strategic visioning

Patricia Riggs: The Role of Citizen Engagement in Nation Building: The Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Story

Producer
National Congress of American Indians
Year

Patricia Riggs, Director of Economic Development for Ysleta del Sur Pueblo (YDSP), discusses how YDSP has spent the past decade developing and fine-tuning its comprehensive approach to engaging its citizens in order to identify and then achieve its nation-building priorities.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the National Congress of American IndiansThe "Rebuilding the Tigua Nation" film shown in this video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Riggs, Patricia. "The Role of Citizen Engagement in Nation Building: The Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Story." 70th Annual Convention & Marketplace, National Congress of American Indians. Tulsa, Oklahoma. October 15, 2013. Presentation.

Ian Record:

"So I'll turn the floor over to Patricia Riggs. Again, she's the economic development director with the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo and as she told me today, she's sort of their de facto chief of citizen engagement for their pueblo. Anytime they face a challenge in this arena, they tend to turn to her because she's done so much wonderful work in this area. Did you want to start with the video or with your presentation?"

Patricia Riggs:

"It's a little long. If you want to start it and then kind of go through middle and then restart it again."

Ian Record:

"So again, this is a video that Pat was involved with putting together. It's called 'Rebuilding the Tigua Nation.' Tigua is another name that refers to her nation and this again I think...think of this not just in terms of what it shares with you, but think of this as a viable tool of citizen education and engagement. We're seeing more and more nations do things like this. These videos that instruct not just their own citizens, but outsiders about who the nation is and what they're doing and why."

[VIDEO]

Patricia Riggs:

"Good afternoon, everyone. Hello. As Ian stated, my name is Pat Riggs and I'm the Director of Economic Development at Ysleta del Sur [Pueblo]. We started community engagement back in 2006. Of course at the Pueblo, there's always been some form of community engagement, but we had a very significant event that took place. If you paid attention closely to the film, we talked about the casino being closed down. In 1987, we were federally restored and there was one little clause in our restoration act that said, "˜The tribe shall not have gaming that is illegal in Texas.' So when the State of Texas started bingo and lottery, we decided that there was gaming in Texas so we opened our casino and they sued us and the courts held that the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act didn't apply to the tribe, that the language in our restoration act superseded that. So we operated gaming from around 1992 to 2002. It was open for about 10 years and it first started as a bingo hall and then later on to Class 2 gaming. So when the casino actually did end up closed, we had invested quite a bit in infrastructure and the tribe had done a lot of good things with our funding or our revenues that we got for the tribe, but we were basically at a...we were in shock. There was this economic turmoil that was taking place that we didn't realize was actually going to take place. We thought that there was no way that we would lose the case, but we ended up losing the case.

So citizen engagement started out of the need to really find out what the community needed. What we started doing is really looking at different groups and seeing what their needs are and really trying to identify with the tribe and what they needed. This is just a picture of what we call "˜listening to our ancestors,' because everything that we do really does come from our history and who we are as a people and where we've been so just the fact that in spite of everything that's happened to us, it seems like...sometimes they call us the 'Bad Luck Tribe' because if something can go wrong, it happens to us. We got left out of the Treaty of Guadalupe in 1861 so we weren't recognized with the other pueblos. We ended up on the Confederate side of the line. Just things throughout history ended up happening.

Really a lot what was happening, too, was our own mindset and the way we thought as a community, so when the casino was closed we kind of stood at a standstill, we didn't know what to do, we were in shock. And I had been working at another location. I'd been working in the City of El Paso and the tribe asked me to come back and I was like, "˜Economic Development, hmm.' So I really didn't know anything about economic development, but I said, "˜I'll give it a try.' But when I came back, one of the things that I started doing is really listening and trying to figure out what was happening in the community. And so I heard in the video that Ian played before from Native Nations Institute, someone said that some of the challenges or the biggest challenges for the tribe come from within. So I'm really about training and trying to figure out what the community wants and so they started asking me to train different departments. And so I started paying attention to what the community was actually saying and to what some of our employees were saying and these are actual...their quotes, their statements that were actually said and they're things like, "˜Tiguas don't want to learn.' Everything was always blamed on tribal council and we all know that there's problems with councils sometimes, but sometimes I think we exaggerate those things because we don't want to move forward or we don't...we try to rationalize what we are or what we're not doing in our departments. So it was always about, "˜We can't do that because tribal council won't allow it,' "˜It doesn't matter.' Some of our non-tribal employees were saying that we couldn't do particular, they wouldn't do particular things because the tribal members would go tell council what they were doing and it was just, it was ridiculous, really. When you really sat down and listened to it and you put all the statements together, it was ridiculous.

So basically...so what we determined that we needed to do is really engage our community in education and try to really figure out who the community was because we know who we are as a people, we know our culture, we knew traditions, but we don't really know the community in terms of what needs do they...are out there, what are the poverty levels, what are the education levels, who's employed, who's not employed, what kind of skills do they have? And as far as doing a needs assessment we needed that, but we also needed to take an inventory of what we have or had in order to move forward. So we started doing different things to try and get the community engaged. And so this is what it looks like if you do the 'flyer method' and it just doesn't work. You send all these beautiful flyers out there and just get ready for everybody to come and they don't show up. So it was like, "˜Well, what am I doing wrong here?' And we were actually, at one point we even brought Native Nations Institute and we had a very small crowd there. So we thought about what we could actually do to get the community more involved.

So what we found is actually working with groups and even within the reservation there are special interest groups. We all have little things that...or subjects that we're interested in and what we found is to look for those core champions in your communities. And there's people who are really just very traditional and that's what they want to discuss and that's what they want to do in terms of who they are so we asked them, "˜Okay, how do you think that we can infuse tradition into the things that we're doing?' We also started working with youth. The thing about youth is if you work with youth and you train them and you honor them and you show their parents what they're doing, then the parents come, too. So we started figuring out how to get parents engaged as well. And then we did different things with leadership, with elders. One of the things that we did learn is that we really need to figure out how to work with each group and how to...and so through the little groups we got the whole.

The big thing here is you can't expect people to just come to you. As I showed the meetings with the flyers, it just didn't work. We had to find different ways to actually go out into community and to seek input. So we went to the elders. And I mentioned earlier that our casino had closed, but it's actually operating now as a sweepstakes center. So it's kind of we have... they look like terminals, but they're actually all hooked up into one network. So there are signs all over the place that say you're donating to the tribe and you're donating to our health, to our education. So we just got creative on ways to do things. It's not quite as revenue generating as it was before, but there's still funding coming in. One of the times I went to the elders and I wanted to do a survey with them and so they said, "˜Oh, no, we don't have time for your survey.' And I'm like, "˜But I have 'Free Play'.' And they, "˜Oh, Free Play, okay. Sit down.' So we started talking to them and then they found out some of the things that we're doing and they were engaged in that, actually came to where they actually wanted to participate in some of the events that we were having. And so they started making the food and sometimes we could pay them and sometimes we couldn't, but they were okay with that and they started assisting us in our events.

So then we also, one of the things that we did is in order to engage the community...there is no greater engagement than actually serving the community, so we started an AmeriCorp program and the AmeriCorp program, they work with the elders, they work in the cultural center, they work in emergency management, in environmental. So they're kind of our ambassadors for community engagement in different areas. The other thing is we do a lot of data collection and we do a lot of surveys, but when we do it we work with focus groups or we work with all the other little core groups and we educate them about why we're trying to collect the information. So we educate them first and then they are kind of our core champions or leaders so they go out into their groups and they tell either the other elders or youth or whoever it is that we're working with why it is important. So we educate them on how to educate the community on getting that information and we've been very successful in gathering information for our tribe in order to determine what it is that we're going to focus on, whether it's health or whether it's economic development. I'll show you a little bit more in a minute about the successes with data collection and also the projects that we're working on.

I know that one of the first times that Joe Kalt went to Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, I had been working in writing grants not just for the tribe, but also for the City of El Paso and I wanted a model, I wanted a matrix and I was like, "˜Well, do you have a matrix?' and it's like, "˜No.' So I realized, I think I really like to visualize what it is that we're trying to accomplish, but I kind of think very methodical. So I have to figure out what exactly it is that we're going to tackle, but I also realize that those kind of models and theories, they're for other communities, they're not really for us. We can't take somebody's methodology and use it at our tribe. So I started to look back and thinking like what is it exactly that we're doing, and this is what I came up with.

Well, one of the things is we have a purpose. No matter what it is that we're trying to tackle, whether it's constitutional reform or building entrepreneurs, there's a purpose there. So you find that purpose and there's also...but with that purpose, there's always passion and I'm so passionate about what I do. That's all I do. I have to have people drag me away from it sometimes, but there's other people in your communities with that passion. So look for the passionate people and then harvest the information. You really do have to harvest information and gather that input from your community, because that's who you're working for and that's who really is driving you to do what it is that you do.

The other thing is...so you visualize and then you assess and you plan. And I know it's kind of theory-like, but when it comes to your community, what is it that you're visualizing? Like for us, one of the things that we're working on is a land use plan and land acquisition. So when we're visualizing, I'm not doing this theory of visualizing, we're actually looking at the community and thinking about the things that we lost and the things that we need for ceremony and where...the places that it's going to come from, from the land and how are we going to be able to redevelop our lands and preserve our lands as they once were and then also rebuild our community as a village because we're used to living as a village and that was taken away from us. So when we're visualizing, that's...we're visualizing how we want to live. It's about how the entire...what the entire community sees. So then of course we can work, work, work, work, but at the end of the day we really do have to have something to show for it. So you do have to measure those impacts and the outcomes of what it is that you're doing because...and then you take it back to the community and show your successes and so you report the results.

And then here's basically the same thing with a little bigger snapshot, but in the end it really is about community, whether you're trying to figure out what the community wants, you start at the community; whether you're trying to figure out the data, you're getting it from community, you're trying to draw a picture of what your community really is, and then in the end you report those results back to the community and then you also try to determine what is driving the community and those are things such as the ceremonies and traditions and culture and just living together as a Tigua society for us. So we look at the core values and we reaffirm them by asking different people in the community and also about what is the best way to apply the things in a manner that...that will work in a manner that is fair to the entire tribe and to every sector of the tribal population.

So this is a little bit of our timeline and as far as our economy is concerned...so really what was happening to us, we had basically lost all our lands. We were living in a small part of El Paso in a little, basically it was a neighborhood. It really wasn't a reservation and we had, there were small adobe houses, most of them were one room. It was during the termination policy, so we really didn't have any hope of having a better life. We were just happy to be able to still be there and still be living as a community and still, even though we weren't federally recognized, we still held tribal elections, we still had our ceremonies every year, we still had people in charge of dong the things that...the doings that needed to be done for us to continue to survive as a Pueblo the best that we could. So of course the civil rights movement took place later and that's when people started to gain more confidence and to start asserting their rights.

So what happened in the 1960s is we were basically losing our few homes that we had left to tax foreclosure because it was the City of El Paso now and throughout there's a couple pictures that you'll see the entire, what our Pueblo used to look like, and because we weren't on federal trust land. And one of the important reasons that we start that film where we're crossing the highway and the tribal police are directing traffic for us is because that one spot is where our Pueblo used to be and we had stacked adobe homes. And the City of El Paso -- because we weren't federally recognized or had trust status -- they decided to have condemnation proceedings against our Pueblo because they needed that one spot that's a highway and they needed it to extend the highway. So they had condemnation proceedings and they condemned the Pueblo basically. So that is the center of our tribe and that's why we decided to start the film there.

So land acquisition and development and regaining and putting land into trust is very important for us so basically there was a lawyer by the name of Tom Diamond that helped us to get federally restored or federally recognized in 1969, but we were basically terminated on the same day because the State of Texas had a Texas Indian Commission, so they turned over the trust responsibility to the Texas Indian Commission. Well, there were some good things that happened out of that. We did get some new housing out of it and there was a few more jobs and some economic development took place. So in the "˜60s, basically our unemployment rate was 75 percent. By the "˜70s it went to about 50 percent and we went from a fifth-grade education to about a 10th-grade education. So then in '87 we were federally restored and the casino was thriving and our unemployment rate basically went down to three percent. We went from 68 acres of land that were transferred over during the time of restoration to 75,000 acres of land that we invested in with our casino revenues and then we also built a lot more housing. I think you saw in the film where the housing was. And then we...but then the casino closed because we were sued. So basically, we were really at odds, we didn't know what we were going to do.

So we started off by doing projections on our funding and what we had in reserves and we determined was that if we continued to operate in the same manner we would run out of money in seven years. So we had to decide what it is that we were going to do, so that's when we started this nation-building process and we started investing money in a development corporation, which is now doing federal contracting and we're located in probably at least five places throughout the country: Washington D.C., Virginia, California, Colorado Springs. And that also took forming a board and separation of business and politics and having a committee that turned into...later to the board. And so this education process, we're educating different people in the community.

One of the things we did is we educated the board on how to operate as a board, which started as an economic development committee and then they ended up the board. So now this... we reassigned the economic development committee and now they're being trained as how to operate as a nonprofit board so then we're going to replace them and they're going to become probably another board. So we just keep getting small groups and keep educating so that they can build the capacity to do other things. But in order to do this we really, really needed to know what our state was as far as a community is concerned. So we were able to really determine what our... who we were, where our people were located at, what the rates of unemployment were and poverty levels, household levels, individual household levels.

The other thing that happened to us in our restoration act is that the language in there said that the tribe shall consist of membership that is on the base roll and people descending from that base roll up to one-eighth blood quantum. They said that in 1987. So we quickly realized that in a few years we'd no longer exist as a tribe because we would lose that blood quantum. So the tribe decided that they were going...we went to Congress and it took us 10 years of introducing different bills, but we ended up just recently having the blood quantum bill passed. So in order to do this, we really needed to figure out who we were as a people because we needed to take that information to Congress. So this is what our community looks like now and we also studied the people that live outside the service area, our tribal members that live outside the service area as well, and what we're finding is really they left before economic opportunity because they're a little bit better off in terms of education and household income.

I talked a little bit about cooperative education and so what we're also doing in order to engage our citizens and get this information -- because we collect that information every single year from tribal members and we've been successful as far as getting the information -- but we also make sure that we give it back to them and that when we compile any sort of information that we give them the reports back, like whether it's health and if there's a diabetes report or whatever it is. But the other thing is we all come to these conferences because we work as professionals, but your average tribal citizen doesn't have that opportunity to learn the things like we're learning today, what's happening in the federal courts and what's happening as far as policy is concerned and even what happened with the Indian Child Welfare Act, and so we take that education to them. We make sure that there's money in the budget to educate our tribal members and we do everything from Indian law to nation building to...we have other people even come and do community engagement to let them know how important it is. We have financial literacy training, but we also do like board training. And so if there's a subject that we think is important for us to learn and what's on the agenda here and at other conferences, we make sure that we find a way to take it back to the community and to be able to train them so that they know. And even when we work with our departments who of course...there has to be some professional training there, a lot of times some of our tribal members don't have the capacity to be in those higher positions of directors, so we tell our directors, "˜We're going to put this training out for you, but you need to pick a tribal member and it doesn't matter if it's a secretary or a maintenance person or whatever it is, you need to bring them to this training also and you need to figure out how you're going to get that information back to your department as well.'

As far as community engagement and what it's done for us as far as impacts are concerned, these are some of the projects that we've worked on that have really made an impact in our community. One of the things is we did this huge comprehensive strategy and that's where we determined that we were going to do things like the Tigua, Inc. Development Corporation, we were going to do workforce development, land use plan, land acquisition plan. All those things were outlined in this strategy and there was focus groups and surveys that were on our website. And if you actually look at our website all the reports are on there as far as the information that the community provided to us and what we compiled and gave back to the community. So this comprehensive strategy, a lot of strategies and plans just end up on the bookshelf, but as you can see it didn't. We like to say that you need to plan your work and you need to work your plan.

The other thing is Tigua, Inc., the tribe provided the seed money for that and now they have really just taken off over the last couple years and getting significant contracts and they're doing a lot of building maintenance all over the country. They just recently got awarded the Wyler Building in California, which is the second largest government facility in the country to do maintenance. This is the Tigua Business Center that we just recently moved into about a year and a half ago and it also incubates Tigua, Inc., but it also serves as headquarters for our department, Economic Development, and we're also just now building another extension to it, which is going to be to incubate tribal member businesses, and we also have, because we really truly believe in educating the tribe and we're not quite there yet as far as having a college. We're building the Tigua Technology Center there, which is also going to help to provide the software that some of our tribal members need to get their business done like the costing and pricing for construction companies and for auto mechanics and CAD and those things that are really expensive that they can't afford as far as software is concerned.

And then also our tax code, this was one of the things that also came out of the comprehensive economic development strategy. For some reason, the tribe had decided that it was going to adopt the State of Texas tax code, which made no sense whatsoever. It was 200 pages long and we couldn't enforce it. And so what we did is we took a look at what would best serve our needs and we went from 200 pages to 20 pages and in less than a year we went from $58,000 a year to $1.2 million in tax collections. The allocation also is divided up for different programming. But I'm able to support our department because we get 30 percent of tax allocation and that's how I am able to turn that into some of the programming that we're doing.

Here's the feedback and it's really a snapshot of the feedback that we got back from the community and the things that they were concerned with in land use. So they were, the community of course was concerned with things like cultural preservation and being able to maintain our traditional practices, having land for residential use, commercial needs and agriculture, as well as transportation. So we determined what the best use of lands would be and through community engagement we also took an inventory of our lands and created a database that had all the criteria of our lands, as well as GIS mapping, whatever, if there were environmental assessments. And so we have a really defined database of all our lands and then we created a master plan and an acquisition plan. The acquisition plan isn't quite finished yet, but this timeline that we looked at started with the need to preserve our lands and we have these milestones where we want to have our master plan and do energy development and make sure that everybody has housing and those things. But then at the end it ends with cultural preservation, too, because it demonstrates 100 years from now that we're still here and our land is preserved.

And then also on one side we have all the modern and things we need to survive today, but we also have all the things that are important to us historically and culturally. When we started writing a master plan through community engagement, we had these and we had these maps of the land...of our land in big sheets and we had the community write what certain places of what they wanted the land to look like.

And also they put places like by the river, like for example, that is still important to us today but that...we have ceremonies at the river that we can't just go to the river anymore. We border Mexico, so everybody knows about the big fence at the river. So we actually have to go ask the Border Patrol to let us go to the river to do our ceremonies. So part of our master planning is to take over the acequias or the irrigation system or the canal system that we actually created 300 years ago. So we created this cultural life cycle that we would incorporate into our land use and master plan and it talks about where we are at birth and how we're being nurtured and the lessons we're learning and how we learn about our culture and then how as elders our roles change and that then we become teachers and we pass on this tradition and culture. So in our land use plan we...that bar that intersects across there talks about the different places that we're going to create to make sure those things happen. So we have things like a nation-building hub and also an elder center and places for teens to meet as well.

