Peterson Zah

Peterson Zah: Native Nation Building: The Place of Education

Producer
American Indian Studies Program
Year

Dr. Peterson Zah, former Chairman and President of the Navajo Nation, discusses the importance of higher education in empowering Native nations' efforts to achieve their nation-building goals. He also discusses the Navajo Nation Permanent Trust Fund as an example of the strategic orientation that Native nations need to have if they are going to truly become self-sufficient.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Zah, Peterson. "Native Nation Building: The Place of Education." American Indian Studies Program, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. September 23, 2013. Presentation.

Peterson Zah:

“[Navajo language]. Thank you, Manley [Begay], for the introduction and then thank you all for being here today to share some ideas, some things that we all as Native community need to think about as well as discuss among ourselves. I really appreciate the invitation to come here.

In working with Diane Humetewa, most of you know she’s a very fine lawyer. She’s the former U.S. Attorney and now has been nominated by the [Obama] Administration to become the next federal judge here in Tucson and she’s one of these scholars that we rarely have as American Indian, Native people. And I think…and I believe what Manley says that some day you’re going to hear more about her because of her commitment to...the concept of justice and she’s that good, just really an outstanding citizen.

My talk as I understand it from little brother here says talk about nation building. I think nation building is the way to go in sovereign Indian Country problem nowadays. We’ve come a long ways where we would take an issue by itself and maybe an issue with a certain group and we try to work with that specific group in trying to resolve the issue, but we have come this far where we now have to work with other entities around that group. No problem has ever been resolved satisfactorily when groups are trying to do that by themselves. You have to work with other entities. There’s just no way around the whole idea.

When I went to Arizona State University, I wanted to increase the student population because that’s what the president wanted. He says, ‘We get American Indian students and we can’t seem to go above 672 and when we do, they leave us the next year and we need to keep them there.’ That was his charge. And then I started thinking, ‘Well, he hasn’t given me any staff or any money so this means I’ve got to do this alone.’ And I knew that I can’t do something like that alone. I’ve got to involve other people, I’ve got to reach out, I’ve got to change the concept of how people recruit students.

And so I went over to the recruitment office and I says, ‘Can you guys tell me where you recruit more students for ASU [Arizona State University]?’ And then they started going to the board and they said, ‘New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Denver, Colorado.’ And I was sitting there and I said, ‘What about Indian reservation?’ And one guy who was the director says, ‘We don’t go Indian reservations because there’s…when we drive out there, there’s nobody around.’ And the guys says, ‘I drove across from Flagstaff, Arizona, through Hopi, all the way out to Gallup, New Mexico, and I saw two people.’ And the guy was trying to justify why they don’t go to an Indian reservation and I told him, I says, ‘You know what, they’re underneath all those bushes. You have to beat the bushes for them to get up and then when they get up, you grab them by the neck and then you drag them here to the university. And when they come, make sure that you educate all the staff people here at this university to welcome them, give them a reception, a warm welcome. You people don’t do that. You don’t do that.’ And so that’s how the recruitment got started.

And for me personally instead of trying to hit the different meetings or tribal council meeting or to the school board meeting, I go to a Yeibicheii dance, traditional Navajo dances, and I grab the microphone and while the Yeibicheiis are dancing away, I’m talking about education and trying to convince the parents that any child who’s able, capable, academically inclined, have a desire to better their lot, those individuals should be given an opportunity. And so basically that was the approach that we use to get students to come to these institution because the normal process sometimes don’t work. You have to think out of the box and maybe do strange things to get people over to where you want them to be.

And so I was so happy in 2008, a Navajo student came to me and she says, ‘Mr. Zah, I want to look at your calendar.’ Look at my calendar? I thought she was there to discuss a problem that she might have and I thought to myself, ‘Well, there’s nothing to seeing my calendar with her,’ and so I opened my calendar and then she says, ‘Mark that date!’ And I said, ‘What’s happening on that day?’ It’s like, ‘Graduation at ASU.’ And I said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ She says, ‘I don’t know, but I want you to be there, we want you to be there. We, the graduating students and faculty.’ So I marked it on my calendar and that day I went over to Grady Gammage Auditorium and I was there for the graduation and I thought that…two days before the graduation I thought she might come back in, ‘And I know she wanted me…maybe she wants me to talk,’ so I started writing my speech. And being ready so that when she comes back, I’ll say, 'Yes,' and then I’m the speaker.

She came back in and I said, ‘Well, I’ve got it all written out.’ And she says, ‘Written out what?’ And I said, ‘My talk.’ And she said, ‘No. We don’t want you to talk.’ I said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ And she says, ‘All we want you to do is sit on the stage.’ And I said, ‘What’s happening?’ She says, ‘All of the work that we have been able…’ and she was one of these students that was very active. ‘All the work that we have done recruiting, retention, increasing the graduation rate, all of that, the cumulative of all of the hard work you’re going to see in May on that date at ASU graduation.’ So I went, again I wasn’t happy with our conversation. I says, ‘What do you specifically want me to do when I’m sitting on the stage?’ And she said, ‘Smile. Smile. You’re going to be happy and you’re going to be smiling.’

And what she meant was that, 'We’re going to have over 300 American Indian students graduating and we’re going to march them in from your left, they’re going to get their diploma, because there are so many of them we’re going to have some more on your right and they’re going to get their diploma and you’ll be sitting there, these are all your students that you recruited. And out of that group we’ve got 22 doctorate, 56 master’s degree,' and many, many of those students became principals, teachers. Many of the master’s degree students were in charge of programs in Navajo.

And so when you get other people involved in the recruitment that you’re trying to do, that is something that you should look at as your goal because you can’t do it by yourself, you can’t do it alone. You’ve got to get other people involved. So basically that was something that ASU enjoyed and that was the day I decided in my own head, ‘We’ll never match that again, so I’m going to resign and retire.’ So the next year I left and I’ve been in retirement for the last…going into my fourth year. I thought I was going to stay home. I even bought a rocking chair and I wanted to just sleep, but it didn’t happen that way. There’s more work at home and if you’re not connected to any program, if you’re not a tribal employee or university employee or state employee, you can do many things because you’re free. You’re free.

And so basically, with me, since my retirement, I’ve been just working out with people in trying to improve their programs; many, many of them that need political muscle because here’s what’s happening, for those of you that are American Indian students and Navajo students, particularly. We have out on the Navajo, for example, Navajo Housing Authority, Navajo Oil & Gas, Navajo Gaming Enterprise; we have all these other divisions, there’s hundreds of them. All of the young, articulate, smart Navajo students are running those projects, rightfully so, except they’re not very well versed in their own peoples’ language, lifestyle. They have a hard time communicating sometimes with the elderly people. And they have a hard time communicating with their own tribal council members so they come looking for me to re-teach in many ways, to have them re-learn this whole idea of Navajo way. And so that’s how I’m helping some of those programs and projects. You take two entities, one is the council of 24 and let’s say Navajo Oil & Gas and then I start talking to them and say, ‘These guys are into oil and gas business. Navajo Gaming Enterprise is into gaming business. They’re also now in hospitality business, whether we like it or not. They have hotels. Do we as a traditional people know all that much about hospitality business? So how do we as American Indian people explain that to the elderly people?’ And so that has been my work and the chair back at home stays there and maybe on occasion it rocks, but I’m still out there doing things that really needed to be done.

And so for those of you that are young, I would recommend that you spend less time with this little gadget here and maybe pay more attention to what your grandma and grandpa has to say because that becomes even more important. I go to these dinners sometimes with people. I never turn down a dinner with people that I’m working with because I like to eat, just like anybody. When I sit down and eat with people, there’s all these people that comes in and they have dinners with maybe their grandchildren, their siblings, sons and daughters and when I look over to that table, the young ones are all on their cell phone and their computers and they don’t talk. They don’t talk. The Navajo is following suit. They’re exactly doing the same thing and that’s why I always tell the young people, ‘When you’re with grandma and grandpa, turn them off. It won’t hurt you.’ Turn them off because they have so much to offer that sometimes we have a hard time trying to acquire through normal ways. And that’s why you have a high-paid CEO for let’s say Navajo Gaming, Navajo Oil & Gas. The Oil & Gas CEO is an engineer. He’s only maybe one of the very few, two or three, that knows how to talk Navajo that can talk still to the council, but still has problems with trying to figure out the political ways of the Navajo people.

So when Manley says this is a class or this is a talk around nation building, we really, really need to do that because Indian tribes are nations and we’re trying to build Indian nations to be like a state, not necessarily a state, but like a state and be able to learn how to operate that government. We’ve got…we came a long ways, we’ve still got some...a ways more to go, but we’re getting there and so I always like the concept of nation building. Navajo Nation years ago has taken on that task where much, much of...some of the trust funding, just trust money that we created goes into nation-building concept, so that using the nation-building concept, those trust money goes to the chapter houses and they talk about their problems, decide how they should use those monies. So trust money is beginning to really help out the Navajo people. Manley mentioned something about the trust money, let me just tell you a little about it.

For any tribal nations building a trust fund is really, really hard because there’s a tremendous need from the local community and from the local people in terms of satisfying some of those needs and you need resources. So you’re a little weird if you become the tribal chair or the president and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to save some money.’ People look at you very funny and they say, ‘Save money? We got elected, we’ve got to deliver services so therefore we need more money.’ There’s that mentality. If you were elected you’d probably end up doing the same thing. So I was with this weird group that said, ‘We’ve got to save some money,’ because if you look at the Navajo revenues, we’re getting about 75 to 80 percent of our revenues comes from the coal and some day the coal is going to be gone. Some day the mineral resources are all going to be gone. Some day the timbers are going to be no longer there. It seems to me and it only makes common sense to save some of that money now to secure the future generation of the Navajo people and that’s why we created the Navajo Trust Fund.

Up to that time there were…it was kind of a bad word to use when you mentioned trust and the trust fund came about because Navajo Nation won a United States Supreme Court lawsuit in 1984 in Kerr-McGee v. the Navajo Nation and we went through a lot with that particular case. And I remember sitting in the council when we spent days about how we should handle the lawsuit. At that time the Navajo lawyers, there were no, well, very few Navajo lawyers, Navajo people who became lawyers. And one of your esteemed members of the faculty here, Judge Austin, was one of those young people. And when we were doing that, talking about how it should be handled, Navajo council was saying that, ‘We’ve got to get the best lawyer in the United States. We’re in Supreme Court. We want to appropriate a million dollars. So Mr. Zah, you go find that person and we’ll pay them a million dollars to defend us.’ That one thought, but I knew that there was two or three Navajo lawyers at the time. Claudine Bates Arthur was one of them, Louis Denetsosie was the other one, Herbert Yazzie was another one. And so we had few Navajo lawyers and we decided that maybe what we should do is call on a Navajo and that person can choose anyone he or she wants to handle the case with them in Supreme Court. And so we brought in the group and we interviewed them and I don’t know if there’s anyone here who knew Claudine Bates Arthur. Claudine Bates Arthur was a Navajo gal that was about that high. Her father was a Tachii’nii, so is this man here, my father’s a Tachii’nii, so is Manley, so that makes her my sister and I used to call her [Navajo language], my little sister. And I says, ‘Can you handle it?’ ‘Oh, my god, handle a Supreme Court case in the United States?’ and by that time she was out maybe five years, six years out of law school. She had a good friend, Elizabeth Bernstein who now lives here, east of us here in a community. She chose Elizabeth Bernstein. So the two of them, we used to fly into Phoenix and we had these mock trial. We selected judges or lawyers that knows Indian law and they acted as justices, four or five of them and they made their presentation. Then we had some more lawyers to critique them. We went over that, over and over so many times before we ever got into Supreme Court.

When we went into Supreme Court, I was there with Edward T. Begay, who was the vice president, and maybe one or two council delegates and we were sitting in the front row just like the way you’re sitting here. And when the United States Supreme Court justices came in, nine of them, they all sat, it was kind of scary, intimidated by those people that know justice, that knows the law so much to be sitting there. And Claudine and Elizabeth did a really, really good job in making their presentation. And at the end of that day we were so happy and some good question, good question, outstanding questions by the justices. And the one thing that I remember at my age you have a tendency to forget things, I don’t even know what I did yesterday, but I remember specifically one justice said to Kerr-McGee, who was extracting coal in the Farmington area that filed a suit against the Navajo Nation, one justice says to Kerr-McGee lawyer, ‘Your client, when they went out to Navajo Reservation out there, did they go out there on their own will? And then went and found the Navajo coal and then they went to the tribal council and asked for a lease? Or did the Navajo Nation seek them out in the community and then against their will brought them over to the Navajo Nation and had them work there to extract coal? What happened?’ And the answer was that ‘we went out there on our own will.’ ‘And are you being taxed wherever you are operating?’ They were asked that question. And they said, ‘Yeah, everywhere we go we’re being taxed except the Navajo,’ and that’s what this case is all about. So the justice says, ‘Then what makes you think that it’s okay with you that you’re paying taxes to all those other states in the other areas except the Navajo? You have to pay taxes too because they’re looking for revenues. Their people are hungry and their people need jobs.’ And that justice really went into the lawyer from the other side and I think that’s what the case really turned on. That was the last time Navajo Nation won a legal case in United States Supreme Court and that’s when we won over $177 million.

