citizen engagement

Erma Vizenor: Engaging the Nation's Citizens and Effecting Change: The White Earth Nation Story

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

White Earth Nation Chairwoman Erma Vizenor discusses some of the historical factors that eventually compelled her and her nation to undertake constitutional reform, and the issues her nation has encountered as they work to ratify a new constitution and governance system.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Vizenor, Erma. "Engaging the Nation's Citizens: The White Earth Nation Story." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 25, 2010. Presentation.

"Good morning. At home we say, '[Anishinaabe language].' Good morning. I want to thank everyone for being here, and to come to such a beautiful place. I came in late last night, so all I saw as the cab was driving me in was this huge place with all kinds of lights. And I was so anxious to see it this morning and it's gorgeous. Your home, your beautiful home, yes. I'm just sorry I can't stay very long today, but I want to thank my dear friend Manley Begay for inviting me to this seminar. He contacted me at least two-and-a-half, three months ago, and of course I checked off the date and made sure that I had this time open. So Manley and I, way, way back we started our doctoral program together at Harvard. This is kind of funny because this is how things happen but we were just overwhelmed with everything and we were also changing Harvard at the same time, because I know that we worked hard to get the Harvard [University] Native American Program as it is today. So we were overwhelmed with all of our doctoral studies and Manley and I said, we were sitting there and he said, ‘Yeah, we're going to go home in three years. We're going to go back where we belong.' Well, Manley stayed on at Harvard for 12 or 13 years doing good work at the Kennedy School of Government. I went home after three years and I got into a reform movement to oust corruption in my tribe and I did that for five years. All good work, necessary work. We didn't leave as we should. The day that I...or a week after the indictments came against three council members for bid rigging, election fraud, embezzlement theft, all kinds of crimes, a week after that I received a letter from Harvard. The letter said, ‘You come back and finish your dissertation or else by the end of...by the spring of 2006 we're going to drop you.' So I jumped on the plane and went back to Harvard and worked very hard, had to do everything over again, and I didn't write a masterpiece but I finished my dissertation and graduated that spring.

We as Indian people, I just want to say and commend all of you because most of us have to run twice as hard, work twice as hard, run twice as fast to keep up and that's the way it is. I don't think anything comes easy for us. I want to say that I am...say a little bit about the White Earth tribe. We are called; the federal government calls us the White Earth Band of Ojibwe Indians. I have gotten, I have worked hard to get our people -- although when we sign our documents with the federal government I have to use that name -- but amongst ourselves we call ourselves a nation because that's what we are. We always have to remember that we are what we call ourselves. I say to our people back home, ‘A band? My goodness, we're a nation of many bands and we think about a band -- loose, disorganized, small. We're more than that, we're a nation.' And so the White Earth Nation is located in northern Minnesota. We're one of 11 tribes, seven Ojibwe tribes and four Dakota Sioux tribes in the southern half of the state. White Earth is the largest tribe. We have 20,000 members and we're part of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, which is White Earth, Leech Lake, Fond du Lac -- and I know Chairwoman Diver was here yesterday -- Grand Portage, Bois Forte and Mille Lacs. We comprise the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, which is an IRA [Indian Reorganization Act] structure created in 1936. The Red Lake Nation is not a part of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. The Red Lake Nation is Ojibwe -- and we have a good relationship with Red Lake -- but Red Lake is unique. It's a closed reservation because they didn't participate in the Allotment Act, the Dawes Act. They kept all their land in common and didn't allow...didn't participate so the land was not allotted and consequently lost. Wise chiefs in those days.