So these are...see those are pictures of maps that we used where the community actually drew what they wanted the community to look like, and these are statements that the community provided back. And then we also had different criteria as far as what the community wanted to see and graphed and charted what the community best wanted for our lands. So these are also places that we don't own yet, but they're what we used to own. And so in our land acquisition process, we want to buy these locations back and this is what we could do with them as far as economic development is concerned. And it seems like way out there, but in reality it really isn't. When you think about we just had 68 acres in 1987 and we have 75,000 acres now, it's attainable. And then so this is what our acquisition process is going to look like and how we mapped it. Everything that is in yellow is what we own and what's in the darker colors is our long-term acquisition. We know that we can't buy everything, but we do...those are the gaps that we want to fill in. I talked a little bit about our enrollment ordinance. Well, we're working on an enrollment ordinance, a new citizen engagement [process] because of the blood quantum bill that just passed last year. So I had thought that that was going to go to somebody else, but I just was told last week that that citizen engagement process would actually come to our department so that's something that we're working on now. This was just a little conversation that the team had last week and these are questions that we're really thinking about what we need to ask the community. It'll be much more comprehensive, but just basic things like what does citizenship mean to you and how did you learn how to be a good citizen from your parents and your community, and so that's the way we usually start with just the basic questions and then we move into real comprehensive model.

These are just a couple, I guess, pointers to just make sure that you try to identify what your tribe needs and also...and then as far as when you're working within your community just know that everything that you're doing is either going to impact your tribe either positively or negatively. And what the work [is] that you're doing, how is that going to actually help your tribe or not help your tribe because sometimes we're afraid to move forward and to change, but in order to change you really need to know what it is that your community wants and to respect what their thoughts are and what they want for the future. Thank you."

Paulette Jordan: Engaging the Nation's Citizens and Effecting Change: The Coeur d'Alene Story

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Paulette Jordan, citizen and council member of the Coeur d'Alene Tribe in Idaho, discusses the importance of Native nation leaders being grounded in their culture and consulting the keepers of the culture (their elders) so that they approach the leadership challenges they face with the proper mindset and tools. She also shares a story about she helped to mobilize tribal citizens and non-Indians in her community to support a tax levy in order to preserve adequate funding for local public education.

Resource Type
Citation

Jordan, Paulette. "Engaging the Nation's Citizens and Effecting Change: The Coeur d'Alene Story." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. November 7, 2013. Presentation.

Herminia Frias:

"Our next presenter is Paulette Jordan and she is a tribal council member from Coeur d'Alene Tribe and she is going to be presenting her experience in citizen engagement and effecting change."

Paulette Jordan:

"Well, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate this opportunity. It feels like a homecoming because I was here back in 2009, right Renee [Goldtooth]? And so it feels like home, and I really do appreciate the hospitality and the good nature that I've always been given. I started out here for the Emerging Tribal Leaders Seminar just when I was just elected on to the tribal council. And so it's always a learning process, but you just have to run and go. There is no college or any type of education that you can go through really to really prepare you for tribal leadership. It's one of a kind, it's all on its own. You can go and get any specific degree and your MBA, your doctorate, whatever, your law degree, but none of that really prepares you for the challenges of what you're about to face when it comes to the people with domestic violence issues or meth issues -- as we heard here -- and housing issues. There's always a concern and how you manage that with your own people really is based on how you base your culture within your own heart and your empathy to understand your people and not judge them.

And so that's always been my big learning curve...is thankfully being raised by the elders, they've always said, "˜As long as you hold your heart out in your hand, that is how you approach your people,' and so that's always been my strategy is just to listen first and foremost and so that's why I come here to you all and offer myself just more so as a student. So whenever someone tries to put me up on any pulpit or anything like that I just say, "˜I'm just a humble person. I was just someone who was just raised on the reservation who just wants to come back and help make my community a better place.' And so whatever title or whatever someone wants to put on you, you just have to remind yourself where you come from and that's one thing my [Coeur d'Alene language] always said. So all the challenges that I've faced, even the ones that I'm going to be facing tomorrow and the next day and the next day after that, I have to remember my grandmothers and they always said to never forget where you came from.

And I mention that because I've pretty much learned over the years where the necessary places for us as tribal peoples. Now how many in here are tribal leaders, sit on your tribal councils, your tribal government? We've got some good representation here. As tribal leaders, what I've learned is we face a lot of conflicts, a lot of challenges, and in those approaches we have to build relationships. It's your job and your duty and your responsibility not only to build a relationship with your people but those surrounding communities, whether you live within a certain county, within a certain state and just being in the U.S. You have to go and meet with the President, with the Congress, with your city council, with your county commissioners, etc. and you have to develop those positive relationships for your people. So you have to be able to communicate to express the nature and the value of your citizens. And so for me, coming in as a young tribal leader learning that we had to promote our own people, promote our own issues, they're all unique, but to me as a Coeur d'Alene woman coming in, the vested interest in me was that we had to tell our story so that our concerns would be addressed at home and that meant building these relationships with the non-tribal community. And so that's what I've been doing and that's been my goal. That's also the reason why I ran for a state representative position in the State of Idaho as a Democrat in a very Republican state. But the point of doing that was in a very racist state, we live 30 miles south of a KKK [Ku Klux Klan] compound. So Idaho is a very not only Republican state, but very white supremacist-natured state, so we have to deal with these issues. But it's...everyone, every state has their issues so no one's better, no one's perfect, no one's more challenged than the other. But that's something I raise today because that also helps to build up [to] what I'm about to get to.

And so I talk about how the white supremacy group comes in and why it is that I decided to step up to some of these challenges, because each and every day I've learned -- whether I worked in D.C. or came back home and worked or even sitting on the tribal council -- that it always comes down to not just telling your story, but being those rooms, the meetings, doing the work, getting there to tell the people, the non-tribal people that this is what you're about, that you're not here to be an enemy, but more so a friend and how you can work together, how you can build those partnerships. Not just for you and that other person in the room that you're sitting across the table from, but for your communities at large and how that's going to benefit both the tribal and the non-tribal aspects.

So that was one of the first challenges that I've faced being on the tribal council and I just wanted to reflect that, because to me for us to get better as communities we have to look at who our friends are and that has to be everybody. We can't just think, "˜Oh, we're sovereign nations, we're going to move forward on our own.' That's not going to happen and that's really more of a pie-in-the-sky and wishful thinking but in all reality, yes, that's great, we're sovereign nations and let's act as such. Let's practice our traditional ways, let's continue to get out there and dig our roots and gather our berries and hunt our game and our wildlife, but yet still we have to know that we are one aspect in the larger picture and we are a small function in the greater world. But as my uncle always says, "˜We could still be a leader in this world based on how we walk our talk even as small nations.' Something I wanted to share, he's one of my greatest mentors, I probably should [have] mentioned this before, but I wanted to share that, how he has always stated to me that "˜the dollar is not the Almighty.' And again I'll say that, "˜The dollar is not the Almighty.' '...And that we must always remember to be humble before the Almighty God, to take care of our children, our elders, our people, our employees and our communities, to walk our talk and lead by example and in doing so,' he said, "˜we can improve our societies and show the world who we truly are as a nation. Our humanity is all that matters at the end of the day and how we look upon one another as relatives.' And he stated, "˜Once we can understand why and what it is we hold sacred, we can truly move mountains.' And so that is a quote that I wanted to share with you from my own uncle, who really helped advise me to the business woman, the leader that I am today.

Still, I just consider myself again a student, so I'm constantly learning from my elders. But it's always stated that you have to talk to your children. Arlene [Templer], she mentioned how you have to mentor each other, you have to mentor your children into these stages. Consult with your elders, your statesmen, your tribal leaders to build this historical knowledge to help prevent you from making the same mistakes that they made and then learn from their experiences because they all have great ideas, but people tend to write them off and want to move them into elders' homes when that should never be the case, that yes, they're in their golden years, but it's golden years for a reason. They're these treasures within our society that are the greatest resource that we have and I've seen within every tribal community that people tend to think more so towards and lean more so towards the western society and less to a cultural education. And so the problem with that to me is when we go all the way back to the United Nations, we talk about the Indigenous rights and the whole purpose of us fighting for that is basically to keep ourselves as a unique society within the world, to have this general understanding that yes we exist and we have these rights as Indigenous peoples, but to have those rights you have to practice those rights. And so that's the whole point is if you're going to practice it, then really walk your talk and go out and do those things of your people, your traditions and then teach your children.

And so with that being said, we have to be the change that we want to see. So I have a story to share and I know I was asked to come in and share some of my stories and I said, "˜Well, there is one recent one that really kind of strikes me that I think would be good for people to know,' because I've kind of been sharing this up in the northwest quite a bit. People ask me, "˜Well, geez, Idaho...' for example, is 47th in the nation when it comes to education, we're 49th in overall ranking. We're just poor as it can be, but again it's a Republican state. We have so many challenges to deal with, but one is education, but to our tribe, to the Coeur d'Alene tribe, we value education as the utmost priority. So to me, it became a problem when the school district within our reservation cut funding and then they were going to close that school when that school teaches around 70 to 80 percent of our students who are tribal students. So just to give an example of how we can engage our citizens and how we can unite with one another for the common good is what I'm getting to here.

It started with a levy, and I'll try to do my best to keep the story short because it's a long one, but it started with a levy. And basically the state said, "˜We're going to cut funding to the school and most of the schools throughout the state,' but our school was the only one who failed the increased funding basically to keep the school open. So it was going to lose its accreditation, lose its sporting programs, lose kindergarten, preschool programs, cut teachers and even good, great teachers, ones who were dealing with math or language arts, music, primary functions I would think for young development. And when that was going on, the tribe wanted to play a role, but the tribe played a role in more of a political sense. For me, I was just coming off of my own state campaign and I felt really worn out because to me it was a challenge about...it's more about educating people to again, telling our story, what tribes really are, how we impact our local economy, socially and economically. And again, we're the number-one employer in the region, so we do quite well, but we don't brag or boast about it -- that's just not our way -- but we like to have other people tell that story. So again, the whole past six months of my life was spent trying to tell our story and educate people about the good that we do and how we want to work together to provide better resources to grow the economy, to create more jobs, to better the educational system, and to help those within even our smaller rural communities.

So after all this was going down and then the levy comes up, we thought, "˜Okay, everyone will vote for the levy. Why not, it's supporting our children, supporting education?' But then that failed and it failed miserably and the tribe became frustrated, the local non-tribal community was extremely frustrated, and sadly people were just ready to give up: the teachers, the students, everybody. So people were thinking, "˜Okay, where do we go next? Where do we go from here?' In a small community where that's checkerboarded [land] tribal and non-tribal, you get a lot of people thinking about their lives. What are they going to do next, where do we go, do we move, do we find a better school system? And this is a reservation and us Indian people, we don't just up and move to where we find a better life. This is our land; we have a sacred relationship with our land. So we don't just call it quits and move on and pack our trailer and go. We have to find a way to make it work. So a lot of the non-tribal people, they knew my plight and what I was trying to do and so they had approached me, the superintendent, the principal, and a lot of the teachers and I was kind of shocked by that, but they came to me and asked me...again, I'm just a tribal citizen in the community and they said, "˜Help us. We need your help. You know how to get out to the people and we think you can unite because we're going to need tribal and non-tribal votes to get this levy passed.' So you can imagine I was burned out and I really don't like politics. I really don't. I didn't like those forums and debates or really getting into the issues, but I do love helping the people and if I know that it's going to better the people overall, that makes me feel good about things.

So when I said to that superintendent of the district, I said, "˜Well, give me a week. I'm going to be here and there, but I need some time to think about it because I'm also a mother, too, and I know this is going to be another commitment and I already have a full plate.' So it came down to basically me seeing the school board panic. They panicked and then they had to cut everything and I felt bad for that school board and a few of them were tribal and I thought, "˜This is what they have to deal with. They have to deal with the state legislature who cut educational funding and it's trickling down to the people.' And so the rural county, the rural society, they're having to put the economy on their shoulders. So these are people just like you and I who have bills and families to feed and they...everyone has issues, they have a real...reality, basically to deal with. And so whatever that was, I thought, even my neighbors. I looked at their struggles and I thought, "˜It's just tragedy overall if we do nothing about it.' So this is what it comes down to, how do we engage our citizens?

So what I did was talked with all of our local folks. We had our education director, talked with our chairman. Basically I had to make this a grassroots effort and turn it into a community-wide, strong movement because they all had to come together. I said, "˜Even our students are willing to help and our teachers are willing to help, our elders, our tribal leaders, anyone and everyone needs to get out and vote.' But they're not only just responsible to vote. They have to get up and show up to these meetings and keep everyone educated because that was the reason why the levy lost in the first place. It always comes down to how you educate, how you tell your story and the people said, "˜Well, I don't really want to go door knocking. I don't really want to have public meetings. Why should we do this?' And I said, "˜Well, let's talk about John Deer, for example, who is a local business owner. He voted 'no' because he thinks that you want to basically bear this burden on his back as a local property owner. You're going to increase his taxes. Whether that's a minimal tax or a large tax, it's a tax and a local business owner does not want to be taxed any further than they already are.' But how do you tell that story? I says, "˜Well, speak from your heart. I'm teaching these young students here to tell their story and how it applies to their neighbors in that community.' I said, "˜And I learned going door...' It's really humbling to go door knocking, by the way, if anyone's done that or not. But I learned that if you want to win these elections and tell your story or have a vote in the broader forums, you have to get out there and tell people who you are and why you're running or what you're there for and how you can help them. And so I said to these students, "˜You're not here for yourself, you're here for your neighbor and you're here for their future because you are their vested interest. They're investing in you and you are the future.' I said, "˜When I went to school, my elders...' as much as I wanted to go back home to the reservation, I stayed in private school, but I said, "˜Only because I knew that my elders would always be with me,' and I knew that when they said, "˜Your education belongs to us. Your dedication, everything that you do belongs to the tribe,' I wholly believed in that. "˜So what you're doing today, this belongs to your community and you're bringing that back to invest a greater interest.'

And so that's what the youth said. They understood that. They said, "˜Yeah, we know, we get that.' And then they told their stories from their heart and that's what it came down to and that's, I think, how we won because this is a happy ending because people were ready to give up and call it good and throw in the towel and move on. And then of course the tribe is stuck footing the bill because people thought, "˜Well, the tribe obviously should be expected to pay this bill. We should be able to hold up that fourth leg to keep it standing.' But it's not the tribe's responsibility. We don't have a leadership arm in the school district. It's the state and it's a state-funded school, but the state was not doing its job and it was withholding money from local communities. So to me that's a travesty, but also it's against the law because they were not upholding an Idaho State Supreme Court decision and it's a law that every child in the State of Idaho is guaranteed a free and good public education. So they weren't upholding the needs of the people and again, it's not the tribe's responsibility, but the tribe was willing to do whatever was necessary. But I said, "˜Wait a minute. This is not the tribe's responsibility, but we're all about community here. We want to build up our community just as the next person.' And so a grassroots effort -- you have to really get out there and tell your story if you want to make change. And so being the change you want to see is about walking your talk, sharing your message, being that voice. Each and every one of us has a vision and we are blessed to have those visions because not everybody is granted that ability.

You're here again for a reason, so you just didn't stumble through that door and decide, "˜I'm going to listen in on Paulette and Arlene here.' You have a good reason to be here. So I'm hoping this story is helpful because to me that really opened my eyes, because when I was in that room I was directing the command center at the last day on voting day and I didn't have the tribal council or the chairman, I was...I said, "˜You know what, this is best left aside from all politics. This is about the children.' So I put the children at the helm and I said, "˜This is their doing. They're the ones who got out and educated the community. They went door to door,' as shy as they are, some of them are the most shy people, but I think after that experience it's going to turn them into strong nationwide leaders because they are young warriors. And I said, "˜You have just been inducted into basically what is kind of like our Indian Way Leadership Academy. You have stood up and counted coup against this levy.'

And so that day was neat because in our tribal headquarters we had all of our youth, we had a lot of our tribal citizens, we had non-tribal people and the most amazing point of the day to me was when we had some non-tribal ladies joking with our tribal people and they were joking like we were all relatives and I've never seen that before. I've never seen tribal and non-tribal and again, we still have a lot of race issues, we still have that line there that we need to get rid of, but I think that line is not as bold as it used to be after that moment. And so for those race relationships we really helped one another, and I think that people will remember that day and they'll see that we came together for each other's children. And so people are starting to see that tribes are not enemies but we're friends and we want to be good relatives and good neighbors to one another and so we showed that by example. And so again, we walked our talk that day.

That was the story I was asked to share and I wanted to come down and express that much to you and I do hope you take something from that. But again, it is...engaging your citizenry is about being humble and having that vision and really I think having diligence and just being honest with your people about what the issues are and what the concerns are. Really tell them, if there's a problem, you have to tell your elders and your people and not be afraid of that backlash because, yeah, they're going to criticize you and I know it's hard to take, but just realize it's constructive criticism that will help you in the long run. I know I would, as the youngest person of the council, I used to develop and hold elders' meetings and I was the elders' liaison and the elders were considered the tough ones of all the bunch in our community. And so they said, "˜Oh, put Paulette over there, she can talk to the elders.' And they thought they were setting me up good "˜cause I was the young one and I got vetted for that job. And I said, "˜Well, I see that as an honor and a privilege. Thank you.' And all the elders of the council, they're all in their 60s, 70s, and so here I was at 28 and so I really seen that as an honor, but my first step was to engage them wholly and we had an elders' listening session and yes, that first session was great. All they wanted to know is that they were being listened to and that you were going to do what they said and not just throw it into the wind. So I followed up after those listening sessions and we had them yearly and so they became very productive. And I thought, "˜I wish we did this more often.' But I would have them once yearly and so trying to keep that tradition going. But that's all it's about is talking to your people and not being afraid to be disciplined and you know how that finger may be waved in your face or challenged in some way or form. So thank you. I appreciate this time again and I appreciate all of you having me and listening to me, especially after that good lunch we had. [Coeur d'Alene language]."

Paulette Jordan and Arlene Templer: Engaging the Nation's Citizens and Effecting Change (Q&A)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Paulette Jordan and Arlene Templer field questions from the audience, offering more details about how they mobilized their fellow tribal citizens to buy into the community development initiatives they were advancing. 

Resource Type
Citation

Jordan, Paulette. "Engaging the Nation's Citizens and Effecting Change (Q&A)." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. November 7, 2013. Q&A session.

Templer, Arlene. "Engaging the Nation's Citizens and Effecting Change (Q&A)." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. November 7, 2013. Q&A session.

Herminia Frias:

"Well, thank you, Paulette and Arlene. We're going to open it up for questions, but I just wanted to make a comment from both of these stories is that these are really good stories about engaging the community and the citizenship about their responsibilities and the whole effective change and the process that it takes. None of this stuff happened overnight and what they did require that vision, that vision and that communication and going back and just keep on moving one at a time. And a lot of times when we work with tribal leaders it just seems like everything is so urgent and everything is so crisis-driven that sometimes it helps to take a step back and see how other tribes have done things and that it didn't happen overnight and as long as you continue to focus on that vision, you'll get there, just like they did. You'll get there and when you look back, you'll look at the process and think, "˜Wow, we did a lot.' And again, nations are not always good at giving themselves credit for the wonderful work that you do and that's one of the neat things that we get to do in our role is to be able to identify and look at that and meet people like Paulette and Arlene and say, "˜You've got to share your story because more people need to know about the process that you went through so that it inspires them to say we can do it, too.' So questions?"