The question was, ‘When the $177 million that we got, what do you do with that money?’ I was the tribal chair. I was the most popular guy in Window Rock because the bank just turned over all that money and I was maybe, looked like you, nice, young, handsome. And I had that money and it was almost up to me and the council as to what we wanted to do. What would you do if you’re being put in that position? Just think about it. What would you do? Wanting advice, seeking advice. You know where I went? Not to New York City on the Wall Street, not to any of the money managers -- I went to my mother, who was a traditional Navajo person with sheep. And I was telling her what had happened, that we got a lot of money that we won and I said, ‘Mother, if you were me, what would you do with it? If you were a member of the council, what would you recommend?’ And she says a question back to me and said, ‘Can money be treated like a sheep?’ Uh, can money be sheep? And what she meant was this. She says, ‘I’ve been a sheepherder all my life and I have this size corral and 200 to 300 sheep can get in there. And when I have that many sheep, I can sell them, I can feed you kids. We can have mutton day and night if you have that many sheep, it won’t affect our herd.’ And she says, ‘Remember one time you were a freshman in college at ASU when our herd went all the way down and we only had 15.' 'That was a pathetic sight,’ she says. ‘We only had 15. And I told you kids, I gathered you kids, your sisters and your brothers, and I said, ‘you can’t have any mutton this year.’ That 15 has to grow back up. If we wait one year, that 15 is going to be 30. If we wait another year, that 30 is going to turn to 60 and then we’re going to be back at the comfortable level.’' Her question was, ‘Can you treat money the same way you treat sheep?’ And when I heard that, I says, ‘Ah ha, she’s talking about trust. She’s talking about creating trust fund.’ So you put money in the bank and the money will grow.

And I went back to Window Rock really, really happy, thinking to myself, ‘There’s the answer and I’d gotten advice from somebody and I don’t even have to pay her.’ And so that’s how the trust money came about and the trust money right now is almost two billion. It goes back and forth depending on the economy and what’s happened at Wall Street. And when we get over to two billion, they’ll probably get another A rating. So this time it’ll be Double A. So that’s where Navajo Nation is right now. The council has already decided to use interest earned to build the casinos. So using the, and not the principal, the interest earned, [Navajo language]. Each year they decided to use that. So just think about it this way, if you have almost two billion, let’s say you have two billion, if the interest rate is five percent, how much is that? If the interest rate is 10 percent of the two billion, how much is that? They’re using that money, but not spending the principal. So using the interest earned they were able to build the casino at Gallup, Fire Rock. They were able to build Farmington, New Mexico. What was the name for that? Northern Edge. Navajos, they always give their own name to these places. At Gallup, [Navajo language]. Fire Rock, [Navajo language]. There’s a fire, then you just sit around the fire. They haven’t given the Twin Arrow a name yet, it’s too new, but they used that money to build that and the one at Ship Rock and then now with the Twin Arrow so all that trust money, interest that they earned each year was used for that.

Why am I telling you this? We’re talking about nation building that you have that class here, that’s what the course is about. Navajo is the only tribe that I know where in the process of building those casinos, they didn’t have to go to the bank. They didn’t go to Wells Fargo. They used their own money to build those casinos. So during the grand opening, the first customer that came in and spent the money that went to Navajo into the tribal treasury. All these other casinos, I stayed at the one over here and I donated last night and that money goes over to Wells Fargo and it’s going to be like that for I don’t know how many years, 20 or 30 years. So the whole idea of trust, creating a trust fund, that’s what it did. That’s what it did. And you have to understand the principle, interest earned; the principle, interest earned. We can’t allow the council to spend and go after the principal, almost two billion. People always ask me, ‘[Navajo language]. Why are you so stingy with that money?’ They ask me. And here’s what I tell them. I tell them that ‘If we do a good job of handling this trust money and then we wait another 15, 17, 18 more years, it could be up to three or four billion. If we wait another 10 more years, it could be up to five billion and it’s just going to keep on growing. And if we don’t allow the council to spend that principal, you know what could happen? 20 more years the whole Navajo Nation can live off the interest that it earns each year and we don’t have to beg anybody for any money elsewhere. That’s what it means.’

But it took a lot of courage, it took a lot of spunk to do that because it was an unusual thing to do at the time, it still is an unusual thing for anybody to do. That was one of the things that we did during our administration. Karen [Francis-Begay] is here, my daughter. Her father took part working with me at the time to create the trust fund and we had that in mind. So it’s getting there. It’s getting there. But the thing about it is this. Every once in a while the council would [say], ‘Pete Zah out there?’ ‘No.’ [Navajo language] ‘Well, let’s go. We have $1.7 billion. Can you make a motion to get $500 million out of there?’ [Navajo language] So I guess by saying that, we need more people to safeguard, to safeguard that principal in the trust fund. I’m telling you only one trust fund. There’s 10 others. There’s 11 trust funds. So it was something new that was happening back then and it didn’t come from an individual with a big huge doctorate, university degree. It came from a sheepherder -- the suggestion, the idea. So you should never sell yourself short. Idea can move mountains. Idea is something that is a very, very powerful thing, particularly if you move it. It can move at its own pace and that’s why you’re going to college and the importance of going to college here really expands your mind so that you’re well versed in what’s going on in the world. And that’s something that I think all of the people that work with the students should realize and recognize that that’s the way to do it is to get that college education. So it’s important that you continue to work in those ways.

The other thing that I wanted to just tell you is that Navajo Nation is embarking on many, many major decisions right now, huge decisions. Because if you look at what’s happening to the coal industry, the whole nation is moving away from the use of coal to produce electricity. Right now, Navajo has a role in deciding something about the electricity. So this thing probably comes from Navajo. So if Navajo don’t want to get into that, we can go over to the light and turn it off. This electricity comes from Navajo coal, but EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] is really clamping down on fossil fuel, the use of fossil fuel to produce electricity and Arizona Public Service, all of the entities like them are beginning to suggest to the Navajo people that they should sell their power plant. So you have a power plant over in Page, I think four or five units there. You have a power plant over in Farmington, New Mexico, four or five units there. Those guys who own that, all of a sudden in the year 2013 became such nice guys. They want to sell it to the Navajo Nation. They’ve been mean all these hundred years, but one day somebody told them, ‘You’ve got to be nice to them,’ and so they’re saying, ‘We’re going to sell it to you for $182 million,’ or whatever it is. What do you think about it? For me, we’re going to be buying a used car. You know what I mean? A used car that has, what? 400,000 miles on it? And that’s going to cost us a lot of money. It’s up for discussion right now and you should be able to participate and all of the other things that will go with it. So here’s what I can’t really see, EPA, if you read…last night, I read another article that came out in USA Today how all of these plants are going to be shut down and new plants, they’re not going to be allowed to build new plants using fossil fuel and that means that electricity-producing firms are going to go to the natural gas. And why are we sitting in the council talking about the use of fossil fuel when EPA’s doing what they’re doing? It just doesn’t really make any sense. So you should participate in those discussions and see where you come out with your question on the proposed activities. And as a student, as a young person, I think you should try those kinds of discussions among and with your own people.

I really like what you are doing here regarding some of the classes that you are having. The students seem to be very well engaged in what goes on, they want to learn. And then for those of you that are Native American, education is so important in your life and in our lives. The Navajo people for example have come a long, long ways going all the way back 100 years ago, even 50 years, 60 years ago. In 1940, 1945 the United States discovered that there were 37,000 Navajo people that are of school age that had not enrolled in a school, that were not going to school. Imagine that: 37,000 Navajo people not in school of school age. I was one of them. I was one of them. So United States devise a program called Special Navajo Program and they put me into that institution and I became a student at Phoenix Indian School way back in 1948. And I always tell my grandchildren, ‘That program was called Special Navajo Program, so I’m special.’ And it was a program where you went to school for five years, only five years and they gave you a diploma, a certificate that shows to the market out there in the community that you’re a good worker, you’re a good carpenter, you’re a good painter, you’re a plumber. These are all the things that you’re good at and then they give you a certificate and they kick you out of the school. So I was on that program and something like the last week of school I decided, ‘I want to go to college!’ And the teachers would laugh, ‘You want to go to college? My god, you should have decided that 20 years ago.’ But I have a little fire in me and I decided as I was walking out almost practically crying that, ‘I’m going to show these guys and I’m going to invite them some day when I’m graduating from a university. To hell with them.’ And so that challenge is important because most of the teachers there, they said, ‘You can’t do it. You’ll never do it.’ When I was graduating from ASU in 1962 getting my degree in education, I sent a personal invitation to all of these teachers that were still at Indian School. None of them came. I wasn’t disappointed, but none of them came. I’m telling you that because you can’t always depend on those kinds of things. It’s what you’ve got in here. It’s what you have in here. It’s a desire that you have to do certain things.

So when I came back on the Navajo Reservation, I knew that there were some things that really needed to be done. And from DNA People’s Legal Services Program I decided that there were some people who were asking me to run for the tribal chair and there were a lot of people that said, ‘You can’t do it.’ And I said, ‘Oh, my god, that’s what they said back there.’ ‘You can’t do it because Peter MacDonald has all the power. He has all of the money,’ and they had a magazine, they had a magazine called Mother Jones Magazine. I don’t know if you remember and they had a picture of him with holding the coal saying, ‘The most powerful Indian in America,’ and so people that found out I was running they said, ‘See, you’re not going to win.’ Well, that was all I needed. That was all I needed. So when people say that, it kind of makes me angry, makes me angry and I want to prove to them that they are wrong.

The same thing as when I went to work at ASU, there was a provost -- imagine that, a provost -- he’s in second command. One day he walked into my office, I was sitting there trying to think how I should do certain things about our American Indian program and the provost sat down, he introduced himself and he says, ‘Pete, I’ve been reading all these rules, statistics, data, and you’re in charge of American Indian programs.' 'My advice to you,’ he says, ‘is that any American Indian who wants to enroll at ASU, we should just send him away. We should send him away to a school where they can last at that school and get their degree. This record shows that we’re losing them left and right and they never stay. We’ve got one of the poorest record on Native American retention so my advice to you is instead of getting some more white hair over that issue, we should just send them away. You’ll be doing them a favor.’ That was what the provost told me. True story. The exact words. So when I heard that, I was thinking to myself, ‘Well, that’s what Phoenix Indian School told me. That’s what the election process on the Navajo, some of those people told me. Now, Mr. Provost, you’re the third one.’ So I made sure in May of 2008 when all these kids were graduating, getting their degree, I invited him. I invited him and I had him sit in the front row. I wasn’t smiling like the way the student wanted me to. I was smiling at him.

So you’ve got to have that desire, you’ve got to have that fire in you. You’re the only person that knows yourself best, when to do some of these things. And so don’t ever fall for people that are trying to shortchange you because they don’t know you. You’re the only one that knows what your capabilities are. So I just wanted to leave you with that and be able to use that. I used to be a basketball coach because I played ball at Phoenix College. And one of the things that I learned from the coach was that there are some kids you have to baby, you have to baby them and say, ‘Hey, that was not right, son.’ You have to put your arm around them, you practically have to cry for them to learn. There are some other people that you have to shake, get after them. So using that psychology, different people because of our chemistry, we get motivated in different ways by different methods. You need to find your niche and what that niche is, what excites you, that’s I think very important thing to learn in life. And that I also want to leave with you and thank you for the invitation. [Navajo language]."

Manley Begay:

"Yeah, go ahead here then over there. Go ahead.”

Audience member:

“I was just wondering, today are any of the other tribes in the state trying to do the endowment approach, do you know?”

Peterson Zah:

“The reason why I’m telling you about the trust fund and endowment is that we have Indian tribes who are into casino that are beginning to make money, not a whole lot. If you’re a member of that particular tribe, then you should encourage them that while they can, while they’re making money to create endowment funds for the nation because you’d be surprised how fast that works. That’s your security. It’s like a child having a security blanket. It’s something that I think you need to encourage them. The question over here was the endowed funds over at ASU, the one that Manley was referring to, what’s happening there is this. Sandra Day O’Connor is the person that the law school was named after at ASU and she’s doing a good job working with the university in bringing in funds to the law school. What university has decided is to use my name and raise money using my name so that they can keep the Indian Law program going in perpetuity. Any money they get, they’re going to put it into trust, and then using the interest earned they’re going to go out and hire the most prominent Indian lawyer and have them teach that course one year or two years. After the two years is up, they’re going to bring in another person using that endowed money and then they’re going to have that person give them service for another year or two years. And if you have money endowed and put into trust, that thing can keep on going forever and that’s what they’re trying to do.”