That did not happen to White Earth. White Earth was allotted all out and White Earth...and Red Lake by the way was the federal government's solution to the Indian problem in Minnesota and created these two large reservations to move all the Indians in Minnesota to the Ojibwe Indians, Chippewa Indians to these two reservations. Relocate the Indians again and get them all together where we can oversee and control them, but that didn't work because our Indian people did not leave their homelands and so we still have our reservations up of Fond du Lac and Mille Lacs and Leech Lake and Bois Forte. People went home again, even if some of them did come to White Earth. So that didn't work, but White Earth is the largest tribe because many of the different Ojibwe people came to White Earth. And the land was allotted out at White Earth and consequently because of that allotment process the land was lost, it was swindled, it was theft, it was lumber companies and farmers and people who were homesteading. So our land was lost. We had...our reservation was established in 1867 and comprised approximately 850,000 acres of land. By the 1900s, we had 50,000 acres of land left. The rest was lost. So land acquisition is a huge priority, large priority for us. Today, when the federal government organized the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, the six reservations together, it put all of our land in common. We have approximately 60,000 acres of land at White Earth out of the 850,000 acres. That's in tribal trust land and it's under the ownership of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe in common. I worked hard to get that back and some of the tribal leaders want to be paid out within the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe and I tell them, ‘I don't see your tribe in our treaty.' But that's the federal government creating these problems for us as Indian people.

The governance of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe is an IRA constitution adopted in 1936 and is a very...since 1987...Vernon Bellecourt was a White Earth secretary/treasurer and was a very progressive man. He initiated a resolution that the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe conduct a constitutional convention. I admire Vernon because he was a visionary person. And in 1987, the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe passed that resolution but it never to this day has not held a constitutional convention. Well, we have an IRA constitution and it's very, very difficult for our people -- how many of us read our state constitutions or our United States Constitution and figure out what our rights...how many of us do that? We know it is taught in our schools, but our constitutions are not taught. And so when I came back from Harvard after I finished my classes, we had corruption in our tribe at White Earth, huge corruption. Our elections were fraudulent, we had bid rigging, and so I worked with elders on a grassroots reform movement and I spent the entire summer of 1991 in jail because we had all of this corruption. By 1995, and with the help of the late Senator Paul Wellstone, an investigation was done and indictments were issued and consequently a federal court trial. This grassroots movement really involved a lot of people at home and got them engaged.

When I was at Harvard, I studied the...Manley and I and Colleen Larimore, we did a paper together on community organizing. And so I learned some good skills there and so we engaged, I engaged the community, the reservation, which is a large area. It's a square that's 36 miles on each side and a lot of our people live in Minneapolis/St. Paul and they came up to help. So we had this huge momentum and change had to come and the people were, the people were empowered to make that change. We had to have open meetings every night, every night we had open meetings and it was spiritual because we had our spiritual people there and we always gathered around to pray first and we always said that we need the Creator to help us.

So in 1996 I was appointed the secretary/treasurer, which is the second role in government and I was elected to that position and re-elected in 1998. I lost my election in 2002. I lost it. But I ran on the platform of constitutional reform. Other tribal leaders run on it but don't do anything about it. But I did. I put together a committee and in 1997, '99 the committee drafted a constitution, I took it out to the reservation, to the Minneapolis area, and very few people showed up. It was a very, very difficult constitution to understand because it was...it talked about grand councils and it talked about language that we had never experienced before. And so when I lost the election in 2002, the constitution went off the radar screen, many things went off, went to the bottom of the drawer. I ran for election for the tribal chair in 2004 in the primary and I won the primary, beat the incumbent and constitutional reform was back on the radar screen again. And so we have, I facilitated, I organized and I facilitated all of the constitutional convention process from delegates, kept the entire process totally transparent and we drafted a constitution and we ratified it by the delegates about a year ago.

And then because...I say we're part of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe with this IRA constitution, I've gone to the...now I'm at the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe level and I'm getting stalled. Some tribes don't want to change, and I think it's because of the colonization and the institutional oppression that people haven't come out of yet. I really do. Don't see the need to change, don't see the need to. There are some issues that are huge. The blood quantum issue is a huge issue, very controversial. Well, that's one of the most controversial ones is the blood quantum and in our new constitution we...our delegates voted on lineal descent. We are terminating ourselves, people, if we cooperate with the federal government on one-fourth blood quantum. We just need to do the math and pretty soon within...we think of seven generations, by seven generations most of us will be gone. That's a controversial issue and even our tribal members in our constitutional conventions get to the point where they say...they get into ethnic cleansing. We have African...our tribal members have married to African-Americans and look like African-Americans and they don't want them there because they're black. I say, ‘My goodness, ethnic cleansing? I can't believe that.' But that's where we're at sometimes. I want to just...I know I don't have a lot of time, but I want to just stop right now and turn it over. Thank you very much.