Ian Record:

"Minnie, if you wouldn't mind, I'm going to actually ask the first question of Arlene. I've actually been very fortunate in sitting down with her and chewing the fat with her about the work that her department has done. And actually we recorded an interview with her that at some point it's going to be on the [Indigenous Governance] Database website...which I'll share a little bit more with you about later. Arlene, I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about the messages that you were conveying to your citizens as you transformed the way that you delivered social services to them and the incentives that -- and disincentives -- the new sets of kind of incentives and disincentives that you, that were laid in that new approach. And also how important it was for you to know that, 'I've got the tribal leadership at my back, they fully support this new approach we're taking where we're really about self-sufficiency and everything we do is geared towards enhancing the self-sufficiency of our people.'"

Arlene Templer:

"It was hard at first. Like I said, we had that entitlement mentality; people wanted to sit back and just draw the government jack or just draw GA [General Assistance] or TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] [money]. And what we got them to see is that when we set up these work placements, when they went out there and actually did that, they seen how it changed family stability. They had checks coming in, they felt better about themselves, the domestic violence dropped, the alcoholism took a backseat, and people began to change. The entire system -- all the employees, all of the people -- all of a sudden you were on the outside. You weren't looking at the jobs or being part of the movement that was happening and the work experience, and it wouldn't have happened if it didn't come from the tribal council, because the council had to say, "˜Enough of the turf, all your programs are going together and you have one goal.' And they gave us just that much of a light and then we took it from there and developed how we would do that. A lot of people said, "˜Well, you're too hard on the people. You're doing this pushing of driver's licenses and drug tests and making their kids go to school.' When they got to a place that they had that first job or they had that driver's license, just the change and the light went on. I don't have to drag them along anymore, they're dragging the others. So it changed, they changed themselves for that. You just open the door, you just give them the hand and it works."

Herminia Frias:

"We have Renee and Ian back there with the microphones. Anyone else? I'll ask a question while you're thinking about it and this is to Paulette. Paulette, what process did you go through to mobilize and create that momentum to get those people behind you and start moving on this and get people to care?"

Paulette Jordan:

"I think easier said than done, but like you said before, it takes credibility. Over the years, especially after the last election it just seems like it...you can't just be someone out of the blue and decide to do this. I think I've always been the outspoken one and said...and I really don't waste myself about issues. I don't just get out there and I guess jump behind every single project that there is. If there's something like a great cause that I know would benefit everybody, you'll see me part of it and wanting to help benefit or lead in some way. So at this point with this particular function, for me to get people rolling with that, I guess I was really heated in the beginning. I was really upset and I don't show emotion. I'm not an emotional person, but to me, being upset is speaking with direct conviction and telling people, "˜You need to be involved.' We had very few tribal people in the beginning who wanted to be involved. There was a lot of non-tribal, mostly teachers, and then the superintendent and so I said, "˜Hey, wait a minute. This is not just your issue, this is all of our issue.' So I started trying to recruit Native people who I felt would work with me and then follow through and show up to these meetings or who were also good at communicating and then getting out there to push this message. So it's...you know, you really have to know your community. I couldn't do this if I were in just any other...in another random community. I think I'd really have to know the people. You have to know who you can work with, who you can trust, who will listen to you and respect you in some way or form because you have to...to be in a leadership position, people have to be able to trust you so you have to have that credibility is what I'm saying. But that's really what I think helped move folks to be involved. And then the students, the students were easy. They were just...students are always willing to learn and they always want to be part of something fun and great so they were just like, "˜Okay, great, let's do this. What do I need to do?' And so for three months straight they just were always at my doorstop just saying, "˜Okay, what do we need to do next. What do we got to do?' And so it was really fun just to work with them. But it wasn't just about being upset and mad. It was just about saying, "˜We need to make a difference,' and I think that goes with anything we have within our tribes, whether it's a drug issue...like right now we were facing a big drug issue so we were just saying, "˜Okay, let's get our community rallied together,' and sometimes that takes food, sometimes that takes the proper people. You would never want someone who was or is a drug dealer or using drugs to be leading that group discussion. You want someone who's credible and who you can trust and rely upon. So you need those qualities and I'm sure all of you have those here. So just get out and do it. "˜Just do it,' as they say."

Herminia Frias:

"Any other questions? Yes."

Steve Zawoysky:

"So I have a question for Paulette mainly about partnerships. Partnerships are like the preferable form of business or governmental relationships. But if you lived in a...or if you were in an environment where potential partner is not necessarily cooperative or don't have a lot in common, it can be challenging. So I'm curious, two questions, one after you got together and did the school thing, did you have better relations then with your non-Native neighbors who were affected by that decision?"

Paulette Jordan:

"Yeah, I'm one of the rare property owners that would be affected by that levy, but I think again it's always about pushing the envelope. And then being a local property owner myself and other property owners having issues in voting no against the levy, I said to them, "˜Well, someone at some point paid for your public education at one point of time.' I never went to the public school system. I was always tribal and then private school. So I've always paid for my own way.' But I said, "˜You on the other hand, you went through the public school system. The state paid for it.' meaning your neighbors and your community. So once people think about it that way, they go, "˜Oh, well, yeah, okay. I need to pay it forward as we say,' then the heart opened up a little bit. But building relationships, partnerships...people afterwards, after the levy passed, people were more happy and thankful about it passing. Really what we found out was the people who were voting 'no' and who kept winning that levy were people who were moving in or retired folks in the northern county who don't have children and just were worried about losing property value. And so it was always a selfish, I hate to say that word, but it's more of a selfish-based reason why they voted 'no.' So to me overall, though, it builds relationships with everybody, and to me it always comes down to race relations and how we can better understand one another because that's really what prevents us from developing businesses together or developing schools together or how we look at each other. I want people to smile at my children everyday and not look at them, or look down upon him because he's Indian and I want them to trust him at some point because maybe he'll run for president 30 years from now. We want people to trust us for the right reasons. Not because we can give them money because we have gaming and other enterprises, but because we are good, humble people, because again like my good mentors say, it's all about humanity and how we look at one another. So I think that this really helped us look at each other more as relatives rather than just next door neighbors."

Herminia Frias:

"Any other questions? All right. I'd like to thank both of the presenters. Thank you so much for sharing your stories." 

Sophie Pierre: Enacting Self-Determination and Self-Governance at Ktunaxa

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

In this informative interview with NNI's Ian Record, Sophie Pierre, longtime chief of the Ktunaxa Nation, discusses Ktunaxa's ongoing effort to reclaim and redesign their system of governance through British Columbia's treaty process, specifically Ktunaxa's citizen-led process to develop a new constitution that reflects and advance Ktunaxa cultural values and its priorities for the future.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Pierre, Sophie. "Enacting Self-Determination and Self-Governance at Ktunaxa." Leading Native Nations interview series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, The University of Arizona. Phoenix, Arizona. October 21, 2008. Interview.

Ian Record:

“Welcome to Leading Native Nations, a program of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the University of Arizona. I’m your host, Ian Record. Today, I am honored to welcome to the program Sophie Pierre, who for the past 26 years has served as chief of the St. Mary’s Indian Band in British Columbia. She also serves as the chairperson of the Ktunaxa Nation Council, an organization formed in 1970 to promote the political and social development of its five member bands, which includes St. Mary’s. She is the past co-chair of the First Nation Summit and a recipient of the Order of British Columbia. Last but certainly not least, Chief Pierre also serves as co-chair of the International Advisory Council for the Native Nations Institute. Welcome, Sophie and thank you for joining us today.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Thank you very much, Ian. It’s a pleasure to be here.”

Ian Record:

“Sophie, I’d like to start with a question that I ask all of the guests on this program and that is how do you define sovereignty and what does it really mean for Native nations?”

Sophie Pierre:

“I think that what it really means was explained by chief who’s since left, his name was Joe Mathias, he was chief of Squamish and he always said that sovereign, that exercising sovereignty was that the people who are going to live with the results of a decision are the people who make the decision and to me that’s what sovereignty has always meant is that we are responsible for our own lives, we make our decisions and we’re the people that suffer the consequences of those decisions.”

Ian Record:

“Okay. As a follow-up to that, how do you define a healthy Native community? What does that look like at Ktunaxa?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, we’re, I think that the healthy Native community is something that I can actually see coming into fruition and that’s a community where the decisions that are going to affect that community are being made right at the community level and that they’re being involved or everyone in the community is being involved in those decisions. The treaty process that we’ve been going through has allowed us, I think, that opportunity to engage our citizens in many aspects of life, not just the social programs that used to be the norm. Now we’re talking about making land-use decisions and far reaching planning for development and those are all at the community level, at the citizen level that those decisions are being made and that’s really where I see a healthy community is where the citizenry are engaged and they’re making, they’re charting their own course for the future.”

Ian Record:

“So essentially, regaining ownership in their own future and in the government that’s going to make that future happen.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Exactly. Yeah, exactly. It’s that regaining of ownership and it’s that recognition that the decisions that you make, that they’re, it’s the people who are going to live with the consequences that make those decisions.”

Ian Record:

“You are the chief, as I mentioned, of the St. Mary’s Indian Band and also Chair of the Ktunaxa Nation Council. Can you tell us a bit about the St. Mary’s Band, the Ktunaxa Nation, and their relationship to one another?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, the Ktunaxa Nation is the Canadian relative of our nation, which is like many Indian nations in North America, was divided when the 49th Parallel was put in and the two countries were created of Canada and the United States, because we have Ktunaxa speaking people in Montana, Idaho and in British Columbia. So we are the Canadian group of Ktunaxa and the St. Mary’s Indian Band is similar to the other four bands within our nation. Those were created by the federal government when they were creating the Indian reservations just after the country of Canada became the Dominion of Canada. And so the St. Mary’s Indian Band is one of five Indian bands within our nation council and we have, our Indian reserve lands are held in trust by the government for our use and benefit as are all Indian reserve lands in Canada.”

Ian Record:

“The Ktunaxa Nation and I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly, ”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes, you are.”

Ian Record:

“, or pretty closely anyway, works to advance the strategic priorities of its member bands through what it calls the 'Four Pillars.'“

Sophie Pierre:

“That’s right.”

Ian Record:

“What are these pillars and how does the Ktunaxa Nation support or advance those pillars?”

Sophie Pierre:

“The Four Pillars are lands, first and foremost, are our lands and our resources, that determines who we are as Ktunaxa and we know where our lands are because it’s in those, that territory where we have place names and when I’m describing our lands, that’s, I can give the place names, sort of the boundaries of it. And it’s our people, always, it’s the people of Ktunaxa ancestry, Ktunaxa speaking people and it’s our governance and then it’s our, the sort of overall what holds us together in terms of our, I’m wanting to talk about our social programs, but I don’t want to call it social programs. It’s the umbrella that provides services to the people. So it would be like our administrative side. So those are the four main pillars. And we determined that through about two years of discussion, of conversation with our people as we started to create our vision statement and that’s where that came from because we talk about strong, healthy people speaking our language and living in our traditional territory and sharing our resources and in a self-governing manner. That is our mission statement and it encompasses the four pillars.”

Ian Record:

“The Ktunaxa Nation, on behalf of its five member bands, has for several years now been engaged in comprehensive constitutional reform and governmental reform as well, which is very different in not only process but also terminology from constitutional reform by Native nations in the United States. What does the constitutional reform process entail for First Nations in Canada and what does it really look like?”

Sophie Pierre:

“It’s different in different parts of Canada. What we’re involved in in British Columbia through the treaty-making process has made it more, has made it, I think a little bit easier for us to actually get into the constitutional reform and to, maybe not so much constitutional reform as building a constitution, rebuilding our constitutions and that’s the discussion that I talked about earlier where I related that to sovereignty where there’s an engagement of your whole citizenry in order to develop that. So now we see, as we form our, build our constitution that that is being brought back to our citizens on a regular basis so they have real input into that. And what it’s going to be at the end of the day is, well, like what constitutions are, they’re the basis, they form the basis of our government and we are looking at recreating, rebuilding the governing structures that we had as Ktunaxa before contact. We, as an Indian band, of course, have been affected by the Department of Indian Affairs and their legislation called the Indian Act. We have, and I have served as such, the Indian Act-elected Leadership. And so you had mentioned that I’ve served 26 years as a chief, that’s something that I’m very grateful for having had that opportunity, but it was through the Indian Act process where we have elections. My grandfather was the last non-elected chief in our community and he stepped away from his position and passed it on in the traditional manner in 1953, but the Indian agent came in and said that the people had to do a vote according to the Indian Act, that that wasn’t, the way that we used to do it wasn’t considered democratic or whatever. So they changed it and now we’ve been having these Indian Act elections. So the, it’s sort of a melding of the way we did things traditionally to the way that we see us being able to move forward and it’s taking the 'Four Pillars' that have been developed by our people in our mission statement and determining a way that we can bring life to that mission statement so it’s not just on a piece of paper hanging on a wall -- it’s something that we live every day.”

Ian Record:

“So what compelled the Ktunaxa Nation to undertake not just constitutional reform, but as you say, but essentially rebuilding the constitution from the ground up? So, what compelled the nation to chart that course and what have been the major outcomes thus far?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, the, I keep mentioning the treaty process that we’re in and that really was sort of the trigger. I think that we may have been involved in this kind of discussion anyway, but probably at a lot slower pace and probably with not as much engagement of our total citizens as we have been able to through the treaty process. I think the most exciting outcome that this, that we’ve seen is the understanding and the, I don’t want to use the word 'buy-in,' but I can’t think of what else to call it, but people really believe that whether or not we sign a treaty with the other levels of government, the federal and the provincial governments, that what we have, that what we’ve recreated for ourselves, what we’ve regenerated in terms of our own governing structure, that that is really meaningful to our people and you can speak to people just on the street and they know when we talk about constitution rebuilding, we talk about recreating our government, we talk about just governance in general, people know what we’re talking about and I find that, ”

Ian Record:

“So that part of it’s taken on a life of its own, essentially.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Absolutely, yeah. And so, I mean, that’s a really positive outcome for us. And I wonder whether or not we would have been able to have that kind of an outcome if we weren’t involved, engaged in this particular negotiation with the government, but I do make that point that we may or may not reach a treaty. In fact, our American cousins tell us, ‘Why do you want to sign a treaty with the governments? They never live up to them, so why are you engaged in this?’ But for us, it’s been a really good process for our own people of engaging ourselves.”

Ian Record:

“In past conversations, you have pointed to the act of defining citizenship or more appropriately redefining citizenship as a critical first step in the Ktunaxa Nation forging a vibrant future of its own design. How so?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, I think that the, one of the key elements or one of our key pillars of course are our people, and our people embody our language and culture and you don’t have a choice what you’re going to be born as. Any of our people, when they’re born, we’re Ktunaxa, just as Italians are Italians and it doesn’t matter if they marry a Chinese [person], it doesn’t change them from being Italian. Well, same thing with us. And there’s been so much interference from government in terms of our own Aboriginal identity, Indigenous identity -- and I’m talking about all governments, not just in Canada -- that I think that one of the key elements of rebuilding nations is to take back ownership of the recognition of our own people. And I know that it creates difficulty because there’s a lot of, there’s very few pure blood as you would imagine, as you could say in this day and age just because of all the interaction that we’ve had with the rest of the world. But that doesn’t take away from someone who can trace their ancestry, if you can trace your ancestry to being Ktunaxa, then you’re accepted as Ktunaxa. I’ve mentioned before that our language and culture is very important and in the Ktunaxa language the word for our ancestors is '[Ktunaxa language]' and the root word of that '[Ktunaxa language]' comes from '[Ktunaxa language],' which is a root. You talk about the roots of a tree and any kind of a plant it’s '[Ktunaxa language]' and for, when you put those two words together '[Ktunaxa language],' meaning 'our roots.' And so if you can trace your ancestry to being Ktunaxa, then that’s who you are and you’re accepted as such. So that it’s not a matter of again the government interference saying that there are certain percentages or if you’re, like we had in the Indian Act. For a while, if you’re an Indian woman and you marry someone who’s not a status Indian, then you lose your status. That’s fine, that status was determined by the federal government to begin with, but it never ever changed the fact that that Indian woman is and always will be an Indian and so will her children.”

Ian Record:

“So has that taken some getting used to among some community members, ”

Sophie Pierre:

“Sure it has.”

Ian Record:

“, who have for so long relied on that blood quantum?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Absolutely, yeah. And I expect that it will affect probably all of our people in that way wherever there’s been government interference in terms of determining who the people are. So again it goes back to your original question, what is sovereignty? Sovereignty is being able to determine who your own people are and welcoming all people that are of your blood, whether they’re full blood or one-sixteenth. If they can trace their ancestry, that’s what that word means '[Ktunaxa language],' you can trace your ancestry, you can trace your roots to whatever nationality and I think that it would be the same if you’re English or German. If you can trace your roots, there’s sort of this Pan-Canadian or Pan-American, like what is that? They really should, everyone has roots from somewhere else other than the Indigenous people. We’re the ones that have roots here.”

Ian Record:

“And in some way doesn’t that entail at least some level of cultural engagement? So what you’re saying is you have to be able to trace your roots. It’s very hard to do that unless you’re participating in that culture, right?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Exactly, that’s right. Yes. Yeah, we’re going to have Ktunaxa people that probably will never become, will never come home, will never be part of our activity of our government, of our communities, simply because they don’t choose to. Maybe they’re part Irish and that’s the roots that, that’s the [Ktunaxa language] they’ve chosen to follow. That’s fine. What I’m saying is that when a person chooses to follow their Ktunaxa [Ktunaxa language], then we have a responsibility to that person, to that individual.”

Ian Record:

“The how of constitutional reform, of government reform is as important as the what. That’s been our experience at the Native Nations Institute and research we’ve done. What process has your nation employed to ensure that the governmental reform that you’re undertaking proceeds the way you envisioned and what have been the keys to that success thus far?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, I think that we’ve had the fortune, we’ve been fortunate to have the acquaintance of such people as Stephen Cornell and Joe Kalt and Manley Begay. I remember that when we first started talking about this that Stephen and Manley came and spent some time with our leaders, and it was really interesting because all of our leaders and particularly the older people who maybe didn’t speak English as well, but they were all saying the same thing and they could really connect with the discussions that we were having around the necessity of the definition of our governance being formalized if you will into a constitution. Like other Indigenous people, we come from an oral culture. So when we talk about and when we have a good understanding, and particularly when we use the Ktunaxa language, it’s all in an oral manner, but you take that to the next level and you start putting that down into a constitution and it makes sense to people when you do that.”

Ian Record:

“So if you can give us a little bit more specifics about the process that Ktunaxa Nation has employed to engage in governmental reform and what is really key to the success thus far, because it’s a very difficult process. It’s confronting a lot of colonial legacies that a lot of people would just as soon not confront.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Absolutely. The main activity that we’ve done is that all of our discussions have been open and these go back again to the negotiations that we have with the other two levels of government. We chose that ours would be called a citizen-led process. Unfortunately, some of the Indian nations in British Columbia that are involved in treaty go behind closed doors and it’s their lawyers that are negotiating and then they bring something back to the people later. We knew that that’s not what we wanted, that wouldn’t work for us. It might work for other people, but it wouldn’t work for us. So we started with a citizen-driven process right from day one and so it was that engagement of our citizens from the beginning. And I’ll tell you, that wasn’t easy because the first reaction we got was, ‘Yeah, right. You’re going to ask us a bunch of questions, but then it’s going to sit on a shelf somewhere. Our input is never meaningful, our input never gets into the final action,’ but I think that the, well, not I think, I know that our citizens are very pleased when they see their own thoughts, their ideas, they see themselves as we move forward in the final documents that are coming out that are reaching fruition now and people can see the input that they’ve had. And so then of course it’s more meaningful for them.”