Audience member:

Last year, about a year ago, the Resources and Development Committee in conjunction with the Dine College, they hosted that 'Nation Building Summit.' And I think shortly after you wrote an editorial to The Navajo Times and I think you had cautioned people about the like -- how can I phrase this -- like the council is approaching the spending of the permanent trust fund without much planning. And so if at any point it goes to referendum and the people indeed do choose to spend that money for whatever purposes, infrastructure, development or whatever, what kind of -- from your perspective -- what kind of planning do you think the students now within their education should be focusing on if that happens?”

Peterson Zah:

“There’s 110 chapters on the Navajo Nation. There’s 24 council [members]. What she’s referring to is a year ago the Navajo Nation Committee of RDC, Resource Development Committee, the Resource Development Committee decided that, ‘When we go out to these 110 chapters, they always have some needs, whether that’s employment, whether that’s materials for the chapter house, whether that’s food for the people to eat, they always have a need,’ they said. ‘But we don’t have any money,’ they said. ‘So why don’t we ask all these 110 chapters to come in and we’ll ask each one of these 110 chapters what they want.’ Christmas in the middle of the summer, so to speak, ‘and then we’ll add up that money, however many it is, we’ll add it up and then we’ll go to…’ At that time the trust money was at $1.5 billion. They said, ‘We’ll get the numbers from the 110 chapters, we’ll add it up and that’s how much money we’re going to get out.’ And it was anywhere from $75 to $150 million. That’s a lot. $75 to $150 million and all the 110 chapters were represented, RDC members were there, the council delegates of 24, some of them were there.”

Manley Begay:

“We were there, the two of us.”

Peterson Zah:

“Well, this is a Navajo trick between him and I. I was not really invited to be there, but they invited Manley to be a guest speaker the second morning, the second day. And Manley comes up to me in the morning and he says, ‘Why don’t I speak for a little while and then when all the people come back, I’ll give you the floor. I’ll yield my time over to you and then you can speak to the group.’ So I said to him, ‘Well, if that’s what you want to do, let’s do it.’ So it was a deal, Navajo trick. And so he gets up there and the chairman of the RDC gives him the mic and he was speaking away and then he says, ‘You know, we haven’t really asked a guy who created those money and save all of that much money. Nobody’s ever asked him. He’s sitting here. So I’m going to ask Mr. Zah to come up and see what he thinks. Is this the money that we could use for what is being discussed yesterday and today? So why don’t you come up and say something.’ So he stepped down, the chair then got up and she said, ‘Okay, Mr. Zah, get up and you talk. Here your brother’s given some time. Whatever amount of time he has left, you could use it.’ Well, that was all I needed. That was all I needed and I told about how the trust money was created, how the case was handled, who handled the case and then I told them about creating an escrow fund.

I says, ‘This is…this case that we won is over taxation and we’re going to tax all the companies that operate on the Navajo Nation and we want to build an escrow account so that while the case is pending in court, they could be paying. So each year the companies can pay into an escrow account the money that they’re supposed to pay for that year. And I told the companies, I brought in the companies just like you, there were a lot of people there, the president of Peabody, the president of this and the president of this, they were all there and I told them, I said, ‘You know, you guys sued me and why don’t we have an agreement? We’re in court. Why don’t we create an escrow account over at the bank and then you pay your money into that account? If you beat me, then you take all the money back. If we win, then we get all the money. That’s a fair deal. That’s America. Competition.’ [Navajo language] And so they agreed to it. And I told that story to the people and I says, ‘You know, it’s like this, we put a bucket here. It’s raining or there’s snow and the water is dripping [Navajo Language]. The water is dripping into that bucket and all during that time when it was dripping it start building up to over $270 million and then we won and we got that money. And then we ran to the bank to put it back into trust for your children [Navajo language].'

Now this council here, they want to take the money out. It’s like taking food out of your own grandchildren [Navajo language]. Now these guys have a legal problem, the council [Navajo language].’ I said, ‘Some of them were criminally charged for misusing the discretionary fund.’ [Navajo language] I said, ‘They were using discretionary funds and they ran out of that discretionary fund so they’re looking at that. That’s what they want.’ Oh, those guys started listening and I told them, I said, ‘My recommendation is that we leave this alone until they take care of their legal problem, until the court says, ‘No, they’re not guilty’ [Navajo language]. I just don’t trust them. When they get some of that money out, they’re going to go back to that discretionary fund. There’s no use in hiding. I’m an old man, I’ve got nothing to lose. I’m your cheii’.’ [Navajo language] And that’s when all hell broke loose. And so we end that…we ended that where the people went back into their respective groups because they were having a big breakout session and they all decided that, ‘No, we don’t want to spend the money. We want to save. We want to save for our children, generations of Navajo people, not now.’ [Navajo language] These guys still have legal problems that hasn’t been cleared up in court.

That’s the way you have to be. You see that thing that I was talking to you about, the little fire inside of you, the little fire inside of you. You’ve got to have a courage to do all of this. I don’t know what they think, but from that day on I was not a popular person with the council. But that’s okay, the hell with them. I helped them. I helped them, but when they decided to deliberately mislead the people and do something wrong, somebody has to speak up. So essentially, that’s my work unfortunately right now. But it’s okay because as Navajo people say, 'The elderly people have lot of wisdom, and it’s something that we use based on our experience.' And so that’s what happened in relative to your question.”

Manley Begay:

“I attended all these sessions, these breakout sessions. My brother says there’s 110 chapters, there’s 300,000 Navajos, we have 27,000 square miles of land, we have every issue under the sun: water issues, land issues, road issues, sewer issues, housing issues, elder issues, veterans issues and the list goes on. So all these breakout sessions dealt with these issues at Navajo. So what they were doing was, ‘Okay, here are our needs: elders issues, veterans issues, so forth and so on, children’s issues, education issues,’ and they tacked on dollar amounts to them. In the half a day that $1.5 billion was gone, it was gone. And they were saying the need was even greater than $1.5 billion, which is true, but if you want to secure your future as a nation, you have to save that money. You’ve got to think way ahead, not right now, but way ahead because the Navajo Nation is going to get stronger, the grandkids are going to come, the great grandkids are going to come. You’ve got to think way ahead. You can’t just spend all this money now. So when I went to these sessions, that’s what was going on. After my brother spoke, people said, ‘Wait a minute, [Navajo language], wait a minute. Let’s think about this a little bit more clearly. Let’s not just think about ourselves, let’s think about the future,’ and that’s what happened. So everything got stopped. Now we’re beginning to see the rewards of the money being set aside. Just spend the interest, don’t spend the principal because the principal was already spent, it was gone, it’s gone. Once it’s gone, it’s not going to come back. So if it’s going to be the Navajo Nation Permanent Trust Fund, let’s make it permanent, let’s not make it temporary. It doesn’t say 'Navajo Nation Temporary Fund,' it’s a permanent fund for the future. So that’s what my brother did, put that together. Another question.”

Audience member:

“Could you speak a little bit how you went about establishing the Supreme Court for Navajo Nation?”

Peterson Zah:

“Supreme Court was something that…it was considered in reaction to what was going on at the time. This is really, really crazy. There was a suit that was filed against the tribal council and one of the judges had the case and that judge ruled against the council on an issue. So the council then decided or that particular delegate then decided to share the issue with the rest of the council and the rest of the council said, ‘Well, instead of talking about all this, let’s just get rid of the crazy judge,’ and so they did. Another issue came about almost identical, a different judge handled it this time and the tribal council lost again so the council said, ‘Well, let’s get rid of that guy, too.’ And when you start getting rid of judges like that consistently, it means you’re sending a message to the world that you have inconsistent thinking, inconsistent tribal government and that they’re not stable. It needs to be stabilized. So we created a Supreme Court where we said, ‘Council has to get out of there. They should not be doing what they’re doing,’ and so we created the Supreme Court. And they were an entity unto themselves and I ended up as an individual that chose as a chairman of the tribe…that chose the Supreme Court justice and the panel of the Supreme Court. And so now it became a three-branch government. So the courts and judicial system is one, legislative, and the executive branch. So they’re deciding on many of those issues without having to fear that the council may go after them and that was the purpose of Navajo Nation Supreme Court. Supreme Court did a lot of things. They created what they call peacemaking process, peacemaker court. Peacemaker court is another concept of…another way of settling disputes and the way the Navajos were doing it, it went over wild, all over the place, even the states were calling in the Navajo Nation tribal judges to talk to the state judges about how they’re dong theirs. It went everywhere. The Navajo courts were a consistent guest at Harvard University, Yale, Stanford, all those big law schools where they conducted some of those sessions and so…then it even got recognized internationally. So under that kind of independent court/judicial system, they did a lot. And that was the purpose for creating the nation’s court, Supreme Court, and now they’re kind of like a model to all of the other Indian tribes. And you have a situation now where the Navajo judges are people, Navajo people who have law degree that are sitting there that talks Navajo. They can go back and forth on the values of those two entities. And the outside people, the outside lawyers, now they respect the decision of the Navajo court and because they decide those issues to the satisfaction of both parties.”

Manley Begay:

“One more question.”

Audience member:

“What do you see like the, for the Navajo Nation to become like economically and financially stable and zero reliance on the government, what do you see as the biggest obstacle for Navajo Nation to get there? Is it like a mindset or is it...what do you see that…what’s preventing us from getting there, I guess?”

Peterson Zah:

“Economic development is very, very [expensive]. Any kind of economic development is expensive and it’s also hard to get into that area because how the people are holding onto the land. Young people just like you, when you drive across the reservation, you’re driving, ‘Next service station 45 miles,’ and you look at your gauge, ‘Oh, my god, I’m going to run out,’ and so you have that situation now. And the reason why that is persistent is the people who have grazing rights to the land that comes up to the highway, they don’t want gas station. Somebody was telling me seven percent of the Navajo population holds grazing permit, seven percent holds the whole Navajo Nation in abeyance for the lack of economic development. They’re hostage, holding the Navajo people hostage. And that’s a major, major problem, the land issue and I think we need to correct that in some ways. I don’t really know what the answer is, but somewhere in between just getting the reservation open and then having some concept of ownership of lands in some degree and then having the land use right or land use…yeah, land use, write program at each chapter. If you belong to a chapter, you should be able to say, ‘Hey, we have this chapter house here. We should have schools here, schools for our children. We should have housing here for us to live in. We should have business development right here, service station. We should have…that’s what we should really be doing.’ But the chapters are fighting themselves because those are the grazing permittees land, grazing right land and the first thing they say is, ‘No.’ You’ve got to have a different concept.

I like my dad, my dad who used to be at Low Mountain Chapter and this is kind of funny. My dad had a good sense of humor. He was trained as a Navajo Nation Code Talker and one day he went home, we were with him and he says, ‘I came home because I want to be with you guys and I’ve got two weeks off because after I get back to San Diego, we’re sailing to Japan. We’re ready to go to battle,’ he said. ‘And I won’t be seeing you guys for a long time.’ [Navajo language]. So he went back. Two weeks later he was back and I said, ‘Hey, what happened? I thought you were going to be gone for a year.’ And he says, ‘No, don’t you know that the war is over in Japan?’ he says. ‘The Japanese people found out I was coming so they surrendered.’ He always had a real good sense of humor, the stories about him that I’m going to tell you.

Well, he belonged to that chapter and he was a chapter officer at one time at Low Mountain and Low Mountain had no chapter, Low Mountain had no houses, Low Mountain had no roads. We had nothing. And when people in the community would say, ‘We’ve got to have a place to build our chapter house,’ all these land permittees said, ‘No. [Navajo language]. No. No. No. Keep it out of there.’ [Navajo language]. Well, my dad had a grazing permit and so he says to these people that were planning a chapter house, he said, ‘You could come over to our land where we have a permit, grazing permit,’ and he says, ‘I’ll give you that land free,’ he says. ‘And when we have a chapter house, then I want to have a road that also goes through my land, highway all the way to the other highway, connected, all on my land,’ he says. And he told the chapter people, ‘When it snows and rains, we all end up in the mud. So when that day comes, I want only my family to use that road,’ he said. ‘All you other guys, you get your truck in the mud and you stay there,’ he said. He says, ‘That’s what you’re doing. That’s what you’re doing. That’s what you’re asking for.’ So they built a chapter house on his land where he’s holding the grazing permit and they put a road through where it was his grazing right land. And sometimes you have to say that to people. Some of those people didn’t think it was funny, but he thought it was funny that people were doing that. And so that’s how those things got…we need more people that are willing and in the best interest of the community, in the best interest of nation building, who think that way. He said, ‘I’m not sacrificing a land, that’s a poor use of word, sacrificing. I’m not sacrificing.’ And then the committee member says, ‘Well, the Navajo Nation has an account for anybody who gives up the land to pay for the use of that land.’ He didn’t want any money. He says, ‘You know, the real Navajo story is, you don’t sell your mother. You don’t sell your mother for money because that land is part of the Mother Earth. It’s for people’s use. It’s for [Navajo language],’ he says. ‘And I’m not going to get paid and I’m not going to demand money to sell my mother to somebody. Use it.’ He says, ‘I’m getting old anyway.’ And so we need more people who think that way, who are dedicated 100 percent to the community and to their people.” 

