self-determination is simply replicating programs with no conscious thought about how the replication of programs is moving us further away from those core values or reinforcing core values, or the way in which economic development is viewed, to either be supportive and compatible with the core values or moving us away from the core values, and something as critical as education -- If we see education as the means and the process that was never intended for us, but how we find that to be necessary in developing our skills to deal with their external forces, to protect the internal workings of our nations, it becomes critical at this very point to really look at ways in which we strike a balance. And as our young people and our trust for the future are being schooled in the formal education institutions, we really have to be mindful in terms of what we're doing consciously in redefining our own blueprint for the teachings, from a cultural perspective, so that in the kind of challenges from this point forward, we really must operate from that position of strength, that is, articulating our relationships with other governments from those fundamental principles encompassed and defined by those core values.

So I think in this next wave, it's going to be about our redefining relationships with other governments based upon the articulation and the full utilization of the core values moving from within, outwardly, as it's never been done before. And if we're not approaching it in that way, the gaps are going to become greater and wider. And if language and culture is not the focus of what we do in creating the next generation of leaders, ask ourselves, 'Will they have any opportunity to argue the spirit of sovereignty from any other context or perspective?' Because when that happens we're going to be reduced to everything we don't want to be reduced to, as simply political subdivisions of someone else's sovereign governmental framework, different than what we want to do -- to come from within that context that sustains that spirit, that is defined by everything the Creator gave us and blessed us with, that sustains that spirit of living from a totally different perspective, which means that we have to create our own institutions. So that for all of us who've gone through the experience of a formal education, it doesn't take us to move back through a process of being reeducated in the principles of those core values.

So I think in this next wave, we have to be conscious about creating our own opportunities and institutions to strike the kind of balance that results in the kind of training that is necessary for young people to have that kind of balanced perspective, moving the core values as we define the way in which we're going to preserve that sustained spirit of living using those core values."

Michael Thomas:

"Definitely very well said. I would only add one piece, to what frankly, I don't think any of us could say better, which is that one of those core values we have to emphasize, in addition to that which separates us...is our foundation, our language, our culture, our values, the history, this dirt that we are from and of -- the interconnectedness value that we were all given as well is horribly underplayed. As important as all of those things that make us distinct tribal communities are, equally important are the things that bind us from one to the other, the interconnectedness value that every last one of us was taught by our elders is one that we don't walk often enough. It's an area where the way I say it to our council, it's an area where we are not matching our lips with our moccasins. It sounds wonderful, but to really emphasize the interconnectedness means that we would fight less within each of these tribal communities.

And frankly, I've never been to a tribal community, and I've visited several hundred in my life, that is startlingly different from another. As a matter of fact, when people come to Mashantucket, I tell them, 'Don't be confused by the cars and the houses. This is the res.' It might be a little bigger or a little prettier -- same issues, frankly. Wealth has intensified some of those community, social, cultural issues that we face. We're thankful to have the means to deal with those things, finally, but we've got to emphasize connectedness, because all of the other things bring us into our own individual boxes. And everything in this American culture is so individualized and so disconnected from anything, that what that value of 'the connectedness of all things' is one of the most important traditional values we should keep in mind and turn into the action that Regis articulated as well as anyone could. Thank you."

David Gipp:

"Regis, I think you summed up quite a few things today, at least from our perspective and from the tribal perspective, and where we're going hopefully. Let me jump to the next question. And it's a question for you, and other leaders, and everyone here, I think. And that's the question that our Assistant Secretary is posing and he's talking about modernizing the BIA. I don't know if you heard his remarks this morning. And I thought some of them made very good sense as compared to what I heard you say out in...which was the introduction of that thought. And I know you're running around the country trying to get ideas of what that means as well, at least that's what I hear. Comes that question, and that's part of what you have raised is, where are we going to go with this? And how are we going to deal with this? Because the immediate question is, now we have a new trust office that's been put in place, and it's supposedly doing all of these wonderful things for us in terms of managing our trust resources, and being accountable, and somebody mentioned the word transparency, and perhaps we'll see this someday from the U.S. government and truly see what they've been up to all these centuries. But the other issue is, what happens with the rest of the functions within the Bureau of Indian Affairs? Particularly as our tribal nations assume more of these, I'll just say, jurisdictional issues and more of the issues that relate to sovereignty and who and what we're all about. What happens to the government in the meantime, and the U.S. government? And what role does it play? And how will it play that role? And where do we put it in its place, if you will, as we talk about this new, if you will, evolution that's beginning to take place? And I think that's a very real question, because the government can surely be, as we know, stand in the way and create even more problems than it has in the past. Or it can be, indeed, potentially a partner, if we make it a partner. And how do we do that?"

