Harvard Project "Honoring Nations" Symposium 2007

Honoring Nations: Patricia Ninham-Hoeft: Oneida Nation Farms

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Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Patty Ninham-Hoeft, Business Committee Secretary for the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, discusses the impact of Oneida Nation Farms on the Oneida community and how it is a concrete expression of tribal sovereignty.

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Citation

Ninham-Hoeft, Patricia. "Oneida Nation Farms," Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 27-28, 2007. Presentation.

Heather Kendall-Miller:

"Now the people that we have today, on our panel, each have wonderful programs that they have been affiliated with, and each of them have their own stories of leadership and the roles that leadership played in developing nationhood. The first person that we are going to -- I want to first make note that we are missing, unfortunately, Tim Mintz, who was going to be here to speak on behalf of the Tribal Historic Preservation project and he is an officer of the Standing Rock Sioux [Tribe]. The Tribal Monitors program was one that we honored in 2005, a wonderful program. And you'll find in your reading material a summary of that program. And even though Tim is not here to speak about that today, I encourage you to look at that for yourself...We are going to begin with Patty Ninham-Hoeft and she's the tribal secretary with the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. She's going to speak a little bit about the Oneida Farms project that was given high awards in 2005. Very, very interesting I would say. Again, [I] happened to be there. It was one of these stunning projects that we're all going, 'Yeah, yeah!' So with that, here's Patty."

Patty Ninham-Hoeft:

"Good afternoon. My name's Patty Ninham-Hoeft. I'm the tribal secretary for the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin. I'm serving my first term as one of nine people elected to the tribe's Oneida Business Committee. I'm here to talk about the Farm, which was honored by the Honoring Nations program in 2005 as an example of leadership. And I'm feeling very humble, a little not confident because I didn't really have, I didn't actually have any role in developing the Farm as an applicant to receive that award. Although I was there watching the people on our team compete for that award. What I'm going to share with you are some of the perceptions that I, personally, have about what the Farm represents to me and as a reflection of what I think is occurring in my tribe in Oneida. I think the Farm is a quiet leader. It's the result of working hard and doing a good job every day. And that comes -- that's a description from Pat Cornelius who, at 69-years-old, is still managing the Farm. You look at Pat and she looks younger than I do.

The idea for the Farm started around 1978 with 150 acres of land, 25 head of cattle. But many people since 1978 have worked that idea about having a farm. Today, the farm has I think almost 9,000, or more than 9,000 acres of land. 4,000 or more are in a mix of crops. There's alfalfa, corn silage, corn, soybeans, wheat, some pasture. And 4,000 acres of that land is used for federal conservation programs. We have restoration programs in place of wetlands and trout streams and waterways. We even have some cooperation going on with local municipalities in restoring some of the smaller trout streams that run through the reservation. We have Black Angus as livestock, about 450-550, and 125 or so cow/calf grazing programs. When I was asked to present on the Farm, that was a surprise to me, because as soon as I saw that the summit was announced, I immediately signed up because I wanted to attend because I'm a big fan of this project. And so then later, when I was asked to talk about the Farm, I sat down with Pat Cornelius to talk to her about it. And really all Pat had to say about the Farm was that it was just the result of hard work and doing a good job every day. And I kept urging her to describe more about what this represented and that was all I could get. So that's why you're going to get my perceptions.

The Farm I think is becoming visible. It's been a quiet leader, but it's becoming visible. And I think the visibility came when it got the 2005 award. And for me, someone who grew up in Oneida, I kind of took the Farm for granted. I watched in 1978 as some people, a little older than me then, tried to create a place where they could grow some indigenous crops and I watched them struggle and I watched the community beat it down and I watched somebody revive the idea. And then in 1992, I think that's when Pat came around, and she started running the Farm.

The Farm is becoming visible in ways that, because it uses tribal dollars and it manages the Farm with tribal members and it uses its land for the common good of the tribe. It generates revenues; it's a way to offset taxes. Because Oneida is a checkerboard reservation, we have overlapping jurisdictions across Oneida. We have two counties, we have a village and a town, we have the city of Green Bay, we have the village of Ashwaubenon, we have five public school districts and -- I think there's two towns actually, the town of Oneida and the town of Pittsfield. So we have lots of complexities and our goal has always been to reacquire our lands by the year 2020, or reacquire 51 percent of the lands by 2020. And so the Farm is a way as we're acquiring the lands, reacquiring through purchasing -- It's difficult to convert that land into trust status so we have taxes to pay. So this is a way to farm the land, get revenue back, and offset those taxes. The Farm is also a place that gives jobs and it's also become a place where Oneida gets to practice its culture. It's a place where Oneida values are brought to life. It's also a place where we get a chance to exercise our sovereignty.

Ways in which the Farm is a quiet leader: People want to buy the farm products, not just Oneida people, but people in the surrounding Green Bay metropolitan area. And the tribe -- marketing right now is a problem, Pat says. It's time to start marketing the product; right now it's just word of mouth. And you see the products in the local grocery store, at Festival Foods. And it's a source of pride, I think, for tribal members to walk down the aisles and see, in the fresh produce aisle, Oneida apples and to see people wanting to buy Oneida apple cider and specifically looking for it. It's great to be around people -- I belong to a sailing club and if we have cookouts they want Oneida buffalo burgers and buffalo brats. And it's great to have white corn products in your refrigerator. I remember as a kid growing up, the only way to get corn bread, white corn bread, these hard heavy loaves, was usually at Thanksgiving time and they were hand-made by elders in the community. But now you can get them every day.

Area farmers, another place where we're having some leadership is with area farmers. I think when the Farm was starting in those early years, local farmers looked at Oneida and said, 'Can these Indians farm? What are those Indians doing?' And now they are still asking that same question, but they're doing it because they want to learn and replicate our practices. So what's happening there is we're building relationships with our neighbors, and understanding.

Pat, as the manager, also is changing the role of women and the role of age. At 69-years-old and a woman managing a farm, she's breaking stereotypes and setting new examples for us.

The Farm also is helping us maintain the rural character of the reservation. And as I described all the multiple layers of jurisdiction, we have lots of competition for land use with Oneida and that competition is from developers. And Oneida is struggling right now because we don't have strong zoning rules, we don't have a comprehensive plan in place. And so the people that are defining how Oneida will look, how the geography of Oneida will be used, are the developers. And I see it happening on the outer perimeters of the reservation. I drive around and what was once rural, is now filled with pole metal buildings, storage sheds, and they're starting to define what my place is going to look like. So the farm is a way to kind of get this land, put it to use, and kind of slow development for a bit. And it's also good for, when we're paying taxes, because agricultural land, maybe some real estate people will argue with that, but it's a better tax base because there's less infrastructure to support it. So they're happy. And then it also helps to preserve the continuation of hunting. My dad, my brothers grew up hunting on the reservation, but as Green Bay encroaches into the res, hunting is becoming less and less. There are less places to do that. And, in fact, the village of Hobart, which is on half of the reservation, is starting to assert its rules of not allowing hunting.

The Farm has become a place to teach children and families about where their food comes from, the cultural values that Oneida had in regards to food and in regards to the land. And it's also a place where we're learning, revitalizing our language. One aspect of the Farm is called Tsyunhehkwa. And it's an Oneida word that means 'provides life for us.' And sometimes, on a good day, as I'm writing out a check for something there I can spell it from memory. But I run into my friends who aren't Oneida and they talk about going to Tsyunhehkwa to get essential oils or an herb. And the Farm has become a place to gather for community events. They have husking bee events, jigging contests.

The idea of the Farm, like I said, has been worked on by many people and I've watched them struggle; but Pat, I have to give credit to Pat who said to me -- when we were talking about what she does and what I do and the struggles that Oneida is having now and she said, 'You couldn't pay me enough money to be on the Business Committee.' But I think she's found a place to provide leadership for people who get elected to the Business Committee and she is an example of many community leaders from her generation who saw a problem, who took the initiative, had the spirit of entrepreneurism, and they went to work and they found ways to solve it. And my mother is an example of that generation. Pat's 69, my mom is 64, and when my mom was 32 years old (and I'm 45), she and another woman started Oneida Bingo in the gymnasium of the tribe's civic center. And they started it because, she was working in the civic center, couldn't afford to pay the utility bills, and they were playing Bingo at the local VFW and they started their own game; and it grew and grew. And in 1980, the tribe was issuing payroll checks for the first time and she was building a new building across from the airport in Green Bay. It's an example I think of people taking the initiative of that generation. And many projects I think that Oneida has been proud of have come from the community.

Oneida has a system where -- we have a direct democracy system where you can petition to have a special meeting, take action. So we have a representative system that I think sometimes is in conflict with that direct democracy system. Fifty people can petition; they get a meeting. As long as 75 people show up for that meeting you have, what you call, a General Tribal Council (GTC) meeting, and it's there where decisions can be made and they are often made there. But from there came ideas like the Farm, where it got its support; a scholarship program that is now in place, where Oneidas who want to pursue higher [education], wherever they live, get $20,000 a year to do that at three different levels -- undergrad, masters and a doctorate program. All those ideas came from the community.

The Farm is also a place like I said to exercise our sovereignty and they do that quietly, I think. It's a place where we can work more at, in the future I think, to develop land use policies. Because I think it's in the land use area where the tribe really is going to need to put its work toward improving, enhancing, our sovereignty. And so it's in zoning, it's how we control development. It's how we decide how someone is going to care for the land, storm water, runoff practices. And it starts with comprehensive planning. And the tribe started a comprehensive-planning process and has been doing it over and over and over again. And we are about to engage a consultant to come and help us do that. And I hope we get it finished next year.

Exercising sovereignty also happens too by knowing where our food comes from. And I have a cousin who's on the council, Paul Ninham, who really is a strong supporter of food sovereignty, and he's been introducing that concept wherever he goes. But it's really, kind of, being able to sustain yourself, sustain the production and the distribution of your food. Diabetes is a big problem in Oneida and according to the application that we submitted 10 percent of our population -- we have 16,000 members -- have diabetes. And they say we get one new patient a day with diabetes. And I think it starts with, it stems from food as one of the components.

My husband and I and our two kids last year started, for one month, for 30 days, we did the local food challenge, the 100-mile diet, where, in October, for one month we would only eat foods that we could find within 100 miles of where we lived. And what we learned from that was that our family became closer, because we spent more time preparing meals. We sat down and ate. Breakfast was really great. We produced less waste. We had less garbage that we brought to the curb. And it tasted better. We went to farmers' markets. We got to meet local farmers. We got to meet people who produce food. But the one thing that we found out was that it was very expensive. That if you wanted to eat good food, you have to have a higher income to do that. And so I think that's a challenge for Oneida too is because even white corn, dried white corn, I think, a pound of it was nine dollars -- very expensive. Controlling our seeds and you talk about heirloom seeds and our farmers market, we have a farmers' market. I forget how old it is, but it's located on an asphalt parking lot behind the tribe's Oneida One Stop gas station in the center of town. And as I was sitting there with Pat last week, we were sitting on a picnic table eating Oneida buffalo burgers and -- but the trucks that were using the gas station, semi-trucks would roll by us as we were talking and I thought, 'This is not the place for a farmers market.' But those are challenges that Oneida has in developing our space.