Peterson Zah: Addressing Tough Governance Issues

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Former Navajo Nation President Peterson Zah shares the personal ethics he practiced while leading his nation, and discusses how he learned those ethics from his family and other influential figures in his life.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Zah, Peterson. "Addressing Tough Governance Issues." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 26, 2009. Presentation.

"Good morning. (I don't want to swallow this. It's so small.) I wanted to thank Steve [Cornell] for the introduction. I also wanted to give you two views about ethics. One of them is the written laws that your tribe may have, certainly with ours we do have that. And those are rules and regulations that governs the conduct of people who are elected to be responsible for your tribal government. The way I look at that is that that's a white man's law. It's in black and white and it has to deal with drugs, alcohol, conflict of interest, nepotism and those kinds of things. I always look at that law as, it's law written for the people that don't really have ethics of their own that's in their heart and it's in their mind that was given to them by their traditional people. They never really had that upbringing that they had, for example, with my coming from a highly traditional Navajo family and that's built into the tradition. So that is something that the Navajo Nation has. And then the second portion of the small presentation here is going to deal with the tradition, your own personal ethics. We each have that and you're the only one that knows that. To talk about it and how important that is in governance, in governing your people and governing a lot of the activities that go on in your nation. And so that will be my second presentation. However, I'd like to tell you a little story before I start.

Yesterday, as I understand, you were introduced to some of the Native American students that came from Arizona State University. And just indicate that the Navajo people love their children so much. And they are one of the groups of minority that I know of that really emphasize education, how important that is in life. And I guess because of that, we have today over 10,000 Navajo children that are going to colleges and university, supported by the Navajo Nation government through a scholarship service, supported by their own families, supported by many of the other entities that provide scholarship out there for Native American students and then many of them supporting themselves because of the traditional family instilling into them how important education is, what they can acquire during their lifetime. So that tradition lives on at ASU and we never really do things without our children. So I just wanted to congratulate Michelle [Hale] for continuing those traditions by bringing down some of these students that you met the other day. And you have to do things with your kids, with your children. You have to bring them on, bring them along, you have to educate them by example and by hearing a lot of these discussions that we have here today. And so I also just wanted to congratulate and welcome the students that we have here from Navajo and Apache.

The story is this: I got elected in 1983, and something like three or four days after the election I went back to my family in the center of the Navajo Nation called Low Mountain. We were in effect really celebrating among our own family members, my sisters and my brothers and my dad and my mom, aunts, uncles and grandmas and the grandpas were all there. And in the morning we had a lot of discussion, discussion around issues, politics, who all voted, how many people voted in that community of Low Mountain and all of that. And my dad at that time was about 85 years old. He could hardly walk, but he loved to herd sheep on horseback. So every morning, he would get his horse and he would saddle up his horse and then he let the herd out and then he came along on horseback to herd sheep. He says, "˜I'm doing this because I can't walk. I'm not as strong as I used to be and I can't run when the sheep tries to run off in the distance and so I have to have a horse.' But when he got on his horse, he wanted to pick up something that he had forgotten. The night before we were involved in local politics at Low Mountain, the discussion of how many people voted. And there was only one guy, one vote from my community that vote against me, that voted for the other party. And everybody was talking about who might that be. We were all discussing. In the morning my dad got on his horse and he also was talking about three or four days before there was a coyote that came into the herd and by god it killed one sheep and he was really ticked off about it. So brothers went over to the trading post, they got him some bullets and he had one of these 30/30 rifles that he always kept and it was always in his room. Well, he got on his horseback and he came to the front door and he says, "˜Gilbert, I forgot my rifle. Can you go get it and make sure that you also give me some bullets?' And my sister came out and she said, "˜Oh, you're going to finally kill that coyote that killed one of our sheep.' And my dad said, "˜No, I think I know who voted against us.'

A sense of humor is also very, very important as we discuss ethics, because when people violate certain ethical behavior expected of you or they violate the standard of conduct, it's a sad, sad thing. And my dad always had this sense of humor that was extraordinary about him. He was a member of the Navajo Nation Code Talkers, a trained code talker. And one day when I was just a young man way back in the early '40s, he told a story about how he was being taught to use the language. And he says, "˜When I go back and I'm having this furlough on a vacation in effect for the next two or three weeks and to spend the time with all of you. And then when I go back to San Diego, we're going on a ship and we're sailing to Japan. And we're going to be on the front line in combat using our language as Navajo Nation Code Talker.' So he, we had a ceremony and a sing and the medicine man painted him and all of that, did some prayers and he went back into the service. We said our goodbyes not knowing what the war may bring to [this] individual. But we were so surprised that a month later he was back. So I asked him and I said, "˜Dad, what happened, you're supposed to be in the war?' He says, "˜Oh, don't you know that Japan surrendered?' He says, "˜They knew I was coming.' A sense of humor in talking with groups of people in Navajo culture is very, very important, and it also has to do with ethics. So I wanted to just tell you that story.

Now, something about white man's law. Those laws are being enforced as we set it up in 1983-84. Because the courts were so overloaded with cases, we decided maybe the best thing to do is create a committee of the council that would get all of those ethics complaints that the Navajo Nation gets; that it would be the eight members that would act as a court, as a judge, as a forum where people can take their complaint to hold those hearings. And so basically the Navajo Nation has that system and people are encouraged to file these complaints with the ethics office. And when I checked last week about how those are going and how they're being handled and what are some of the most prevalent cases that we may bring to your attention -- and I do this because I want you to avoid them as much as possible -- on the Navajo Nation, the number one complaint is financial malfeasance or misfeasance, misuse of money. And that is happening because the Navajo Nation has decentralized its government.

We have on the Navajo Nation a government with over 300,000 people, 17 million acres of land and 110 chapters, local units of government. The Navajo is highly centralized and it has [an] 88-member council. So what the Navajo government did is they passed a law called the Local Governance Empowerment Act and that gave the chapters some authority, given to them by the Navajo Nation government, and they exercise those authorities at the local level to do what needs to be done. Along with that act, they also gave them some resources, some money to administer and that's where a lot of the misuse occurs. We also have 138 schools with 72 or 75,000 Navajo children going to school. So you have school board members, superintendents and principals that have all those duties to run those schools out there. There's a lot of misuse, misappropriation of funds. So it's the ethics office that handles those for the Navajo Nation. So number one is the financial malfeasance.

Number two is the conflict of interest. You all are familiar with that conflict of interest, where you have to avoid the conflict, where you have to not only avoid the conflict itself but every appearance of conflict you have to avoid because people interpret that a little different. And there's also a hazy area: what is meant by conflict of interest? I served on Window Rock High School Board for about, oh, maybe 12 years in my younger days. And every time a relative's contract would come before the board I always left the school board meeting either completely -- not participate in the discussion, particularly the voting -- or I went outside and took a smoke with some other guys in the community as it was being discussed; then coming back. That is a responsibility of the elected official to tell your colleagues that, "˜There may be a conflict here for me. So I'm going to try to avoid it by being outside. And you can always call me back in when you guys are finished with it.' The best way to avoid those is you yourself have to do that. So conflict of interest is high on the list for cases that are being handled by the Navajo Nation, the Ethics and Rules Committee.

The next one for Navajo is also very high, nepotism. You all heard about that, right? Nepotism, because we all say we're related to each other by clan. So the law has to be very, very careful in terms of how it states it and then how they enforce it because on the Navajo everybody is related to you. Everybody is related to you, especially when you get elected. They all come to you and they say, "˜I am your cousin or I am this,' and all of that. And so nepotism is one of those, like a conflict of interest case that's sometimes very hard to handle. Sometimes the courts can't deal with all of it. If we were able to put all of these things in court, our courts would be just loaded up with these kinds of issues. And so we try to have the local Navajo Nation government committee handle all of that.

And the last one that we have to deal with very carefully -- and there's a lot of that -- is courtesy to the employees. The elected officials misusing their power by the fact that they're members of the council and members of this committee using that authority and power and forcing an employee to do something that they shouldn't be doing. That's also high on the list of those cases being heard by the committee. And so we should as tribal leaders avoid all of this as much as possible.

I took office on the Navajo Nation in 1983 and we were in a terrible, terrible situation where the people or the person that I was running against was tried in federal court twice over misappropriation of money. And when your leader, the top guy, does that, then all of your other officials, their fuses go haywire; they want a part of the action. So when that happens, you have a complete breakdown of tribal government organization and function, especially when it comes to ethics; terrible, terrible problem. And that's what we faced when we went into that office. I even had people came to me when I first went to the Navajo Nation as chairman, some of the first few days where people were lined up outside -- Peabody Coal Company and all these other businesses that do business with the Navajo Nation. They wanted and they were expecting the same kind of favoritism that was given to them by the other tribal leaders.

I even had a guy come to me and he says, "˜Can you take a minute or two? I'd like to measure you, your arm, your chest, how tall you are.' And I said, "˜Why? We're here to talk business. Why do you want to measure me?' And the guy says, "˜Well, I think you'd look really, really sharp if you had a good suit on. If you had a blue striped suit with a nice necktie you'd look real sharp.' And I said, "˜Oh, my god.' I said, "˜You know, I like this and I like the way I dress. There's nothing wrong with it. It has nothing to do with my mind.' And he said, "˜Well, maybe the next time you're in Denver you can stop by and see us because we want to make you look nice.' [It was] very tempting because I didn't really have any decent clothes to wear, but my traditional family always said, "˜Be who you are. You're a traditional person by nature.' And that always come to mind when there were people who wanted to bribe you because that was the normal way of doing business in Window Rock. And so I wanted to just tell you and that's the standard of conduct that was issued by the Navajo Nation.

The next one is your own personal ethics. We each have our own personal ethics that was given to you by your tradition, by your families, by your grandmas and your grandpas. And you have to live by those; you have to live by those. Not only that you should know about it, and a constant reminder that that's what your traditional people taught you, but you have to live it, you have to be committed to it and you have to really practice that, because the only thing you have after leaving that office is your reputation. Yes, it was nice when I was in office because I had all these resources to help people with. But, when you leave office you don't have all of those resources. You have just you. You have just you. I am probably enjoying the best part of my life right now because I didn't commit anything and people know about it. You'll be surprised how many people follow your careers. They know about every little goof that you made, but they have a lot of respect for you if they never read bad things about you or never heard anything that's terrible about you. I'm really enjoying that right now because everywhere I go people respect the way you live. On the Navajo Nation with all of that money, I always tell people, I said, "˜See these five fingers, ten fingers. Millions and millions of dollars went between those fingers and not once did I put a dollar in my pocket. That belongs to the Navajo people. That belongs to your constituents.' I tell my friends, even in my own house. Yesterday I was driving this way to come to this conference, in my garage I saw a quarter and my wife says, "˜Hey, there's a quarter here.' And I said, "˜I'm not going to pick it up. That's not mine. That's not my quarter. It may be my grandson's, but whatever it is, it's not mine.' So I left it laying there. It's somebody else's quarter in my family. So you have to really, really practice those traditions when you go into govern your people and I think that's a very, very valuable thing to keep in mind.

I probably had the best teacher when I went into become a tribal chairman. There was a lady named Dr. Annie Wauneka. You probably heard some about her, probably read books about her. And she did some wonderful things in her life for the Navajo people. She was probably the best teacher. She always taught me these values. When I first decided to run, she said, "˜I'll support you. I'll go wherever you go.' So I would go to my first campaign rally at the chapter house. Boy, I would talk about my degrees. "˜I'm an educator, I got my degree from the university, I had these experiences, I was a legal service director,' and all of that. On the way back home after that rally she says, "˜My god, don't talk about that.' She says, "˜Don't talk about that. We, the Navajo people, don't value all of those things as much as maybe you do.' I said, "˜What do you want me to talk about?' She said, "˜Talk about your clan. Talk about your grandma, your grandpa. Talk about the fact that you were raised in the hogan. Talk about your corral where you keep your sheep. Talk about your dry farm and your field where you plant your corn and your beans and the squash -- all of those things that your family plants.' She says, "˜That's self-sufficiency; you don't rely on anybody else except yourself to live a decent live, a good life. Talk about your values, Navajo values. Not your master's degree, no.' That was Annie Wauneka trying to teach somebody who [she] thought was electable, but he just needed to say things a little more differently. So I probably do a lot of those things that my mother, my grandma, grandpa and what Annie Wauneka stood for. And those all had to do with ethics. One of the other things that Annie Wauneka said was, "˜Don't take things that don't belong to you. Don't ever think that it's nighttime. Nobody will see me. There's no one around. It's nighttime.' She says, "˜The night is your cheii'. The darkness is your grandfather. The people who are no longer with us, they turn into these great spirits and so your grandfather may be the night. You'll be taking things in front of your cheii', your grandfather. So don't you ever think it's dark time. Nobody's seeing it and so you're doing these crazy things.' Good lesson from a traditional person.