Oren Lyons:

"Sovereignty is the act thereof. No more. No less. And it's a French word. It talks about kings. It talks about absolute monarchal power, absolute. That's what sovereignty comes from. But we came to understand it to mean control of your own future. When we talked this morning about the landing of our brothers here, and not too far away from right here, and they saw the Indian come standing out of the forest. And they looked at him and the word was, 'We'll never tame that man.' And all they ever saw was a free person. That's what they were looking at, was a free person. And that's what we all were at one time. And it's absolutely [certain] that we have to go back to our original teachings to move into the future because they're fundamental, they don't change. Principles don't change. Everything else changes, but principles do not. So as we move forward, we've changed as well. I would imagine that if we were to talk to our counterparts 200 years ago, if they walked in here, they wouldn't know who we were. They'd say, 'Well, whatever happened to our people?' We change. And 100 years or 200 years from now, we'd look at what's in the future and we'd say, 'Well, whatever happened to them?' But if you keep your principles, the main core principles, you can change all you want and nothing changes.

And so I think that it's true that there's going to be outside forces, this global warming is no joke. It's going to break economies. It's going to break world economies. They're just not going to be able to stand it. They're not going to be able to be spending all their money on wars and fighting because they're just going to be talking about survival. So commonality comes back. The discussion is about water, it's about land, it's about resources. When you talk about sovereignty in a contemporary sense, you're talking about jurisdiction. Who has jurisdiction on your land? And that will tell you how sovereign you are. And so jurisdiction is a very important discussion. How do you maintain that?

The courts have always been unfair but they're extremely unfair these days. I agree with you, it's a very difficult time. There's not been fairness in this country to us, there never has been. Racism is still here, it's still rampant, doesn't take much for it to come up. It does not take much for it to pop right up and look you in the face. So we're in a time, I guess, where we're going to see momentous changes. And so the spiritual strength that comes from our elders and comes from our nations and our old people, they always talk about the old people. I always remember Thomas Banyacya saying, 'Well, the old people said...' I always liked it when he said that because he was talking about our elders and how they instructed us and how they always looked after us. It was never a question about leadership then.

The problem with today's leadership in Indian Country is the system that doesn't allow you any continuity. You're there for two years, and then you have an election, and you fight each other for two years, and then you start again, and two years later you're -- it keeps you off balance. The traditional system, the old system, where the chiefs were there for life, I'm one of them. I've got 40 years on the bench, so to speak. I've seen a lot, talked to a lot of leaders (Nixon), most of them one time or another. Bob Bennett, I knew Bob. All of them actually -- how they had a short time, problematic time, but meantime back home, back home where we live, things remain kind of constant. You do what you can do, but I think the core values are just what we're going to depend on and we have to just get back to that. The ceremonies that Jim [James Ransom] was talking about as a guideline -- ceremony is what kept us going, ceremony is what makes us unique, it makes us different from everybody. If you were to ask who we are, we're the people who give thanks to the earth. That's who we are. And we do it all the time. And we still do it. It's important and we were told as long as you're doing it, you're going to survive. When you give it up, you won't. Simple as that.

So we're coming into times, hard times. We've had changes. On September 13th [2007] the United Nations adopted the Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And for the first time in the history of this world they recognized us as peoples with an "s." We fought 30 years for that. Up to that point, we were populations. Populations don't have human rights. Peoples do. That's why we had such a problem. Well, 143 countries voted for us, four voted against us. We know who they were. But the question is why? The question is why? And you have to really inspect that for a reason. We know each other. We've been sometimes allies, sometimes antagonists, but we know each other very well, especially the Haudenosaunee. Those 13 colonies were about as close to Indian as you're ever going to get, Grand Council, the whole works, instructions from our chiefs, democracy. Democracy is from here. It didn't come from overseas. It was here all the time. We were all democratic.