And then the Farm, as an exercise in sovereignty, helps to spread our ideas about Oneida; our values of Oneida get spread. When people use our food, when they start to depend on us for food and they start to trust what we are providing, I think then that's another chance to express our sovereignty. So, in conclusion, I think we have lots of challenges, lots of opportunities, the Farm is one of those quiet places I think where the community needs to look at as a source of inspiration. We're at a crux in Oneida; we're at a crossroads, I think. We have, we're searching for leadership, we're searching for people like Pat who can help guide the tribe in our next path, our next journey.

The tribe just recently passed a motion at a GTC meeting that created a per capita distribution plan. And on August 11 of this year [2007], we had more than 800 people show up for a GTC meeting. And more than 500 of them agreed that we would have a one-time per capita distribution by December 12 of this year. Tribal members 62 and older will get $10,000 and everyone younger will get $5,000. With 16,000 members, that'll be more than $88 million. It will deplete the rainy day fund that we have spent years and years of building. The vote, I think, is an example of, or a symptom of, an expression of frustration with tribal leadership. And the Business Committee constantly gets blamed for that. And it doesn't matter who's on the Business Committee, it's just the Business Committee gets blamed for that. And I think there's a lot of people who feel they've been invisible, that their needs have not been met. And I think too, the tribe, Oneida -- and I'm very critical of the tribe right now, I'm trying not to be. But I think we've lost sight of our purpose, that we've become great casino managers and thought that the casino was the end result when really it was supposed to be the means to the end. And this vote, as we're trying to figure out how we're going to pay for this and how we're going to distribute it, it really is forcing the entire community, the entire organization to think and reflect on who we are as a people and who we want to be in 25 or 50 years from now.

So I've heard people talk, it's about back to the basics and it's forcing us, that vote is forcing us to go back to the basics and really talk about what we want to be. I'll just leave this -- I was at a history conference in Oneida this summer and I got to hear just the end of someone's talk. It was a professor from Minnesota traveling back to Oneida. He's Oneida. And he said as he was driving home he asked himself, 'How do I know I'm Oneida. How do I know that?' And he said, 'I know because I have a home to come to, I have a place.' And to me, I think part of my purpose, part of being on the Business Committee, part of working for Oneida, is really trying to build, define this vision of what Oneida is going to look like. And it's really busting the stereotypes about a reservation community, about what a reservation community should look like. It's rethinking everything. So the Farm is, I think, a step in that direction at defining the place. And I'm just hopeful that the rest of the community will see it that way. And hopefully, when we come back and talk again that we'll have something more positive about what that vision's going to look like. Thank you very much."

Honoring Nations: Devin Redbird: The Gila River Youth Council

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Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Devin Redbird discusses the importance of the Gila River youth council as a source of education and development for the next generation of tribal leaders, while stressing the impact youth councils could have across Native nations.

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Citation

Redbird, Devin. "The Gila River Youth Council," Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 27-28, 2007. Presentation.

Heather Kendall-Miller:

"Our next speaker is -- this is going to be fun to listen to -- Mr. Devin Redbird, who is currently a councilman of the Gila River, and he was previously a council rep with the Gila River Youth Council, which was one of our honorees in 2002. So he comes to us now as a council member, no longer a council rep for the Youth Council. So let's welcome Devin."

Devin Redbird:

"Good afternoon. I got short notice, just about maybe half an hour ago, that I was going to speak, so this is going to be interesting. I just want to say good afternoon and I'd like to thank you for letting me speak here today. I just want to touch on the Youth Council program. How many of you in your communities have an active youth council or a youth organization in your community? And if so, can you raise your hand? I just want to see how many of us are out there in the nation. Okay. That's good. And those of you who don't, I encourage you to start a youth council program. It's really -- it makes a really good cause for the youth. It gives them something to strive for and to understand your tribal government; because as many of you have heard, the youth are the future, and you need to encourage them anyway you can and that is a positive way. I myself, yes, I did serve on the Youth Council. We are Gila River Indian Community located in Phoenix, Arizona, just south. We border Phoenix major metropolitan areas. With the Youth Council I served, I come from -- I'm Maricopa. Our tribe is comprised of two tribes, Pima and Maricopa. My district is only Maricopa community within the Gila River.

So, serving on the Youth Council, we received a letter from the [John F.] Kennedy School of Law at Harvard. They were interested in our program, they wanted some more feedback, and that was my last term on the Youth Council, and we gave them everything that we did and not knowing that how, I guess, successful that our program was within our community. We're part of a national -- Youth Council is a part of national -- UNITY [United National Indian Tribal Youth]. And we would go there, and other tribes would come and visit our community, and we'd help them, [because] that's what we're taught, to help other communities. Regardless of who you are, we're going to help you. If you want to start a program, by any means we'll go do a visit. And so we submitted all the material, and I got off of Youth Council at that time [because] my term expired, and to hear a year later that we got honored in 2002, that was a great accomplishment and achievement for the council. But then we talked about change, where a new youth council came on and they need to understand where we are as a community and youth.

The youth program itself, I'll give you a little brief history, is -- our tribal council, back in, I think, 1988 -- our youth of the community didn't have a voice in our community. So the youth basically got together, and banded, and formed a coalition. And it grew so much, because Gila River Indian Community now, our population is 65 percent youth, and it seems to remain like that. So the youth does have a powerful voice. They went to the tribal council. They had their bylaws, resolutions, everything, code of ethics -- something that our own council didn't even have at that time, and remains to still be revised at this time. They came in with their plan of action. They knew what they were doing, they knew their goals, they knew their accomplishments and what to do. The council members tied right down the middle, 50 percent. The governor at that time was Mary V. Thomas and she broke that tie to establish the Youth Council. So the Youth Council was established and we are recognized. Youth Council is recognized as a form of government. Youth Council is a mirror of the council. And over the years it's grown.

When I first came onto the Youth Council, it is an excellent program. We get sworn in by our chief judge in front of a crowd as council does. We take the oath and we are elected in each year at our youth conference by our peers from our district. We go into a caucus and we basically run, usually six to seven people run, for a position to be on the Youth Council. And the former members that are going out have to explain the duty and responsibility [because] you have to give up Saturdays, you have to travel; it's a big responsibility. Plus, Youth Council requires you to hold a GPA still -- within in high school, because these are still high school students and you've got to manage your family at the same time. So this is a real mirror project of the council. Now that I can see that, I'm on the council, it is. It just prepared me for what I'm doing. My transition, personally, was very smooth because of the Youth Council program.

The tribal council also allowed the Youth Council, we have -- we go to D.C. annually and we meet with our [Arizona] senators, McCain and Kyl, and our state representatives, and we have a lobbying firm up there that the tribal council utilizes. So when the Youth Council goes up to D.C. to talk about the youth issues -- the recent one I was on was for Youth Council, which is Arizona, it was tribal gaming. And we went up there to speak the youth voice to the senators saying what positive impact it would have on youth programs and why we would support a proposition. And we would visit and we would lobby, meet the senators, network with other tribal youth from different areas.

Most recently, when I got onto the tribal council -- I wasn't even thinking about running. I was absent from the political scene for like four years. I was into our tribal gaming facility. I ran our slot department; I was slot manager for one of our casinos. Basically, what I did there was, certain shifts were in distress with leadership skills and I had certain qualities, I guess, to bring morale up on a specific shift. So we would engage them and bring up that shift. So I was transferred all over. That got kind of tiresome and so I decided I wanted to go to school, do something. I popped in one of our community meetings and when I left the community meeting I was executive chairperson. It was just -- it was a calling, I guess it was a sign. They knew -- when I was 18 on the Youth Council also, I promoted so many youth programs that the community still remembered the programs that we initiated. So I guess the impact that we had -- I was just doing my job as Youth Council and it just, the impact, I just left a mark on the community, like it needed to be done.

Another proud -- I didn't consider it an accomplishment, but just recently, in one of my meetings, one of our elderly veterans, he's not doing so well, but he says that -- we have a celebration every year, it's called Mustering In Day in my district, which is Native Americans, we were the first ones to get – basically, in Arizona we mustered in when the National Guard, they left to fight the Civil War, they initiated into the Maricopas and Pimas to protect Arizona at that time. So it's a big, it was a proclamation and it's a big celebration for our veterans. So that's what we utilize it for now. We have all the tribes in Arizona, usually we invite their veterans group down and we celebrate that. And in one of the meetings I said, "˜It would be nice to have a flyover. Way out there, who's going to do a flyover?' So we said, "˜Well, let's run with it. Let's go see how far we can go with it and let's do it. So what does it take?' So they said, "˜Why don't you try it?' I said, "˜Well, okay, I'll see...' So what do you do for a flyover? You call the military base, Luke Air Force base. Then they say, "˜Well, call the Pentagon.' Okay, [I] call the Pentagon. It's just a process in which you do things, if you want to get something accomplished. You just do it, right? But who would think to go call -- our staff, they were like -- this lady walked up, she had this real blank face and she was like, "˜The Pentagon's on the phone for you.' To me, I was like, "˜Okay.' And I ran in there. And everybody was just looking at me like, "˜Oh, my god, what's going on?' They just needed material. It's real simple -- you fill out a form, send it in, and if it gets approved or not, that's it. You can get a flyover. So they called me back and said, "˜Yes, you've got your flyover. What time do you want it?' Just follow the steps and just follow your work through, I guess, basically. The day came, nobody knew. Only our committee knew. We told the veterans; everybody came out. And we did the flag raising, we sang our songs, and then, lo and behold, here come these F14 jets roaring by.

I guess just that, it's still -- you need to take initiative. I'm from, I guess like, another generation. Where I see things -- people talk about a lot of things. I used to go to the meetings with my mother and they would talk about building our new, like a new service center for us and I was like nine or ten years old. And I came back when I was 18 and they're still talking about that same thing. That just puzzles me. I don't know. I can understand it [because] even as, growing up I can understand like -- I had opportunity to go get a driver's license but I didn't want to go the DMV or MVD. You just put things off. But if you take one day out of there, you just do what you've got to do, you'll get a lot accomplished. That's just what I stress. That's what my grandfather always taught me. Do something. You can do it, do it right. And if you mess up, learn from it and try again [until] you get it right. So I went to the meeting, like I said, I became executive chairperson.

Youth Council -- it is a pristine program, it's recognized throughout Indian Country. The program works really well. In tribal council even, they still -- my colleagues still refer to me as Youth Council. They say, 'You know, we've got a Youth Council member sitting there.' And one of the other elder, been on the tribal council for a number of years, she pulled me aside and said, the other day she said, "˜Well, you kind of inspired me and made me think back of where I was when I was that young joining, because,' she said, "˜I lost my way of thinking when I first came on and what to accomplish,' she said. So -- and other tribal council -- and it makes me feel good and weird at the same time because it kind of, what were you doing all those years when you were up here?