Ian Record:

“The Ktunaxa Nation has made a concerted effort to get its young people heavily involved in governance and governmental reform. Why is this so critical?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Because they’re the ones that are going to live with the consequences and of course that underlies this whole thing -- is they’re the ones that are going to live with the consequences. I’m going to be long gone and it’s going to be the younger people that are going to have to put this into fruition for us and for their children and their grandchildren. But I think that how we’ve done that is maybe as important, it goes back again to when you engage people to actually make them feel that their engagement is worthwhile. So that it’s young people that we’ve had out there that have been leading the meetings, they’re the liaisons that go into the community, that sit at the kitchen tables and talk with people or go into Band meetings or make presentations at nation meetings. You don’t always have the old-timers like myself up there speaking. No, it’s, the presentations are made by the people that are actually out there gathering the information.”

Ian Record:

“And how have perhaps the older generations responded? Are they inspired by the eagerness of the youth?”

Sophie Pierre:

“I think as a whole, yes, and of course there’s always some old curmudgeon that sits somewhere thinking that, ‘These kids should be listening as opposed to talking,’ but I think that you learn by doing and I think that the majority of people recognize that.”

Ian Record:

“One of the great success stories of the Ktunaxa Nation is the St. Eugene Mission Resort, which I know you’re very proud of.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes.”

Ian Record:

“Can you tell us in a nutshell the story of St. Eugene and how what is now the resort and a major economic development engine for your people, how that story is emblematic of the Ktuxana Nation’s effort to reclaim their culture, their identity and their future?”

Sophie Pierre:

“You’re right, we are very, very proud of the St. Eugene Resort and because, I think the most important reason is that we chose to take something that was so negative in our past and turn it into something positive for our future. I say it that way because it really was a choice. When the residential school was shut down in 1970, the oblates, the priests who ran the school, the priests from the Catholic Church who ran the school, they turned over the property to the federal government with the understanding that the federal government would then turn it over to our tribal council. And when that was done, we were a bit unsure on what we were going to do. It’s a huge building and we could have turned it into like another school or health facility, some social-type program that would always be needing an infusion of cash; [we] chose instead to turn it into a business. And so we needed to have the approval of our people to do that and there were some people that told us that we should just knock it down. They said like that was such a horrible place, they suffered so much in that building that they wanted to see it just flattened, take it off the face of the earth. However, there were a greater number of people that understood what we were saying about turning it into something positive instead of knocking it down. So we made that choice rather than knocking it down to turn it around, and it was not easy and in fact it was very, very challenging. But we persevered and we were successful and we now have two other First Nations partners, Samson Cree Nation from Alberta and M’Chigeeng First Nation from Ontario, and it’s doing very well.”

Ian Record:

“So has that decision that you talked about, has that helped at least in some measure the community to begin healing from the experiences that took place there?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Very much so. I think a lot more so than if we had just knocked the building down. I think that actually seeing what it’s become and knowing that we did that ourselves, knowing that we made that decision and that choice to do that ourselves, I think that’s just been phenomenal and it really has had an impact. And what you see now is the younger generations refer to that as the resort. It’s only my generation that refers to it as the former school. It’s something positive and that’s what we wanted to do.”

Ian Record:

“So for younger generations and those to come it’s going to mean something a whole lot different then.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. For them it means a place to work, it means a place to go and recreate and it just means so much more and it’s so different from what it meant to us, to my generation.”

Ian Record:

“So you’ve been a leader for quite a long time, probably even longer than you were a leader in an elected capacity, I would imagine in my interactions with you. Pretend that I am a newly elected tribal leader who has been chosen to serve his nation for the first time. Drawing on your extensive experience as I’ve talked about, what advice would you share with me to help me empower my nation?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Talk to people, always just go around and meet with your citizens and talk with them. From elders, you’re going to learn so much from the elders, you’re going to learn from people who’ve served on council and you’re going to learn what people need when you talk to the younger generations so that’s what I, when I, the other piece of advice that I always give is that being elected is a privilege and it’s something that you have to, you are taking on a responsibility and it’s not, it’s not a position of power, it’s a position of serving your people. That’s what being elected means and you can only do that well if you know what it is your people need and assuming that your people need one thing when you haven’t gone out and talked to them about it is not a good thing to do.”

Ian Record:

“That’s interesting you mention this kind of axis between power and responsibility because we hear that so often among tribal leaders of nations who are really breaking away as we like to say, who are really finding success with their efforts to rebuild their nations in a way that they see fit and not perhaps a way that outsiders see fit -- we see that axis kind of, that axis pivoting on this issue of clearly defining your roles and responsibilities and that the conversation around leaders, it’s about responsibility and not so much power is when those roles are clearly defined. When they’re not clearly defined, it’s very hard to get away from the power issue because there’s nothing to keep you from overstepping your bounds.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yeah, exactly and I think that that’s where it’s the process that we’ve gone through just in this last little while, because things are changing for us, and we are starting to see more financial resources coming into our communities for example, financial resources which are not grants from government, these are our own revenues, our own source of revenues, and it’s imperative that we’re ready for that and that those decisions have been made on how those resources are going to be shared among everyone before it actually starts to flow and how everybody is going to be able to benefit from it. So having that kind of responsibility and understanding that kind of responsibility as opposed to seeing it as power and using it over people -- we’ve seen the results of that. I don’t want to take any community, but you’ve seen the results of that. It’s not a good place to be.”

Ian Record:

“You kind of stole my thunder with this next question already on the advice question I asked you, but one of the things you and I have talked about in the past is this issue of effective leaders not just being decision-makers but effective leaders being good educators and good listeners and really what we’re talking about, we’ve talked about is this issue of citizen engagement, that it’s not enough just to engage your citizens come election time, but that to be an effective, empowered leader you have to be engaging your citizens all the time and that comes in the form of one-on-one personal interaction to getting the word out on the internet, whatever it might be. Can you just discuss your perspective on this issue of leaders as educators, leaders as listeners and how that plays out in your community?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, I think that it’s important that when a person is in a position of leadership that you also recognize the, not just the responsibility but the onus that is on you to ensure that people feel confident that you’re going to be able to represent what they need both within the community and also on the outside. So I think that that’s another very important part of leadership is to be able to go into the wider society and talk about the issues that are important to you like say some of the land development that’s going on and I would think [is] affecting all Indian nations. I was listening to that, the presentation just a little while ago from Ak-Chin and how they’re taking on the development that’s going on around them and getting, and their leadership made sure that the community that has infringed all the way around them is aware that, what the outside community is doing is going to affect life in their community and I think that that is a very important part of leadership. So there’s the leadership within the community and you’re absolutely right about, that you need to have input and you need to be able to listen to everybody’s point of view. And half the time, they’re not going to agree with what you’ve said and that’s okay. You engage in those discussions and eventually come to an agreement where that everybody can live with. So you engage your own citizens internally, but then you also have to engage the people that live around you and you have to do it in such a way that it’s respectful, but it’s also forceful so that people will listen.”

Ian Record:

“So really what you’re talking about in terms of leaders as educator,s it’s not just a challenge to educate your own citizens but there’s this kind of constant challenge of having to educate those people outside of your nation that are making decisions that are going to impact your nation’s future.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Absolutely, yes. And I think that that is becoming more and more a very important part of leadership. I think it probably always has been but it has not really, it hasn’t played as prominent a role, but I think that nowadays you cannot be a leader in your community without being able to communicate with the wider society about what it is that your nation or your community is involved in, and I think that one of the very important messages to make, too, is how much our communities are part of the larger community so to speak in terms of, even just in terms of economics when you figure how much money is actually spent in the local town of Cranbrook, for example, by people from my community and how much the businesses rely on that and what would happen if we were to suddenly not support Cranbrook business anymore. I think that it’s those, that kind of being real players in the whole life of the region. I think it’s very important.”

Ian Record:

“One of your neighboring nations, the Osoyoos Indian Band, shares this, at least their leadership shares this perspective about the importance of their nation going out and educating again these outside decision-makers whose decisions impact the nation. They made a concerted effort to do that, particularly around economic development as you mentioned and the incredible ripple effect that takes place when economic development takes place in Aboriginal communities.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Absolutely. That’s the point that I always make is that when we’ve got any financial resources coming into our community, we don’t squirrel it away in some Swiss bank. We go and spend it in the local community so it’s, it makes a big difference.”

Ian Record:

“We call it the 'Walmart effect' down here in the United States.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yeah.”

Ian Record:

“It was interesting, in preparing for this interview I happened to Google your name and one of the first links that popped up was YouTube, and I had occasion to review a video that was recently posted on YouTube about the Farnham Blockade. Can you tell us a bit about the background to that story and why you felt it so important to take part in the blockade?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, it’s a major development, major tourism development on a very fragile glacier and the whole development itself from the get-go has been of great concern to us because we see that it’s, the development is of such a magnitude that it’s going to have impacts not only on the environment, which it’ll have a very detrimental impact, but on the wildlife and on the people that live there. It’s going to affect us in every way possible. So we’ve always been concerned about that and we have not been able to find any reason from the studies that have been done and everything that has been given to us, we haven’t been able to find any reason to support that level of development. And the provincial government has been kind of interesting in the position that they’ve taken here, because on the one hand they say that people in the local region should be the ones to make a decision because they’re the ones that are going to be impacted by the development. But on the other hand, they do these kind of, it’s almost underhanded actions that they take, where we found out in terms of the Farnham Incident, we found out that the provincial, one of the provincial ministries had actually transferred a license that they had given to a non-profit, Olympic ski organization that trains Olympic skiers, they had transferred that tenure from this non-profit to the development, to the profit-oriented group and in a very major way they transferred this tenure and hadn’t told anyone. And so when my colleagues brought this up, the response from the ministry was, ‘Oops, I guess we forgot to tell you.’ It was just very, very irresponsible kind of actions. So I think that the government really need, the provincial government in this case, they really need to put their own actions in what they say that they’re going to do. If it’s important for local citizens to make the decisions about the areas that they live in, then they should be allowed to do so and not have the provincial government step in and decide what’s going to be in our best interest. I think we’re beyond those days, I would certainly hope that we are anyway.”

Ian Record:

“So what do you see for the future of this issue?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, right now I think that we’re going to have to continue to fight it, quite frankly. I don’t see a whole lot of support coming from the province, I don’t see a lot of leadership coming from the province and the local people, I think at the last count and they do it fairly regularly, it’s like 85 or 90 percent opposition by our local citizens and I’m not talking just about the Aboriginal people of which our tribal council has had a formal position that we are very concerned with the proposed development because of its size. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, as they say, to figure out that our environment is in real dire straits and you take a look at that poor glacier. It is just ravaged and they’re talking about building a resort on it so that people can ski on it in the summertime. At some point, rational thought has got to start kicking in.”

Ian Record:

“Do you feel your nation and others have a leadership role to play in that regard?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Oh, absolutely, and we are very, we very much step up to the plate with that one.”

Ian Record:

“What do you see for the future of First Nations in Canada when it comes to self-determination and specifically governance?”

Sophie Pierre:

“That’s an interesting question because the, on the one hand, our Canadian government would probably say that there’s a very large, there’s a big move towards self-determination and governance. In fact, they’ve got programs called 'Self-Determination' and 'Self-Governance.' And of course that is the exact opposite of self-determination and self-governance. However, I think that there’s a couple things that are at play that will support self-determination and self-governance. In British Columbia, we have the treaty process, which some of us are taking advantage of in that way to re-establish our own governments but then there’s, we’ve also been fortunate in some of the court decisions that have been made, the legal cases that have been made that have led the government to actually vacate areas that they assumed that they had some say, and so we’ve been able to enforce Aboriginal title, Aboriginal rights in that way so yeah, I think that that’s, that’s been sort of an interesting outcome of some of the court decisions.”

Ian Record:

“So what about your nation specifically? You mentioned earlier on in the interview about...that strategic planning has been a key for you as you’ve moved towards governmental reform for instance, you’ve got a strategic plan in place or a strategic vision of where you want to head. What does the future look like for Ktunaxa Nation and how is the nation today working to get there?”

Sophie Pierre:

“It’s our mission statement. I’ve mentioned that it covers all aspects, it covers the Four Pillars that are the Bible for us, so to speak. And so for our organizations, our governments, our elected leadership, we know that that is our path and so if the government comes along with a new program, we measure it by our mission statement. Does it fit with our mission? If it doesn’t, carry on, move on to somebody else, leave us alone. We have our path, we’ve set our sights on what our nation is going to look like and it’s going to be the embodiment of that mission statement and if other people’s actions don’t fit in with that, then we don’t become involved.”

Ian Record:

“So what you’re saying is that this mission statement, which is essentially as you’re talking about your strategic plan, it’s where you want to head long-term.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes.”

Ian Record:

“It gives you a basis upon which to decide matters that are before you, day to day.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Exactly, yes.”

Ian Record:

“And that essentially, does that not really empower you as a leader?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Absolutely and well, yeah, it’s actually, it makes it a lot easier I think to start, when you start juggling things and particularly as we’ve come to this place where we’re at and we’ve had to depend so much on other governments to...and other sources of resources coming into our communities, whether they’re financial resources or whatever to keep our communities moving, we’ve always had to react to somebody else’s agenda and it’s been so empowering to say, ‘We don’t have to do that anymore. We know what it is we want: strong, healthy citizens speaking our language and practicing our culture in our homelands in a self-governing manner and looking after our own lands and resources.’ It covers all those areas and so if something comes along that doesn’t fit in there, then like I said, I don’t have to worry about it. As chief, I don’t have to worry about it. And the next administration, they will find that it’s going to be a lot simpler just to follow that plan.”

Ian Record:

“Well, Sophie, I’d like to thank you very much for taking the time to join us today. I’ve certainly learned a great deal and I’m sure our audience has as well. That’s all for today’s program of Leading Native Nations, produced by the Native Nations Institute and Arizona Public Media at the University of Arizona. To learn more about this program and Sophie Pierre and the Ktunaxa Nation, please visit the Native Nations Institute’s website at www.nni.arizona.edu. Thank you for joining us. Copyright 2008. Arizona Board of Regents."

Chris Hall: Cultivating Constitutional Change at Crow Creek

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Native Nations Institute's Ian Record conducted an informative interview with Chris Hall, a citizen of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe and a member of Cohort 4 of the Bush Foundation's Native Nation Rebuilders program. Hall discusses Crow Creek's current effort to reform its constitution and the importance of fully educating and engaging Crow Creek citizens in that process.

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

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Hall, Chris. "Cultivating Constitutional Change at Crow Creek." Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, The University of Arizona and the Bush Foundation. Spearfish, South Dakota. April 25, 2013. Interview.

Ian Record:

So I’m here with Chris Hall, who is a member of Cohort 4 of the Bush Foundation’s Native Nation Rebuilders Program. Chris, welcome.

Chris Hall:

Thank you.

Ian Record:

Before we get into the questions and discuss your experience in the Rebuilders Program and talk a little bit about your own nation, why don’t you start off by telling us a little bit more about yourself; what you do, where you come from.

Chris Hall:

I come from the Crow Creek in the Big Bend District on the Crow Creek Reservation, born and raised there. I won’t say I grew up there because I refuse to grow up, so that’s just a deal there. But yeah, I’m working with my nation in the hopes of improving our situation.

Ian Record:

So let’s talk a little bit about the Rebuilders Program and what led you to this day today, where you’re here at Spearfish, South Dakota, with no cell coverage, and you’re here learning with folks from other tribes across the region?

Chris Hall:

I think it was the state of our nation. After college, I had come back home after working on the East Coast and going to school, had come back home and really had an interest in getting involved. And when I did start, begin to get involved, I realized that there was some real issues that our leadership was struggling with and just one afternoon in a council meeting offered help. They were indicating they were overwhelmed and they were needing help so I simply said, ‘What can I do? How can I help?’ and was taken up on the offer. And they needed some help with their constitution revision, which hadn’t been done in a while. And so I stepped into that role.

Ian Record:

So you’ve had a few, you’ve been part of a few convenings of the Rebuilders Cohort 4 group now, and from your own personal perspective, what have been the highlights of the program thus far?

Chris Hall:

Oh, you know, the people are incredible, the leadership tools that we’re gaining, the support not just from the Bush Foundation and Native Nations Institute, but the cohort members themselves just has a real family feel and that sense seems to deepen with time. This is our third session out here in Spearfish Canyon and it really feels like we’re a family. We’re talking about getting together on each other’s land bases, reservations, and helping each other in an ongoing effort to just be together, because I think we’ve found strength in coming together. And we all have a commonality in our language and in our situations, a lot of familiarity with each other’s situation and now we have a common language that we can approach that with, and it feels really, really comfortable because we’re with like-minded individuals.

Ian Record:

So you’re not the first rebuilder from your nation that’s gone through this program or is going through this program,

Chris Hall:

Correct.

Ian Record:

There’s been some others, but I would imagine there’s a number of leaders in your, current leaders in your nation that don’t know a lot about this program, perhaps don’t know the value that it can have or perhaps is having for your nation. Can you talk, if you had an audience with the tribal leadership of your nation about this topic, what would you say to them? What would you want them to know about the Rebuilders program?

Chris Hall:

Well, I would assume that they are a lot like me. I would assume that with a desire to help, the first thing you seek out is resources. And one of the resources that I was looking for was information, information for my toolbox, for my toolkit, and I would think that current leadership and future leadership would want those tools so that they could address and compete on a level playing field with other leaders who are speaking the same language and talking about the same constructs, so that again, that we can all get on the same page and we can all move forward together. I’m beginning to see that it’s not each nation on its own path -- inasmuch as that is what’s going on -- but I sense a resurgence amongst all nations, and I feel like we are all gaining ground together and I feel like that synergy is really propelling us forward. So there’s a lot of inertia, and I would just encourage current and future leaders to tap into that, to ride that wave because it’s, I believe, it’s crashing towards a good shore and I think it’s actually going somewhere positive so it’s a good thing.

Ian Record:

So pretend for a second that I’m somebody that works in your nation’s government. It’s the day before the application deadline for Cohort 5 of the Rebuilders program and I’m sort of sitting on the fence. I’m not sure if I want to make this commitment, I’m not sure if I have much to contribute, not sure how much I’ll get out of this program. What would you say to me to convince me to apply?

Chris Hall:

I would say that you could make a lot of decisions in your life that may or may not assist you, but I could reassure you that this would be one that would propel you forward. This is a program -- if I can call it a program -- that really tunes in, listens, and provides you with tools for where you’re at and where you’re really intending on going. So even if you’re riding the fence and you’re not really sure, once you dip your toe in, you’re going to know that that water’s ripe for jumping in and swimming. So I would just say, ‘Put those fears and hesitation behind you and jump in,’ because it’s a real safe environment, it’s, like I say, they meet you where you’re at with your information, there’s no one person that is going to put you down for not knowing. So it’s a really, really positive experience and I think everyone needs that.