And so we're coming to a crux and it's a tough one. We're involved in it because we're people; peoples, I should say. That was really a benchmark. Now the problems that we had in that final document, we'll be battling in the next 30 years I suppose, if we have 30 years. That's the question. This global warming is extremely fast, it's coming and it's coming faster than you will think. In 2000, we gave a speech at the UN and we warned them then. We warned them then. The ice is melting. It took them seven years to respond to that, but seven years lost. Time's a factor now. We really don't have the luxury of another 100 years. We're going to see stuff very quickly and we best be ready, as leaders, as responsible people. It's coming now. You can't be red, you can't be white, you can't be yellow, you can't be black. You're people, you're a species and the species is in dire trouble as a species. There's nobody in charge of our fate except ourselves. Human beings have their own fate in their hands and how they act is how it's going to be. So they're looking for instructions and right now the long-term thinking is coming forward and the values are coming forward -- our values. And I say that collectively, because I know we all have the same -- I know that. I've traveled into ceremonies all over the place. It's all the same. It doesn't matter what language. It's the same. That's going to come back again. Now whether we can survive, collectively, is going to be up to us. It's just going to be up to us. That's all. So leadership is now coming forward and I think Indian nations have that opportunity. And the stuff that we're doing right here is kind of what you would call getting in shape. You're getting in shape, flexing yourself, getting back to where we used to be, getting in shape for the big one.

And I'm just really pleased and honored for this collection of humanity: common people, common cause, and we have to work together for survival. That's the way it's going to be. Unity -- that's what the peacemaker said. Your strength is in unity. One arrow you can break, arrows bound together in a tight bundle is strength. That's what we're doing. We're binding the arrows, getting ready. We've got to take care of each other and help our brother. He's in a lot of trouble and when he's in trouble so are we. There's no way to run. You have only one Mother and when you make her mad you're in trouble. And that's where she is right now. You can't make war against your Mother and that's what's going on in this world, and not without a consequence. So I know next year, when we have the meeting again, there'll be more examples of our abilities and our strength and who we are. It's coming forward and I'm pleased to see that.

I just want to say one more thing about sovereignty. In May [2007], in Halifax, Canada, they played the World Games Box Lacrosse Championships, world championships. And Iroquois Nationals won all through the week and came into the semi-finals and we defeated the United States 14 to 4. And we moved in to play for the gold on a Sunday and we were defeated by Canada by one goal in overtime. And I would say bad call from the ref in there, too. But it was our flag, it was our anthem, and our nation and our boys and they did do well. [Thank you]."

Megan Hill:

"Thank you, Chief. I've been honored and humbled to have been in this room with so much wisdom."

Native Nation Building TV: "Introduction to Nation Building"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Guests Manley Begay and Stephen Cornell present the key research findings of the Native Nations Institute and the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. They explain the five keys to successful community and economic development for Native nations (sovereignty or practical self-rule, effective institutions of self-governance, cultural match, strategic orientation, and leadership), and provide examples of Native nations that are rebuilding their nations. 

Mary Kim Titla: "Welcome to Native Nation Building. I'm your host Mary Kim Titla. Contemporary Native Nations face many daunting challenges including building effective governments, developing strong economies, solving difficult social problems and balancing cultural integrity and change. Native Nation Building explores these complex challenges and the ways Native nations are working to overcome them as they seek to make community and economic development a reality. Don't miss Native Nation Building next."

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[music]

Mary Kim Titla: "Today's program examines where, how and why nation building is currently taking place in Native communities throughout the United States and beyond, in particular the fundamental issues governing Native nations' efforts to restore their social sovereignty and economic vitality and shape their own futures. Here today to discuss these nation-building issues are Drs. Manley Begay and Stephen Cornell. Dr. Begay, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, is Director of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona, where he also serves as Senior Lecturer in the American Indian Studies Programs. Dr. Cornell is the Director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and a Professor of Sociology and Public Administration and Policy at the University of Arizona. For the past two decades, they both have worked extensively with Native Nations in a major research effort that seeks to identify the keys to solving the challenges to nation building. Welcome, gentleman, nice to have you here today."