It's a changing experience. There's two -- I came in with two other council people and we had a chance to go to Washington, D.C. to lobby on some issues and they didn't know what to expect. They didn't know where we were going. They were surprised we were going to a Senate building, we were going to meet McCain, we were going to meet Kyl. It just blew their minds of what we were going to do that day. Those three days, we were just going to go and work D.C. And for me it was just real natural [because], like I said, on Youth Council that's what we did. They also, they're like -- they were asking me what was expected. And I was telling them -- and it doesn't matter, always ask. If you don't know, ask. And they were asking, so I was telling them. It was a good learning experience, because it only builds us as a stronger team later on.

So the mentality of our tribal council is changing a lot. They spoke of per capita. When we were in D.C., our tribe voted for a per capita initiative. And we're 2,000 members strong and they want a strong distribution, and that's quarterly. So we're dealing with that change and we have a year time span for that. So we're ready for that. We are working diligently to that, regardless of the outcome of the vote, we still represent the people. And if they give us a task, we're going to do it regardless of what it is. And if we don't like it, then we don't -- that's not our place right there. What the people tell us to do, we're going to do. And another thing we're doing, we have a lot on our plate. We're doing a tribal re-government restructuring, meaning that we're downsizing our departments because we're top heavy. So that's a major project. And the last project that is also big is that we're revising our constitution. We're revising that program. So we've got three things plus we're dealing with all the local issues, with the mini governments here, just things coming day to day. We've got recall petitions coming in for one or two people, just regular type of politics we're dealing with. With those three initiatives we've got to keep strong and keep straight and that's just another daunting task that we have.

The Youth Council program, if you don't have it, just -- I strongly encourage you because every youth needs a model up there, a lot of directors that come report to us ask questions and they look at me like, "˜Well, why are you asking me?' But ultimately, as council, we are their boss and they're going to answer to us, regardless of our age, or not because we're put in this position. And that's why I think some people are scared because if you're young -- young or old, it doesn't matter your age. It shouldn't matter at all because you're leadership and you need to know what you're talking about. And if you don't know, ask. And that's one thing I wanted to stress a lot because, as Youth Council members -- I went to a youth conference just to go see the conference coordinator. I'm here with him today. I just went to go see [because] I haven't been to conference in four years. Those kids walk in real shy, they don't talk to each other. We do ice breakers, and we do team building, we learn how to let them speak in front of a crowd, [because] we have like 900 to a crowd with our conference. We teach them to lead that conference within a day. We teach that. We bring a trainer and we teach them everything they can. At the end of the conference they're talking, they're running up shaking each other's hands because why -- we're breaking that barrier that they shouldn't have because when you get in the outside world it's all about networking and talking and speaking and asking questions. And we're trying to break that [barrier] when they're 15 and 16 because when you get out there it's going to further, it's only going to enhance your perspectives when you grow up.

And I just -- I strongly encourage that program. If you want any information -- I think we just shared some information with our Navajo Nation friends there and we're going to help them start that if they would wish. Our door's always open. If you have any questions for us, we're always there to help. Or any kind of other youth programs you may have that we can utilize, it's all about sharing and networking. That's basically all I have to say, I think." 

Honoring Nations: Joseph Singer: Sovereignty Today

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Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Harvard Professor Joseph Singer makes a compelling case that Native nations' best defense of sovereignty is their effective exercise of it, and stresses the importance of educating the general public -- particularly young people -- about what tribal sovereignty is and means.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

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

Megan Hill:

"We've got an amazing panel today, and we're going to be talking about sovereignty. And so I'd like to start it off by introducing Professor Joe Singer. He is the Bussey Professor of Law at Harvard School of Law at Harvard [University], and a contributing author to [Felix] Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law.

Joseph Singer:

"Thank you. It's an honor to be here and see all of you. I was asked to talk in ten minutes about sovereignty today, which is kind of a daunting thing to do. I was thinking about this and one of the issues is, when people think about this is, ‘What is sovereignty?' The thing that's crazy about that question is, to everyone in this room, it's not a problem to figure out what that means. Everyone here knows exactly what that means. It's other people that have trouble figuring out what that means -- other people meaning the Supreme Court, mainly, a little bit the [U.S.] Congress and some of the American people. So let me just say a couple of words about that.

The Supreme Court, in recent years, has ruled against Indian nations almost all the time. There've been a few times where they've --Indian nations that have been in lawsuits before their court have done okay, sometimes won, but more or less lost all their cases in recent years. And one of the things that is important to note about that is that almost all of those losses involve relations between Indian nations and non-members, usually non-Indians, sometimes Indians who are non-members. Those are the cases that the Supreme Court is very worried about. So one thing that's actually important about this record of Supreme Court case law is that the Supreme Court hasn't really been that bad in terms of interfering with internal relations in the tribes. So in terms of relations among tribal citizens and relations between tribes and their citizens, the Supreme Court has not been so bad over the last 25 years. And that's a pretty significant thing. Sometimes law professors -- we write articles criticizing the Court -- and we sometimes tend to exaggerate the extent of the Supreme Court's attack on tribal sovereignty because we focus on all the bad cases they're deciding, and we don't focus on what's left. And what's left is actually most of what all of you are actually doing and why you're getting honored here today.

The other thing I want to say about this is, is there any way to imagine some way to change the situation? To make the United States Supreme Court more friendly to Indian nations? And the answer is partly yes and partly no. In one sense, I can just say that the answer is no, they are not going to be friendly to tribes, and that is going to be the case for the next 30 years, given how young the people are on the court, and we're all just going to have to learn to live with it. On the other hand, I do think there is one thing that Indian nations can do to affect the way the Supreme Court views Indian nations. And that's what you're all doing. That's what you're being honored for.

My reading of the case law suggests that one of the major things that influences how judges see Indian nations is facts on the ground, what Indian nations are actually doing. And by creating institutions, creating governmental institutions, economic institutions, social institutions, engaging in good governance, and actually creating institutions which are thriving and create relationships with non-Indian governments and with the non-Indian public, actually creating those institutions and having them work well creates factual, what Joe Kalt calls de facto sovereignty, which then becomes very hard for the courts to say ‘can't or shouldn't exist.' Once you actually change the facts about how the world is working, the court has to live a little bit within those facts. So, the more Indian nations can actually exercise their sovereignty and do a good job of it -- that actually creates the best bulwark you can imagine against the Supreme Court limiting your rights.

So I think this is kind of an odd thing to say sometimes because I work with the Native American Rights Fund, and we consult on cases, and the main thing we do is to tell people not to appeal to the Supreme Court. In most cases we can look at the case and say, ‘Look, they're not going to think you should win this case. Don't appeal. We want to have them not making more bad law.' This actually then means being creative and figuring out if you can't do it that way, what's the way that you can do it? Because often, even if the Supreme Court says you can't do it one way, clever lawyers and policymakers can figure out a completely other way to achieve the same ends. I just think that's the things you're being honored for are really -- the best way to protect tribal sovereignty is actually to exercise it and do a good job of exercising it. And that's what you're all doing. So what you're all doing is actually the way to defend yourselves from the Supreme Court.

One last thing I'll say, and this is quite obvious to everybody, but -- and I have no idea and I'm not an expert in this and I don't know how to solve it as a problem -- but one of the big things I think needs to be done is to educate the non-Indian public about tribal sovereignty in a better way -- I think both the Supreme Court and Congress and the American public and then school children. I'm a parent of a 15-year-old daughter, and her third grade textbook in history -- she was joking with me and she laughs with me about this, but she knows how upset I get about her history books, because I read them and they're just wrong, they're just completely wrong. They say, ‘1776: the U.S. declares independence, and then there's a Treaty of Paris in 1783,' and then 1783 – wham! The book says, ‘The border of the United States went to the Mississippi River.' And I'm like, ‘Well, you know, there were millions of people out there. The border actually didn't go for another 50 or 60 years and it took all these treaties.' And the book just says, 'Wham, the border moves all the way out there.' And I want someone to write a different history book or somehow figure out -- we've got to educate kids when they're eight years old, nine years old about the history, and somehow figure out -- there's a big education project that needs to be done about the American public. And it's partly -- forget about the Supreme Court, we want to get them when they're eight or nine. And so I want someone to figure out how to do that -- and movies, and public relations, and there's just a lot of education things that need to be done to actually transform people's understanding of tribal sovereignty.

And again, this is the last thing I'll say. The things that you're doing that are good in terms of exercising sovereignty -- I see the other major thing is not just protecting yourself from the Supreme Court by creating facts on the ground, but that also has an added benefit of educating the non-Indian public because you create institutions, you run them well, that becomes facts that get in the newspaper -- it just becomes just something which actually then, other people learn from, ‘Oh, that's what tribal sovereignty is!' It's what you're all doing and what you're doing well. So, thank you."

 

Honoring Nations: Michael Thomas: Sovereignty Today

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Former Mashantucket Pequot Chairman Michael Thomas provides his definition of what tribal sovereignty means in the 21st century, and stresses the importance of Native nations examining and reconnecting with their traditional governance principles as they work to exercise sovereignty effectively.

Resource Type
Citation

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

Megan Hill:

"So I'd like to introduce our next speaker, Chairman Michael Thomas. He's the Chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation. And he's representing our New England region. Thank you."

Michael Thomas:

"Thank you, and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak to the folks at Harvard [University and] to the elders in the room. When we think about what sovereignty today means, rather than focusing upon a definition, which many will do, and frankly, given how often it is tortured and twisted, they probably should do, I want to talk you today about some of what sovereignty means in a connective sense. Not the definition of sovereignty, but what does sovereignty mean in terms of what it creates for us. And from the standpoint of a tribal leader, sovereignty, first of all, means equal parts of authority and responsibility. And we are, as tribal governments, becoming more responsible as time goes on with the authority that sovereignty affords us. There have always been places where -- although we don't talk about these things publicly very often -- sovereignty has been used against the very people in the tribal community from whom it originates. And we have to, increasingly, examine our own tribal government systems so that we can provide for our people all of the things that we would have provided in traditional governmental forms, but provide them through these modern mechanisms, often forced upon us by Relocation-Era policy or other eras of policy that you all in this room are as familiar with as I am. And for us, at Mashantucket Pequot, it has meant government transparency and accountability. And I want to talk about those things, and talk about how important those things are, and talk about how traditional those things are. These are not modern, democratic, American things that are creeping their way into tribal governance. These are things that are traditional, values-based, Indian things that are creeping their way back into tribal governments, if you approach it from the right perspective.

And so, for us, it's meant basic government accountability mechanisms. Financial transparency. I am extremely proud of having been a part of achieving financial transparency in our tribal community. Ten years ago or 15 years ago, a tribal citizen at Mashantucket had no right to any financial information that was produced from any of the tribal enterprises that we've been fortunate enough to build or acquire. Today, any person in our tribal community goes to the clerk's office and can see the last ten years of audited financials; can see last year's spending, up to and including all of mine; can see the next 10 years of cash flow forecasts, so that they even have a good idea of what might be coming, although clearly all of those things have disclaimers on them. You don't want people in our tribal community assuming that pro formas are reality, but they should see the pro formas, they should understand what they are. They should understand 10- and 15- and, frankly, for tribes, 50-year cash-flow projections. These are things that in a normal business sense, people even here at Harvard [University], would tell you are just unrealistic. You can't do a 50-year cash flow forecast. To which my question is, why not? We're going to be here in 100 years, and 100 years after that, and 100 years after that. I don't think it's ridiculous to wonder about sustainability of tribal government, sustainability of community service delivery, over that 50-year window. From a tribal perspective, it's actually a snapshot in time.