Ian Record:

So you alluded to this at the outset, that in recent years you’ve become involved in your nation’s, I would describe it perhaps as an ongoing effort to reform its constitution, perhaps it’s an ebb and flow, perhaps there’s work being done in some stages and just conversation at other stages, but can you first start off by describing the nature of your involvement in the sort of constitutional reform picture with Crow Creek?

Chris Hall:

By nature, what do you mean?

Ian Record:

Like so how are you contributing I guess to the reform process?

Chris Hall:

Oh, okay. Initially, I was the coordinator for a committee which was formed. There was a short time frame where we were allowed to present changes to our constitution, amendments to the constitution. We were asked to formalize those -- put that in writing -- present those for the decision, whether or not to move ahead. So a lot of the initial work that I was involved with was coming to the conclusion of what did we initially want to change, what [were] our top two priorities? And so it was weekly meetings, it was meeting with the community, tribal leadership, sort of cooking all that down and refining our selection to two amendments, which we put forth to vote. So that was the initial stage of my involvement.

Since the election, and the election didn’t go through, and there were a variety of reasons for that but that was...and I sort of knew this on the onset that it wasn’t going to be easily changed, we weren’t going to make two adjustments to our foundational document and then it was going to correct all our ills. So knowing that and having that election come and go and not have anything change, there wasn’t any disappointment on my part, in that we were making effort at changing.

So now this effort continues. There’s community education, leadership education; there’s lines of communication that are open that now need streamlining. There’s a very, very large picture out there that was at first unforeseen. There’s so much involved to wrap your head around that a lot of our citizens struggled with that. So since then, I’ve been working with the community and the leaders on clarifying that picture and clearing those lines of communication and this effort is, as you say, ongoing 'cause the revision process is just that -- it’s a revision process. The last time our constitution had been revised was 20-some years ago and that’s too long.

So the process that I’m involved in right now is an ongoing process of continuing education, of making resources available, clarifying that picture for our citizens so that they realize the importance of our foundational document, which is our constitution so that we can really accurately move forward in a knowing sense, so that we’re aware of what we’re doing rather than just throwing darts at a board, which at first, that’s what it felt like. We were under the gun, we had to come up with two prioritized amendments, and we were under the time pressure and it was just a shot in the dark.

Ian Record:

It sounds like it was a forced process when there needs to be sort of an organic nature to it, right? Where you allow people to fully immerse themselves and engage in the deliberations about this most precious governing document?

Chris Hall:

That’s a wonderful analogy. It does need to be grassroots, it does need to be organic, and I refer to our constitution as a foundational document. It impacts every aspect of our governance, of our culture, of our lifestyle, and people did not realize that at first. They thought this was just a piece of paper, it’s got some rules written on it and people are supposed to follow that if you’re in leadership and it doesn’t apply to the people, the nation. That concept has changed. Their appreciation of the document has deepened. They understand that this needs, that it’s wholesale; it’s across the board. This document affects every aspect of our living and our existence. So the importance of it now, I believe more and more people are becoming aware of that. Now the issue becomes, how do we not only specify in that document what our rules are, but how does that define us and which comes first? Do we define ourselves and then produce a document or is it vice versa? I’m letting people discover that for themselves. I believe I already have arrived at the answer, but I think that self-discovery for our citizenry is really, really important I think.

Ian Record:

I have two follow up questions for you on that. They were not on part of our original list, but this is typically what happens. Somebody says something really interesting and I ask them follow-up questions.

Chris Hall:

No, I think we need to stay on script.

Ian Record:

No, but the first one deals with this mindset you had, this recognition you had with the sort of forced process that you first were involved with, where it’s got to be two amendments and it’s got to be done by this date; that you recognized that win or lose that vote on those two amendments that this process we’re engaged in has some value to it because we’re beginning the conversation in the community and when we revisit this issue in the future, the baseline of knowledge and understanding and appreciation for why this matters will be that much greater. Is that sort of what you were getting at?

Chris Hall:

Yes, exactly. Moving forward in the dark, you grope, you feel your way, you’re unsure, and there’s a lot of fear. The fear of change in and of itself, not knowing what lies within that dark room, creates impediment, creates hesitation. So with the education, with the awareness, with the resource tools, people are coming out of that darkness, they’re shedding some light on the importance of this, the importance of the nation’s desires in proportion to leadership’s desires and the balance of that. So I think this whole process has been very positive, very productive, even though looking in from the outside, it may look like it was a complete failure, contrary to that from the inside, it’s been hard won, but, it’s filled with success, filled with success after success after success. Every time someone approaches me with a question and they get a satisfactory answer, I see that success in their eye, in their expression, in the ‘Aha!’ in the ‘Oh!’ So that’s been rewarding for me.

Ian Record:

So the other follow-up question I want to ask you is this dynamic between do you have the constitution define who you are, or do you define who you are and then have that inform the constitution. And this is a dynamic I’ve seen play out in a lot of other nations that are wrestling with the reform question. And where I’ve seen tribes succeed more often than fail is when the discussion around constitutionalism is paired with a discussion and a lot of deliberation about, 'Where do we want to be?' Not just who we are but where do we want to head, what sort of nation do we want to be 50 years from now, because that’s provides a lens through which to analyze, 'Well, how do we want to organize ourselves, what sort of vehicle do we want to design to get us there?' Is that sort of what you were getting at with that question?

Chris Hall:

Exactly. It’s cart before the horse; that analogy works. How can you create a document that will govern you without knowing either who you are or where you’re headed? So in my mind of course, you have to have a, I’ll go back to the word 'process.' I think we need to make some adjustments in our foundational language document, we also will then adjust as a nation and that will reciprocate back and forth. That’s why it needs to be an ongoing process. We will grow as a nation and if we’re smart enough to create a foundational document which can stay basically structurally the same and allow it to inform our law codes and inform our conduct as a nation, these two can support each other. So ideally, that’s the way it should move forward. Whether or not it will or not, that remains to be seen, because human beings are a very complex creature.

Ian Record:

So let’s backtrack a little bit; we’ve been talking about the reform process at Crow Creek. What prompted the nation to realize, 'We need to go down the reform road'? What were some of the issues that you felt necessitated constitutional change?

Chris Hall:

I don’t think it was my feelings necessarily, but more of different factions within the nation. There were factions that were concerned about our lease and our land use. There were factions that were concerned about our youth and our elderly. There were some gaps in some of our coverage in those areas and there were areas -- which a faction of the population had highlighted -- there was no action being done, there was no one at the bargaining table for some of our greater rights and our sovereign issues. So the issue of changing the constitution grew out of, 'Where are we at, and who’s got our bases covered, who’s protecting us and how do we get this done?' And so the conversation moved around, ‘Well, that all comes from your constitution.’ And there were very few knowledgeable people that had knowledge about our constitution. It wasn’t something that people talked about. They would rather talk about issues over and over again and not having any solution in mind whereas, we know that these issues stem from a weakness in our constitution. So that’s where that comes from.

Ian Record:

So in a nutshell, what’s the history of the Crow Creek Constitution? Where does it come from?

Chris Hall:

1949, it was drafted by Vern Ashley. We were given the choice to accept an IRA [Indian Reorganization Act] constitution, which we chose not to accept, but we were forced to create a constitution in order to interact with outside governments in a mode that was understandable for everyone. So we adopted a constitution -- again, sort of force-fed -- but we are a treaty nation, and we did not really agree to the IRA, although we had to concede to creating a constitution. The constitution that we ended up with was drafted in a language that was foreign to most of our citizens at the time, and which has fallen out of date to the point where it’s very, very, very weak and very outdated.

Ian Record:

So Vern Ashley was, what was his background? Was he a tribal citizen or, ?

Chris Hall:

Vern Ashley is one of our elders and he still exists. He had a legal background, and I’m not sure if he was asked or volunteered or what that situation was, but he drafted and that is the constitution which we have now.

Ian Record:

So where would you say the reform effort currently stands? If you can sort of give somebody the 101 version of where are you at, in sort of the grand arc of reform?

Chris Hall:

I think we’re in the embryonic stage. I really believe that our awareness as a nation amongst nations, we are realizing that this document is important and the document that we have is weak. I think the awareness that it weakens our nation is prevalent now, more so than it ever has been, and I think with that knowledge people are, our citizenry is becoming more and more committed to strengthening our nation and they’re seeing that document as key to that future success. So we are at the beginning of a long road, and we have a map [the constitution] that is an old map and it’s tattered and it may actually be inaccurate for where we’re deciding to go, where we will decide to go.

Ian Record:

So I’m going to backtrack a little bit to some of the examples you shared with sort of what led the nation to decide to go down the reform path. There were different groups within the community that had sort of issue-based concerns on a variety of fronts and it sounds to me like all of those at some level stem from the realization that we talk about how we’re sovereign, but we’re not fully and strategically exercising our sovereignty and then being told that, ‘Well, it’s your constitution that’s preventing you from fully and strategically exercising your sovereignty.’ Is that basically how it was playing out and where the realization was rooted?

Chris Hall:

I think essentially, yeah. I think people were, our citizenry was spending a lot of time pointing fingers, being very accusational -- a lot of negativity -- and I think a lot of that was placed or aimed at our leadership, our elected leadership. And when we would go outside of that circle and ask for an external enforcement, they would, the citizenry would be told, ‘Well, those are your elected officials. You elected them and they’re operating off of their constitution.’ So I think it took several generations of sort of struggling with that, and I think now we’re in a completely different communication era. I think there’s avenues of communication where we can get an avalanche of information whereas before that was not available to people. So people are able to grasp and grapple with a lot more information that’s readily available. I think that has a big impact on people’s awareness so that they have really queued in on this and they’re to the point where they’re saying, ‘We’re not really wanting to blame, finger-point, because our leadership is actually in the same position as the citizenry; they’re not supported by a solid document and our sovereignty suffers because of it, and our leadership has suffered because of it,’ to no fault of the leaders, but because of the paradigm.

Ian Record:

So you mentioned this initial process and the fact that it led to a vote, which did not result in any changes. What do you feel that you and others that have been integrally involved with this current effort have learned from that first go-around? Are there lessons that you’re now applying in terms of how you’re trying to better structure the process moving forward?

Chris Hall:

Yeah. We, of course, we were just so anxious for change and hoping that those changes would fix everything. I think now we realize that we can still be hopeful for change, but that it’s going to take a lot more work. It took us a long time to become dysfunctional -- for the weaknesses within our governance to magnify and manifest them selves into what we have now. So it’s going to take us a little time to work ourselves out of that. We’ve learned some lessons about where the decision-makers are, who those people are, what their motivations are. I think we’ve learned a little bit more about how to move forward through what we saw as a mountain of bureaucracy. I think on the external side, there’s been some change in the bureaucratic end, which has opened itself up to our efforts more. So that has sort of eased some of the path, but it’s still a rough, rocky road that we have to walk. So some of the lessons that we’ve learned we will apply, but there are many more lessons that I’m sure we’re going to bump our heads against, but knowing that on the outset. If you set out on a journey and you know that there’s going to be storms, you’re okay. If you set out on a journey and think everything’s going to be sweet and peachy, you’re in for a surprise. So I think one of the most important lessons we’ve learned is, this is not going to be easy, it’s going to be hard and if we listen to our elder’s teachings, they told us, ‘Life is hard. Prepare, work hard, and you’ll be rewarded.’ I think a few generations maybe thought that this would just be an easy road and one of the hard lessons we’ve learned is it isn’t.

Ian Record:

Yeah, I think this is a common refrain we’ve heard from others, from nations who are engaged in reform is that you’ve got to dial back expectations, you’ve got to be realistic, you’ve got to understand that constitutional reform, the process is thorny and the outcome is not going to be a panacea, that it’s not going to be this sort of newly minted utopian existence the moment the new constitution is ratified, that it’s an uncertain path, but it’s one worth taking.

Chris Hall:

Expectations are a dangerous thing.

Ian Record:

So what are some of the changes -- without being too prescriptive here -- what are some of the changes that have been discussed as, ‘If we change this, if we change that with the constitution, we’ll end up with a stronger government that’s more capable of supporting the nation’s strategic priorities’?

Chris Hall:

Well, we’ve talked about criteria for leadership. We’ve talked about tribal sovereignty being strengthened through taking control of some of the programming that affects our tribal citizenry. We’ve talked about our land use and our resource base and how to step in and control that more for our citizenry’s benefit. We’ve talked about putting our own language in a prologue. We’ve talked about putting treaty language, because we are a treaty tribe, to strengthen that document and to reiterate to the citizenry that, ‘You are a treaty nation, you have rights, and because you have rights, you have obligations. With ownership comes the responsibility and you need to be able to shoulder that responsibility in order to properly own.’ And there are folks who want to own a resource base and own leadership who are not willing to face that responsibility. So those things, if we can instill that in a document, somehow, magically, hopefully that will transfer to future generations of citizenry that can stand firm on a firm document.

Ian Record:

It’s interesting you bring up this issue of obligations. We’re seeing an emerging movement among tribes that engage in reform, not just here in the United States, but in First Nations in Canada in particular, that are consciously reintegrating a sense of civic duty, civic obligation within the constitution, actually explicitly referencing if, here’s the criteria to be a part of us, of our nation, but once you are considered that, whether you’re born into that citizenry or you become a citizen through various criteria that you meet, that once you’re a citizen there’s expectations of you. It’s not just a one-sided deal; it’s a two-way street. Is that sort of the nature of the conversation that’s taking place?

Chris Hall:

Yes. You have to have someone have your six. If you don’t have anyone that you can rely on in tough times who has your back, then you’re not strong. So in order to have a strong nation, we all have to agree on some ground rules, we have to agree on what it means to be a nation and what it means to be a part of that nation, and that’s part of defining who we are and who is amongst us, who we call 'citizen.' So yeah, that’s a very big part of it. It’s a fundamental aspect of being a tribal citizen and not just a tribal citizen, but a citizen of any organized nation that wants to be strong.

Ian Record:

And at sort of an overarching level, isn’t that really ultimately about restoring balance to the nation, where it’s not, it’s no longer the government’s job, the tribal government’s job to support in its entirety the life of the nation, but the citizens themselves have perhaps a greater role to play and the government is there sort of supporting the people as they perpetuate the nation and its culture, and not simply replacing the role of the people in doing that, applying that task?

Chris Hall:

I think for me, philosophically, the government is a small supportive entity within a nation. I think the citizenry is the one who outwardly people see as the nation and they should be the ones that are producing. They should be the ones that are exercising that leadership, that autonomy that says that we’re standing on our own two feet. We are capable and we desire our future to be sustainable and we’re not going to give that over to a government institution and we’re not going to give that over to any large umbrella corporation that may or may not support our desires as citizens and define us differently than we choose to be defined. So yeah, it really comes down to the individual’s impetus of making the announcement and the statement, ‘This is who I am, this is what I stand for and this is what I’m willing to do to be a part of this nation.’ And you need people standing beside you that are like-minded.

Ian Record:

Well, Chris, we really appreciate you taking some time to share your thoughts and experience with us.

Chris Hall:

You’re welcome. I’ve enjoyed this. Thank you.

Ned Norris, Jr.: Strengthening Governance at Tohono O'odham

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Tohono O'odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris, Jr. discusses how his nation has systematically worked to strengthen its system of governance, from creating an independent, effective judiciary to developing an innovative, culturally appropriate approach to caring for the nation's elders.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Norris, Jr., Ned. "Strengthening Governance at Tohono O'odham." Leading Native Nations interview series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. February 16, 2012. Interview.

Ian Record:

“Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I’m your host, Ian Record. On today’s program we are honored to have with us Ned Norris, Jr. Since 2007, Ned has served as chairman of his nation, the Tohono O’odham Nation, winning re-election to a second four-year term in 2011. He has worked for his nation for the past 35 years, serving in a variety of capacities, from Vice Chairman of his nation to Director of Tribal Governmental Operations to Chief Judge of the Tohono O’odham Judicial Branch. Chairman, welcome, good to have you with us today.”

Ned Norris:

“Thank you very much. It’s good to be here.”

Ian Record:

“I’ve shared a few highlights of your very impressive personal biography, but why don’t you start by telling us a little bit more about yourself?”

Ned Norris:

“Well, I’ve… born and raised here in Tucson, born at San Xavier when it was a hospital in 1955, and pretty much grew up here and spent all of my life here in Tucson, and got married to my wife Janice in 1973. And actually Friday, February 17th will be 39 years that she’s put up with me.”

Ian Record:

“Congratulations.”

Ned Norris:

“So I really appreciate that. We have children, we have grandchildren, and it’s great seeing them, and seeing how our kids have developed over the years and seeing how our grandchildren are coming along.”

Ian Record:

“Well, we’re here today to tap into your knowledge, your wisdom and experience regarding a wide range of critical Native nation building and governance topics and I’d like to start with tribal justice systems. You’ve taken on many different roles in your nation’s justice system including court advocate, child welfare specialist, and judge. And so I’m curious, generally speaking from your experience and your perspective, what role do tribal justice systems play in the exercise of tribal sovereignty?”

Ned Norris:

“As I was thinking about this, I was thinking about where we were as early as the late 1970s. For some people that’s not early, for some people that’s a long time, but when we think about where our tribal system, judicial system has developed since ’79 and forward, we have really come a long way in realizing that the court system itself plays a significant role in ensuring or demonstrating our ability to be a sovereign tribal entity. Obviously the tribal legislature’s going to make the laws and the executive side of the tribal government is going to implement those laws, but the court system really has a key, significant role in determining, in how those laws are going to be interpreted and how those laws are going to be applied. And for me that’s really a significant role in the tribal judicial system ensuring that whatever we’re doing internally with regards to applying the law as it is written by the legislature and implemented by the executive branch that it is ensuring that sovereignty is intact, that it’s ensuring that we have the capabilities of making the decisions that we need to make in order to govern our nation.”

Ian Record:

“A law professor here at the University of Arizona who you know very well, Robert Williams, who serves as a pro tem judge for your nation’s judicial branch describes this systematic effort your nation has engaged in over the past three decades or so to build an effective, efficient, tribal justice system from the ground up. Why has the nation engaged in that effort and why is that important?”

Ned Norris:

“I think that it has a lot to do with the fact that we’ve got tribal legislators over the years that have really began to take a holistic look at the tribal government as a whole and realizing that for the most part as late as the 1970s, early 1970s, our tribal judicial system was really what I would refer to as a BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs]-type system. Tribal codes were developed, but they were really taken off of boilerplates of BIA codes and so on and so forth. So I think that our leadership, our tribal council began to realize that these laws don’t always have the kind of impact that we would like them to have. And so in order for us to be able to govern ourselves and to determine our own destiny as it relates to [the] tribal court system, we’ve got to begin the process of changing the system and bringing it more up to speed, so to speak.”