So my contribution to you today as young leaders, emerging leaders, is to live by those principles that have always been taught to you at a young age. And you'll be surprised at the end of your life, towards the end of your life how important those values are. Live by it, practice it. [Navajo language] Thank you." 

Peterson Zah and Manley A. Begay, Jr.: Strategic Thinking and Planning: Navajo Nation Permanent Trust Fund (Q&A)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Manley Begay and Peterson Zah field questions from the audience concerning the Navajo Nation Permanent Trust Fund and how they and others worked to mobilize and sustain the citizen support necessary to keep the fund intact and allow it to grow.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Zah, Peterson and Manley A. Begay, Jr. "Strategic Thinking and Planning: Navajo Nation Permanent Trust Fund (Q&A)." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 26, 2008.

Audience member:

"We are currently facing a recession here in the United States of America. I guess number one, how safe is our investment from a possible crash in the market? And number two is how will the recession affect the trust fund? Did you guys do any research on that?"

Peterson Zah:

"One of the things that the Navajo Nation has to weigh right now is, because of the economic condition nationwide, I believe they have to pass a legislation that would allow the money managers -- if it should completely go down, before that happens, when it's beginning to go down -- they should probably withdraw that money and reinvest some of those monies into other accounts where it can maintain the status quo or even make more money. They haven't really decided that yet.

There's been a lot of discussion with the budget and finance committee, the money managers, and other finance people within the administration to try to come up with something so that they don't have to take a big hit on what is happening at the national level. So it's something that I think the work group has to come back together and really take a hard look at that to insure that the money is safe and that it will not completely hit the bottom.

When you have monies like this in trust, it's like a roller coaster. It's a roller coaster. And I guess the smart ones withdraw some of those monies when it's at its height. And I think Navajo Nation has to learn how to play that game. And definitely the budget and finance committee is addressing those issues right now."

Audience member:

"With your experience in this process, what would you suggest to a smaller tribe that is interested in this but doesn't have that initial large amount of income, like in the court case, to get a fund like this started?"

Manley Begay:

"So the question is, for a smaller tribe that might have less of a windfall, what we would suggest to that particular tribe? My suggestion is -- in the same vein as what we've been taught by President Zah -- is to save. There really has to be some mechanism by which to save that amount of money, because we don't really know what the future holds. But one of the primary responsibilities of leaders is really to think strategically, to think way ahead of everybody else.

In the Navajo way we say, naat'aanii. The naat'aanii, those are leaders. That particular person is responsible to plan strategically for the long haul, to plan for those that are yet unborn. In the Iroquois Confederacy philosophy they're talking about seven generations. So sometimes, we sort of just think about the here and now -- the here and now is really, goes fast. I mean, look at Curt Massey and myself. We're already at that age where we can't play basketball like we used to even though we might think we can. So time flies very, very quickly. And so for leaders, the primary responsibility is to figure out what's our vision? What are our priorities and concerns? And then make a commitment to the long run.

And also to leave a legacy; my brother here has left a legacy for the Navajo Nation. He'll always be remembered as that leader that thought way ahead. And to this day, we are reaping the rewards of that. And the generations to come will also reap the rewards as well. So the primary responsibility is to answer the question, 'What legacy are you going to leave for your people? How are you going to be remembered a hundred years from now? What will people say about you? How will they remember you?' I think that that is a crucial, critical question for all leaders."

Audience member:

"I wanted to know how did you educate your community members and how did you educate your council members? I know you say you have 88 members, that's a large legislative branch. And how did you get the majority to set up this accounting? How is it educated within the communities, districts or what not?"

Manley Begay:

"So the question is how did you educate the people? At Navajo we're, as I was saying earlier, Pete Zah's like E.F. Hutton. However, people out there in Navajo country, they want to know what's going on. They're also thinking about the future as well and they're interested in the future of the Navajo Nation. And so it was really actually very easy to gather a group of people and begin a discussion. And there are some amazing, intelligent individuals out there. At the same time, also with a lot of humor. So they don't take things too seriously, but at the same time they're thinking very hard about the future of the Nation and less about themselves. This person that made the statement about the corn, this is a guy that was wearing a T-shirt and Levi's jeans and worn out shoes. And he said, "˜Don't worry about me.' He says, "˜I can take care of myself. I get by.' So he wasn't thinking about himself, he wasn't being selfish. He was thinking about everybody else -- his relatives, his grandkids, his children and all of his relatives. I think that that was, there was this spirit about these public hearings that was unbelievable."

Peterson Zah:

"Let me add a bit to that. If you look at the Navajo Nation and its demographics, we have something like 82,000 children that are of school age. We have something like 144 schools on the Navajo Nation; 50 high schools on the Navajo Nation. And in terms of educating those kids, I take the time each year to do what we call a Navajo tour. We just completed one two weeks ago, where I go across the reservation with ten or a dozen Navajo college students from ASU [Arizona State University] -- students that are getting their law degree, engineering, nurses and some of those students. This year we took a trip with ten of them during the spring break. This is when all the other college kids are on their spring break. We choose those students and we go across the Navajo Nation with them. And our job there, while we're doing that, is to recruit other Navajo students to come to ASU. While we are doing that, I make sure that I end up in two or three of these classes at these high schools where there are seniors and juniors. And we talk to them about tribal government and the establishment of the Permanent Fund -- how it is their money and that they should have a role in the say so as to how these monies are spent. So we do that. We still have on schedule, within the next two or three weeks, another ten high schools that we will be going to. So we take that trip each year. So that's one way.

The other way is that with the chapter leaders they usually have an agency council. We have some chapter officers right here. Agency council meetings, they usually have those six times a year where all the leaders from those different agencies come together. We go over on occasion to make those presentations just to keep the local leaders informed as to what's happening so that they have some idea as to the current events surrounding the Navajo Nation trust fund. And so we do that.

And then what I usually do personally is I get on the radio. They have KTNN radio station, Navajo Nation-wide. You can blab away in Navajo about some of these activities regarding their trust fund, just to keep the Navajo people, the general public informed as to what has happened. I love doing that. Now, let me give you the last one, which is hard.

I do that because I really believe in it. I don't get paid for what I do. It's just work that needs to be done. So because of that, people know it. People know it. I don't have any conflict. If you don't work for any of the institutions on the Navajo, you can say whatever you want to say -- whether a council delegate is there or not, or President [Joe] Shirley is there or not, I don't really care -- but it needs to be said, it needs to be done and because I don't work for anybody. You're free -- really, really free -- to express those views. To me, that gives you more integrity. That's where the power is. But once you start demanding some kind of income, compensation for what you do, then you've shot all of what you're trying to do to pieces. And that's why I do what I do.

Let me give you another good example. In gaming, in the state of Arizona we have a gaming compact all these Indian tribes signs with the state of Arizona. And they have on the Navajo Nation X amount of machines dedicated to the Navajo Nation, but Navajo Nation is not in gaming yet. But the law says that if the Navajo Nation wants, it can use its designated number of the machines and lease it out or rent it out or sell it to the other Indian tribes. And so all these tribes, this tribe, Gila River, Fort McDowell, and six or seven other tribes want Navajo's machines. But Navajo politicians weren't ready to make any movements. They were afraid because once they touch this whole idea of pooling those machines to give it to the other tribes for rental -- even though it's for money -- they were afraid to face the people about what they did because they know the Navajo people would say, "˜We were ready to open a casino and you sold all of our machines to somebody else.' Well, what I do in those cases is I put all the tribes together -- the leader that you heard today, four or five of those tribal people -- and say, "˜Okay, what do you guys really, really want? The Navajo has those excess machines.' And then I go back to Navajo and I tell the president, the speaker of the Navajo Nation, and council and I said, "˜This is what these tribes want.' So you put them all together and they negotiate and they come to some kind of an agreement. You don't get paid for what you do. You don't get paid for what you do, but it's something that needs to be done that other people, the politicians who are paid to do that, they don't want to do because it's a hot potato. So when you begin to do something like that, it gives you a lot of credibility, a lot of credibility. And I think more and more of our tribal leaders need to do that. You don't wait to see if anybody's going to compensate you for what you do, but there's just a lot of work that needs to be done.

I always tell the president at ASU, I says, "˜President, I know that ASU sometimes goes through a budget crunch. And I just want to let you know that if you feel like that I'm occupying a space here, you can just kindly tell me what you think. Because I'm going to end up doing what needs to be done anyway, which is to recruit more Navajo students. I always work for ASU. I don't have to do it from that office. I can do it from Phoenix or from Window Rock. I'll just keep on doing the same thing because that is the way it is meant to be. So I don't need to work here and I don't really need to work for anybody.' And I think when people begin to do more of that, we all end up winning -- this tribe, all the other tribes, the Navajo people, and the Navajo students. Your question was how do we educate people? Well, you educate them that way and people will listen. He was, Manley was saying that people listen. Well, people listen because they know that there's no conflict. They know that what you say really has a lot of credence and they know that what you're saying is the truth because nobody is paying you to say those things."

Mediator:

"Anymore questions? Well, in that case..."

Manley Begay:

"Just one second. Let me just conclude by saying that strategic vision is really so critical. It might sound like sort of pipe dreams, but it really has a concrete purpose and that purpose is really, it gives you a basis on which to make decisions. It gives you a basis on which to consider choices. If you don't have a set of priorities and concerns laid out...remember the story I told earlier about the Cherokee Nation and that their number-one priority is language retention, their number one concern is language retention. So you know what? They put all their money into that. So when somebody comes to your office and says, "˜Let's spend the money over here.' You can say to them, "˜No, we can't do that because you told us that this was our number-one priority, number-two priority, number-three priority. This is our number-one concern, number-two concern, number-three concern and that's where our money is going.' It takes the burden off of you. You have a way to go, you have a function, you have a road that's laid out. So strategic visioning, setting priorities of concern has a real concrete purpose. And that's what this session is about here. So with that, thank you. [Thank you, my older brother]. I'm really happy that I spent time with him. We call each other almost every other week, joking, laughing, but underneath that is some real main serious reasons to think about the future of Indian people. And I'm just so happy that we have leaders like Mr. Zah. I'm so happy that he came into this world. And as a result the world is a better place, for me and for everybody else. So with that I just wanted to also thank him. [Again, thank you, my older brother]." 

Native Nation Building TV: "Leadership and Strategic Thinking"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Guests Peterson Zah and Angela Russell tie together the themes discussed in the previous segments into a conversation about how Native nations and their leaders move themselves and their peoples towards nation building. They address the question all Native nations have: How do we get where we want to go?

Citation

Native Nations Institute. "Leadership and Strategic Thinking" (Episode 9). 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.

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

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[music]

Mary Kim Titla: "The challenges facing contemporary Native leaders are daunting. Typically, they are expected to do everything from defending and expanding the sovereign powers of their nations to tackling day-to-day social issues to finding ways to improve the future of their fellow citizens. Leadership can be tough. You get blamed when things go badly and sometimes fail to get credit when things go well. Today's segment examines what Native leaders are doing and can do to rebuild their Nations and forge a vision for their long-term futures. With me today to discuss leadership and strategic decision making are Peterson Zah and Angela Russell. Peterson Zah, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, has twice served as his tribe's chief executive, first as chairman from 1983 to 1987 and then as president from 1990 to 1994. For the past ten years, he has worked at Arizona State University, where he serves as advisor to the President on American Indian Affairs. Angela Russell, a citizen of the Crow Nation of Montana, currently serves as Chief Judge of the Crow Tribal Court. She previously served as a member of the Crow Legislature as well as the Montana State Legislature. Welcome to both of you."

Angela Russell: "Thank you."

Peterson Zah: "Thank you."

Angela Russell: "Good to be here."

Mary Kim Titla: "Leadership. Peterson, you know best about that I think, and I'm sure Angela can give us her advice as well, but why don't we start out by talking about just leadership in general and how it is so critical to our Native nations as they move forward."

Peterson Zah: "I think it is perhaps the most important issue today, mainly because of all of the questions that are being raised about Native leadership. The issues that we face as Indian nations, there are questions thrown at the Indian people regarding the sovereign powers of [an] Indian tribe, the social problems that we have on our reservation, things that we never ever thought will come to the reservation is now on the reservation, mainly alcoholism, drugs, the behavior of young people at the high school. Those are very, very crucial issues in the area of education. You also have questions on land, and recently it's the administration of justice on Indian land, in Indian Country."

Mary Kim Titla: "Angela, tell me what you can advise after all these years that you've served on the legislature on the tribal level and state level."

Angela Russell: "Well, among our people, when we say leader we say '[Crow term],' which means a good person or a good man, and I think leadership is extremely important to all of our nation,s and it's important not only for the leader to have a vision for his people but as citizens of a particular nation, we need to be very supportive to our leader, but we also need to be participatory in a sense that we need to give some direction, we need to give support, we need to give encouragement. I think too many times it's easy to be very critical and to not look ahead toward the vision. You have to have goals, you have to have reachable goals, whether they're short-term or long-term. So leadership is very important, but it's a very, very difficult thing, because in the past our leaders were usually men who had many deeds, many accomplishments and that's how they became a leader. They were supported by the community, and today it's a whole different role, different dynamics, a different society we live in -- lots of challenges ahead for leaders."