And so we've begun to blend the traditional values that grandma taught us -- and speaking of grandma, I have to give credit where credit is due. I am a third-generation tribal leader, and proud to walk in the moccasins of my mom, who helped to establish Foxwoods way back in the day, and walk in the moccasins of my grandma, who was on the tribal council in the 1970s, before we were federally recognized. And so, I have huge moccasins to fill that I probably never can fill, but I have a whole lot of fun trying to fill. And if we remember our community roots, we always come back to the same traditional values. Sometimes, being governments and seeing ourselves as modern governments, actually pulls us away from the traditional values that make us who we are. And so, the reality is that most of what we need to succeed in life as tribes, as people, as human beings, our grandma taught us when we were three, or four, or five [years old]. I spend the vast majority of my time in this de facto CEO role that you see many tribal chairmen assuming in this modern era, teaching business executives five times as smart as I am the basics that their grandma taught them when they were five [years old]. And when we get through those, then I begin to teach them the ones my grandma taught me when I was five [years old]. And that's the layer they need to finish their perspective and serve a tribal community fully.

And so, I think increasingly, one of the things that sovereignty today should mean is an examination of the separation of powers in tribal governance. The reality is that yesterday's model, where, well, I'll say it to you all the way I say it to the folks in the family at home -- yesterday's model, where the next nut in my position has to be a de facto CEO, and the chief of an Indian community, and the mayor of a small place where you want an economy and you want community activities -- it's just becoming increasingly unrealistic that any individual leader or even group of seven leaders -- seven is our traditional tribal council number, we went away from that for awhile at the behest of the state government, and in the last 15 years or so we've been back to the traditional number of seven -- but for seven people who only must achieve popularity in the tribal community in order to be where we are, this presents challenges for us as tribal people. And I do believe in the principle that -- given the time and the resources -- frankly, we are as creative at adapting and overcoming what is in front of us as any group of people on the face of the Earth. And so, too, can we examine our own government structures with that same set of glasses on.

So, I think tribal sovereignty today means, frankly, the continuing defensive effort that our parents, and our grandparents, and their grandparents, fought before our time. But, just as excitingly, the new opportunity for us to examine ourselves in the mirror and reconnect ourselves with the values that we were all given by our grandma. To reconnect ourselves with the true meaning of representation as tribal leaders, not just leadership as tribal leaders, is what I hope sovereignty is beginning to mean today. Thank you all very much."

Honoring Nations: Brian Cladoosby: Sovereignty Today

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby offers his perspective on what tribal sovereignty means today. He argues that the long-term sustainability of Native nations hinges on their right and ability to decide their own affairs and determine their own futures, and stresses the importance of educating federal, state and other non-Native decision-makers that tribal sovereignty is the only proven policy.

Resource Type
Topics
Citation

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

Megan Hill:

"We're going to move ahead to Chairman Brian Cladoosby. He is Chairman of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. The Swinomish Cooperative Land Use Program is a 2000 honoree, and Swinomish has also been a partner for several honorees."

Brian Cladoosby:

"Good afternoon. I'm that tribal leader that needs to rush to catch a plane at six o'clock tonight so pray that traffic is good and I get there on time. My Indian name is Spee-pots. Spee-pots. It means, in our language, 'little bear' or 'cub.' My non-Indian name is Brian Cladoosby. I'm the Chairman of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. I've been on the Tribal Senate for 23 years now, and I've been the Chairman for 11 years. And I've been married to the most beautiful woman in the world -- it'll be thirty years coming in March. I truly believe in commitment. People say, ‘What were you, 13, when you got married?' Yeah, it was prearranged between the Lummi Tribe and the Swinomish Tribe.

I just want to thank the [John F.] Kennedy School [of Government] for all the work they do in Indian Country, the staff that put this all together, just all the hard work getting us here -- it's just awesome. And I especially want to thank the Kennedy School for educating two of my directors that work at Swinomish, two graduates of the Kennedy School: Charlie O'Hara who's here, he runs my Planning Department; and John Petrich, he runs my Housing and Utility Department. And I will not hold the current quality of their work product against the Kennedy School. And I pray that they both paid all their tuitions in full before they left.

My tribe is small. I consider it a small tribe -- 800 members, 10,000 acres of land. We live on an island about 60 miles north of Seattle. Our people have harvested salmon and shellfish in our tidelands for as long as we've existed. That is our staple. Anything that crawls in that ocean, we probably are going to bring it home, throw it in a pot, and eat it. And many of you have probably enjoyed some of the delicacies that we have up there in the Pacific Northwest.

Now I've been asked here to talk about what sovereignty means today. I'm intrigued by the title because it seems to ask whether sovereignty today is different than sovereignty was at some other point in time. I'll come back to that question later. I almost wonder whether it is a trick question. Later, I'll describe how this question has tripped up some other leaders. Based on what others had to say about the meaning of tribal sovereignty today, I have to conclude that it probably can't be understood by those in our society who have never experienced it.

Before I prove how tricky the question of what tribal sovereignty means, I want to make an observation in the form of a short story about how inventive we Indians can be. In a roundabout way, the story speaks to our topic at hand. The story reinforces the reality that if you give Indians the resources, the time, and the opportunity to solve any problem we face, there is nothing we as tribes cannot do. Time might be a big challenge. We tend to work on a different time schedule than some of the rest of you in case you haven't noticed. But we -- our educational institutions, our children, our governments, our elders, our communities -- will find the right answer for us if given the opportunity. We'll find creative solutions to problems that have stumped others. We'll do it with less money, with fewer staff, and with less fanfare. So I want to share with you a little story about how ingenious we Indians can be.

Three Indians and three white guys are traveling by train for a big meeting at Harvard. At the station the three white guys each bought their tickets and watched as the three Indians only bought a single ticket. ‘How are you three people only going to travel on only one ticket?' asked one of the white guys. ‘Watch and you'll see,' answered an Indian. They all boarded the train. The white guys take their respective seats, but all three Indians cram into a restroom and close the door behind them. Shortly [after] the train has departed, the conductor comes around collecting tickets. He knocks on the restroom door and says, ‘Ticket please!' The door opens, just a crack, and a single arm emerges with a ticket in hand. The conductor takes it and moves on. The white guys saw this transaction and agreed that it was quite a clever idea. So after the big meeting at Harvard, the white guys decide to copy the Indians on the return trip and save some money, and they know their accounting department will be very proud of them -- being clever with money and all. When they get to the station, the three white guys buy a single ticket for the return trip. To their astonishment, the Indians buy no ticket at all. They're scratching their heads. ‘Now how are you Indians going to travel without a ticket?' says a perplexed white guy. ‘Watch, and you'll see,' answers an Indian. When they board the train the three white guys cram into a restroom, and the three Indians cram into another restroom on the other side. The train departs. Shortly afterwards, one of the Indians leaves his restroom, walks over to the restroom where the white guys are hiding, he knocks on the door and says, ‘Ticket please!'

I'll repeat my observation from earlier. If you give Indians the resources, time, and opportunities to solve any problems we face, there is nothing we can't do. That's sovereignty. We need our non-Indian friends and institutions, but the best solutions to problems in Indian Country always come from Indian Country. That's sovereignty. We've been solving problems in Indian Country for thousands of years. That's sovereignty. We'll keep solving them if our friends live up to their promises and let us take care of our own future.

As part of my reflecting on the meaning of sovereignty, I thought I would take a look at some of our partners in the federal government and see what they had to say on the topic of sovereignty. It's either concerning to us or comical, depending on your perspective. For example, in 2004, President Bush had an exchange with Seattle's own award-winning Native American journalist Mark Trahant. Mark asked President Bush, ‘Most school kids learn about government in the context of city, county, state, and federal. And of course, tribal governments are not part of that at all. Mr. President, you have been a governor and a president, so you have unique experience looking at it from two directions. What do you think tribal sovereignty means in the 21st century? And how do we resolve conflicts between tribes and the federal and state governments?' Sounds like a very intelligent Indian with a very good question to ask the President of the United States. And I'm very proud of Mark. I know him, and I'm glad we have Indians working in major newspapers. His question sounds reasonable, and the leader of the free world should be able to hit a home run on this one. And here's what the President said: ‘Tribal sovereignty. That, uh, means...it's sovereign. You're a...You're a...You have been given sovereignty. And you're viewed as a sovereign entity.' Uh, okay? This guy is clearly lost and has no idea what tribal sovereignty means. Isn't there some kind of rule against using the word you're trying to define in the definition? He's just stalling for time until he can come up with an answer. Sadly he keeps digging. He continues, ‘...And therefore the relationship between the federal government and the tribes is one between sovereign entities. Now the federal government has got a responsibility on matters like education and security to help -- and health care. And it's a solemn duty from this perspective. We must continue to uphold that duty. I think that one of the most promising areas of all is to help with economic development. And that means helping people understand what it means to start a business. That's why the Small Business Administration has increased loans. It means obviously encouraging capital flows. But none of that will happen unless the education systems flourish and are strong. That's why I told you we spent $1.1 billion in reconstruction of Native American schools.' Any benefits here, beneficiaries? So he goes on to say that SBA loans are the key to the relationship between the federal and the tribal governments. And I think, ‘Now, he can't be serious?' But maybe I'm not being fair. Mr. Bush is known for being quick on his feet, but surely, the ‘great communicator,' President Reagan, has something worthwhile to say about tribal-federal relations.

In 1988, President Reagan spoke at a Moscow state university. Apparently, some Native leaders traveled to Russia because they heard he was going to be there. And here was a question that he faced in Russia. It says, ‘Mr. President, I've heard that a group of American Indians have come here because they couldn't meet you in the United States of America. If you fail to meet with them, will you be able to correct it and meet with them back in the United States?' The question was directly not about sovereignty, but President Reagan took the opportunity to talk about the status of Native Americans generally at that time. Here's what he said after indicating that he would be willing to meet with our tribal leaders. (And I've got five minutes.) President Reagan, he says, ‘Let me tell you a little something about the American Indian in our land. We have provided millions of acres of land for what we call preservations. And others are known by reservations I should say.' I hope it was just a slip of the tongue on Mr. Reagan, but I'm sure he recovered. And he went on to say, ‘They, from the beginning, announced that they wanted to maintain their way of life as they had always lived there in the desert and in the plains and so forth. And we set up these reservations so they could -- and have a Bureau of Indian Affairs to help take care of them. At the same time, we provide education for them -- schools on the reservations -- and they're also free to leave the reservations and be American citizens among the rest of us. And many do. Some still prefer, however, that way of life, the early way of life. And we've done everything we can to meet their demands on how they want to live.' I have no idea what he's talking about here. I don't know, maybe he's seen too many John Wayne movies up to that point or played in too many John Wayne movies -- I don't know. But I'm sure he was a little confused about Americans and Indians being citizens. He goes on to make another stunning admission: ‘Maybe we made a mistake. Maybe we should not have humored them in that wanting to stay in that kind of primitive lifestyle. Maybe we should have said, ‘No, come join us. Be citizens along with the rest of us.' As I say, many have, and many have been very successful.' This statement from President Reagan in '88 was quite interesting because we became citizens of the United States in 1924 after many of our elders served in World War I, like my grandfather who was gassed over there in Europe, and many of your grandfathers, great-grandfathers. So, clearly, we as leaders have a long way to go in educating the leaders of the federal government about who we are as tribal people and tribal governments, and what sovereignty means to us.