Ian Record:

“And part of that I guess, regaining control of the justice function of the nation, things like making sure that you are charge of law and order, that you’re in charge of dispute resolution, that when you have a young person who has a substance abuse problem that they’re being taken care of, that issue is being taken care of internally versus them being shipped off the reservation, making the system more culturally appropriate, where the people in the community feel like this makes sense to us. Can you talk about that dynamic in the work that the nation has been doing in that regard to, I guess, make the justice system their own?”

Ned Norris:

“Well historically, I think it’s unfortunate that back then, and even to some extent even today, tribes do not have the level of resources available to address the more intricate needs of a substance abuser, an alcoholic, whatever the case may be, and so even today there are needs. There is a need to identify resources, whether it’s on or off the reservation to address that, but I think most importantly is the idea that we would be able to create the kinds of services that we’re using off reservation and bringing those services on the reservation where we’re playing a more direct role in that person’s treatment, in their rehabilitation and really looking at it like…from the perspective that this is family, this is part of our family. This individual isn’t just a member or a citizen of our nation, they are a citizen of our nation that we should take more of a responsibility to try and help within the confines of our own tribal nation, our people. And so I think when we think about it from that perspective, we begin to realize that maybe the services that we have are not as adequate or not as resourceful as we would like them to be. So we’ve got to be able to identify that and be able to identify where those voids are and bring those services into that program or create the program that…where those voids exist.”

Ian Record:

“It really boils down to the nation itself best knowing its own needs, its own challenges versus somebody from the outside that is simply just bringing in something from the outside that may not…”

Ned Norris:

“Not only that, Ian, I think that in addition to understanding that we have…we as the nation membership have a good understanding of what those needs are and what those resources are or aren’t, but also really realizing that if we’re going to bring or utilize outside resources to do this, those resources aren’t always going to be there. We’re going to be there, we’re going to continue to be there, our members are going to continue to be there and what makes more sense to us is to be able to take control and bring those services, develop those services where they lack and provide the services more directly by the nation’s leadership itself.”

Ian Record:

“One of the things that Professor Williams points to in this effort that the nation’s been engaged in around the justice system for the past 30 years is how the nation has invested in its own people, how it’s worked to build the capacity, internal capacity of its own people to provide justice to the community. Can you talk a little bit more about that? You’re a byproduct of that effort.”

Ned Norris:

“Well, I think that when we talk about investing in our own people, over the years in a more significant sense we’re…we’ve been able to establish our gaming operation. That operation has played a significant role in our ability to bring the kinds of services that aren’t there, that haven’t been there, or those kinds of services that we would for many years just dream about having and even to the extent that we’re developing our tribal members. I think, just to give you an example, pre-gaming we probably had less than 500, 600 employees that worked with the tribe and now we’ve got well over, I think it’s about 1,400 tribal employees and we’ve got a varied amount of programs that have been developed that are really beginning to address a lot of the needs that we’ve been having over the years. And not even that, the ability to develop our own tribal citizens in providing them an opportunity to train academically, whether it’s a vocational program, whether it’s a two-year or four-year college, whether it’s earning a bachelor’s degrees, master’s degree, doctorate degree, whatever the case may be. We’ve been able to provide that kind of an opportunity for our members to be able to acquire the kinds of skills that they lack academically and bring those skills back to the nation and apply those skills.”

Ian Record:

“Yeah, and I think what you’ve addressed is there’s a major obstacle for many tribes in that they’ll invest in their people, they’ll send them off to get a good education, but then it’s really critical that there’s a welcoming environment for those college graduates to say, ‘We’re sending you off to get a skill to come back and apply that skill here on behalf of the nation.’”

Ned Norris:

“Exactly, and part of our challenge as tribal leaders is making sure that we create the ability for those members to be able to come back. Too many times I’ve shared with different audiences over the years that we’re graduating more O’odham with bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees than in the history of the whole tribe, however, where we may lack in the ability to create the kinds of jobs that those individuals trained for. And so we need to prepare ourselves to be able to receive those tribal members back and provide them the kinds of job opportunities that they’ve spent four, six year, eight years in college acquiring, but also not only be able to do that, but to be able to pay a comparable salary for the kinds of positions that they’ve trained for.”

Ian Record:

“I’d like you, if you wouldn’t mind, to paint a picture. Before we went on air you were describing a little bit about what the nation’s justice system looked like when you came on board and started working within that system. Can you compare and contrast what the justice system and what the justice function looked like back in the early 1970s or mid 1970s, to what it looks like now?”

Ned Norris:

“Wow. It’s a night-and-day comparison really, because just physically we didn’t have the kinds of facilities necessary to really do… provide the kinds of justice services that our people should be afforded and we…when we talk about facilities, we talk about staffing, we talk about laws in themselves or codes, back in the late ‘70s, the early ‘80s, there was a time there that our law and order code was a boilerplate from the BIA code and I think that it took some years and some education and some effort to begin the process of understanding that this boilerplate code is obsolete in our mind and we need to begin the process of developing our own tribal codes. And so we began that process in writing our own tribal code, our law and order code, our criminal code, our civil codes and other codes and that took a process, but once we’ve done that and the tribal council adopted those codes, we started to apply them in the tribal judicial system. And so I think that when we compare where we were in the late 1970s to where we are now, the only… the concern that I have is, being a former judge -- I spent 14 years as one of our tribal judges and from ’79 to ’93 --and I’ve seen the court system develop over those years and seen how obsolete the laws were back in the late 1970s to where we were able to develop those laws. But also realize that back then in the early 1990s, I began to think about realizing the time that the court system is no longer processing and dealing with human beings, but they’re dealing with numbers. You become a number at some point, a case number or whatever because early on we came into this with the perspective that we’ve got this tribal member that is maybe committing crime, but there are a lot of factors that are contributing to why that tribal member has committed that particular crime and that we, the court system, although it has the law before it and the law may provide a jail sentence and/or a fine, the idea wasn’t always to throw this person in jail because of the crime they did, but to try and dig a little deeper into what’s really going on within that individual’s situation. Is it the home situation? Is it…was the person an abused person over a time of their life, was that person a victim of incest that just was never dealt with? And so we came to this with the perspective that the court system enforces the laws, applies the law and issues sentences, but some of that sentence has to take into consideration how can we help, how can we help this individual, how can we help the family address those issues that are impacting or having an influence in them committing the crimes that they’re committing?”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned that for several years you were a judge and so you’ve seen firsthand how the court system works and you’ve been a part of that court system. There’s an issue…there’s a major infrastructure challenge for a lot of justice systems across Indian Country. Can you talk a bit about what Native nation governments can do to ensure that their justice systems have the support they need to administer justice effectively?”

Ned Norris:

“One is, there was a period of time where the tribal legislature was what I refer to as the supreme authority on the O’odham Nation, at that time the Papago Tribe of Arizona. And as that supreme authority, there was really not a separation of powers between a three-branch system. And so, over the course of those years, early on the tribal supreme authority, the legislative authority really infringed on or encroached on what should have been an independent judicial system. And so I think, in answer to your question, tribal governments, tribal leadership should realize that it is imperative to the success of a tribal governmental entity that an independent system of judicial…a system to dispense justice is not having the kinds of influence by the other two branches of government that would impede its ability to deliver that justice. And I think that once we begin to understand that and realize that and realize that that not only does that involve the legislature not meddling into the judicial process, but it also has to involve an understanding that because in many tribal governmental entities the tribal legislator controls the purse, controls the funding, that they not use that as a basis to not fund the needs of the tribal judiciary. And I think that because the council has the authority to disperse funding resources that the courts still have to go to the council and ask and present their budget and ask for funding for infrastructure, for whatever the case may be. That there still has to be a relationship there, but I think that the tribal legislature needs to understand too that they shouldn’t use their role as a tribal legislator to deny the kinds of resources that the court system needs.”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned this issue of political interference and this is something that comes up in virtually every interview I do with folks on this topic of tribal justice systems and they all…almost all of them mention this issue of funding and how that can be rather than direct interference in a particular court case, but this kind of more subtle, insidious process of denying funding or reducing funding or holding funding hostage to…in exchange for certain considerations -- that that sends real messages and others have talked about how this issue of political interference can be a very slippery slope. That if a chair or a legislator, once they do it once for one person, word’s going to get around that, ‘You just need to go to this council person and they’ll get involved with the court case on your behalf.’ And in many respects doesn’t that distract the executive…the chief executive of the nation, the legislators from focusing on what they really should be focusing on?”

Ned Norris:

“Yeah, if we’re taking so much of our time and energy dealing with a relative’s court case and not allowing the court to apply justice to that situation, then obviously it’s taking us away from our real role, which is to provide the kinds of leadership and direction that we need to provide to run our government. So yeah, political influence, I think early on was an issue. Now, I think it’s rare. I think that we’ve educated our leadership to the extent that they understand the concept of separation of powers, that they understand that they shouldn’t use their position to try and influence a decision that the court is going to make. We’re not 100 percent, but we’re far less than what we were in the late 1970s and I think that that whole process just took a series of education and in fact, in some cases, some case law that’s already been established where the legislative branch was trying to encroach on the powers of the executive branch, we’ve had those cases in our tribal court system and those decisions are the law at this point.”

Ian Record:

“This wasn’t originally in my list of questions, but since you brought it up, I’d like to talk about the role of justice systems and the judicial branch, particularly your nation, in essentially being a fair umpire when there are conflicts between the executive function -- whether it’s a separate branch or not -- but the executive function of the nation and the legislative function. How important is it to have somebody, whether it’s your courts or an elders body or somebody, some entity that can, when there is conflict between those two functions to say, ‘Okay, let’s take a look at this and let’s be the fair arbiter here.’?”

Ned Norris:

“I think that it’s critical. I think it’s critical to be able to understand at some point in that particular dispute process that we’ve got to sit back and we’ve got to realize that as the two branches that are in dispute, is this an issue that we really want the courts to have a major role in deciding or do we want to come to terms or come to some level of understanding, try and resolve the matter before it ends up in court? I think that we should look at those kinds of issues from that perspective because once you get the court involved, the court is going to make its decisions based on the law, and the law is not necessarily always going to be the way to resolve or the way that you may… either side may want this particular issue resolved, and I think for the most part too, the court itself should realize if there’s an opportunity to resolve the dispute outside of the court, laying down the gavel and saying, ‘I hereby order…,’ that giving the parties an opportunity to resolve this dispute, whether it’s an encroachment by either branch, executive to legislative or vice versa, that we always have the opportunity to try and come to terms on resolution even if it means calling, I don’t know, I don’t want…I guess we could call him an arbitrator or mediator or a council of elders, to come in and provide some level of traditional means of resolving the dispute. I think that that’s important, but it’s important for the parties to make that decision. I’m not always open to the idea that court systems will order you to call in a council of elders or a medicine person to come help resolve this issue. I really think that that’s got to be the tribe themselves to make that decision. Over the years, the court has issued those kinds of orders and I think that they’ve worked, but for the most part I think that it’s the parties themselves need to make that determination and that decision.”

Ian Record:

“I would like to jump forward basically because of what we’ve been discussing and talk about the fact that virtually every tribe that I've worked with there’s always going to be some level of friction between the nation’s executive function and the legislative function. It’s just the nature of politics; it’s the nature of governance. And you being in that role of chairman now for multiple terms, I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about that despite your best efforts, there are times when you come to an impasse or there’s a conflict that emerges. Can you talk about how do you build constructive working relationships -- as a chair -- with the legislative branch, the legislative function of government to try to make that relationship as productive and as seamless as possible?”

Ned Norris:

“Well, I have to say that I’m proud of what my first four years of leadership has done to do exactly what you’re asking because I felt and I sensed and I heard from many council members that there was really a breakdown in the relationship between the branches. And we knew then, Vice Chairman Isidro Lopez and I, and now even Vice Chairwoman Wavalene Romero and I realize, that it’s got to be a continuous effort to build that relationship, still maintain and understand there are certain constitutional authorities and powers that each individual branch has, that we need to understand what those constitutional powers are and that we don’t encroach our authority and violate what those powers are, because once you start doing that then you begin the resistance between the two and it doesn’t make for a good working relationship. We knew coming into office four years ago, and even continuing in my second term, that we’re going to need to continue to develop that relationship and I’m comfortable that where we’re at some, almost six years, five years later that we’ve been able to have a level of understanding that decisions are going to need to be made, that decisions that even though I have authority to veto decisions of our legislature, it’s been...in four years I think I’ve exercised that power twice and -- actually three times and -- both of those times those issues have been resolved. One issue is still pending in court, but I think that in itself speaks for the fact that we have a very understanding working relationship between the executive branch and the legislature and it’s really a continuous level of communication, it’s a continuous level to understand where they’re coming from on that particular issue, where you think you’re coming from and how do you work together to resolve your differences and how and at what point do you want to compromise in order to be able to accomplish what it is you want to accomplish. I think for the most part all of us want what’s best for the people of our nation. How do we get there from here to there, we may have some differences. And it’s discussing, resolving those differences to hopefully come to a positive outcome for providing the leadership that our people need.”

Ian Record:

“I’d like to switch gears now and talk about tribal bureaucracies. In addition to serving as your nation’s Director of Tribal Governmental Operations -- as I mentioned at the beginning -- you also have served as its Assistant Director of Tribal Social Services and as a former Commissioner for its Tribal Employment Rights Office, its TERO office. What do you feel from your diverse array of experiences, what do you feel tribal bureaucracies need to be effective?”

Ned Norris:

“Well one, I think clearly the individual that has a level of authority in that bureaucracy needs to understand themselves what…where do their powers derive from and to what extent do I have any power at all? And I think the individual then taking that in the whole from let’s say the tribal legislature or… I’m constantly having to make the kinds of decisions, leadership decisions that I need to make, but I’m constantly asking myself in my own mind, ‘Do I have the authority to do this?’ And I think that that’s the kind of understanding in our own minds that we need to continue to ask ourselves, ‘Do we have the authority to do this? What does the constitution say on this particular issue? What have the courts said on this particular issue? What has tradition said on this particular issue?’ And being able to understand that in all those perspectives I think is really where we need to…it’s going to help in the bureaucracy that’s created, because to me 'bureaucracy' isn’t a positive word in my opinion.”

Ian Record:

“Tribal administration.”

Ned Norris:

“Tribal administration, there you go. The Bureau [of Indian Affairs]’s a bureaucracy, but in tribal administration, I think that if we’re going to be able to…the end result is how do we get to be able to provide the kinds of needs that our people deserve and are entitled to? And are we going to create the kinds of roadblocks…and if there are roadblocks, then how do we break down those barriers, how do we break down those roadblocks, how do we begin to sit at the table with each other? I’ll tell you, there was a point in time where -- and I think it’s with any government -- but there’s mistrust, there’s a certain level of mistrust between the tribal branches or the governmental branches and it’s needing to understand that regardless of what I do there’s still going to be some level of trust. I’ve got 22 tribal council members. I still have to accept the fact that I know there’s at least one, maybe more, of those 22 council members that don’t want to see me where I’m at today and accept that. I accept that, but that doesn’t mean that I not continue to do what I think I need to do in working with my supporters and my non-supporters. They’re still a council member, I still have to work with them, I still need a majority of council to get the kinds of approvals or decisions to do things that I need. We need each other. The council needs the executive branch and the executive branch needs the council.”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned at the beginning of your response about the importance of every individual that works within the nation and for the nation understanding what their role is and what their authority is. Isn’t that absolutely critical when you talk about say, for instance, the nation’s elected leadership versus say your department heads, your program managers and things like that? That there’s a common understanding of, ‘Okay, when it comes to the day-to-day management,’ for instance, ‘of this program, that’s not my job as an elected official. That’s the job of the department head and the staff below them.' Because that’s a major issue that we’ve encountered across Indian Country, where there’s this constant overlapping of role boundaries if you will.”

Ned Norris:

“Micromanaging.”

Ian Record:

“Yes, that’s another way of putting it.”

Ned Norris:

“Yeah, micromanagement. I think for the idea or the idea of overstepping one’s authority where it appears, or at least you’re experiencing micromanagement, I think that for some time there was even a certain level of micromanaging that was going on and attempted to be going on from tribal council members or council committees on executive branch programs and we even see a certain level of that even today, this many years later. But I think how we handled those situations really has an impact, because I think for some time, we’ve got to realize that I’m not going to disallow my department directors, my department heads or anybody in those departments to not take a meeting with the tribal council committee if the council committee wants them to be there. That wasn’t always the situation in previous administrations, but for me, the council needs to be as informed on those issues in their role as a tribal council member. I think that when we think about micromanaging, again I think that it’s really a level of communication as to how you’re going to deliver. I’m not going to sit there and say, ‘Council member, you’re micromanaging my programs and that’s…I have an issue with that.’ I think that how we explain to them that we’re going to provide you the kinds of information that you need, but as the Chief Executive Officer under the constitution I have a certain level of responsibility to make sure that these programs are doing what they’re intended to do and I will assume that [responsibility]…I will exercise that responsibility, but we’re going to keep you informed, we’re going to keep…and if it’s personnel issues, that’s a different story. That’s clearly…we’ve got to protect the employee and the employer, but I think that for the most part we…how you communicate -- I’m trying to explain this. I’m not sure I’m doing a good job of it -- but how you explain without offending is critical to the outcome. And I don’t want our council to think that I’m prohibiting our departments to communicate issues with the council, because once we start doing that then you start to create barriers there and I don’t want those barriers, but at the same time the council needs to understand that if it’s an administrative issue that is clearly within my authority as the Chief Executive Officer for my nation. I have directors, I have people that are…that I hold accountable to make sure that those issues are addressed.”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned a term that I think is really interesting, I’d like to get you to talk a bit more about it. You said, ‘It’s critical to explain without offending.’ And we’ve heard other tribal leaders and people that work within tribal government talk about the fact that the impulse to micromanage, the impulse to, for instance, interfere, for an elected official to interfere on behalf of a constituent, for instance -- it’s always going to be there. The question’s how do you explain to that person that wants to interfere, that wants to micromanage, that this is not the way we do things because we have processes in place, we have policies in place that prohibit me from doing that? That’s not to say, as you said, that we can’t have a communication, that you can’t understand what’s going on and why, or why a certain decision’s been made the way it’s been made, but we have processes in place. How critical is that to have that…I guess to have that basis upon which you can explain without offending? That there’s these processes in place that are critical to the nation functioning well?”

Ned Norris:

“Sure. I think that it’s extremely critical to be able to have a level of understanding, but a certain level of trust. I think follow-up is key. I think if you’re going to have a council member or a council committee that is raising issues that are clearly an administrative function of one of my departments, then I’m not going to leave them out of that issue because they have a reason, they have an importance, they have a constituent out there that brought the issue before them. They need to know, they need to understand and so I’m going to make…I’m going to give them the assurance that as the chief administrator, I’m going to make sure that my people are going to follow up on that issue, but I’m also going to make sure you know what we’ve done. Not necessarily what disciplinary actions might have been imposed, but how are we going to address that issue? And make sure that I get back to them and tell them, ‘Here’s where we’re at with this issue, here’s what we’ve done. I want the program director to come and explain to you where we’re at on this as well.’”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned this issue of personnel issues, which are inevitable. They always arise -- whether it’s a hiring and firing dispute, whatever it might be -- and you mentioned it’s a whole different ballgame, that that really is critical that that’s insulated from any sort of political influence whatsoever. And we’ve heard others talk about how important that is to achieving fairness within the tribal administration, achieving fairness within how the nation operates, how it delivers programs and services. Can you talk a little bit about how your nation has addressed this issue of personnel disputes?”