Patricia Riggs: Educating and Engaging the Community: What Works?

Producer
Archibald Bush Foundation and the Native Nations Institute
Year

Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Economic Development Director Patricia Riggs shares the citizen education and engagement strategies her nation employed in strengthening its governance system.

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

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Riggs, Patricia. "Educating and Engaging the Community: What Works?" Remaking Indigenous Governance Systems seminar. Archibald Bush Foundation and the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Prior Lake, Minnesota. May 3, 2011. Presentation.

"I'm glad to be here. I've been asked a few times by NNI to do a few presentations on our progress and the different work that we've done at Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, and I can tell you that when we started this work a few years ago it was just about trying to change our community and make Ysleta del Sur Pueblo a better place to live. We never imagined that we'd actually be serving as a model and we're very proud to be here. First of all, I just want to say that we did not do constitutional reform. You heard from Regis Pecos yesterday about the government of Pueblos. And our tribe is a Pueblo and we do have a traditional form of government. However, I've also heard other people talk about how a constitution is really how a community chooses to govern itself. So we do have a body of law with different institutions, as well as different policy and ordinances. And so that -- in addition to our traditional and our administrative council -- is the basis for our governance.

So what we did is we set out to do different changes and adopt different policies and foundational work for Ysleta del Sur Pueblo. And one of the things that we learned straight off is that we needed to basically, is -- what we coined a new word -- and it's called 'Tigua-fy.' Besides Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, we're also known as the Tigua. So we set off to Tigua-fy everything that we did. So we even came up with an acronym for...so we set out to Tigua-fy everything and the way that our project got started is our casino was closed. And it's a real long story and I know we don't have enough time to go through all of that, but basically what happened is Ysleta del Sur Pueblo was federally restored in 1987. So at the time of restoration, our tribe was pretty much living in poverty. We had an unemployment rate of 50 percent. Our poverty rates were extremely high and education, almost, I'd say more than 75 percent of the tribe had less than a high school education. And at the time of restoration 68 acres of land was conveyed into trust. Well, in the 1990s the State of Texas opened, started bingo and the lottery. So we decided that we would go ahead and open up a casino. What happened is, in our restoration act for us, as well as other tribes in Texas -- the Alabama Coushattas as well -- there was some language in our act that stated the tribe shall not have gaming that is illegal in Texas. So we operated a casino for a few years. Unemployment went down to five percent, education was on the rise, we started building a lot of housing and infrastructure and we increased our land base from 68 acres to 75,000 acres. Well, the State of Texas, they sued us and they wanted to close us down. Texas basically isn't very friendly to Indian tribes. There used to be say 150 tribes in Texas and right now there's three. And so Texas sued us and the district court sided with them, citing that our tribe did not, IGRA [the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act] did not apply to our tribe. So in 2002 the casino closed and by 2008 unemployment had risen to 18 percent. And except for our smoke shop basically all our businesses were failing.

So we decided that we needed to conduct a Pueblo economic revitalization program. So we basically set out to transform strategy, policy and the economy. This was not an easy process. I was working somewhere else at the time and the tribe called me and said, 'We want you to come back and we want you to do economic development.' And I'd never done that, so I was like, "˜Okay. So what do you want me to do?' And they basically told me that they wanted me to start a business that would bring in the same revenue as the casino. That was my job. I was like, "˜That's not going to happen, right?' So I started looking at different models and of course I ran into NNI and Harvard Project and I started looking at the different models. And so I started talking about the nation-building process and I don't think anybody really understood it or really thought that I had any kind of experience or credibility in that area. So what I started with was really the mindset, a very, very negative mindset, and I was hearing things at different meetings like 'Tiguas don't want to learn,' 'no use,' 'clients non-compliant with program policies,' 'nobody wants to participate,' 'tribal members don't want to give out their personal information,' and it just went on and on. I actually had a conversation with a former director that actually said to me that they hadn't been able to hire tribal members because they have criminal records and are drug users. And of course this was a non-tribal director so I just responded, "˜Well, I guess you should hide your purse then because it could get stolen in this room and it might be me.' So needless to say she's not there anymore. And just everybody was saying this. It was coming from directors --whether they were tribal, non-tribal -- employees, leaders, generally community members. So we learned early on that community education and engagement was critical.