Dr. Stephen Cornell: "Thanks for having us."

Mary Kim Titla: "First of all, what is nation building in practical terms?"

Dr. Stephen Cornell: "Nation building is really about how Indigenous nations in the U.S. and elsewhere can put together the tools they need to build the futures that they want. And by the tools they need, we really mean the tools of governance. These are nations in our experience with very ambitious goals, they face daunting challenges, they carry the legacies of colonialism, they are trying to overcome deficits in economic affairs, in health, in all kinds of areas. If they're going to do that, they need the governing tools that are adequate to that task and Nation building is about identifying those tools, putting them in place, being sure that they match Indigenous ideas and culture and putting them to work."

Mary Kim Titla: "Can you talk about some of the tools? Explain that."

Dr. Stephen Cornell: "Yeah. A lot of Indian nations here in the United States have governments that they did not design. That's not true of all of them, but a lot of tribal governments were designed basically by the U.S. Department of the Interior back in the 1930s. They aren't very sophisticated structures of government. Some of them have no provision for adequate court systems or ways to resolve disputes within the nation. Some of them have got unwieldy legislatures. Some of them don't have the kinds of procedures that you need if you're going to move vigorously and effectively to make good decisions, implement them, get things done. So we're talking about rethinking some of the those tools of government. What kinds of tribal courts or other dispute resolution mechanisms will serve Indigenous needs and interests? What kinds of governing structures will people believe in and support within the nation's own community? Are those structures adequate to what the nation is trying to do? So when we talk about tools, we're talking about the practical mechanisms that nation's use to organize how they go about trying to get stuff done."

Mary Kim Titla: "Dr. Begay, would you like to add to that?"

Dr. Manley Begay: "Sure. It seems from the work that we've been doing that nation building or nation rebuilding, as Steve mentioned, really began to occur with most Indian nations around 1975 when the Indian Self-Determination Act was ushered in, and since then a lot of Indian nations have begun to wrestle with rethinking their political systems, rethinking their economies and it's not unlike other nations that have gone through colonization and all of a sudden found themselves in the midst of freedom, if you will, very much like what occurred in Eastern Europe after the Soviet Union fell apart. Poland is wrestling with issues of constitutional reform, you had the European Union there, and Indian nations are in the same boat and a lot of other colonized society are wrestling with Nation building and rebuilding."

Mary Kim Titla: "Let's talk about the research. What prompted the Harvard Project and the Native Nations Institute to embark on the research?"

Dr. Stephen Cornell: "This kind of got us wondering what is it that makes some nations more successful than others, and in fact the data that we first looked at had to do in part with timber and with forestry. A lot of Indian nations have timber resources. Some of them seemed to be doing a better job of managing those resources than others and we got interested in why. And being professors, we thought maybe we knew the answers already -- typical of professors -- and so we thought, well, it'll be educational attainment or it'll be the Nations that have big natural resources will be doing well or the ones that have access to capital will be doing well. But we decided we'd better go look and we got a grant from the Ford Foundation to do some research. We spent a lot of time in the field getting stories of what was working, how did this enterprise succeed, how did this one fail, what else have you tried to do, what seems to be working here, what are the problems you're encountering. And the interesting sort of payoff to the research was it turned out that the critical elements were really political ones, that if you had your political house together, if you had some stability in the government, if you were successful in keeping political considerations out of enterprise management decisions or out of tribal court decisions -- if you could do some of those political things, then these sort of economic assets like good education or good natural resources or being close to a major market -- those would start to pay off. If you couldn't get the government house in order, then those assets tended to be wasted. So the result to the research was really to focus our attention on these political issues and the effect they were having on how these Nations did, whether or not they were able to achieve their goals."

Dr. Manley Begay: "And what was really interesting about the research findings initially was that we knew of no known cases of economic development, successful economic development, occurring without assertions of political sovereignty. And secondly, we also found that capable governing institutional development was a major piece of nation building. And thirdly, those institutions had to be culturally appropriate. And since then we've also found that Indian nations that are planning for the long haul if you will, a hundred years down the road -- what kind of society are we going to build, what do we perceive the society to look like 50 years from now --and those that have done that seem to be faring well or faring better than others that have not. Lastly, leadership is really critical. So these five components and research findings formed the basis for the work that we've been doing all along."