Sadly, one has to wonder after more than 500 years of showing these folks that Indian people are fully capable of governing themselves and their territories, whether they will ever get it. In the end, our sovereignty speaks for itself. We are sovereign because we are always and have been and always will be a sovereign. In conclusion, I want to add that, how could someone understand our sovereignty whose family is not buried all around them, whose land is not rich with history and culture with thousands of years of living where we've been for time immemorial, whose fishermen know where the fish go when the tide changes in the sea and push the river back, who haven't had to overcome 500 years of exposure to a culture so blind with greed that they couldn't even see the richness of our shellfish, our salmon, our carvings, and our songs? How can they begin to understand who we are and what our sovereignty means to us? I thank my Creator everyday. I thank the leaders who came before me. They were wise in their ways that the people with whom they negotiated our treaties couldn't begin to understand. Isaac Stevens, who negotiated our treaties for the United States in 1855, and my grandfather's grandfather got on a canoe in the Swinomish Channel in the middle of winter and the river -- it was so cold the upriver tribes couldn't get out to the sound because the rivers were frozen over. They couldn't wait until the spring thaw to get our land, and so hence in 1855 in the middle of winter, my grandfather's grandfather went down to negotiate this treaty with Isaac Stevens. And he didn't understand fully how much the salmon meant to us, how it would give us strength and wisdom we needed to preserve our rights to fish, that our salmon would give us the courage to protect our opportunities for economic development fueled by gaming, that our salmon would provide us the visions to plan for a future for our children free from the scourge of drugs and alcohol. Our ancestors preserved the great blessing of the salmon for us in the Northwest and the buffalo on the plains and the sweat lodges and the pipes and the kivas and the longhouses throughout Indian Country. Our sovereignty means today what it always has meant and always will mean. Indian people know what our people need to survive and thrive. As long as we know who we are, no one can touch our sovereignty. And sadly, very few do understand what it means. If we're lucky a couple will be able to speak to those folks in D.C. in ways they can hear. Maybe one or two will let them know we're just kidding when we take the only train ticket from their outstretched hands.

To our friends at Harvard [University] and the Kennedy School, we need your partnership and collaboration for the solutions we devise to come to fruition. Thanks for standing with us. We'll help make sure that all your education doesn't get in the way of your understanding. Just give us the information we need, and we'll help chart the course. If we succeed, we'll all share in the blessing of knowing that we were part of something larger than ourselves that will reap lasting benefits for generations to come.

After this serious discussion, I'd like to leave you with a final thought: Always remember, you cannot leave footprints in the sands of life by sitting on your butt. And who wants to leave butt prints in the sands of life? God bless each and every one of you. Thank you!"

Honoring Nations: Hilda Faye Nickey: The Mississippi Choctaw Tribal Court System

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Mississippi Choctaw Chief Justice Hilda Faye Nickey discusses the Choctaw tribal court system, and provides an overview of Choctaw's youth court and how it works to educate Choctaw youth about Choctaw ethics and core values in order to set them on the right path.

Resource Type
Citation

Nickey, Hilda Faye. "The Mississippi Choctaw Tribal Court System." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 27-28, 2007. Presentation.

Duane Champagne:

"Our next presentation is the Choctaw Tribal Courts, again, which we were very impressed with. A very efficient court system, one that has a very strong emphasis on youth courts. And the presenter today is Hilda Faye Nickey; she's the Senior Youth Court Judge. So, Hilda, why don't you tell us the story?"

Hilda Faye Nickey:

"Good afternoon. [Choctaw greeting] from Choctaw. I was going to talk about Choctaw Tribal Youth Court. We were one of the programs that was awarded [in] 2006. And we presented a lot of programs that we were including in our court system and basically, they asked me to just bring an update of what's been going on and what we're doing so far. As introduced, I am a youth court judge and I deal directly with youth court, youth court program, youth court services and anything to do with youth court; juvenile offenders, child welfare cases, and everything with the children, family and youth.

First of all, I want to go back and kind of tell you a little history of our court system. Before 1997, our court system only consisted of one court, one small courtroom, one chief judge, two associate judges, part-time basis, and one special law trained judge. And we -- the chief judge and the two associates were the only ones handling all our cases. And then by 1997, with the growing population of the tribe, as well as advanced economic development on the reservation, the tribal council and the tribal government decided that they needed to reorganize the tribal court system. And when they reorganized, they really reorganized.

After the reorganization, we had from one chief judge to two associate judges and one special judge, we [wound] up with eight -- excuse me, four senior judges and four associates judges. And then later, in 2000, when they included the Supreme Court, we had one chief justice and two associate justices; so, a total of eleven judges [are] in the system now. And everybody has their own distinct court. And I also want to mention that when we were in Tulsa we were talking about our new state-of-the-art facility that we were hoping to move into. Well, we finally have and it's gorgeous. It's wonderful. Each court system [has] their own courtroom, a large courtroom, about this size here. And we have three courtrooms, civil, youth, and criminal, and the Supreme Court shares with the criminal court. But we are very proud of it. All the legal communities are within that building; the legal defense, the attorney general's office, as well as federal magistrate court judge office is there, as well as the attorney general or the state attorney general. We have our own established detention facilities, youth detention, and adult detention; and basically, we're just very proud of that facility. Whenever you're in Choctaw, please come by and look over our facility. And that's the little history of the Choctaw Tribal Court.

What I'm going to be talking about is the Youth Court. With Youth Court -- as I was saying that I work mainly with juvenile, and when you're working with kids you just have to stay ahead of them all the time, I found, and constantly thinking, and planning, and coming up with certain things to try to work with these juveniles.

Well, one time I was faced with a situation where I had this 14-year-old girl that kept coming to court over and over and over. I'd send her home, she'd spend a night in jail, I get her out, and then send her back to her parents, and then the following weekend, she would come back to court again; disobedience to lawful order of court. Well, anyway, it was just so frustrating; I didn't know what to do with this child. There was obviously something wrong at home, right? So I make referral to social service department or other service provider programs and they'd try to intervene, and they did intervene, but nothing worked. It wasn't the mom. The mom was willing to work with all these programs and was there for the child. It was just the child; the child just wasn't going to listen to authority, basically. So with that frustration and nobody, really, to help answer, or come to some sort of a solution to this problem -- so the only thing I could think of to do was to go to my elders in the community and seek advice of what is happening here; children are not listening to parents, they're not listening to officers, they're not listening to judges anymore.

Well, and then this one elder sat down and talked with me and went over what it used to be, how they were able to handle kids when they were being disruptive within the community outside the courtroom, generally. And I found other -- and I'm sure within your tribe you have some of these things that you utilize or had utilized in the past. Some of the things I found was, or ways, was a 'talking to.' I don't know if you're familiar with that but we call it [Choctaw language], or a 'talking to'. In our tribe, when a youth is being disruptive or is not listening or having bad behavior, usually the parent would -- and they're not listening to a parent, we all know that. We didn't listen to our own parent when they were telling us the right way of what to do and what not to do, right? So you know the kids doesn't listen to their own parents sometimes. Well, what I found out was that they refer to extended family members, like grandma or uncle, to do the talking to the child, 'talking to' to the child, to try to teach him what they were doing was not right, appropriate, and that they should be doing other things. And then upon 'talking to,' they also took the time to go, if it was boys, go hunting with, teach them how to fish, and other things that, just to keep them busy, and just to show them that there are other things to do rather than being a very delinquent child. And then the grandma would do that for the girl, if it was a girl that was having problems. But when we started, or I started using it in my court system, the [Choctaw language], and I called it the 'talking to' court, rather. And I've had a couple of cases that's come through my court system that I've utilized some of the stuff that I've learned from interviewing elders in the community. There are other things that they mentioned to me that I kind of disagree with, maybe not disagree but it's called [Choctaw language]. And [Choctaw language] is 'corporal punishment.' Whipping your children was a basic thing that most of the parents used. But we -- that got out of hand, so we try not to utilize that one.

And then there are other things that, doing the Indigenous law projects review survey research, we've learned a lot from our elders, at that point in time. And I agree with Ms. Theresa [Pouley] here that the important thing is, when you get them in court or anywhere else, education. We need to educate everybody, we need to educate, or re-educate, I come to find. Because a lot of these things, a lot of these ethics, values, we already know them. It's within us already; it's just that we don't practice them anymore. And if you don't practice them, like with the language, you lose it. And that's what's happening in our society, we found also that -- some of the basic concepts of respect, sharing. Sharing things, sharing food. When you have plenty of food left over, you give it to your neighbors, share it with your neighbors. If you borrow a car, if you borrow somebody's car, you make sure you take that car back full of gas and maybe washed, in perfect condition, or in the condition that you borrowed the car from. Those are some of the basic respect that we knew we're taught what to do.

I found out that our younger kids are not being taught that same ethics, the same values, and therefore I feel like the main reason why that they do not listen to parents as well as authority is because they have lost that values and ethics. And hopefully, with the Indigenous law project as we go through the process that -- and we have, we have come up with a poster. I can't tell you the exact size of this but it's about that size. A poster that reads, that tells the importance of the basic ethics and values of the community, of the tribe. And we take it to the school, to the classroom, to go over it with children, especially in first grade to the eighth grade. I asked them, 'Have you been told this before, grandma or mom or parent, did anybody tell you all this stuff before?' Out of 20 kids, we only had about, maybe, two to five that raised their hand and said they've heard it before, and the rest were not familiar with these basic values. That is our focus, for the time being, with the Indigenous law project, as well as the youth court, is to educate, to educate our youth, our children in the basic of respect, the basic respect, common respect of our ethics and values. I don't know if I have gotten to 10 minutes but that's all I have and I thank you. And it's nice seeing everybody."

Honoring Nations: Joyce Country and Dorry Larson: The Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Professional Empowerment Program (2007)

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Joyce Country and Dr. Dorry Larson discuss what prompted the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate to establish its award-winning Professional Empowerment Program, and the positive impacts it is having on the lives of its citizens.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Country, Joyce and Dorry Larson. "The Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Professional Empowerment Program." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 27-28, 2007. Presentation. 

Duane Champagne:

"The next presentation we have is the Professional Empowerment Program, and we're going to have I think a dual team here. We have Joyce Country and Dorry Larson will share the podium."