Mary Kim Titla: "You said something that was really interesting to me and that has to do with criticism. As a journalist, I always like to encourage people to give me constructive criticism and you really have to have thick skin."

Angela Russell: "You do, you do. You have to be able to take a lot of abuse. But there are lots of rewards, too. I think it's a real challenge to be in government, to be in leadership, because we are like third-world countries. There's lots of needs there. We do have resources. We may not have gaming where I live, but we do have a lot of natural resources, and that puts responsibility on leadership to take a look at what can the leaders do that would be best for their constituency. Abuse is there, criticism is there, but I truly believe that with good communication, you can dispel some of the criticism that goes on. You've got to have a good media outlet so that people always know what you're doing. We get very suspicious as human beings when we don't know the full story. We want to know what's going on."

Mary Kim Titla: "Peterson, we talked some years ago about your role as President -- Chairman and President -- of the Navajo Nation, and it really is an overwhelming job."

Peterson Zah: "It really is overwhelming. I see some of our leaders today -- particularly with Navajo leadership -- those people are overwhelmed and they have so much on their plate. They have so many things to do decide and every one of them are crucial. Everything that they have on their mind is important that people bring to them. But one thing that the leaders have to learn how to do is prioritize their work, because you have all of these problems coming at you. You have to sit back and say, 'This issue has a priority over all the others,' because in the representation of your constituency you have to learn how to do that. Number two, I always say that you also have to learn how to delegate responsibilities. You have a certain amount of responsibility as the leader for Indian people, Indian communities. You also have on the other side the council, you also have the tribal courts, and they are there to take on certain issues. You have to learn how to play your role and where those limitations are and be able to have enough trust in your people to say that they'll do a good job of handling those situations and you don't need to be everywhere. And that's where learning how to prioritize your work really comes into existence."

Mary Kim Titla: "We are going through elections constantly, and a lot of times people may come across as being a good leader. But after you elect them, you realize, well, 'Maybe they weren't the leader that I thought they would be.' We make mistakes sometimes in choosing our leaders. How can tribes, tribal people protect themselves from poor leadership?"

Angela Russell: "I think it's real important for tribes to have primary elections for one thing. It's only been recently that we've had primary elections. So people just entered a race and if they won, they won. But now I think we have a little more choice and we like to have our candidates be out there and talking about policy, about their platform. I would really like to see us have our leaders address the state of our nations and that would be research: What is the status of our tribes? What is that poverty level? What is the main economic income that's coming in? What are those potentials out there? I think if we had a State of the Indian Nations, or if it was the Crow Tribal Nation, I think any candidate should address that and say, 'This is what I want to see for our people.' You've got to have that vision. You've got to be projecting what is best for your people. You've got to move away from self interest and you've got to be looking at the interest of the whole."

Mary Kim Titla: "I'm sure you've dealt with that, Pete, with especially all the different delegates and members of the tribal council that you have to deal with."

Peterson Zah: "Well, I think the key is participation. The Indian people who are listening to this program for example, the students, the young people, they should never say to themselves, 'Let the tribal council do it, let the tribal chair, the tribal governor do it.' They have to learn that this is their government, these are their leaders that they elected. They have to learn how to work with them and they also have to participate in the tribal government process. In the process of participating, then you can judge how your leaders are doing. So I believe that's very, very important, because our leaders need to be held accountable for many of the things that they do, and I guess that's why I am in education. I always believe that education can solve many, many things and some people will say and argue with me and say that education can't solve everything. But, by god, education can solve a lot of our problems. It may not solve everything, nothing ever does. But if you have an educated community, people who are aware, people that have had the experience handling the affairs of our tribal nations, then I think we're in better hand as a group, rather than just sitting back and watching the tribal government do something that isn't pleasant to the local people."

Mary Kim Titla: "You touched on what was going to be my next question, and that is the role of non-elected leaders in the community. There are many of them. Can you give some examples of how people can become more active in their tribal government? I know attending meetings would be one thing, but can you give some examples of that?"

Angela Russell: "It's important for legislators, and I was one, you need to get out in the community, you need to let people know what is on the agenda for the next session, and you really need to solicit their participation. I had a woman just a few months ago who said she was really concerned about horses that were just all over the road, dogs that were abandoned and not fed, and why were these individuals having livestock and not tending to them. And I said, 'Well, you know what you can do is talk to your legislator and by the petition route, if you get a signature of 10 percent in your district, you can promote [a] resolution and that may become law.' So I think we need to really encourage people to participate instead of griping. You can say, 'Well, you can do something about that.' Another example is truancy: A lot of kids missing school, suspension of kids from school and somewhere, somehow somebody brought together a truancy bill, and now our students have to be in school 'til they're age 18 and we are going to enforce it. In fact we're getting ready through the court to enforce that shortly. So we need to have people participate. Instead of having a gripe, let's put it into action and do something."

Peterson Zah: "I also happen to believe that those things that really make our tribal government function very well is the people who participate in a lot of those programs, because you can go out into any Indian reservation, you won't have any problem finding the problems. They're there, many, many problems. I think the role of the local people, the non-elected people, is to define some of those problems and then say to themselves, 'How can I make a difference as an individual? How can we, the two or the three of us, make a difference? Let's see if we can do something about this particular problem,' instead of not doing anything, and to do that you have to motivate the young people. In the generations of Indian people that we have on Indian land, Indian Country nowadays, students are completely different than those students that I knew when I was just a young man, and motivation has to take place among those young people for them to begin having them become active in a lot of the social problems that we have on the Navajo reservation, for example."

Mary Kim Titla: "And I'd like to see more of that, young people really taking charge in their communities. I tried to do that as a young person and I'm hearing more from young people about efforts they're doing. In fact one young lady I met recently is going to spearhead a suicide-prevention walk, and I thought that was excellent because as we know, that's a big problem in Indian Country right now. What changes do you see in our leaders today? I know you've touched on this a little bit, but from say 10, 20 years ago, how different are they?'

Angela Russell: "Well, I think that the challenges, the demands of leadership today are just monumental. We're bombarded by so many requirements, so many changes that our societies need and I guess even going back further, I really like this term of enlightened democracy, where people have information, they're educated, they can make a decision looking at all the facts. But I think Indian people have a long way to go yet because we have so much poverty on many of our reservations and it really is a luxury to be participating in government, because a lot of our people are just kind of living from day to day, making sure that they're going to get through the day with whatever needs they may have. And it's not unusual for those of us who live on the reservation and are blessed to have employment, we have a lot of people knocking on our doors, people looking for work, people just looking for money and hopefully if we ever have a secure economic base for our people, then I think that we can start having more participation. Right now, I think it's limited, but I'd like to see that expand, and I think the economic situation is really important to take a look at for all tribes, not only our tribe but other tribes, too."

Peterson Zah: "I think this is probably where we have such a big difference between leaders of 20 years ago and today. If you go back 20 years ago, even in this state here [Arizona], we have Dr. Annie Wauneka for example on the Navajo. We have Ronnie Lupe with the White Mountain Apache Indian nation. Agnes Sevilla with the Colorado Tribe. And if you look at those folks, what did they have? What did they not have, and what did they not do for example? They really didn't have the education that we now have with our tribal leaders, but they have one thing that is so important in my own estimation which is a commitment and education and the dedication that they had to their people and they were honest. They didn't have much money to work with. They didn't ask for let's say compensation for their travel. They did things where the Great Spirit told them to do things. When the Great Spirit moved them, that's when they move and they were good leaders, women leaders in this state, and they were solely dedicated to, for example, eradicating tuberculosis on the Navajo by Dr. Wauneka. And she did all of those while there were no roads on the Navajo Nation and she rode horses, she rode wagons and she used radio, she used the Navajo language to do all of those things that needed to be done. She did not have the kind of education that many of our tribal leaders today have. And so I would say probably today's leaders are less traditional than let's say they were 20 years ago, but 20 years ago those leaders, 40 years ago, you could never outdo them in traditional way of doing things. You could never outdo them in dedication and commitment. I think that's what's missing."

Angela Russell: "I think tradition is extremely important, and for many of our tribes, it's real important to speak our language and to communicate with people through our language. We have a clan system and it's important to include clan members or to give them information. I think tradition is really the backbone of our society so we need to foster that and continue it. But I think if you can deal with tradition as well as trying to develop modern ways of dealing with things, I think that's the best route to go."

Mary Kim Titla: "What about our future leaders, our young people? What advice would you have for our young people who want to become tribal council delegates or tribal chairmen or presidents?"

Angela Russell: "I think that we don't use our young people to the extent that we need to use them. I think the tribe really needs to set up internships, they need to set up fellowships, give people practical experience, have them get their feet wet, so to speak. A lot of young people come home, they may go to college with the intention of coming back and doing something and they may graduate, they may come back, and there's nothing there for them. I remember a young man who just got his degree in civil engineering and he came back and he was really excited about working for the tribe, but the tribe did not hire him. And we have other instances like that. We have to make room in our government to encourage young people to participate and to take some leadership roles."

Peterson Zah: "If you look at the three of us, we came from a family where the tradition was very strong so we were taught by our parents and our grandparents about traditional belief. Now, if you look at the young people that we have today in college, their parents are less traditional, and many of the students that we now have coming from single parents and they don't have as much tradition as what the three of us had. And I think that presents a problem because the young kids today represent a totally different set of values that they have. The values aren't the same and I think that's going to cause some problems for the Indian nation. So we have to go not only to the young people but to the parents that are raising them, and then their children. And so to some degree we're losing the tradition that helped us survive among all of the Indian nations for this long. And the young people should never ever forget that we survived as long as we had because of our traditions, because of our language, because of our culture. Those may not have dollar signs, but they were more powerful than all of the dollars that the tribe gets now, and the young people should never ever forget that."

Mary Kim Titla: "One of the things that I was interested in learning more about from you Pete is this Navajo Nation Permanent Fund. Tell me about that and what made it become a reality?"

Peterson Zah: "I was very, very lucky when I became the tribal chair back in 1983. We had an 88-member council. Most of them were traditional people and a totally different perspective about leadership and about Navajo life and Navajo goals and aspirations. The difference is that back then those were visionary leaders and during that period in the history of the Navajo tribe we won several very, very important court decisions. One of them was Kerr McGee versus the Navajo Nation, a United States Supreme Court case where the Navajo Nation wanted to tax all of the companies that were extracting minerals off Navajo land, businesses that operate on Navajo Nation. We decided what we should do is tax them, and that's been in the works with the tribe for many, many years and so finally the tribe says, 'We're going to tax all of you, as you're being taxed elsewhere, you're doing business throughout the United States.' And so we did and they took us to court. While we were in litigation during the court process, they were paying us escrow funds, the amount of taxes that they're supposed to pay the tribe. So by the time we won in 1984, it had accumulated a huge amount of money in the escrow account, so all of a sudden as a young chairman of the Navajo Nation, $214 or $216 million was dropped on my lap and my job was, what to do with the money? As you know and Angela well know, when you have a tribal council such as what we have among Indian people, they want to spend, spend, spend. And any time you raise the issue of wanting to save you were an oddball. So in my case, I decided that I'm going to go against the grain of what the Navajo Nation Council wants, which is we're going to invest all of these monies, and the one that people always hear about is the Permanent Fund. That is where you establish a permanent account and we put something like $26 million into a permanent Navajo fund and we want that to grow. Back then, from 1984 to 2004, for [a] 20-year period we all agreed that we wouldn't touch that amount of money, and then the Navajo Nation was to contribute 12 percent of its total revenues into that account each year. So you had the $26 million that was earning interest and the Navajo Nation council was also depositing 12 percent of the total revenue each year into the account and that thing grew and grew and grew. And to this day, 2006, we're almost at a billion dollars. And when we reach a billion within the next several years, that money is to be used by the Navajo people after they have a referendum vote, so it's not only up to the council to decide how that money should be used. It's going to be up to all the Navajo voters. We had hearings three summers ago and the Navajo people decided that what we should do is don't use it all. Use only the interest off that one billion. We can handle that but keep the one billion in the bank so that you'll always have money in the bank for a rainy day for example, and only use the interest. And we can use that interest just to keep the tribal government, tribal services going and not ever spend the one billion. So that was the kind of visionary leaders the Navajo council was back then, and I was just very, very lucky as a young person to be in that seat working with them when that thing happened."

Mary Kim Titla: "Sure. And Angela, you have a new constitution."

Angela Russell: "We do."

Mary Kim Titla: "Can you talk about what prompted the tribe to develop this and where did the leadership for that come from?"