Mary Kim Titla: "Can you give us a snapshot of current Native nation-building efforts among indigenous peoples throughout the U.S. and Canada?"

Dr. Stephen Cornell: "Yeah, in fact there are a number of Nations across the U.S. right now that are engaged in constitutional processes. The Osage Nation in Oklahoma has just launched a major constitutional reform effort. The Crow Tribe of Montana, the Northern Cheyennes are involved in that. The San Carlos Apaches are engaged in governance reform or rethinking how they govern themselves. This is happening a good deal across the U.S. It's also happening in Canada where we see First Nations that are engaged in constitutional processes. Some of them are also engaged, especially in British Columbia, in treaty processes that involved working out new relationships with British Columbia and with Canada and that process also involves rethinking governance. So we see a lot of constitutional stuff happening there. We see some developments in tribal courts. The Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, which straddles the Ontario/New York boundary, are engaged right now in trying to rebuild their justice system. They of course face some interesting justice problems because of that boundary, because they're a nation that operates in two different jurisdictions and then they have their own jurisdiction. It's a complicated situation. They're trying to develop a court and justice system that's adequate to that set of challenges. We see a number of nations like the Ho-Chunk, the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, have started a corporation called Ho-Chunk Inc., which has been a very successful enterprise reducing unemployment there. They put a lot of thought into, how do you set up this enterprise so that it has a good chance of succeeding?"

Dr. Manley Begay: "And up in Canada there's the Membertou First Nation on the east side of Canada that's actually wrestled with figuring out how to develop a capable governing institution and they did that through what's called the ISO [International Organization for Standardization], sort of international standards set-up, and then also the Siksika Blackfoot Nation in Alberta have also really moved forward in thinking about nation building and is actually doing relatively well. Lac La Ronge as well. They're finding some success in promoting their wild rice not only in Canada and the United States but also overseas as well. So there are a number of stories of First Nations and bands up in Canada, tribes in the United States that have gone the extra effort to figure out how to build nations that work, and obviously one of the major success stories is the Mississippi Choctaw. And they did that without gaming. Initially they set up good governing institutions, they asserted sovereignty, really thought through how to develop a culturally appropriate political system and actually we refer to them as the Singapore of Indian Country. They did that without gaming. Only later on did they get into gaming and every day you'll see upwards of 7,000 black and white workers going on to Nation land to work. As a result, they've become the major political and economic powerhouse in the southeast and they've done that through nation building."

Mary Kim Titla: "And I've been there to Mississippi Choctaw and I've seen what they've done. It's really great with [Chief] Phillip Martin and other tribal leaders. I imagine that they must face many obstacles and of course those obstacles can get in the way of objectives. Can you talk about some of the obstacles that some of these Nations are facing?"

Dr. Stephen Cornell: "Boy, I think one of the obstacles that -- in fact I was just last week in Canada and talking with a First Nations leader and he said, 'You know, a lot of my people have been, we've learned over time to be dependent on Canada and to be dependent on federal agencies in Canada, and part of the work that we face as First Nations leaders,' he said, 'is trying to change that mind frame, trying to get into a mind frame that says, 'We can change this, we can take responsibility for what happens here.'' There's a -- Manley just mentioned the Siksika Nation of Blackfoot in Alberta. Chief Strater Crow Foot, whose the chief of that nation, he spoke at a session that Manley and I were both at not long ago and he said, 'We're trying to replace the victim attitude with a victor attitude.' He said, 'The victim attitude keeps you sitting still, the victor attitude gets you moving.' And he said, 'In my nation, that's one of our primary tasks as leaders is to change that attitude, a feeling that if we're really going to have an impact we've got to alter the way people look at the world around them, the way they think about what's possible.' So that's certainly one of the obstacles. Another obstacle, and Manley touched on this, is simply that sovereignty obstacle. It's getting the jurisdictional power to make decisions for yourself. That's something which Indian nations in the U.S., they've had a lot of jurisdictional power. It gets chipped away at by the U.S. Supreme Court, it's often under attack in the states and in Congress. Luckily, so far, much of it is surviving. In Canada, First Nations are struggling to achieve the level of sovereignty Indian Nations in the U.S. have, but that's an obstacle. If someone else is making the decisions for you, you're not likely to go much of anywhere. It's their decisions, the program represents their interests. Shifting real decision-making power into Indigenous hands is a critical piece of nation building. These nations have to be rebuilt by Indigenous people, not by decisions made in Washington or Ottawa or someplace like that. So I think the other big obstacle is that sovereignty piece. You've got to have the power to make things happen."