Ned Norris:

“Well, I have to say that I…we have a lot yet to develop. We have a system to grieve, there’s a policy, personnel policies are in place, there’s the policies outline as to how individuals grieve an employee-employer situation. And I’m not…I haven’t always been 100 percent satisfied with the system itself. And so we’re currently going through a rewrite or a restructuring of what that system should be and really all in the interest of facilitating the process in making sure the process is more friendly to both sides, the grievant and the grievee and so on and so forth, because I think that our process involves a panel of individuals that may not necessarily have the level of training or understanding of what their duty and responsibility is as a panel member hearing that grievance. And so we have a panel and an individual or individuals on that panel that may think their authority is much bigger than what is really outlined or that they may need to make decisions that aren’t necessarily related to the grievance itself and those kinds of decisions have come out and our current policy provides that as chair of the nation, the chair has the final decision over a grievance that hasn’t been resolved at any one of the lower levels. And it’s by that experience that I realize we’ve got to change the process; the process needs to be more equitable I think to not only the process, but to the grievant, the person grieving it themselves. So I think that you want to make sure, you’ve got to make sure…you’ve got to ensure to your employees that we have a system to grieve that is fair, that they have confidence in, that they have the comfort that they’re going to…they know that when they get to the process, that that process is going to move along as fast as possible, but that their issue is going to be resolved. And I think too many times we don’t get to that point, but I think it’s the process itself that needs to be looked at, but we need to develop a process that is fair.”

Ian Record:

“I’d like to talk now about a symbol of pride for your nation, and that’s the Archie Hendricks Sr. Skilled Nursing Facility and Tohono O’odham Hospice. What prompted the nation to develop this amazing, what’s turned out to be this amazing success story and what has it meant for the Tohono O’odham people and in particular, its elders?”

Ned Norris:

“Archie Hendricks Nursing Care facility was a dream for many years. I was in tribal social services when, not long after the tribe contracted [Public Law 93-] 638, those social services from the Bureau. And it was really unfortunate that too many times when our elders needed nursing care that those elders were, as a figure of speech, shipped to some nursing facility in Casa Grande, in Phoenix, in other areas of the state and literally taken away from their home, taken away from their family. And too many times, the only time that those elders came back was in a box, when they’d deceased at that facility. And too many times having our elders placed in off-reservation facilities limited or to some…and in some cases prohibited family members to participate in their care in that off-reservation facility. And it just made sense that we begin the process of creating a facility on the nation where our elders can stay home at a location that we think is kind of central to where members, family members can commute, have more easily the ability to commute to that facility and visit. Too many times…a lot of our folks don’t have vehicles. A lot of our folks pay somebody else who has a vehicle to take them to the post office, take them to Basha’s or take them to somewhere, in a lot of cases drive them to Phoenix to visit their elder in the nursing home. And even though that still is the situation today with many of our members, the drive is a lot shorter than it is just to go to the Archie Hendricks facility. But also not only to be able to bring our elders home and have that service here on the nation, but also to…it’s an opportunity to instill tradition and instill who we are as O’odham into the care of our elders and in doing that, also having the opportunity to train tribal members in that particular service. We have a number of tribal members that have gone on to earn academic programs that are now applying those skills in the nursing home. So it had a win-win situation all the way around, not only bringing our elders, but a job opportunity; an opportunity to create a program that wasn’t there.”

Ian Record:

“Obviously that success story has addressed a particular need and as you’ve shared, a very dire need. But I guess on a larger overall level, doesn’t it send a very powerful message to your nation’s citizens that if we have a challenge, if we have a need, we can do this ourselves?”

Ned Norris:

“Oh, I think that’s true. I think that that’s maybe one of the bigger messages that we’re demonstrating because even today we think about…in fact, I had some, a family member come into my office that were concerned about their child or their nephew that was in an off-reservation youth home placement and that individual turned 18 years of age and was released from the facility. Well, the concern was there was really no services that was provided to him while in that facility and so in their own words they says, ‘Why can’t we build the kinds of facilities that we did for our elders for our youth? Why can’t we bring our youth home into a facility that can provide the kinds of services that they need?’ And why can’t we? We should. We should move in that direction. There was a time when the nation operated a couple of youth homes, a girl’s home and a boy’s home. I’m not sure right now what the history is as to why that doesn’t happen anymore, but I think the bureaucracy is what I remember, was the bureaucracy got hold of the situation. It was probably a licensing issue that the Bureau required that we weren’t able to comply with and so on and so forth, but I’m not suggesting we want to run off, run facilities without being accredited in some way or certified or licensed in some way, but I think that we need to understand that if we’re going to move in that direction…and I totally agree that we need to begin developing those kinds of services on the nation, but we also have to realize do we have the capability to do that? Do we have…? We can build a house, we can build the home, we can build the facility, but do we have the resources to run the kinds of programs that it’s going to require, do we have the trained personnel, do we have the…all the requirements that you need in order to run a sound helpful service to these youth -- can we do that? I think we need to do an assessment ourselves and if we feel we’re ready to make that move, then by all means let’s start putting the…making those facilities available.”

Ian Record:

“It’s interesting you mentioned that your citizens are now thinking, ‘Why can’t we?’ and that’s a very important shift in mindset, is it not? To where…from where in many Native communities 20-30 years ago, it was always, ‘Let the Bureau take care of it. We don’t need to deal with it.’ To now, ‘Why can’t we do it ourselves?’ That speaks to this larger shift that we’re talking about, the message that it sends to the people, does it not?”

Ned Norris:

“Well, it’s…I think about former leadership and I think about leaders that have had an impact in my life and I always share this story about…you remember the TV commercial, ‘Be like Mike,’ Jordan’s Shoes, ‘Be like Mike, play the game like Mike’ and all this and that? And I have my own ‘Be like Mike’ people out there myself. I think about the late Josiah Moore, an educator, a leader, a tribal chairman, former tribal chairman of our nation. I think about a Mescalero Apache leader by the name of Wendell Chino and think about other leaders that have gone on, but have demonstrated their leadership over the years. And I think to myself that those are the kinds of leaders that have vision, those are the kinds of leaders that have fought for sovereignty, that have fought for rights of tribal governments and those are the kinds of values as a leader that I think we need to bring to our leadership. Is, how do we protect the sovereignty of our sovereign nations? And it’s really unfortunate because somebody asked me, ‘Well, what is tribal sovereignty?’ And I says, ‘Well, I don’t agree with this, but too many times, tribal sovereignty is what the United States Supreme Court decides it’s going to be in a case or the federal government,’ and we can’t accept that. We shouldn’t accept that. We don’t want to accept that. We may not be a true sovereign, but we have certain sovereign authorities that we need to protect and we need to continuously exercise and whatever rights we have as a people, we need to exercise those rights, we need to understand what those rights are, we need to protect those rights just as well as protecting our tribal sovereignty.”

Ian Record:

“Isn’t part of that process… and you’ve mentioned this term a lot, assessing, assessing, assessing, assessing. Isn’t part of that process assessing where your nation could be exercising sovereignty or where it needs to exercise sovereignty, but currently isn’t and saying, ‘Let’s push the envelope here?’”

Ned Norris:

“Sure. I think that is. I think that…I like to do assessments, I like to do that mainly because you think you might understand what the situation is and you think you might have the right answer as to how you’re going to attack that situation or address that situation, but too many times we go into a situation not realizing what the impacts of your addressing that issue is going to be and so for me, I like to, ‘Okay, I agree with you, let’s address that issue, but let’s make sure we understand what it is we’re dealing with and whether or not we have the ability to address that issue,’ because to me to do something with half of an understanding really creates, to some extent, false hope because people are going to see that you’re moving in that direction. And if you’re not able to fulfill that movement, you’re going to stop and people may have liked to have seen what you were moving on, but don’t understand, ‘Why did you stop? We had hope in that. We thought you were going to address that issue.’ ‘Well, you know what, we didn’t do our homework and we couldn’t move it any further. That’s why.’ I think that we need to be, if we’re going to make a decision as a tribal leader, we need to fully understand the ramifications of what that decision is and to the best of our ability make informed decisions about the decisions we need to make and then move forward.”

Ian Record:

“I’d like to wrap up with…I’d like to wrap up on a final topic of constitutional reform. And as you well know, there’s been a groundswell of constitutional reform activity taking place across Indian Country over the past 30 years, in particular in the wake of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. And back in the mid-1980s, your nation, the Tohono O’odham Nation, completely overhauled its constitution and system of government. And I’m curious to learn from you, what did the nation change and why and what did it create and why?”

Ned Norris:

“Well, I had the experience of being involved in my tribal government under the old 1937 constitution and then the new 1986 constitution, and although I wasn’t as involved in the development of the 1986 constitution, I understand some of the history and that it took, and as I understand it, that whole process took some 10 years to accomplish, to be able to…there were several drafts of our 1986 constitution. The constitution committee had understandings and misunderstandings and decisions that they couldn’t come to terms on amongst themselves. So it was just a long, drawn-out process, but I think a 10-year process that was well worth it. And I say that mainly because I saw the government under the old constitution and I see it now under the ’86 and realize that even under the ’86 I don’t think that we fulfilled the possibilities under the current 1986 constitution. Going back to what I said earlier about that supreme authority under the old constitution, in many ways the council was the legislature, the executive and the judicial. And for me, you had that supreme authority under the constitution in 22 members of their tribal council. And so there were…because of that I think there were times as tribal judges or as…well, yeah, as tribal judges where we may have sat back and thought to ourselves, ‘Oh, I’ve got council person’s son or daughter in front of me in this courtroom, I better be careful on what I decide here.’ That consciousness or sub-consciousness about the fact that you’ve got a council member’s relative in front of you that you’re either going to throw in jail or you’re not going to throw in jail: ‘If I throw them in jail, then the council member’s going to come after me.’ I think there were those kinds of influences that the old 1937 constitution brought about and in different ways. That was just an example, but in different ways. And so when we…when the development of the 1986 constitution really brought on the whole concept of a government that is separated by three branches and three branches that are equal in power and authority and three branches that are clearly defined as to what that power and authority is in the constitution itself. I support that and I continue to support that. We’re going through a process now because over the last…since ’86 there have been some things that different districts and different and even I think need to be changed in the constitution. Literally, just take a look at our 1986, our current constitution and you’ve got more pages that cover the powers and authorities of the legislature than you do four or five pages under the executive branch. And so even on paper, is that truly a system that affords the level of powers and authorities that should be granted to each branch respectively. And so I think that constitution reform is good. I think that though there are still things in the constitution today that we don’t understand, that may not have been fully implemented or implemented at all, but I think that…and even educating our members on the constitution, I think, hasn’t been as adequate as it should have been. Because you look at the constitution, the constitution, the powers and authorities of the constitution is derived by the people. The people themselves need to understand the enormous power and authority they have under the constitution and they, under that power and authority, need to hold us leaders accountable for ensuring that we’re protecting not only the provisions of the constitution but protecting them as well.”

Ian Record:

“It’s interesting you bring this up. We’ve heard so many other leaders of other nations whose nations have engaged in reform, either successfully or unsuccessfully, and particularly among those who’ve engaged in reform successfully, in that they’ve implemented certain changes, they’ve had the citizen referendum and it’s passed and all that sort of thing, they’ve all discussed this sort of critical moment where you overhaul your constitution, it becomes law and everyone kind of sits back and goes, ‘Whew, that’s done.’ But it’s really not done because you’ve eluded to this challenge of not just changing what’s on paper, but changing the political culture, changing citizen’s expectations of their government, educating the people about, ‘This constitution has a very direct impact on your daily life and here’s how.’ Is that something that… a dynamic that you’ve seen in your nation in terms of the challenge that it continues to face?”

Ned Norris:

“I think that everything that you’ve just mentioned as a leader whether you’re chair, vice chair, council, whatever the case may be, we need to understand that. We need to understand that simply amending, changing, instituting a brand-new constitution on paper doesn’t solve the problem, doesn’t resolve whatever issues. Yes, it may be a better constitution in your opinion or a group of people’s opinion, but how we apply that, how we interpret that, how we educate the authorities to the people that the constitution is going to impact is a whole new process. And it’s a responsibility that we should take on as leaders to make sure that our people are… have at least an understanding of the constitution, but and I think to some extent have a working knowledge of what that constitution has to offer.”

Ian Record:

“You’ve mentioned vision and the importance of leaders having vision and you mentioned Wendell Chino and Josiah Moore. What’s your vision? What’s your personal vision for the future of your nation? And how are you working to make that vision a reality?”

Ned Norris:

“Vision, you’ve got to have visions in all aspects of leadership. What is the vision for the health area? What is your vision for the continuation of your economic development? What is your vision for the services that are delivered or that lack or that you dream about? What is your vision? And I think that one, the vision really has to take into consideration, where do you want to see your people, where are your people at now, where do you want to see your people five years from now, where do you want to see them 10 years from now? And we want to continue to educate, we want to continue to develop, we want to continue to be able to address the kinds of issues that are impacting, whether it’s a positive or negative impact on our people. We want to be able to identify a continuous identification of needs that our people have and how do we begin the process of addressing those issues, those needs, those whatever the case may be. I think that vision involves all of that and it’s not simply saying, ‘Well, my vision is that we’re going to rid the Tohono O’odham Nation of unemployment.’ That is a vision, but how do you get there? What do you…you have to…in order to have vision, you’ve got to be able to understand that there are things that are going on now that are going to impact your ability to apply that vision; and unless you understand what those issues are here, your vision isn’t going to mean anything. And so the vision might be big and it might have a bigger perspective, you want to address the health needs of…our vision is to eliminate diabetes amongst the O’odham. Great! I think all of us that have those kinds of problems on our nation want that as a vision, but how do you get there? What do you have to do now in order to address those issues? I want our kids to be positive, productive citizens of not only themselves and their families and their extended family and their communities and their nation, but I also want…I realize that there are things that are impacting our kids now that are going to have an impact on whether or not they’re going to be a productive individual. Too many times we take, we accept things, we accept things as the norm. Too many times, we accept alcoholism as the norm. Too many times, we accept drug trafficking or human cargo trafficking as the norm. That is not who we are. That is not the norm, and we need to impress on our people that those things are having negative impacts on us as a people as a whole and those things are going to have those negative impacts and are impacting our future, are impacting our ability to be the people who we are. And so the vision is being able to realize and understand those issues and make the kinds of changes in order to have a productive nation.”

Ian Record:

“Well, Chairman Norris, I really appreciate your thoughts and wisdom and sharing that with us. Unfortunately we’re out of time. There’s a lot more I’d like to talk about and I think we’ve just scratched the surface here, but I really appreciate you spending the time with us today.”

Ned Norris:

“I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.”

Ian Record:

“Well, that’s all the time we have on today’s program of Leading Native Nations. To learn more about Leading Native Nations, please visit the Native Nations Institute’s website at www.nni.arizona.edu. Thank you for joining us. Copyright 2012 Arizona Board of Regents.”

From the Rebuilding Native Nations Course Series: "What Effective Bureaucracies Need"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Native leaders offer their perspectives on the key characteristics that Native nation bureaucracies need to possess in order to be effective.

Native Nations
Citation

Brown, Eddie. "Tribal Service Delivery: Meeting Citizens' Needs" (Episode 7). Native Nation Building television/radio series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy and the UA Channel, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. 2006. Television program.

Ducheneaux, Wayne. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Spearfish, South Dakota. April 11, 2012. Interview.

LaPlante, Jr., Leroy. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. August 12, 2010. Interview.

Luarkie, Richard. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. October 1, 2012. Interview.

Penney, Sam. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. August 20, 2010. Interview.

Leroy LaPlante, Jr.:

"You know, when you have a strategy in terms of where, and a vision of where you want the tribe to be, you know, generations from now, everything works toward that end. And so people -- it does give program managers more focus and it does...but you know, that example being set by elected officials is so critical, 'cause if they're setting that example, then it trickles down to your administrative personnel, it trickles down to your program managers, it trickles down to your tribal employees. That there's this conscientiousness that what we're doing is really for the betterment of the people not just here today, but further down the road."

Sam Penney:

"With most bureaucracies, there needs to be roles and responsibilities, there needs to be clear lines of authority, policies and procedures need to be in place. That can save a lot of time over the long run. I think what was important for our tribe is when we adopted our strategic management plan that goes to all levels throughout the tribe, and that communication/coordination among the tribal departments and programs can always be improved. We are a pretty large entity, and I think that just by simply adopting a strategic management plan that is tribal council-approved goes a long ways in providing the day-to-day direction for your staff."

Wayne Ducheneaux:

"I think it all falls back to a solid policies and procedures, something that...a handbook, a guideline that everybody can look at and distribute equitability amongst everybody. It really helps to have the support of your elected officials when you're carrying out the day to day. That's one of the things that I've found has really been cool about my job is of the 15 tribal council people, I've had every one in my office come in and visit with me, ask for advice. I've asked them for advice and what we need to help keep that going is the trust from elected officials, but a clear policy to follow so we make sure everything's fair."

Eddie Brown:

"It's building a good solid foundation of making sure that you have your regulations in place. When we talk about foster care programs or child welfare programs, they have a lot of rules and regulations and standards to ensure the protection of the child as well as the parents. Those kind of things -- having good regulations in place, hiring competent staff, providing training for those staff, pulling together management information systems that allow them to track and to evaluate the kind of program or the impact of the programs that they're having. I think all of this -- it's a tremendous challenge for an administrator today at a tribal level, because there are so many things that need to be done with limited dollars, and a growing expectation of tribal members toward the tribal council to begin to act in a full essence of what a government is, and that is a government's role is to care for the wellbeing of its citizens."

Richard Luarkie:

"For Laguna, I believe what makes our system work well, our bureaucracy work well is the ability to authorize those that are in decision-making roles -- like directors and supervisors -- to make certain levels of decisions. That way everything is not coming to the governor's office, everything's not coming to the chief of operations, and so when you can begin to build quality staff, great systems, the system will take care of itself and you don't have to sign off on every little document. So having that type of environment in place is very critical and I think definitely helps with the bureaucracy. On the tribal side, same thing with the...on the tribal government side, same scenario where the tribal council has delegated to the governor's office and to our staff officer level certain signing authority so we don't have to take everything into tribal council. As an example, we just had a request for filming. There's a movie that's going to be filmed at Laguna and starring Jennifer Aniston and they wanted to come and film for two days and it was two hours per day. So as opposed to taking that into council, that's something that the governor's office can just sign off on. So it allows the council to focus on the big issues and not have to worry about, do we authorize somebody to come film for two hours and we end up debating that for two hours. So it becomes critical when you can begin to delegate certain responsibilities out and so that helps in our bureaucracy."

From the Rebuilding Native Nations Course Series: "Strategic Clarity"

Author
Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

NNI Executive Director Joan Timeche stresses the importance of Native nations having strategic clarity in the development and operation of effective bureaucracies.

Native Nations
Citation

Timeche, Joan. "Strategic Clarity." Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy. University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. 2013. Lecture.