Angela Russell: "Well, I think there were only a couple of tribes that had a town council form of government. We were one of them. Our constitution was actually modeled after a Moose Lodge charter, and that was in 1948, so that was the constitution we had. And with mineral development possibilities, with changes in our society, we really needed to be more business-minded, and looking at that old constitution, it wasn't going to work. We had a group of individuals that were part of a committee called the 107th Committee but they -- in discussing where the tribe needed to go -- recognized that we needed changes in our constitution and there were a number of things that they really wanted. They wanted separation of powers, they wanted longer terms for tribal officials, looking at maybe limited waivers of sovereignty. There were a number of things that they looked at and when they looked at the old constitution, it just was not going to work. It was either in conflict or it was so inconsistent that it would raise lots of problems. So back in 2001, actually even earlier than that, many of us who participated in those old councils worked hard to try to look at a new constitution or constitutional reform. I remember I had a resolution before the council -- I think it was 1973 -- just asking for a study to look at different constitutions and bring it back to the council and that was defeated. So it's taken a long time to get where we are, but in 2001 we did approve a new constitution, and that gives you the three branches of government, six districts on our reservation and we have three representatives from each of those districts. And then we have the executive branch and then we have the judicial. If we really are going to move forward into business, it's really important that we have the three branches of government, because a lot of businesses don't want to come on Indian land if they don't feel they have a right to certain things or if they believe their rights aren't being protected. At least the courts provide a forum hopefully to be fair to individuals working on the reservation. So it's new and it's pretty exciting. There are problems that we need to work out, but I think it's moving along."

Mary Kim Titla: "We could talk all day about leadership and issues that our leaders are dealing with in their own communities, but we've run out of time. So I just want to thank you for your insight and your advice. I've learned a lot today."

Angela Russell: "Thank you. It's good to be here."

Mary Kim Titla: "We want to thank Peterson Zah and Angela Russell for appearing on today's edition of Native Nation Building. Native Nation Building is a program of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the University of Arizona. To learn more about Native Nation building and the issues discussed on today's program, please visit the Native Nations Institute's website at www.nni.arizona.edu/nativetv. That's www.nni.arizona.edu/nativetv. Thank you for joining us and please tune in for the next edition of Native Nation Building."

Peterson Zah and Manley A. Begay, Jr.: Strategic Thinking and Planning: Navajo Nation Permanent Trust Fund

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Native Nations Institute
Year

Former Navajo Chairman and President Peterson Zah and NNI Faculty Chair Manley A. Begay, Jr. discuss the role of strategic vision and planning in the establishment and cultivation of the Navajo Navajo Permanent Trust Fund, and stress the need for Native nations to forge a long-term vision for their communities and peoples.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Zah, Peterson and Manley A. Begay, Jr. "Strategic Thinking and Planning: Navajo Nation Permanent Trust Fund." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 26, 2008. Presentation.

Peterson Zah:

"[Navajo Introduction]. In the Indian way and Navajo way you always identify yourself, who you are, where you come from, who you're related to because, after all, that's what we're all about. And so that's normally the way you start your conversation. Because you're not the only one I'm talking to here in this room. We have other entities that are also here and they always want to know who you are. I wanted to say just two or three words before we get going with what I'm supposed to be doing here.

Number one, I now work at Arizona State University [ASU]; I've been there for the last 14 years. And after the Navajo people kicked me out of office I went down to the University and I started working with young people because, at the time, they only had something like 600 Native American students on campus. And the President says, "˜That's as far as we get. We come to that number then we always come down. Our graduation rate is horrible,' he says. "˜So we need to improve that. Let that be your concern.' He also said, "˜I can't tell you how to do your job because I don't know what to tell you. You evidently know.' And so essentially that's the way we got started. From 600 Native American students to today, we have 1,500 Native American students. Our goal is to reach, within the next five years, 2,000 Native American students. So we're doing very well in recruitment. Our retention rate is improving. Our graduation rate is improving also. And so I wanted to just give you that little commercial. If I didn't say anything about ASU, the President it's going to get back to him and he's going to be angry. So I wanted to just say this.

Number two: I really, really enjoyed the conference here during the last two days. I'm learning a lot and listening to all of the young ones -- all of you, participating in these discussions -- and all of the dedication, and a good sense of where we should be headed all comes out. And as an old man, as a grandpa, that really makes me happy. And we need more of these kinds of training to equip the upcoming leaders with all of the tools that they need so that they can do better among their people in their communities nationwide. So I just wanted to say this.

In terms of the subject today, the establishment of the [Navajo Nation Permanent] Trust Fund, I always tell people that the needs of the Navajo people back then in the mid-1980s were the same as they are now. Some people say, "˜Well, you were able to do all of that because the needs back then weren't as great.' Well, to be honest, they were the same, basically the same. As the tribal chair sitting there at that desk every minute people coming in, they want service, they want to talk to you, they want advice, they want a sense of direction, they want this and they want that. And so your time is occupied a hundred percent throughout the day, almost 24 hours a day -- how they want those services to be rendered to them. And so basically that was the backdrop of the Navajo Nation back in the mid-1980s.

Navajo, as you know, is the largest of all of the Indian tribes, whether it's a pure membership or land base: 88-member council, over 300,000 Navajo people, 110 chapters. And at those chapters you have chapter president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, grazing committee members. So you can multiply 110 times five, and that's how many people you have to work with as an elected official of the Navajo Nation government. So to put your program into place, you have to work with those officers at the community level as well as the 88-member council. So it's not an easy task. You may have a great idea but if you don't do your homework to begin with, you're in trouble right from the word "˜go.' And so with establishment of the trust fund, we had to basically deal with that kind of infrastructure on the Navajo to get to where we wanted to go. I do not know in this room how many of our tribal government, tribal leaders, have tried to create trust fund for the Indian people. I was extremely lucky to be working with a tribal council that had a lot of vision. They were visionary leaders, the 88-member council. I would say probably one half of them had no greater than 10th-grade, 11th-, 12th-grade education. We didn't have a single college graduate but they were visionary in a lot of the things that they did. So we were very, very lucky to have that number in the Navajo Nation Council.

Prior to my becoming a tribal chair I worked at the legal services program called DNA [Diné be'iina Náhiilna be Agha'diit'ahii or "˜attorneys who work for the economic revitalization of The People'] People's Legal Service. I spent 11 years there as the executive director, as a non-lawyer executive director. There were always a lot of people who wanted me to go to law school and I used to tell them, "˜Listen, I'm better off than a lawyer. So I'm going to continue running the program. Because when you become a lawyer, you get tunnel vision and sometimes you can't see things out here. And therefore you have to really, really concentrate on the overall problems of the Navajo people.' And as such I was always working with lawyers to make sure that the cases that we handled at DNA, many of which went to United States Supreme Court, was handled right because I knew that when you get into that court you don't really know what's going to happen. Sure, the lawyers will tell you that they're going to win, this is their argument and this is what we want to do. But we always had a mock trial that we insist our lawyers go through that mock trial -- not only once or twice or three times -- 10 times to have those kinds of sessions before they went into the United States Supreme Court.

So I was intimately involved in Kerr-McGee vs. the Navajo Nation, a taxation case that was accepted by the Navajo Nation to go on to the United States Supreme Court. Within that four-year period, we were able to win in the United States Supreme Court where the tribes were given the authority to tax companies that work on the reservation, that extract minerals on the reservations and that do business on the Navajo Nation. I remember the controversy when we passed that taxing legislation by the Navajo Council, all of the people who do business, companies who do business on the reservation, they all banded together and they said, "˜We're going to sue you because we don't think you have the authority as Navajo Nation to impose taxes on us because we have this contract with you. And we look at that contract as a bible and in there it says we are not to be taxed.' But those were the old leases that were approved by the Navajo Nation Council and the contracting parties. And so when we decided that we're going to start taxing people, they used that against us, the very same thing that the other Navajo Council did in the past.

And so what happened was that we went into court and basically did all of our homework and we [ended] up winning that case. And I remember getting a call from the clerk of the United States Supreme Court saying, "˜I'm just letting you know a decision was made today. It was nine to zero. You guys won the case. That means Indian tribes can now begin taxing companies that operate on the Indian nation.' That was a precedent-setting case. And what that did, what that did was I told the companies, when they decided to sue us in court, I says, "˜As a tribal chairman you get sued every week so it doesn't really matter. And so can I get a concession out of you that while this case is going on can you pay the amount of money that you're supposed to pay in escrow, in escrow account? If you win, you take all the money back. If I win, I take all the money.' And so basically that's how the $217 million was accumulated. So when we won the United States Supreme Court, I went down to the bank and got a check for $217 million. I was the most popular person in Window Rock.

But the question about what to do with that amount of money was really, really something that people, leaders, have to deal with because it was the election year. The 88-member council, they said, "˜We understand you picked up the $217 million. Let's call the council into session and I've got a project. I want to be reelected.' Council delegate from Chinle says, "˜I want to have a laundry, laundromat at Chinle chapter and we'll call it Chinle Wash. We want to have that going because using that I can get re-elected and we'll get further in our progress that we're trying to accomplish.' And so that was something that was really a lot of pressure, activities that happened on the Navajo Nation. The problem was, what do you do with that money? A lot of services are needed. Anything you can think of you can throw the $217 million at those problems because it's election year. And so everyone wanted a role in terms of how they all thought we should spend the money.

My mother is a traditional Navajo lady. She never went to school. She doesn't know a word of English. She has lots of sheep all her life. And every once in awhile she always wants us to come home, spend a night, two or three days with her. So when the pressure got so hot, boiling over in Window Rock, I jumped in my pickup truck and I went home. And I got to the house late in the evening, slept and early in the morning my mother was butchering the sheep. And she says, "˜I'm cooking for the kids.' And then when I got up she started talking. And I told her and she says, "˜Son, I hear all these things on the radio about what's happening in Window Rock. What is happening? What is happening with that money? What did you do with the $217 million that you got from the bank?' And I says, "˜I just put it in the safe and I'm trying to decide what I should do with it.' And so then she started talking about her herd and she says, "˜Is there a way, is there a way that you can treat money the same way as you treat a herd, the sheep?' And she says, "˜Remember, say back several years ago, when our herd came down and we only had 15 sheep and we were all worried? Then I told you kids, let's not eat the sheep anymore for the next two years. If we do it that way, the 15 will multiply to 30 if we leave it alone. The following year we'll have 60. The following year we'll have 120 and we'll be back to where we were. Can you treat money that way?' And this is a traditional Navajo lady talking with me. I could have probably hired a consultant at $400-500 an hour to tell me the same thing, but the mother cares. She's a permanent fixture on the Navajo Nation. She's a tribal member. So I thought to myself, 'Well, she's given me an advice and what she's really, really talking about it is putting money into trust so that it can multiply the same way as her herd multiplied.' And so I got all recharged. At the end of that two-day period, I went back into Window Rock and I went to the council and I says, "˜Ah ha! I've got the answer. Let's put these monies into trusts, let's not spend it. Let's not spend it foolishly. Yes, we all want to get reelected -- I do too -- but let's be prudent. Let's use our judgment in the right way for the Navajo people.' So it was advice that I got from my mother that was highly valuable to the Navajo Nation.

So we sat down with the council and we developed a plan in terms of how that $217 million should be distributed and used to the trust fund. And we established what we call Chapter Government Nation-Building Fund. We put something like $60 or $70 million into that account. That means at the end of the year, whatever interest that it earns those monies were divided among the chapter houses and that's the way their chapter houses operated throughout the year. We created a $20 million Navajo scholarship fund. We had something like maybe $20 million in there already, but we put another $20 million on top of that for something nearly $40 million and we said the interest that this earns at the end of each year will keep the Navajo kids going to college, a college and a university of their choice. So we took care of the chapters. We took care of the young people but not everybody is fit to go to college. Some want to go to vocational education. So we said why don't we take care of them? And we put something like $7 or $8 million into that account. The interest that it earns then can send those Navajo kids to those vocational institutions.

Then we had some problems. There was tremendous need for the handicap people. It was right at this time that old man Ronald Reagan came into power and he cut off all those social programs. Remember back then? Maybe some of you were in diapers still but Ronald Reagan came in and they said, "˜No more of these social programs.' So he cut them. Well, that left the senior citizens out in the cold. We then said, "˜Why don't we have a handicap trust fund?' So we put $7 or $8 million in there for all the elderly people that may need hearing aid -- like the one Manley is wearing -- and hearing aid and all of these other things that they need, the senior citizen. And they're the ones that use that trust fund to help them with some of their problems that they were having. And then there were senior citizens' trust fund. All the senior citizen organizations on the reservation and we put some money into the trust fund for them. And we said that the interest that it earns, "˜You can use that for your activities,' all the seniors.

Then we gave Navajo Academy -- the only Navajo high school, a prep school -- we gave them some trust funds so that they can establish a truly Navajo Nation school. And that was built in Farmington, New Mexico, and today it's still there. They're the only high school on the Navajo Nation that sends every graduate to colleges and university. And I like to go over there and recruit students. So they're the ones that have that Navajo prep academy.