Mary Kim Titla: "We've talked about obstacles. Let's talk about assets. What are some of the greatest nation-building assets?"

Dr. Manley Begay: "Leadership is an asset. However, it's only an asset if you can couple that with developing good capable institutions, and if you set in place the rule of law and policies and codes and constitutions. That goes a long way. You can wait for a good leader to come around, and it takes 20 years to get a good leader, but you can't always be sure that the leader was going to be good. However, if you put in place policy, rules and regulations, you can always trust those rules, and enforcing those rules becomes part of nation building, and it seems to me that that's an asset that we see, the creativeness, the innovativeness of Indian people to really wrestle with figuring out how to do this, and to do it in a culturally appropriate fashion is an asset. And it's not something that's new."

Dr. Stephen Cornell: "The other thing we have to recognize as an asset is Indigenous cultures themselves, and sometimes people who think about how Indigenous culture is an asset think of it mainly in terms of stuff you can sell -- arts and crafts or something like that -- and that's an important way to think about it. We tend to think about it, though, in terms of what can we learn from Indigenous cultures about appropriate organization, so that the government that works at Navajo is not necessarily going to be the same as the government that works at Osage, because they are different nations with different heritages, different cultures, and part of the challenge of nation building is figuring out what set of institutions in fact resonate with what people here believe about how authority should be exercised, about how we should pursue goals. We've worked with some of the Pueblos in New Mexico where you have governing institutions that are very traditional. There are no elections, there are no legal codes, no written constitutions. The governing institutions are deeply rooted either in Pueblo tradition or in several hundred years of working under Pueblo influences, Spanish influences and other things. They've been borne out of Pueblo experience. You go up to the Flatheads in Montana, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation, and you'll see a tribal government that looks very different. It looks, as our colleague Joe Kalt likes to say, 'It looks like it came out of my high school civics textbook.' Well, you've got three nations on that reservation and those nations have had to find a way to govern themselves that they all can support so it doesn't look very traditional. There are three traditions there, they might be in conflict with each other. So they've had to find a set of institutions that work for them. But that link to Indigenous cultures, that ability to tap into the fact that these nations long ago solved tough human problems and maybe the ways they solved some of those problems still work today. Let's tap into that. At Navajo, their court system, their justice system today combines western jurisprudence with longstanding Navajo ways of dealing with disharmony or conflict and that makes them an extraordinarily effective court system that no outsider could have invented. It had to be generated by Navajo people."

Mary Kim Titla: "Can we talk about more of the research and the five major keys to successful community and economic development among Nations?"

Dr. Stephen Cornell: "The first finding that came out of this research really was the sovereignty finding, the fact that Indigenous nations themselves have to be in the driver's seat if things are going to happen. So there's a kind of a power issue there. Where is the power? And from a research point of view, it just underlined something that Manley touched on earlier, that we haven't been able to find a case across Indian Country of sustained, self-determined economic development where someone other than the Indigenous nation was calling the shots. So that turns out to be a necessary piece of the puzzle. The second piece that came in on the research findings was that, yeah, but that's not enough in and of itself. You've got to back it up with the kinds of governing institutions that Manley has been talking about. They've got to be capable of dealing with contemporary challenges. They've got to be stable. They've got to control, keep politics in its place. They've got to assure people that if I have a claim, a dispute with the nation, it'll be dealt with fairly. Part of the challenge for Indigenous leaders today is, how do we hang onto our talented, energetic young people with ideas? If I've got a family to support, will I pursue supporting that family at home on the rez or will I move to L.A. or Minneapolis or something like that? For tribal leaders, how do we create an environment that says, 'You can do it right here, we'll make it possible, we'll keep you'? That means a governing situation in which it doesn't matter who my family is, who I voted for, I'll get a fair shake. So that second finding was about capable governing institutions. The third was this thing we've just been talking a bit about of the cultural match piece of making sure those institutions really have the support of the people, that people believe this is our government, not an import from somebody else -- this is ours. And then these last two pieces that Manley talked about, the strategic thinking that gets people to make decisions on what's on our agenda today in terms of what matters in the long run and what does that mean for how we decide this today. And then that piece of leadership."