Joyce Country:

"Number one is, we really want to thank Amy [Besaw Medford] and the board for inviting us and having us. We were really excited to come, and we want you to know we really appreciate this time. We really have a lot of passion for what we do. We give it our all and somebody said this morning that we're all over-achievers. I believe we are. It's nothing for me to go to bed at night with a tablet beside me because I'll wake up at two o'clock and say, ‘Hey, that's a good idea! Write that down.' And then Dr. Dorry called me up, he's hunting, ‘Hey, I thought about something.' So we want things to really be exciting and passionate for our people because we learned, we learned that beating up people doesn't work. So we want them to have fun when they're starting to change their life. And I wanted Dr. Dorry to be up here today because he was the gentleman with the vision. He was the gentleman with the vision for this program. I kind of helped him after I got hired and implemented it, made some changes. And this past weekend on Sunday we had a [Dakota language], a thanksgiving, because Dorry's adopted brother had vision quest. And he made a real nice statement. He said, ‘For my brother who's a sun dancer, goes to ceremony, goes to sweats; he's the man that kind of forgot he's not an Indian.'"

Dr. Dorry Larson:

"Good afternoon. I wasn't expecting to be up here. This is really Joyce's time. I want everybody to write these things down because I've learned a lot and I'm going to share with all of you 'cause this is what you want to take away from this conference. From Joe [Kalt] I learned I'm not a yuppie, I'm a muppie. And from Alfreda [Mitre], where are you Alfreda? Before you, I thought I was healthy, but now I'm an over-functioning member of a dysfunctional family. And all of you are, too. From Al [Pemberton], I learned don't land a good plane on Red Lake. A poor plane you're going to be safe, but don't land a good plane. From Carl [Artman], the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Interior, we all need to make more wind. I'm sorry, Carl, I couldn't resist that one. That's right out of Washington, D.C. From Theresa [Pouley], get ready for the cup. And you know, I talked about being an over-functioning member of a dysfunctional family, but now, thanks to you, we know we're one of Amy's [Besaw Medford] favorites. We still haven't gotten a new bike, though.

I want to echo Chief [Oren] Lyons, what you were talking about, because that's what our program is about. Our program -- just to understand where we're at, we're in the far northeast corner of South Dakota. We're here with our brothers and sisters from Flandreau and from Winnebago and Macy. And we have opportunity. We have opportunity. It wasn't that many years ago when there wasn't opportunity. We have lots of jobs. We are now the ninth-largest employer in the state of South Dakota. Now, to put that into perspective for people that live here, that doesn't -- I mean, we have about two people per mile, so -- but we're the ninth-largest employer. If you're a tribal member and if you want to work, there's a job for you. And so when you spoke this morning, Chief Lyons, I thought a lot about what you said. Now it's about learning how to deal with that, how to deal with money, how to deal with opportunity, and that's what our program is all about. We're helping people get healthy to deal with opportunity.

And we've developed this program. It's very therapeutic in nature. I do all the work; Joyce just takes all the credit. No. Actually this woman does all the work, she does all the work, and I just want to honor that. I also want to share with you, and Chief Lyons, I'm going to pick up on what you're talking about, if you're not aware of the resource, this is a resource I'd really encourage you to look at because this is what we're dealing with and that is Ruby Payne's material on multi-generational poverty. And I suspect many of you are familiar with that. It's dealing with people -- and Joyce and I grew up in poverty, we know what it's like -- it's dealing with people that are not used to having these things that they now have. And poverty, as she defines it, is doing without resources, not just money, but support systems, and physical resources, and skill resources, and spiritual resources, and on, and on, and on, and on. And that's something that I'm really interested in.

The other thing that I heard last night for a resource that I'll share with you that really is exciting to me and that is the whole concept of resiliency. Resiliency. Emily Werner's work on resiliency. What I like about this program, Amy, is we're talking about resiliency. We're talking about what works rather than continuing to struggle and focus on what doesn't work. I always tell people it doesn't take a real master rocket scientist to say it's not working. It's like, 'Okay, what are your suggestions and what are your solutions?' And I listen to all of your programs and I've got to tell you, I'm in awe of the solutions. I want to say that I'm in awe of the solutions. When we were down in Tulsa, we got our award in 2005, once again as I joined this dysfunctional family, I still feel guilty about this, because [at] the dinner and they're making the awards and some of you know this, you remember this -- you're sitting there and they're starting to talk about different -- and then the honorees, the honors, and I turned to Joyce and I said, ‘Joyce, this is not where you want to hear your name.' And then, I started to feel really guilty, Amy. Like oh, I shouldn't be thinking this way. But we wanted high honors and we were very fortunate and very appreciative of getting this.

In closing, before I turn it back to Joyce, I told Jackie, and I told Amy, it is a gift to be here. It is an incredible gift to be here. I grew up in western Minnesota and northeastern South Dakota, and what a gift. This morning I was walking around in the Harvard Yard and I thought, ‘Wow, who would have thunk it? Huh? Who would have thunk it? Here I am.' Here we are, Joyce. So I thank you, Amy and Jackie and staff, and I hope you remember what you learned everybody. But get ready for the cup."

Joyce Country:

"We started our program in March of 2002. And it began because, we had the casinos on our reservation, but we were having a lot of turnover. We even had one individual who was rehired through Dakota Magic 17 times. And Dr. Dorry mentioned to the HR director, and I wasn't a part of it yet, and he mentioned to her that, ‘You know what, this isn't working. This is not working. You've got to do something different.' So a group of people got together, the TERO [Tribal Employments Rights Office], the college, the TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families], the Tribe and Dr. Dorry, and they decided that they needed something that would work that would help people to be successful in whatever that term is to them; not to us, but to them.

And so at that point in time, they developed what we called the 'Developing the Productive Employee.' I changed that name to the Professional Empowerment Program. Thus far, we just finished our 39th class in August. And thus far, we've had 373 [employees] who have successfully completed the program. You notice I said ‘successfully.' It doesn't mean cause you come through the program you're going to be successfully completing that program. There's some declaration of expectations that we have for people that we identify, and they identify for us, that they expect out of us, and we also have identifications too. So out of that amount we had 373 [employees] that graduated. Of that amount 85 percent went back to work; 85 [percent] went back to work. Six percent went on to higher education and we're all for that. Six percent decided that they needed to work on their GED and we're for that, too. And four percent decided that it was an important job for them to stay home and be a good parent and we're for that. Because I believe that we are the key, we're the key to change. And that's what we want for people, is to be a key for change. Something's not working, something's not working for our people. And so we want to be a tool that they can put in their toolbox and use every day of their life, every day.

We do a lot of psychodrama; we do a lot of experiential therapy in our group, which runs for ten days, 58 hours for two weeks. And we want our people to have fun. And when we first started, we used to have to go and meet with the supervisors and the referral sources because they would say, ‘If you don't behave, you're going to PEP.' So we got, I got wind of that. And so Dr. Dorry and I went and we met with the managers and we met with the court, we met with different people and we said, ‘You know what? This is not a beat-up session. This is a session to help people to get to know themselves, to find out what it is that's in their way that's causing them to have difficulty in their life and causing them not to be successful for themselves, their families, their employer and most of all for us, as a Sisseton-Wahpeton member.' So now that's sort of changed. Now people come to us and they say, ‘Hey, when's your next PEP class?' They might have just been there six months ago but, ‘I want to come back. Can I come back?' And so we get a lot of self-referrals today. Our TANF rate went from, I believe it was, 47 percent -- 37 percent to 7 percent. Everybody that -- TANF and GA [General Assistance] are a requirement to come through our program to maintain your eligibility status, and what we ended up doing is, we had success. People that finished from TANF and GA got a job. They got a job and they never re-entered the system. And we've been here since 2002 and I think that's success, that's success. We did this for the YouthBuild program. And out of that amount, we had just about 63 kids from ages of 16 to 21 that came through our program, and most of them finished their GED, they went on to college, we have some working at Dakota Magic, some at Dakota Connection; so we think that that's good for them.

The sad part of this, all of this, is that we do an assessment at the very beginning of our program; we do an alcohol and drug assessment, we do a tape assessment that figures out your educational standard, and then we do a mental health assessment. The sad part of this all is that 85 percent of our people had an alcohol and drug problem. Does it mean that they're addicted? No. It means that sometimes they're abusive. And I think that that's where people in our community and in our agencies get confused, because we hear a lot about addiction on reservation, but the people that we see, it's been abuse. It's been a lot of abuse. And so when we were developing this program, I'll be honest with you, we took it to sweat. We had a ceremony for it, because we wanted this curriculum to be helpful to people, not hurtful. Because I think the people that we're dealing with come from a lot of hurtful situations. I know we did. Dr. Dorry did, I did -- come from a lot of hurtful situations. And so we wanted this to be helpful and we wanted people to enjoy coming to class, to enjoy being a part of this and being able to share some of the things that went on in their life that's been a stumbling block for them.

And we do a deal called Significant Events and in that process people, we ask people to leave those issues there on the floor. We ask them to leave them there and not carry them out with them. For those of you that go to church, it's just like confession or -- what else is there? Confession. So we want them to be able to identify where they've been, where they've been, what happened and where are you at today? We ask them to identify that. And I always tell people we're like a tree. Our roots are in the ground, we're the stem and we're the branches. And I've got to stop, okay. And so we ask them to take a look at that because those roots and stuff are our values and our ethics that guide us through our life and guide our families. But this is adaptable to anybody, any group of people. Thank you."

Honoring Nations: Elvera Sargent: The Akwesasne Freedom School

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Elvera Sargent discusses the Akwesasne Freedom School and the role it plays in the cultural identity of each generation that goes through the curriculum.

Resource Type
Citation

Sargent, Elvera. "The Akwesasne Freedom School." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 27-28, 2007. Presentation.

Duane Champagne:

"Again, I think that our next program is a similar kind of program, in the sense that it's a grassroots education program, and it's trying to provide us with a solution to how to teach history and culture and identity. I think Akwesasne Freedom School is actually an extraordinary example of that, and so I'll let Elvera Sargent make the presentation."

Elvera Sargent:

"[Mohawk greeting]. I'm a little nervous. I'll let you say [Mohawk greeting]. See, now you know two words in Mohawk [because] I kept hearing the word 'Oweesta,' and that's a Mohawk word, too. My name's Elvera Sargent and I'm from the Mohawk Nation.

I'm here to talk about Akwesasne Freedom School, which [was] founded in 1979. And it [was] founded by parents, who wanted to control what, and how, and who would teach their children. The whole focus of the school is that they immerse their children in the Mohawk language and culture. The students -- we have 75 students this year, and they're ages between 3 and 14. Their studies are based on Ohenton Kariwahtekwen, and you may know that as the Thanksgiving address. Also part of the curriculum of the school is that they attend Long House for ceremonies. And I think all of these things, with the Mohawk language, the culture, I think that really strengthens and gives these students their identity. Then a lot of them don't get into that party mode once they leave our school. Right now, we have four staff people that are graduates of the school. So they've only had four years of high school in the Western, regular public school system. So I think this group of four are very special because they haven't done all the partying and other stuff that all of us did, the rest of us did. So I think that these teachers are our treasures and we need to do everything we can to encourage them, and nurture them, and keep them at the school, so that they can keep teaching and teaching their own children too.