In 2006, we set off to Tigua-fy nation building, and that's the year that the economic development department was established. We formed different advisory committees and task forces and started looking at best practices. So in 2007, council passed a landmark resolution which had a few bullet points and talking points about how we were going to get this started. And what they did at that point is they committed. They committed dollars; they committed time and resources to actually taking this on. So we had also by then looked at different successful models and pretty much...what happened basically is that the tribe basically had hit rock bottom. We had no clue what we were going to do next and our funds were depleting. We actually went through a financial snapshot and where we assessed where our finances were, where they had been during the time of the casino, and at the rate that we were spending at, where we would be in a few years. And what we found is that in seven years basically we'd be bankrupt unless we started to change things. And this really is what set everything into motion.

Together with tribal council and the community, we started looking at what we were going to do to increase our sovereignty as well as changing our attitude and committing. So of course success breeds success and we started learning from different tribes just as you're doing here. We looked at different tribes such as the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, the Chickasaw Nation, and the Tulalip Tribes. And then for the first time, the community -- together with different directors and tribal council -- set out to create a vision and a mission. And it went through all kinds of different processes. We worked with different groups and this is what we ended up working with. Pretty much our vision is to become a self-sufficient Pueblo and power to thrive in a modern world while preserving our cultural foundation. And surviving [in] a modern world was very important to us because the City of El Paso has pretty much grown around our reservation and we're sitting in the middle of an urban location. So we have to learn to adapt in order to deal with that. And then our mission of course is to promote self-sufficiency, improve the quality of life and promote the cultural identity of the Pueblo.

Basically it was a grassroots initiative, so all kinds of different community presentations started taking place and we had different platforms that we worked with. We knew early on that it was about institution building and that we had to assess and do strategic planning. Some of the things that came out of this like, for example, I noted earlier that we started different advisory councils and task forces. Well, this actually empowered different groups to do their work. We had the tribal elders, they decided that they were going to form their own committee with their own bylaws and charters and that they were going to have a lot of input in what happened to their programs and with their budgets. And then for the first time a tribal youth council was also established. We did different things as far as strategic planning is concerned and so we started adding different focuses, and I'll explain more a little about how the process actually took place.

I can tell you this. If you invite them, they will not come. I can't tell you how many times, the first couple times I sat and I invited everybody and "˜Come, we're going to do this nation building,' and that's what the room looked like. And it was very disheartening and thinking nobody cared. What I realized early on was that was just a wrong process. If you just go about sending a flyer, it's not going to work. We realized that we had to appeal to everybody. So we started being very specific about who we were working with for different projects. And so for different projects we targeted parents, youth, leadership, elders, directors, different programs and traditional and spiritual people, as well as the tribal enterprises. Pretty much as far as outreach with the community, don't expect anyone to come to you. You really have to go out and go to them.

And what I mean by go to them is like you get on the tribal council agenda, you talk about your platform and the things that you want to work with and do and then you also present at community meetings. Back at Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, we have quarterly community meetings that at least, there's not a specific date for them but basically earlier you heard Regis talk about reaching consensus through their Council of Principales. Well, for us, we reach consensus during a community meeting. So that was one of the places that we delivered our message as well as we would go out to the elder center and work with them. We held retreats for tribal council and directors. As I said, we had different committees and task forces and then we created things like Junior Nation Builders and we went to the day care. So we were able to present to parents there as well. And one of the things we started joking about, "˜Let them eat steak.' So we found that barbecues and steak works really well also. And then along the way we also incorporated culture in everything that we did. So basically what the lesson here was rather than just have these big broad-based meetings, we needed to target specific groups.