Dr. Manley Begay: "Yeah, to give you an example, back to Mississippi Choctaw. Initially a big portion of the population of the Choctaws were moved to Indian Territory in Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears, so you essentially had this society that was uprooted back in the 1830s and only small groups stayed in Mississippi. But they held onto the land, they held on to who they were as Choctaws. And as time went on they went through the termination period, they went through...and here comes the Indian Self-Determination Act and they essentially wrestled jurisdiction and power and control from the feds as well as state government and began to pursue a long-term plan, and Chief Phillip Martin was sort of the main impetus for assertions of sovereignty back then. And once they wrestled a significant amount of decision-making power from the federal government and also from the State [of Mississippi], they began to think through, how do we develop a capable governing institution? And they did that basically by necessity because before they could attract manufacturing companies to the nation, they had to think about a commercial code, they had to think about appropriate policy rules and regulations, laws being put in place, a good court system, separating business from politics, and so forth so that the investor could feel safe in investing on nation land. And then the cultural match piece came in. Historically, Mississippi Choctaws really had the strong chief executive-type of political structure, but they also had a strong court system. They had a separation of powers and checks and balances set up, which allowed for them to plan well. So a lot of this was planned out years and years ago. A lot of the success Mississippi Choctaws are having now was planned 50 years ago, and so today you essentially have a zero percent unemployment rate, you have to import labor and so forth, so the strategic thinking piece came into play. And then you have good leadership, you essentially have really good leadership. So all of the ingredients to successful nation building seems to be present at Mississippi Choctaw. But we've seen it at Fort McDowell, we've seen it at Siksika, we've seen it at all of these places that we've mentioned that have built nations that seem to be working well."

Mary Kim Titla: "We do want to talk about more of those positive stories, those models if you want to call them that. I like Mississippi Choctaw, so I'm glad that you touched on that. Are there some other examples out there that you'd like to add?"

Dr. Stephen Cornell: "Well, one that we're particularly fond of is the Citizen Potawatomi story from Oklahoma. The Citizen Potawatomi Nation back in the 1970s -- this today is a very large nation, I think its population is well over 20,000 people -- but in the 1970s they had very little land that they controlled, less than 100 acres, they had hardly any money in the bank, life was tough, [the] situation was grim. Today the Citizen Potawatomi Nation owns the First National Bank of Shawnee, Oklahoma. Today they own the supermarket in Shawnee, where they sell beef grown in their own cattle herd and vegetables grown on their own farm. They've basically got a vertically-integrated food business going. They own some of the media outlets in town. And when you talk to "Rocky" Barrett, who is the current chairman of the Nation, he says, 'Well, you know, it's really an institutions story.' And I remember the first time I heard him tell the story of the Citizen  Potawatomi Nation at a conference in Oklahoma, and afterwards I talked to him and I said, 'You know, you really tell a nation-building story about governing institutions.' And his response was, 'Oh, yeah, if you're not thinking about constitutional reform, you're not in the economic development ballgame, because what you've got to do is get that political house together and then you'll be able to create the kind of economic success.' So we look at Citizen  Potawatomi, a remarkable turnaround from the mid 1970s to the start of the 21st century in that nation's fortunes. Some nations, there are these success stories out there, and some of them are about pieces of nations and we've been fortunate -- in doing this work on nation building -- you come across nations that are doing extraordinary things that you don't hear about. I think often what we hear about are the problems in Indian Country. But some of the...we've talked about the Navajo Nation court system, which is one of these striking successes. The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, another example of nations coming together and solving a difficult problem creatively and effectively. At Fond du Lac, they've got a foster care program that has solved a major problem they had with the placement of tribal kids in non-Native homes. They've come up with a way to deal with that problem. It's effective, it works. These kinds of stories are all over the place out there and in one way or another they are nation-building stories."