The school's been in existence since 1979, and in that length of time, we've never gone after any federal monies to run the school. The school is very supported by the community. We actually just did our annual dinner and quilt auction. The parents of each child [are] required to donate a quilt as part of their tuition. That quilt auction happened last weekend, and in just that portion, the auction part, they raised $36,000.

We keep our students -- during the last two years of the, while they're at the Freedom School, the students are then taught English so that they can transition into the English public school. Last year we added a Grade 9 class. We only had three students who were in Grade 9 and now, this year, they're in high school in Grade 10. I think we have a unique and special school. The children are taught and cared for as if that child -- each teacher treats each child as if it was their own, and I think that's what is real different. [At] Other schools you don't have kids hugging their teachers, and here it's just a common every day thing to see that.

For the past two years we've had -- our first day of school has become real ceremonial and that's where the child that's coming into the school is introduced to their teacher. And the mom has the opportunity, or the parents have the opportunity, at that time, to inform that teacher what their expectations are and they can also tell what gifts or skills that child has, so that can be nurtured. So we have a lot of singing in the school. We have a lot of games. We teach a lot of traditional activities, such as medicine walks. A lot of our students know how to identify medicines. They know how to run a social in a Long House. That's just an example of some of the things that they do.

Since winning the [Honoring Nations] award in [2005], which I want to say thank you again for that -- I've left the school actually, in November 2006. I just needed to take a break and do something else for awhile. Like I said, they added the Grade 9 class. So this year that Grade 9 class is still going. We have many -- part of our success, I think, comes from the partnerships that we have with community organizations such as the Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment. We partnered with them for three years, and they had funded, and they paid for a cultural educator. And that cultural educator really got into the ceremonies of the Long House, and he was teaching them how to conduct ceremonies and all the wording that goes with each ceremony. I'm sure you all know that in your -- when you don't use your language you're going to lose it. Like this man -- I forget what man was talking about the walleye. I'm sure if they're not using those words in their walleye fishing, they're losing a lot of their words. So that partnership worked out really well. But unfortunately, this year they ran out of funding and there wasn't funding to continue it. But I'm hoping that we'll find other funding so that we can keep this particular person working at the school.

Funding again is always a major issue. We're always looking for funding. Last year, or this past year, we got a little bit of funding from the tribal council and I'm hoping that they're going to give more, more and more on an annual basis, instead of occasionally. We get some funding from the Canadian Board of Education. Again, they've cut a lot this year. So we have to, again, find new funding for that. I don't really worry about that part because I think, regardless if the funding is there, I think the school will continue because people realize the importance and they realize the importance of our language, our culture, giving us our identity. That's it." 

Honoring Nations: Jon Waterhouse and Rob Rosenfeld: The Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Jon Waterhouse and Rob Rosenfeld provide an overview of the work accomplished by the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council, demonstrating the benefits of Native nations who have common cultures and challenges to band together to solve issues of mutual concern.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Rosenfeld, Rob and Jon Waterhouse. "The Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 27-28, 2007. Presentation.

Heather Kendall-Miller:

"Our next panelist is Rob Rosenfeld, and he's going to be joined by Jon Waterhouse. Rob Rosenfeld is the Alaskan Region Director for the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council. Their program is a 2005 honoree."

Jon Waterhouse:

"Good morning. My name's Jon Waterhouse and I work with the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council. I'll start with a quick introduction. I'm S'Klallam, Chippewa, Cree and Scottish. I always kind of like to think I got the best parts. My wife has let me know that's my own private delusion. That's okay.

I would though, before we get going, I'd like to say this. We are a group of 66 Tribes and First Nations in the United States and Canada that came together in 1997. Now it's ten years later, you can imagine getting even five people together to agree on one thing. But the chiefs came together in '97 and decided that the Yukon River was in trouble and that it needed some help, and decided on one thing and that was clean water. And it's a unifier, I believe that to this day, and it has become that. As I heard earlier, nations around the world are having trouble getting together. I think as Native nations -- I agree with what I heard earlier -- that we can help them find some way to come together. If I could call on Heather Kendall-Miller, who has been a huge help, to come up here for just a minute. This is the part of the job I love. It's all-inclusive. That's what we try to be. We include everyone. I have a short mission statement I'd love to have her read for me."

Heather Kendall-Miller:

"Our Mission: We, the Indigenous Tribes/First Nations from the headwaters to the mouth of the Yukon River, having been placed here by our Creator, do hereby agree to initiate and continue the clean up and preservation of the Yukon River for the protection of our own and future generations of our Tribes/First Nations and for the continuation of our traditional Native way of life.

Jon Waterhouse:

"Okay, enough of the modern technology. Some of the issues of the day, that I've heard here today, are climate change and energy. Well, we've looked at a lot of programs -- I know the time is short. We have many programs, but on climate change we've taken water quality as one of our issues. The Yukon River is about 2,000 miles long. We have a program of water quality testing for the entire river system. It's been turned over to us by the USGS [U.S. Geological Survey], a world-renowned water quality group. And it's a capacity builder, because our tribal members of all 66 tribes are involved in that program. We've provided the training and now it's been taken to a whole new level where we are a world benchmark-river for climate change. All the scientists are looking at us. It's pretty exciting. All our programs are interwoven, so it's kind of hard to talk about one without talking about another. One of our hugely successful programs is the backhaul program, which kind of combines climate change and energy. The program cleans up things, so it kind of does something about climate change, and we take the materials and turn them into energy. In the last three years, we've removed five million pounds of recyclables and hazardous waste from the Yukon River watershed through a combination of private industry and public monies, like through our NGO [non-governmental organization]. It has taken airplanes, trains, boats, ships -- you name it -- but once again, it's a capacity builder. The tribes have taken this as their mission to clean up the watershed. It's a huge program. It can be replicated, and I offer that to everyone here, to take that home with them. It can be replicated around the world and I think it should. Some of the hazardous waste like the used oils that we've received from this program we've turned into energy. We found equipment, and helped design it, that combines the used oil on the molecular level with your existing heating fuel. It cleans the fuel; it's cleaner than anything you put in at the beginning. And we are now heating tribal offices and clinics with that fuel. So it's a pretty exciting program. Now I know time is short and I just wanted to tell you about a few of the programs that got us here. I'd like to turn the rest of this over to Rob Rosenfeld, who is not only an ally of ours, he is definitely one of our very good advisors. So, Rob Rosenfeld, please."

Rob Rosenfeld:

"Podiums are difficult for me as well; I am standing up. It is a true honor to be here among so many great nations. All great nations have allies and it's been a great honor for me to be an ally of Indigenous nations throughout the Yukon River Watershed and beyond.

Jon spoke briefly about the backhaul program. It's been a very, very exciting program. And the genesis of it was at the very first meeting of leaders in 1997. The leaders identified many of the different contaminant sources, from one end of the river to the other, including mining sites, military contaminants, but they looked mostly at their own municipal solid waste. And instead of pointing fingers at polluters, they decided to focus on what they could do in their own backyards. With that the backhaul program was created and, with one of the guiding principles of the organization, it was driven. Through inclusiveness, all the different backhaul companies, 12 airlines, three barge companies, two shipping companies, Alaska Railroad, as well as battery recycling companies joined together. They go out to the villages filled with all sorts of goods and services and come back empty. Not any more. They're loaded up to the gills. And we realized that they were going above and beyond and we realized the importance of rewarding them for their efforts and encouraging corporate responsibility.

And the way that we did that was -- actually, I'll give Jon Waterhouse the credit for that. I asked Jon to come up with a very creative way to say thank you to the many different transportation companies. He walked into my office one day with an idea to do a commercial on the Super Bowl. I thought he was nuts, actually. I had no idea that was even feasible. Well, within about six months, it came to reality. And Super Bowl Alaska aired a 60-second piece that focused on the good work of the transportation companies and the tribes. And that has now been shown two years in a row, last year twice at halftime.

And one of the things I wanted to focus on is, really, how the Honoring Nations award program has helped amplify the work of the Yukon River [Inter-Tribal] Watershed [Council]. Since the Honoring Nations Board of Directors acknowledged the good work of the Tribes on the Yukon River [Inter-Tribal] Watershed [Council], the organization has tripled in size and tripled in credibility. The money that came with the award was used for the video footage that was used for the Super Bowl commercial. It was also used for footage that was utilized to create a new documentary called Yukon Circles. That documentary is now part of the permanent archives of the National Museum of American [Indians]. It travels with the Wild and Scenic Film Festival all around the United States. It's showing in a film festival in Italy this next month in October, and it's been in nine other film festivals around the country.

I do want to switch for a moment to how not only Honoring Nations matters, but also unified voices of sovereign nations matters most of all. When 66 indigenous governments come together and take a position, that position is hard to ignore. It wasn't long ago, maybe three years ago, that the community of Galena was looking at and still is looking at a proposed nuclear reactor, being donated by Toshiba©. Now, it's kind of cute. It sounds kind of cute -- the 4S reactor. It's super, safe, small and simple. It sounds like you want to take it to bed with you. But it's actually 100 feet big; it's 60 feet in the ground and 40 feet above the ground. There's 450, or so, reactors in the world. Three of them are sodium cooled. Every single sodium-cooled reactor in the world that has ever gone online has gone on fire, blown up, and in one case killed everyone on site. Again, corporate America is looking to use Indigenous peoples as guinea pigs. And the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council provided information to the Tribes and First Nations. It was a no brainer. It didn't take long. The Tribes and First Nations have unified and they oppose the transportation of radioactive materials on the Yukon River watershed, they stand against the storage of radioactive materials on the Yukon River watershed, the experimentation with Yukon radioactive materials on the watershed, and they opposed this particular sodium-cooled reactor. We got a phone call two nights ago from one of the city council members who once voted in favor of this proposed reactor who now, as of last night, took an official position against the reactor because he wanted to encourage all the city council members to recognize the desires of the First Nations and Tribes on the Yukon River watershed. So we hope next time to come back and let you know that there is no more talk of that reactor.

One other important thing that I wanted to mention was the unified voice that is starting to come to be with regards to a critical issue that affects all of us here in this room and beyond. There is a proposed land transfer in the Yukon Flats Wildlife Refuge, one of the biggest refuges in the United States. The Department of Interior is proposing trading some of the refuge land with a corporation. That would be the beginning of the erosion of refuges in the United States. To go along with that, in an area that has 80 percent unemployment in most places, Fish and Wildlife has put a high dollar -- and is proposing to put a high-dollar value -- on buying Native allotments. What it could amount to is yet another federal land grab of Native lands. I can say that from a meeting over three weeks ago or four weeks ago more than 50 Tribes and First Nations have expressed their opposition for this proposed land transfer. And we'll be going to Secretary Kempthorne's office in the very near future, hopefully, if he will honor the request for a meeting. And the request will be made to 'please, not to release a draft environmental impact statement without first consulting with all the governments, all the tribal governments on the Yukon River watershed,' before a draft environmental impact statement is released, so that their concerns can be integrated, rather than being reactionary to a position that gets put out. Finally, the leaders have requested a Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing to look at the impacts of military contaminants throughout the Yukon River watershed.