There was a lot of education that happened. For example, we had executive nation building in 2007 and that's when it really got started. And I won't go through all of them but we...there was very specific areas as far as education that we had to look at. It ended up all the way down to where we did things like how do you collect data? Because we had to know whether we were actually doing the right things: what the baseline, what was unemployment, what was poverty? So that years down the road we could figure out if we had actually made an impact. We also, you have that book the Rebuilding Native Nations -- we also worked with that. I'll tell you about that a little bit more in a little bit.

One of the things that we learned also early on is we need to assess and be honest and realistic. So part of the group that was working and leading the charge for change, we had college degrees and we thought like, "˜Oh, well, we know theoretical models and we're going to go show everybody.' So we had these statements like 'limited capacity building to build environment conducive to community and economic development, viability of tribal economic and business endeavors is weak.' That reminds me of, what is that movie with "˜to endeavor and persevere.' Anybody know where that statement comes from? Josey Wales, right. So I saw that movie after we had this statement I was like, 'Ah, we're kind of being cheesy here, right.' So what we realized is that we were being a little too technical for YDSP. And when it really hit me is I went to Native Nations Institute and they highlighted the tribe and they had problem statements for different tribes. And we didn't quite put it that way but what they had on their slide was "˜ineffective government.' And I can tell you, ouch, that really hurt. It was like, that's exactly what our problem is and that's what we've got to admit and move forward from there.

The other thing is we realized right away that partnerships work. Sometimes, unfortunately your tribal members don't realize that you do have credentials and you have experience and you have something to add to the tribe, but you have to actually bring people in and it really does help. So these are the different people that actually came in. I know there's somebody from Hualapai here and Judge Flies-Away is there. Also Peter Morris from NCAI, Lance Morgan's in there from Ho Chunk. We had Chickasaw come in and different tribes present to our tribe.

The other thing is a lot of intergenerational outreach happened. We needed to be informative and creative and also have fun. We actually established different games. We established different programs like we had a youth nation-building program where we taught history, governance and we also taught about the tribal economy and what was happening and had them help with the visioning process. On your top left, that was a game which we called the Tigua Road to Life and it was kind of a Monolopy/Life game but it was in the Tigua Ysleta del Sur Pueblo setting and they had to either...they had to make injections...they had to make the decisions that they either made injections or linkages to the tribal community and then also decisions in leadership. We still play that game. The kids love it. And then I found out really easily that adults love games. As you can see, they're having a great time there. So the other thing is we let everybody participate. Whatever group it was, whatever level of government they were in, they became part of the process. And we had quite a few different sessions.

We also established different educational series. One of...you can find these on our website. It's ysletadelsurpueblo.org and all one word. We also created our own strategic planning guide where different agencies followed the model. And then we also did different reports on nation building, had reports on what nation building is and put it in perspective with Ysleta del Sur Pueblo. So along the way we actually started making it in the news. And the other things is you need to identify who's going to help you with this process. We identified key opinion leaders through different boards, committees, elders and supporters. And also we also worked with Nation Nations Institute and we helped to pilot the long distance-learning curriculum. We had 48 members graduate from this course.

And in the end though, we did all this community engagement, but you have to have things to show. Tigua nation building ended up with a different code development. We did a tax code, we did an incorporation code, secured transaction code. We built different institutions such as the Tigua Inc. Development Corporation. Right now we're working on the non-profit. And we also did a lot of capacity building with the different departments. And we're also working at this time on an entrepreneurship program and resource development grants management. This process had a ripple effect on the tribe. There was one -- as I started off -- a changed mindset and raised accountability for different departments as well as the tribal government. When we changed the tax code, for example, we went from $58,000 in taxes and ended up the very next year, we had a $1 million in taxes. And part of the reason for this is the tribe had decided that it was going to wholesale adopt the State of Texas code and of course that wasn't feasible or we really couldn't enforce it. But by changing the code to a small manageable code, we were able to raise revenue through there. We did needs-based fundraising tied to our strategic plans. We went from $350,000 a year in raising funds to $3 million a year. And then we also diversified our economy through Tigua Inc. and we do federal contracting now and we are developing a commercial district.