Mary Kim Titla: "And then trying to train the young Native leaders, I think the Gila River Indian Community has done an excellent job of that with their youth council and really they're a model for a lot of tribes around the country. Anything you'd like to add?"

Dr. Manley Begay: "The Cochiti Pueblo is another Indian nation that sort of has built these very successful economic ventures. At one point in time, Cochiti, a significant part of Cochiti, was actually under water when a dam was built, and very little seemed to be in the works for how to get out of the situation that they were in. And lo and behold they essentially began to assert a certain amount of jurisdiction and a certain amount of power and authority, and today you find a tremendous amount of success at Cochiti. They've developed one of the top 100 public golf courses in the United States. They have a retirement community where Harry and Martha from Ohio go to retire. And it's a very interesting turnaround. Here a very traditional society is doing relatively well in pursuing certain economic development projects and they've done it with, as we said earlier, first pursuing jurisdiction and decision-making power and authority, and it really resonates to non-Indian society. Often non-Indian society [has] a hard time grasping political sovereignty. The thought is, 'Well, we've got to take political sovereignty away from Indian Country and then we need to tell them what to do essentially.' However, it seems as though that it's in the best interest of non-Indian society to support political sovereignty, because in the long run when economic development takes place in Indian Country, it affects nearby communities, it affects the region and in turn it affects the nation as a whole. So it has this domino effect. So it really is important for non-Indian communities, also governments, to support political sovereignty."

Mary Kim Titla: "Well, I want to thank the both of you. We've talked about a lot of things today, about some of the positive stories that are out there, some of the obstacles that Native tribes are facing and I must say that they've dealt with adversity very well and they have a history of dealing with that. I see a bright future, so thank you for what you're doing. We'd like to thank Dr. Begay and Dr. Cornell for appearing on today's edition of Native Nation Building, a program of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the University of Arizona. To learn more about Native Nation Building and the issues discussed here today, please visit the Native Nations Institute's website at nni.arizona.edu/nativetv. Thank you for joining us and please tune in for the next edition of Native Nation Building."

Tribal Per Capitas and Self-Termination

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For many Indian families, tribal per capita payments help meet their most basic needs. They buy food, pay heating bills, make car payments, and open savings accounts. As a Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians leader explains, per capita monies have given historically impoverished Indian communities “cause to hope and dream and plan.” But systemically, “per caps” are causing harm to tribes as independent political entities.

Ho-Chunk, Inc., CEO Lance Morgan has indicted per capita dollars as a “new form of welfare [that] is just the latest in a cycle of dependency that Indian Country has been trying to break out of for the last 100 years.” Socioeconomic dilemmas aside, per capitas have become an indomitable force in tribal policy and governance, to the detriment of Indian political stability and self-governance...

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Galanda, Gabriel S. "Tribal Per Capitas and Self-Termination." Indian Country Today Media Network. August 13, 2014. Opinion. (https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/opinions/tribal-per-capitas..., accessed August 13, 2014)

How Do We Re-Member?

Producer
Indian Country Today
Year

On July 2, the tribal council of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde held a special meeting to allow their citizens an opportunity to testify for or against a proposed emergency enrollment ordinance whereby the Council sought to delegate its constitutional authority to involuntarily dismember citizens. At issue was whether or not the Council should give the enrollment committee the power to make the final decision. The committee, made up of tribal members selected by the Council, had already studied the situation and recommended the dismemberment of over 80 citizens. At the conclusion of a nearly three-hour discussion, the Council narrowly adopted the ordinance and set into motion an expedited process. Exactly three weeks later, on July 24, the enrollment committee would follow up on its earlier recommendations and vote to formally dismember 86 tribal citizens--both living and deceased members...

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Citation

Wilkins, David. "How Do We Re-Member?" Indian Country Today. July 30, 2014. Opinion. (https://ictnews.org/archive/thoughts-on-how-we-re-member, accessed July 18, 2023)