And I'll just close with sharing the theme of this initiative here today and this symposium, is sharing successes. And since the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council received high honors in 2005, and received incredible exposure as a result, the leaders on the Yukon River [Inter-Tribal] Watershed [Council] have since been invited to go to Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina to help the Indigenous governments form an inter-tribal watershed effort in a similar way. Since then they have gone already to the Salish Sea Conference, where 88 First Nations and Tribes came together to also emulate and take the best from this idea of organizing on a watershed basis, a paradigm shift. In addition, the leaders have been invited to Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia as those countries work together on cross-border environmental cooperation. Just three days ago, we spoke at a NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement] conference where the people of Mexico asked for the documentary to include subtitles in Spanish, so that the people of Mexico protecting their rivers can begin to learn from this effort and invitations have already been extended. We've learned of the Three Rivers effort in England, where now there's been invitations for leadership to go to England to teach how to organize for river watershed protection. And finally, there's been invitations to speak at French universities.

In any event, I'm just so honored to be here, and I look forward to getting to know folks, and continuing to learn from all your wisdom in this room. Thank you."

Honoring Nations: Allen Pemberton: The Red Lake Walleye Recovery Project

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Red Lake Chippewa Natural Resources Director Allen Pemberton provides an overview of the Honoring Nations award-winning Red Lake Walleye Recovery Project, and illustrates how the program reflects the benefits of Native nations taking over control of their own affairs from the federal government.

Resource Type
Citation

Pemberton, Allen. "The Red Lake Walleye Recovery Project." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 27-28, 2007. Presentation.

Alfreda Mitre:

"Our first panelist is Al Pemberton, Director of Natural Resources for Red Lake Walleye Recovery Program. He is a 2006 honoree."

Allen Pemberton:

"Thank you. It's pretty hard to get up here after all the good speeches everybody gave today and yesterday. I'm just a person that worked in forestry, pretty much most of my career. And I'm probably used to talking to trees more than I am people. You talk about the strength of Honoring Nations. It's a real good program. I'm very honored that we won that award. And just the family that comes along with it is spectacular. I brought my mother along. We had some friends down here where I worked for the IHS [Indian Health Service] years ago, a doctor, and we sat down and had supper with them yesterday; [I] hadn't seen them for about 30 years. I just want to let you know -- I forgot to tell you my name. My name's Allen Duane Pemberton. My Indian name is Coming Down to Earth Thunderbird.

I work for the -- When you talk about self-governance and stuff like that, I worked for the Bureau [of Indian Affairs] for 15 years, almost 15 years, when the tribe took over the self-governance program. I was kind of a skeptic to begin with. I was one of the ones, you know, ‘Geez, I'm losing my job.' But the tribe took a big step there and looking back on it now, I'm very glad they did that. To me, working as a Bureau of Indian Affairs [BIA] employee -- you've got one of them Bureau people sitting right over here -- and one of the things that, to me, as an employee of the Bureau, I was really, I was young then and I was really energetic about what I was going to do. I was in forestry and I seen some of the problems that were happening on our reservation and I wanted to make it better for the timber and stuff like that.

And one of the things, I started a program with all the young students on planting trees. I seen a need for that, that we had a problem with fires and stuff on our reservation. And I was just trying to start at the bottom with all the young ones so they would work their way up to knowing about -- there's actually trees out in those fields and it takes awhile for them to get up to where they're growing. I guess I'm going off on a tangent here, but what happened was I did that for about five years in the tribe. I went to them and asked them for money every year and they'd give us money and the kids came out and we fed them, they planted trees; it was a real good project. One of the things that I feel, in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, looking back on my career, is that the people that work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, not all of them but a big part of them, they don't care. They don't care about us. We're Indian people, this is our land. There was a lot of them that did care but a lot of them didn't. They didn't say, ‘Hey, Al. Good job here. You started a program and it's really working.' Every year I'd have to go to the tribal council and ask for money when the [BIA] Forestry Department had enough money to take care of that. But my supervisors at that time, ‘Al Pemberton?' You know, ‘Pfft! Who cares you're doing that?' But it's just kind of -- I just kind of wanted to start that way.

The self-governance program, looking back on it now, is the best thing the tribe ever did. We're going to do things better than the Bureau would ever have done because we care for our land. We want to be, like Oren Lyons says, the seventh generation. I'm not going to see what happens to our trees and our fish. Our fish, they came back. That's something we can see and it happened. Just miraculously, they came back. But you're looking down as a leader of your tribe; you're looking to your grandkids, your great grandkids. And if you stick around long enough to see some of that, that's the best thing that could probably ever happen to you.

In the walleye recovery, one of the things that me, as a Red Lake member -- we never ceded our lands to the government. We're a closed reservation. And one of the things that happened, my great grandfather, Peter Graves, was asked by the chiefs to come help them because they were having such trouble with negotiations with the government. They wanted to allot our land and the chiefs said, ‘No, we're not allotting our land.' And when they negotiated with them, they were so mad at them. And they had the foresight to, back then, to know that we should keep our land. And they did it in a way that got the government agent mad at them. This walleye recovery process, it's kind of hard for us as Indian people to -- when they went back to Washington, they were so mad at Red Lake. The Red Lake, the chiefs told them that, ‘We want the whole of the lake,' and when it came back later on, they'd cut part of the lake off. The reason, I was told, that some of that happened because there was non-members living up there. And at that time you -- back in them days, you didn't get around. They didn't have very many cars, so they probably didn't even know there was people living up there. And it was hard for us to negotiate with the State of Minnesota. Because why should you negotiate for something they stole from us? That's our land. And to this day, we still think that's our land. There's an imaginary line there. But no matter what you do, as Indian people, we have to, we have to fight for what we have. You have to keep it. It's hard. The Bureau throws stuff out to us and let's the tribes fight for it and I don't think that's right. We should be nation to nation. We're Indian tribes. We're a nation. Give us our money that -- you stole land from us through the centuries and what do we get back for it? A slap in the face. I'm just going to get back to our walleye recovery process. I could go on all day on that but...

The Red Lake walleye Initiative was our -- in 1997, was the first year of the self-governance program and we reached out to the State of Minnesota to explore a partnership to recover the famous Red Lake walleye. One of the things that happened was, the Red Lake fishermen, they voted -- they were at a co-op and they voted their self out of a job. There was over two to three hundred fishermen at the time and they voted to stop fishing because they knew the walleyes were down and we needed to -- they needed to do something. And they sat there and voted themselves out of a job. And we have 70-80 percent unemployment on our reservation. This was a thing that people had done for years. It was in their families, the fishing, the netting, the people made money, the kids helped, the whole family, so it was kind of a culture in our tribe. And these guys voted their self out of a job. They knew it would take -- we said ten years and it ended up eight years. And what happened was some of the council people, at that time, went and asked the government -- some of the fisheries in other places, when they go down, they give them help, as stipends, to go to school or find a different job or anything like that. But, 'No, the Red Lake people, no. We don't have nothing for you. You're just going to have to suck it up and have unemployment on your reservation, more than what it was before.' And that's one of the things that bothers me. They could have come out and tried to help us out a little bit but no, they didn't. Red Lake did it pretty much on their own.

When we negotiated with the State of Minnesota, prior to that, there was no contact or cooperation with the state fisheries on any issues. Essentially, one hand didn't know what the other hand was doing. And Red Lake was the first one to put a moratorium on the walleye fish harvest. It took the State of Minnesota two more years to do a similar moratorium, when Red Lake had already quit two years before that. Red Lake worked with the State of Minnesota and other technical committees to restore the Red Lake walleye, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs. And through this -- I remember when we sat down, some of the guys said when they first sat down, I wasn't there at that time, but -- when they first sat down they were, all the different divisions sat in separate tables, but after the years went on, we began to trust one another. And I think there was -- we fostered some cooperation and trust between the programs and the Red Lake walleye recovery was a success because of this partnership. We're going forward, we'll be managing using state of the art science, where we have -- every year the catch is going to be measured by what the -- they'll go out and do their test netting every year and find out how many fish we can take in the following year. And Red Lake has a top-notch science team. I think talking about some of the stuff earlier that Red Lake has a real good group of people now that care about our resources, and then that way we pick the people -- through self-governance -- we pick the people that we want, not who the Bureau of Indian Affairs wants. Going forward, I think this whole thing really worked out pretty good.

And in the past, the Red Lake fishery was governed by the Secretary of the Interior using outdated quota systems. Every year it was 650,000 pounds of fish no matter whether the walleyes were low or not. They'd just sign off on 650,000 pounds. Now we're going to, if it's 800,000 pounds this year, next year it might be 600,000 pounds. That's what we're going to go by. We're not going to -- once it gets to that point it just stops. Before, it was kind of driven economically by the fishery people and the cooperative asked the Bureau of Indian Affairs for -- say they got into July and they already hit their quota, well, they just asked the Bureau for another 650,000 pounds and they'd sign off on it. But the tribe is not going to do that anymore. You're borrowing on your next year's catch, and the years to come, and we can't do that anymore and we know that. The tribe will -- we sent out letters to the members and they told us different things that they wanted, more rules and regulations, and it's really worked out pretty good.

The fishery is opening up again, but we're going to use hook and line from now on. We're going to try that. It's kind of a culture shock for everybody [because] a lot of them are used to using the nets and stuff. But we thought that we're going to try it this way and it seems to -- what's going to happen is there [is] going to be a lot of walleyes taken during the wintertime. [Because] as you know, Minnesota's a pretty cold place. So during the winter, you can go out and fish quite a few months without having any problems. So last year the fishing resumed on Red Lake. And we caught a little slack over it because the State, their portion of the lake, they had two walleyes, just a two-walleye limit. So the Red Lake DNR [Department of Natural Resources] and the tribal council set the limits at 10 walleyes for Red Lake members. So we heard about that on the new things that everybody looks at, computers and emails. There's a lot of things people say about, ‘Oh, Red Lake's got ten fish, why do we get two?' But they have a lot more people than we do. And when they go and fish on their side of the lake it's, it looks like a city up there. When they fish on our side of the lake, if you go out on the lake you're lucky to see 200 or 300 people out there. On that side of the lake it looks like a city up there in the winter. It's like a little city there. So we're going hook and line right now, and taking a cautious approach to commercial fishing.

The Red Lake Fishery has completed a $1 million state-of-the-art renovation. This is thanks to a grant from the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community tribe. We got a grant from them to refurbish our fishery and we are getting another grant to get some other equipment that is needed. The biggest test for the fishery will be the ice-fishing season. The fish sales will be through the Red Lake Foods. Red Lake Foods -- they're a promising tribal business. We [have] a goal to maximize by selling fully processed products and fillets. Where before, when we used nets, we made a company south of our reservation pretty rich because we sold everything to them in the round, almost everything. Where now we're going to do all of the processing on our own and sell them right from Red Lake. I think that's going to work out better. It'll create more jobs for everybody. We're currently working with a Canadian tribe -- not tribe, there's like seven of them -- and they want a better price for their fish and they're looking at us to get that. That might be another thing that happens to us, where they said they could give us like a million pounds of fish every year, where we would process those and sell them through our fishery.

So that's some of the stuff I have to say. I don't know if I went on a tangent sometimes, but you've got to bear with me. I'm just a guy that works out in the woods. So thanks."