Just a word: keep it fresh, keep the momentum up, do different things. Like for example, now we have an AmeriCorps Program where our youth in college are actually doing the nation building for us, and work with different partners as well. Make sure that you recognize individuals at all levels and incorporate culture in everything that you do. And also keep the bottom line in mind. This whole process is about actually adding value, both quantitative and qualitative value. So in the end you've got to deliver. So this our...we're building this right now, the Tigua Business Center, which is going to house economic development, the Tigua Development Corporation, as well as some tribal member businesses, and then we're also building a Tigua Technology Center that's also going to be an incubator for the tribe. It's not really the buildings; it's the things that are taking place in the buildings. Those are in a nutshell the things that we've done over the last few years. Thank you."

Miriam Jorgensen: Organizing the Reform Process

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

NNI Director of Research Miriam Jorgensen shares what she sees as some of the critical keys to Native nations' efforts to develop and implement effective constitutional reform processes. 

 

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

Resource Type
Citation

Jorgensen, Miriam. "Organizing the Reform Process." Remaking Indigenous Governance Systems seminar. Archibald Bush Foundation and the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Prior Lake, Minnesota. May 3, 2011. Presentation.

"I'm going to try to -- like Steve [Cornell] said -- not take a lot of time but I want to accomplish a couple of things today. One of them is to just really help tie together some of the expertise that's in the room -- and as Frank [Pommersheim] did -- sweep together some of the pieces that you've been hearing the last couple of days, or the last day. Feels like a couple of days sometimes, doesn't it? So first off, I just want to say thanks to Frank for the very nice words about my mother. I think all of us know how important family is to us and I just think that was really nice that he honored her. And she's definitely a big reason why I'm involved in what I do. So thank you for that.

In your binder that you got, on tab six is the talk that, in a sense, I prepared, but I' d love it if you just looked at that as resources. I'm going to concentrate on three of the slides in there and the first one is just this. And it's a way of organizing, thinking about the project that all of you are engaged in. One of the things that we were kind of talking about in the hallways and in the lunchroom conversations is how everybody in this room is really at a different point in their process, but this is just one way to think about what the overall process looks like. These are really big, large steps. They're very summary. I think a little bit about what the judge did yesterday at lunch and break it down into, "˜...and then step six and step seven and step eight,' and those things are all embedded in this process. But if you think about it, what many of you at the beginning of the process are engaged in, is just this assessment process of what needs to change.

The next piece is really the exploration of solutions, and that is a huge portion of your process -- who's doing what, what are some things that I can learn from, what are those particular ways we can solve our problems -- then into implementation and sustainability, some of the things Frank was just talking about as well. But I think just having that kind of map in your head is really critical, because it says there is a way through this process, there's a sort of logical step. And sometimes, you're going to be moving backwards a little bit or sometimes I'm moving forward, but there is a process to go through. It's also a circle and I think this really picks up on something that Don Wharton said today. He says...I don't think of the process that Virgil [Edwards] shared with us about Blackfeet. And I know that there are others in the room who may feel like their processes are kind of stalling or slowing. It's not that these things stop, rather that they are very organic processes that have lives of their own and they turn in upon each other. Sometimes we're moving quickly around this circle, sometimes we're moving slowly around this circle, but it is a circle and a moving onward process. And sometimes even when you feel like you're done, maybe there's still some work to do. And that work is around the living the constitution, living the laws that you put together for your Nation that Frank just talked about. So again, I include the slides for reference, but there are just a few things I want to pick up on critically.