"Some of the key considerations that you need to look into. One of them is...the first one is strategic clarity and this all goes back to you as an individual citizen of your nation, of your community, and wondering, 'I'm a citizen of this nation, but what's ahead [on] the road for our nation?' It's tribal governments assuming that responsibility to figure out 'What do I want, what kind of a society do I want for my grandchildren, for my great grandchildren?' And if you're young enough, for myself, 'Is this the community that I want to come live and work and play in? Or...as soon as I finish a degree I'm going to jump ship and I'm going to go off the reservation. What do I want...what kinds of things do I want to change within my community that I wish would be there, to what kinds of things [do] I want to...want to make sure I protect?' Like for Hopi, it's things like our culture, our religion, our language are these kinds of things that we want to still be in place. Last summer we were working with some youth from...Native youth from New Mexico, and what you heard from them most when we asked them this question is they wanted to have a safe community within...wherever it is, wherever they lived. They wanted to be able to...one example is, and it's done out of Hopi and I know it's done a lot in the Pueblo communities is, as you're driving across the rez, usually you'll wave to people. You may not know them personally or may not recognize that person who's zipping by you, but you wave to the person to recognize that you're a part of the community and they're a part of the community, too. You want to be able to have this home environment that we're all a part of this group, and this is something that we want. They wanted to feel safe within the community.

Some of the things that can happen if you don't have that strategic clarity is you're gonna...what you'll end up having are employees who don't know, who have a lack of direction, who don't know where their program should be headed, who don't know why, what their role, what their job is supposed to be doing or even why they come to work. I know a lot of people that did that at my tribe and I know people today too, not just at the tribal government but anywhere, people who just come to work, clock in, do the work, hang around, do some work, end of the day right at five o'clock, clock out and they're gone. To them it's just a job, it's just a paycheck. But what you want to do is be able to make sure that those people coming in clearly understand what it is that you're about, understanding what role they play, even down to the secretary. The other is if you don't have this strategic clarity about where you're headed as a nation, then you're going to continue to support that kind of behavior. One example of this is with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. What they did is they said, 'We are going to make it mandatory for every single employee who comes to work for us, whether they're Cherokee or not, to go through a 40-hour course and it's equivalent to a college course,' and they learn all about Cherokee history from its beginning to its dealings with the federal government, all of their treaty making and so on, but they have to also pass this course 'cause what they're wanting to do is make sure that every individual knows the history, all the trials that the nation had to go through, understands why it made the decisions it did in the past to where it is that they're moving towards, because they want to have every employee on board with them as they move and work towards their future. They share with them not only the history, but also the present. What are our future goals and what are our expectations of you as a citizen of the nation as well as an employee of ours? So that if you're a non-tribal citizen and you're working for them and you go and meet with others on our behalf as our employee, we want you to be as well versed as any one of our citizens, because you're representing us out there in the community. And all of you will have to do that...all of us have to do that at one point or another. When we work for someone else, we have to be able to know enough about our employer and about its purpose, its goals, to be able to do our job effectively and we should want to know those kinds of things as well."

Honoring Nations: Rick George: The Umatilla Basin Salmon Recovery Project: Building on Success

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Rick George, former Program Manager for Rights Protection and Environmental Planning with the Confederated tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, shares what he sees as the foundational characteristics of the Umatilla Basin Salmon Recovery Project and other examples of successful, sustainable nation-rebuilding initiatives that Umatilla has developed.

People
Resource Type
Citation

George, Rick. "The Umatilla Basin Salmon Recovery Project: Building on Success." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 11, 2004. Presentation.

Amy Besaw:

"And next up we have Rick George from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation. Rick is the -- excuse me while I look -- environmental protection and rights protection manager for the nation."

Rick George:

"Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. It's an honor to be able to speak to you this afternoon. I'm here at the behest of Donald Sampson, he sends his apologies and he also sends me to give them to you. We lost a tribal leader a few weeks ago and he was a very close friend of mine and he was my boss and I want to honor him today with my words.

One of the most important lessons I've taken from these last couple of days -- and I was not prepared for it, it's not something I considered in coming here -- was the lesson from the younger generation. The youth, the young adults, the recognition that this program has given them and the role models that you provide not just your youth but all of us. I applaud that and I think that if there is a standard of measure of success of this Harvard program of honoring nations it is that. It is that you have recognized the younger generation and you have singled them out in a national award recognition program that I think supersedes all of the other recognition processes and programs and things that I'm aware of. And I just hats off to you all. It's been a pleasure, it's been an honor to be here with you for the last couple of days.

And for that reason I just want to say thanks to Harvard and I want to say thanks to Ford and to the Casey foundations. I don't know if you have other supporters, I'm sure you do, but just watching the younger folks here I don't think there's a better way to represent the success of your funding, of your contribution, of your support and of the work of the people that make this program what it is. So thank you very much. And I think when you talk about how to sustain programs, how to make good things continue, that's one of the first things you do, you recognize them. You honor them and you give thanks for them and that's what we're doing and that's what this Harvard program does. So I think that's one of the first key components in maintaining and actually building on successes.

I work for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, which is located in northeastern Oregon, made up of three tribes, the Walla Walla, the Cayuse and the Umatilla. At one time, prior to treaty, they utilized country that is now part of the southeastern Washington and northeastern Oregon and far beyond that area. The tribe has been honored by the Harvard program, high honors for a project called the Umatilla Basin Project. It's a project that restored stream flows to the river that flows through the heart of the reservation after 70-plus years of having no stream flows for six months out of the year and then putting salmon back in those waters, three different stocks of salmon. The river has gone from dry for six months out of the year for 70-plus years and it has gone from zero salmon for 70-plus years to 30,000 adult salmon returning each year and to a flowing river 12 months out of the year. It was conceived of, negotiated, and implemented by the Confederated Tribes.

The tribe was awarded also high honors for a salmon foundation funding program that's operated by a tribal consortium that includes the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, also includes the Yakima, the Nez Pierce and the Warm Springs tribe and that's the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission out of Portland. And the tribe received honors recognition for its cultural resources protection program, a program that has just been a phenomenal success on the reservation as far as being a demonstration for Indian people at home and for tribes across the country, and in some cases across the world, for how to protect your cultural artifacts, your sacred places, by doing it yourself, by taking over the expertise, the responsibility and the obligation and taking it away from folks that have been trying to do it for a century and a half.

I think there are several foundational characteristics in addition recognizing and rewarding successful programs that the Umatilla tribes use day in and day out to make sure that successes continue and that they actually grow into new successes. One of those is vision and leadership. And I am fortunate enough today to be here at Harvard with the chairman of the Confederated Tribes, the chairman of the board of trustees, chairman Antone Minthorn. Antone, would you stand up please? [Applause] Chairman Minthorn has been on the board of trustees for 20 years and when you talk about vision and leadership in our country, in our part of the world, Chairman [Antone] Minthorn is the vision and the leadership that has guided the Umatilla Basin Project, the salmon and water restoration project, from start to now. It's his vision, it's his leadership that makes sure that that program is well understood and honored by both tribal people and the off-reservation, non-Indian people. And one of the things you get the opportunity to do when you come back to a program like this is learn from other people. And yesterday during Chairman [Anthony] Pico's moving presentation, Antone looked at me and he elbowed me in the side and he said, 'Now that chairman has a good speech writer.' [Laughter] So I'm going to take that home and I will learn from that.

Vision and leadership -- it is the foundation to make sure that you continue on with your successes and that you honor them as you should. Funding, obviously you've got to have funding and it's got to be stable funding to keep the program going and to allow it to grow and bud off into new successes. I think it's equally important, though, to recognize -- and this tribe recognizes it very well -- that because you may need a quarter of a million dollars to get the project going and implemented, you don't need that much money and you potentially don't need the same staff to keep it going. In fact, it's going to change. Funding levels need to change with that transition and often supervision of the project needs to change, too. Umatilla Basin Project is a good example. Once that was negotiated, congressional legislation passed, funded, implemented, meaning it was constructed and operational, the tribe then transferred it out of the program that I work and into a different program that has the expertise to operate and maintain a project like that. That leaves us available to do different work, to do new work.

Commitment. One of the things that you won't see successful programs without is commitment. If you think about what you've heard today and yesterday from the tribal leaders -- young and a little bit older than that -- one of the things you've heard is that none of these projects were one-year projects. They weren't five-year projects. They were decades-long projects. Commitment from tribal leadership and from the tribal membership is absolutely critical. New successes have to have that same level of commitment. And I think that new successes become easier once you have successes to build on and that level of commitment, that institutional investment that runs from tribal policy down to tribal membership, is easier to come by once you break that barrier of major successes.

One of the things the tribe has been really good at doing is moving off of successes, leaving them where they should be to be implemented, taken care of, nurtured, funded, but then moving the people, the policy priorities, on to new projects and programs to create new successes. In the Umatilla Basin Project, once that project was operational, the tribe immediately stepped over the mountains to the next river which had the same problem, an off-reservation river but a river that the tribe maintains treaty-reserved rights to fish in. Same problems, agricultural diversions dried up the river, it fuels the economy of that river basin, the Walla Walla river basin in Oregon and Washington, and the tribe simply stepped over and used the same model that worked in the Umatilla Basin. And that's not a technical-fix model, that's a 'how do you work with people?' model. It's a sit down with people and negotiate a resolution and then figure out together how to make it happen, how to get the millions, and in this case probably more like $150 or 200 million to make it happen. And the tribe itself coughed up $2.5 million of its own money. First went back to Congress to get a change in the legislation so that they could do that, $2.5 million over the course of the last three years to contribute to the federal agency that's planning and designing the project. So applying successful models: you get one, you move it out, and you do it again. And you continue doing it and you learn every time you do it how to do it better. The Umatilla tribes have just done great work at using that model concept and moving it out.

And lastly, and this may well be the most important component that I know we've learned back home on the Umatilla Indian reservation, and that is you have to have an intimate connection to the Indian people. That's another thing you think about with the projects, the people that you've listened to today, that defines every project I heard was an absolutely intimate connection to Indian people from start to finish. Without that connection to Indian people you will drift and your project won't have that foundation back on the reservation that will allow all the other things to happen, continued funding, continuity of funding, continuity of it being a priority at the political level within tribal governments and that communication connection to tribal people is just absolutely foundational.

And finally, in closing, I want to say that Chairman Minthorn came out here for whatever reason, his administrative staff at home must have told him that he was going to speak so he has a wonderful speech prepared, he's wanting to give it so give him a call back home and I'm sure that he will give you his speech over the telephone [Laughter]. We can do a conference call; it's a wonderful speech. Not as good as what we heard yesterday, but it ranks right up there.

I want to say thank you and I want to say that this two days has been very, very instructive for myself. We have learned things that we'll take back to the reservation and we're very eager to continue to work with you all and to be in the presence of, as was said by the speaker before me, the elite of tribal leadership and tribal people. Thank you very much."

Honoring Nations: Manley Begay: So You Have a Great Program...Now What?!

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

"Forward-thinking" is often used to describe innovative programs. In remarks designed to frame the symposium session "So You Have a Great Program...Now What?!", Manley A. Begay, Jr. talks about strategic orientation, planning, and implementation as critical to sustaining the success of tribal programs, including how they stay financially healthy, how they deal with changing missions and needs, and how they maintain their effectiveness.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Begay, Jr., Manley A. "So You Have a Great Program...Now What?!" Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 11, 2004. Presentation.

Amy Besaw Medford:

"To start the session off we'll have Manley Begay come up again, the co-director of the Harvard Project and also the director of the Native Nations Institute. Manley is a great friend and I hope that you learn a lot from his words."

Manley Begay:

"This is the second-to-the-last session and the session is called "So You Have a Great Program, Now What?" [Laughter] And my wife would say, 'whatever.' [Laughter] I wanted to just once again say hello to each of you and also just acknowledge Amy Besaw and Andrew Lee and Carmen Lopez and the staff, Liz Hill outside and also Liza Bemis, and am I forgetting anybody? And the fine work that they're doing, so we should give them a round of applause. [Applause] They're wonderful people and in the past 16 years or so that I've been working with the Harvard Project, I've come across many wonderful people and each time we connected with these individuals we held onto them pretty tightly.

Originally back around 1987, Joe Kalt was actually wrestling with an economics question and Joe was puzzled by the fact that as he was studying the U.S. Forest Service land in central and eastern Arizona he was puzzled by the fact that right next door was the White Mountain Apache tribal forest area and as all good economists, you know, he's running numbers and trying to figure things out sort of numerically and so forth and what he was trying to figure out was why is it that all of a sudden in this work he ran across the fact that White Mountain Apache Tribe was managing their forest land better than the U.S. Forest Service was managing theirs. So he was faced with this question and he couldn't figure it out. And Joe began to think well, 'I guess economists really don't rule the world' [Laughter], or they like to think they do and he said, 'I've got to find something else about what's going on here.' He said, 'There's got to be somebody here at Harvard that knows something about Indians.'

So he starts looking through the phone book and asking people questions, 'Who here at Harvard knows about Indians, besides the anthropologists?' [Laughter] And lo and behold he runs across Steve Cornell. Steve was in the Sociology Department at that time and lo and behold Steve was working on a book and I think just finished a book called The Return of the Native. So the two of them have lunch and Joe poses his question and lo and behold, the Harvard Project was born. A short time later, a year or so later, I arrived here at Harvard to work on a doctorate at the Graduate School of Education and I answered a work study ad, it was on the bulletin board at the Harvard [University] Native American Program office and so I went to go see Joe Kalt at the Kennedy School. So I sat down with him and we talk for, gee, it seemed like two, three hours, so I figured I was hired, you know? [Laughter] And became one of the first research assistants for the Harvard Project. And there was another guy that was working there at that time with Joe and Steve, a gentleman named Karl Eschbach. Carl has a wide range of interests from baseball to English tea. Interesting fellow, Carl, wonderful guy, was there working with Joe and Steve. And then Carl and I shared an office and had many good conversations and fast got to know Carl as a wonderful human being. And a short time later, Steve actually was here for maybe another year or two and then went off to University of California-San Diego and then I was fast promoted to the executive director position, which is what Andrew holds at the current time, and began to work with the Harvard Project. So for the next 15 years or so, I was here. Finished my doctorate, received a position at the Graduate School of Education, and became one of the [Harvard Project] co-directors along with Joe and Steve.

And in the course of the 15 years or so that the Harvard Project has been around and working in Indian Country, many wonderful individuals came our way and I think many of them stayed with us. And they've formed their own careers and formed their own interests about the work of nation building in Indian Country. Among these individuals are Jonathan Taylor, Kenny Grant, Eric Henson, Miriam Jorgenson, Elise Adams, and Harry Nelson. Harry is currently at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and I was thinking about this today and those individuals I just mentioned were all students here at Harvard. Many of them were at the Kennedy School of Government. And we've not only become fast colleagues in this work, but have become good friends and individuals that you know you can trust and respect. So this is sort of the team that has formed the Harvard Project.

And a short time later, after Andrew graduated from the Kennedy School of Government and was working at the Ford Foundation, Andrew called and wanted to return back to Harvard and see about finding a place within the Harvard Project. So he brought along with him this idea of the Honoring Nations program, which I believe he and Michael Lipsky had talked about for quite some time. So Andrew came and joined the Harvard Project again and Andrew for the longest time single-handedly put the Honoring Nations program together and I think if there's anybody to be touted as the father of the Honoring Nations program, it is Andrew Lee. [Applause]

And it's wonderful to see that Carmen Lopez is doing a great job with the Harvard University Native American Program. And Carmen has a little known distinction probably among all of us -- except for me--  that she's a fantastic volleyball player. And she and my daughter played volleyball at Dartmouth College and I always admired Carmen when she played high school volleyball. That's when I first noticed her, and Carmen is doing a wonderful job here at Harvard and it's good to see her once again.

I wanted to just make a brief statement about 'So You Have a Great Program Now, Whatever.' [LAUGHTER] But what I want to talk about is sort of forward thinking. I want to talk about strategic orientation, long-term planning and thinking, about sort of setting the context for my brother Lenny Foster and also, who else is speaking? I forget who else is speaking. I know it's not Don Sampson. Rick George will come up after me. But I want to talk about, 'Okay, so now what? Where do we go with all of this? What do we do? How do we begin to think about the future?'

And I think strategic orientation really is a shift from reactive thinking to proactive thinking. It's not just responding to crisis but trying to gain some control over the future. Trying to gain some control over the future, try to figure out where are we headed, what are we all about. And it's about a shift from short-term thinking to long-term thinking. Twenty-five years, 50 years from now, what kind of society do you want? What kind of society do you want to create? It's a shift from opportunistic thinking to systemic thinking, focusing not on what can be funded, but how each option fits the society you're trying to build. It's a shift from a narrow, problem focus to a broader focus on the community. Fixing not just the problems, but societies. Very much like what is going on throughout the world.

I think Joe at his opening address talked about our trip to Poland, and while in Poland you can tell they're working on trying to fix the society after colonization had occurred, first with Germany and then with the Russians. And in some of my trips abroad to places like Australia and New Zealand and South Africa you know that these countries are facing some tremendous problems and issues, not unlike Indian Country. South Africa faces problems with law enforcement. Russia is facing problems with law enforcement. And you go to places like Australia, where Australia, New Zealand, and Canada are essentially commonwealth countries and still wrestling with some basic issues that we've somewhat resolved here in the U.S., like land, human rights, justice. Not that we don't continue to fight for those things, but the issues in many of these countries are some 50, maybe even 100 years back, from what we're dealing with here in the U.S. And in Indian Country today, we're faced with some key strategic questions. You know, what kind of society are we trying to build, what kind of society are you trying to build? What do you hope will be different 25, 50 years from now? What do you hope will be the same? What do you wish to protect? What are you willing to change? What assets do you have to work with and what makes sense to the community at large? And this is all in the context of a hard-nosed look at the reality requirements of your situation.

So essentially it's our job as leaders and you as leaders from your respective nations to begin to think about, how do you want your kids to live or their kids to live 100 years from now? What kind of clothes will they be wearing, what language will they be speaking, where will they be living, what kind of home will they have, how will they worship, where will they go to school, how much education will they have, what about cultural education? And these are all very tough and, I think, thought-provoking set of questions. And it's really about determining nationhood, determining what shall we look like 100 years from now. And then how will we be remembered as leaders? What sort of legacy are we going to leave? Those -- and I talked a bit about this the other day -- those that are yet unborn, what are they going to be saying about us? 'Oh, that guy, that person, did this and to this day we live in this fashion and this manner.' What kind of legacy are you going to leave? I think it's a question we must all wrestle with because life is short. Life is very short and we don't have much time to waste because there's a lot of work to be done.

And I think answering those questions requires a tremendous amount of leadership, and I'm just deeply honored to be in your presence because you're working hard, you're doing things that need to be done, and as leaders we have a tremendous amount of responsibility because leaders create or destroy a climate in which success can occur. They set a vision or not of where the nation is headed. They create or undermine institutions capable of effectively implementing a national vision. They create or abuse the rules of the game. They send signals that decisions will or will not be made by the rules and their fair interpretation. So in short, leaders make choices and their choices matter. And as all of us are leaders in one form or fashion. The choices we make matter and effective nation building depends on those good choices that we make. Thanks. [Applause]"