The other one that is not listed, these things happened in 1984-85. In 1990, early 1990, we established three more trust funds. One of them is what we call Land Acquisition Fund. All of you are wondering, "˜Say, how come the Navajo Nation has such a big land base, big huge reservation?' Well, we buy land back. We buy land back. So we created what we call Land Acquisition Fund. There are some ranchers, non-Indian people adjacent to the Navajo Nation that always put their land up for sale. We said, 'When those people make their land available, we should get to the bank, make out a check, buy the land.' Now our reservation is growing. It's getting bigger and bigger and so we established that Land Acquisition Fund. Today it has $50 million, $50 million in that account. So anybody who puts out their land for sale, we use that money to buy land. The reason why we did it is Navajo Nation keeps on growing; the people, the membership is getting larger and larger. We want the land to grow with those numbers. And so every year we purchase more and more land, and we're not going to stop until we get back the whole Southwest. And so that's why we established that fund.

The other fund that we created during that period was a trust fund to take care of a lot of these economic development that's taking place on the Navajo Nation. They have their own trust fund that they can tap into to do economic development projects. And so basically those are the trust funds that the Navajo Nation now has. Now why did we do that? My thought back then was, you can use the $217 million, put them all into trusts. If you have enough trust accounts that you establish, I want to see the day the Navajo Nation government would run on trust fund; we don't have to beg anybody for money. Is that called self-sufficiency all of you young people? Self-sufficiency, that's what we're striving for. Twenty years has gone by. Many of these trust funds are being utilized and they have matured. So much of your trust fund is being utilized to keep the tribal government going.

Now I work for Arizona State University as I told you. We have a rather new president that came out of back east. His goal is to put Arizona State University in a position so that all of these monies that people donate, he puts it into trusts. He calls it endowed funds. And he says, "˜I'd like to put the university in the position where we don't have to go to the state legislature and beg for money each year, we don't have to go see the governor. We want to run this university like NYU, Harvard, Yale, all of those universities. They all run on their own. They're all running on trust funds.' So basically the Navajo concept was to essentially to do the same thing.

The biggest one that we wanted to talk about is the Permanent Fund. It was established because of the natural resources being depleted. I told the Navajo people, I said, "˜We have coal, but you know coal is a non-renewable resource. Once the coal is gone, where are we going to get our money? Once the coal is all extracted from Navajo Land, where are we going to get our income? So while we can, we should put these monies into trust.' So a permanent fund was established by the Navajo Nation. One thing that we had to keep on explaining over and over to the Navajo people is, 'What is the difference between the principal and fund income?' Probably the most simplest thing that you can put across to people, but there was a lot of misunderstanding between principal and the fund income. And we keep on saying, 'We want to make it so that we don't spend the principale when we are at a point of using, beginning to use these trust funds.'

The way it works now is, when the permanent fund was authorized, we put something like $26 million as a basis, as a foundation of the Permanent Fund; we put that in the bank. On top of that we said, '12 percent of all projected revenue shall be invested from the Navajo Nation.' So each year, the Navajo Council comes to decide the budgeting process. The first thing they do is they take, on top of everything they get, 12 percent of that, they put it on top of the Permanent Fund. So the Permanent Fund enjoys two things. One is the interest that it earns goes back into the Permanent Fund. The Navajo Nation uses 12 percent of their general fund total, they put that on top of that. So it enjoys a lot of deposits of money and the generation of revenues that way.

We agreed among the council, I told the council, I said, "˜I want to get an agreement from you that we're not going to ever touch this money for the next 20 years. For the next 20 years, you shall not come to my office and ask that you withdraw these monies. We're going to put it into trust for 20 years and we're going to see what happens, how much money it can generate. After the 25-year period, we will then have a five-year plan where 95 percent of the money could, may be expended according to rules established by the council.' And so that is still in the plan. However, there is no program in place right now for the use of those permanent fund[s]. And so basically that is something that the Navajo Nation agreed to and that they are still, we are still holding them to those agreements. All of the expenses that is associated with the administration and the management of the Permanent Fund comes out of that amount of money that it earns. And so that's what happened to the Navajo Nation and the establishment of its permanent fund.

Today, March 27th -- is it today? -- we have some like $1.4 billion in that permanent fund. This is money that is not earmarked for anything. It's free money. So money in the bank, 1.4 [million dollars]. One of the biggest push by the council every time they come into session is they want to get at it. They want to spend the money. So usually Manley Begay and I are there in Window Rock saying, "˜No, no, no, no. You guys agreed not to do this. Let's keep it growing, let's keep it going.' So thus far, we have been successful and so that is the way this permanent fund and all the other trust funds was established.

Now in 2002, a work group was established called Permanent Fund Work Group. The Navajo Nation Council wanted to get seven people from the Navajo Nation that can decide what to do with that permanent fund. And they made me the chair and then we selected people like Manley Begay and others. And we've been meeting on and off since then and talking about what the future holds for the Navajo Nation trust fund. Manley says, "˜You go first, talk about how these were established, but no joke.' He says, "˜As long as you agree that you aren't going to tell any joke to this group, then you should do this.' So before I crack a joke, I'd like to give him the floor."

Manley Begay:

"The reason why my brother walks around real slow is [because] he has $500 million in both pockets. A good friend of mine, I ran into him again, Curt Massey from White Mountain Apache. I used to play basketball with him years ago. I noticed he was walking real slow, too. I told him, I said, "˜You're walking really slow.' I said, "˜Are you still playing basketball?' He says, "˜No, I don't have any more knees.' I used to play ball with him years ago. We used to be neighbors over there in the East Fork area of the White Mountain Apache reservation. So it was really good to see my brother and good friend Curt Massey. Now he's on the council at White Mountain Apache. And one thing about my brother Pete Zah is that he used to play basketball also, years ago at the Phoenix Indian School, and he was actually on a championship team. So quite an athlete back when.

As Pete was saying, we were selected to this permanent fund work group. And lo and behold, we're sitting on millions of dollars, and it was our responsibility to decide what to do with that money. So I asked Peter, I said, "˜What should we do with the money?' And he said, "˜We should buy Tahiti, the Island of Tahiti, and move over there, get a flock of sheep and herd sheep by the ocean.' But can you imagine the responsibility that's given to you about what to do with that amount of money? In 2002, the money was hovering around $800 million and seven of us, these individuals, we were the ones to decide how the money was going to be spent. As my brother was saying, when they first won the legal case, everybody became his best buddy. They'd come out of he woodwork. The same thing happened again, this time to me, again. People I hadn't seen for years they said, 'Brother, uncle, grandpa, have I got a deal for you.' So can you imagine the amount of responsibility we were given?

And so what do you do? How do you handle this? Because everything's important, right? Grandpa and grandma are important, the handicapped are important, roads are important, health is important, education is important, veterans are important, the youth are important, and there are 300,000 Navajos. Shall we go per cap, 300,000 Navajos? Not much money to go around. And so that was what we were facing. So what did we do? We did a lot of research. First we wanted to figure out what's been happening all these years since the money was put into a trust fund and we wanted to find out exactly how much money there was.

So my brother and I and the five other individuals, we had the fund managers come to see us and we had meetings with them about where the money was at, how the money was invested, where did it go, how much is left and this was shortly, if you'll remember, after 9/11. And the stock markets were really fluctuating around that time. It probably would have been up to $1 billion, but 9/11 sort of made it dip, up and down. And we consulted with the community. One thing about my brother here is that he's very close to the people, the people that are out there in the community. And he said, "˜I want to ask them what they think because that's the heart and soul of who you are.' And he says, "˜We have to go there, we have to go there and ask.'

Then we found out, lo and behold, we found out that in the year 2000 this legislation was passed. The Navajo Nation during an election year earmarked 50 percent of the money to go to this local governance trust fund. And so that remained that only 45 percent of the fund income would be available to us to determine an expenditure plan for and then the 5 percent would be reinvested back into the principal. So essentially this is what happened. So we were actually only dealing with $6.8 million and the vastness of the needs of Navajo is unbelievable and here we were only dealing with about around $7 million. And here we were thinking, we're going to buy Tahiti. But there was a reality check. All of a sudden things began to change very, very quickly. So what to do, what to do?

And so we began to figure out how to do this, what do we do, how do we think through this particular...? So we began to research more and more about how much money there actually was and we wanted to know if there were other extenuating circumstances. This bullet point three. Were there other things that were going on with the money that we hadn't known about earlier? We requested reports from just about everybody at Navajo; we met with the money managers again, we talked to attorneys, we went to the natural resource department. We wanted to know how much time is left for the coal deposit at Navajo? How much more oil do we have left? Because all of that plays into how you plan for an expenditure plan. We held public hearings and then we began to devise a final permanent fund work group report to the Navajo Nation Council. Here is an assumption chart that if coal reserves at our coal mine were depleted, if our oil fields were depleted, what's going to happen to the Permanent Fund trust. And so this middle road is sort of the best route that was imaginable.

So 2008, we're talking about the money hovering around maybe $700-800 million. But as my brother was saying, it's actually at $1.4 billion; so the stocks doing a really, really good job. And here's sort of the market value chart of the Permanent Fund. So you can imagine that in 2010 it would be nearing $1 billion, but it's actually exceeded expectations. Here's another chart that we were working with. In terms of the local governance trust fund -- let's say -- if the money went there, what's the best-case scenario? So we were thinking through what to do with this money and we held public hearings. We wanted to hear from the people. We wanted to hear what the people had to say. And my brother here is like -- remember the old commercial of E.F. Hutton? When Peterson Zah speaks, everybody listens. It's absolutely true. He has that stature that when he goes out to the community, when he talks to the people, people really listen to him. They want to know exactly what he's thinking. To this day, even though he's not in office, he's still a leader. He's still a leader to be respected, to be listened to, to be thought through. So at these community hearings, this is what we put together. And here are the public hearing questions. So we started to gain data and information. And this was actually my brother's idea. He said, "˜We've got to go over there, talk to the people, find out what's going on. Let's pose to them these questions and let's find out some answers about what they're thinking.' And these were their comments.

There was a big push for reinvesting the money, instead of spending it. They said, they told us...these were grandmas and grandpas, people that we would consider sort of everyday people. Very intelligent, smart people. And they said to us, 'Reinvest the money.' But they didn't come out and say, 'Reinvest.' They said this, "˜It's like seeing your corn grow. You should pick the corn only when it is ripe. If you pick it when it's too young, you won't get enough to eat.' So what they were saying was, reinvest the money, put it back. They also said, in reference to the local governance trust fund, they said, "˜There's this huge cow with lots of milk, but only a few calves are allowed to feed, then others are all standing around hungry. The money is like milk, it all goes to just those few.' So they were saying to us, 'Wait a minute. Let's wait a minute.' And then those of us that are living off Navajo Nation land, they were saying, "˜Count us in; don't count us out. Don't call us outsiders. We know our homeland and the homeland knows us. Our umbilical cords are buried in our homeland. We are still your relatives. We are only here because of jobs, education, training and for medical reasons.' Often these services are not available on the Navajo Nation. In the Navajo way, when a baby is, the umbilical cord falls off, there's a whole ceremony that it entails. So where it's buried is where your heart and your soul is at. So no matter where you go, wherever your umbilical cord is at, that's where your heart and soul will be.

And so what did we do, we put together this permanent fund work group report and this is what we said. Number one, we challenged the Navajo Nation Council and we said, and we also challenged the Navajo people, and we said, "˜Develop a vision with a strategic plan for the Navajo Nation as a whole that can provide guidance to those -- including the Navajo Nation Council -- who must make momentous decisions regarding finance and other matters affecting the long-term future of the people.' We said, "˜Reinvest all of the Permanent Fund until 2012, an additional period of five years, or until the corpus of the fund reaches $1 billion, whichever comes first.' As my brother said, it's at $1.4 billion and everybody wants to get at it. And we said, "˜Repeal the legislation requiring the Permanent Fund income go to the local governance trust fund.' And we said, "˜the Navajo Nation should really resist further legislative diversion of the money. It makes the fund quite vulnerable.' And we said, "˜set up an endowment commission.' The endowment commission's responsibility would be to figure out according to policy, rules and regulations, how the money would be dispensed.

Today, what's the future of the Permanent Fund? We're not sure. It's sort of a question mark, although we're all following Mr. Zah's lead. He says, "˜We sometimes as Indian people have a hard time saving. We get a paycheck and then we're driving to town, we spend all the money. We're happy going over there, coming back we're all quiet. No more money.' And he says, "˜We've got to save. We've got to save that money.' So we're following his lead to this very day." 

Peterson Zah: Finally We Are Growing Our Own

Producer
The Library Channel
Year

Recorded on March 25, 2010, in this lecture Dr. Peterson Zah discusses the history of Native American education, Navajo education, and his involvement recruiting Native American students to attend college. He also stresses the importance of higher education to the success of Native nations' efforts to rebuild their nations, build robust economies, and achieve self-sufficiency.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Zah, Peterson. "Finally We Are Growing Our Own." The Simon Ortiz and Labriola Center Lecture on Indigenous Land, Culture, and Community, Arizona State University. Tempe, Arizona. March 25, 2010. Presentation. (https://vimeo.com/17524438, accessed September 20, 2016)