One of the things that we think it's really important to do in a constitutional reform process or a fundamental governance reform process is undertake processes of education. I think they actually take place at two different levels. One is the kind of citizen and community-wide education that needs to take place kind of on a constant sort of endemic sort of way. Scott Davis mentioned this a little bit in his remarks from the mic this morning, kind of saying, 'We really just wish citizens knew more about their governments and maybe tribal colleges are one of the ways that that can occur.' Maybe it's through some of the mandates that some of the states have about what education has to occur in state schools. Maybe it's through writing and rewriting curriculum. Maybe it's through community meetings.

And I think that one of the really exciting things that a number of tribes sitting in this room -- and I'm just going to pick on a few -- I'm just going to say that the work that the Oglala Lakota nation has been doing and also the Lac de Flambeau nation have been doing is around those lines of generalized citizen education that really prepares the ground for governmental change. So there are a number of folks from both those nations in the room if you want to talk to them about what they're doing in kind of preparing the ground for change. I think one of the really exciting things that Oglala Lakota nation has done recently for instance is draw together a lot of the kind of disparate groups within the Nation who sometimes feel like they might not have much in common -- they adhere to the IRA [Indian Reorganization] government or they adhere to the treaty government or they haven't been involved in government at all because they don't think it works -- and they've really brought those groups together for a conversation where they can feel common ground.

One of the things that a lot has come out of those conversations -- and again, also at Lac de Flambeau -- is these next two slides about, what it is you can hold conversations about? What are people's rights and responsibilities as citizens? What kinds of things do they need to know about their government? What's the substance of those conversations about how the tribe is currently governed and how it might wish to be governed? What are people's hopes for that? And these two slides just provide some lists of what those conversations might look like. So that's the first level of education in a process of change. I think the second level is a really, really critical piece too and it's actually after you get started. It's that thing that says, you know, we might have a convention or a commission for change, a committee that's charged with exploring those options, but that commission and committee also has to be engaged in vital outreach. And I think a real great resource in the room for some of that is the work that the Osage Nation did. Hepsi touched on it a bit yesterday, former Chief Jim Gray may touch on it a little bit later today; just that process of keeping citizens informed about what the process is and what the things being considered on the table are. Lac de Flambeau is also doing a lot of interesting work in that area of running citizens through mock examples of what constitutional change might look like.

One of the things I'm trying to do here is really encourage you to look around the room and as -- now I'm going to forget who mentioned this this morning -- of really using each other as resources. Maybe this was Richard Jack -- he put that on the table perhaps of -- how can we use each other as resources in this process? If you're in the room today, you're already committed to these ideas, right? You're committed to moving forward in terms of fundamental governance reform of some sort and so you're peer resources to each other. If nothing else, you're cheering squads for one another or support systems of saying, "˜Yeah, we got stuck there, too.' But you're also critically information resources. So I'm trying to point out some of the things that folks are doing so you have that notion of what some of those information resources are. So education critically is one of the pieces of the process we want you to pay attention to.

Another piece I want to talk about -- I'm just going to skip through this quickly -- is to really think about who's going to manage the reform process. We haven't talked about that much but there are a number of options out there of who's going to manage the reform process. One of the things that the evidence, the research evidence seems to suggest, is that it's really hard for the reform process to be managed by a sitting council. I think Hepsi Barnett talked about this a little bit yesterday, but it's really hard to get the people who in a sense may lose their jobs from the governmental change to manage the process. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be informed; you've got to keep them informed and you've got to educate them and make sure that they're knowing how you're moving forward as well. But oftentimes, it makes a lot more sense for the people to managing that reform process to be, have some independence. Now how have different nations done that?

Todd Hembree, who's been generous enough to give us his time this last couple of days, actually was engaged with the Cherokee Constitutional Convention back in 1999. That's a really interesting model that brought together a number of citizen delegates to just really work through the conversation. Blackfeet, that Virgil shared with us yesterday, is another model of citizens, in really large groups of citizens, coming together sometimes almost spontaneously to write portions of the constitution but then was followed up by the technical writing and review. The Osage experience was a constitutional committee, in a sense, that did a lot of the heavy lifting work. And so you can see there are a lot of different models out there. They're typically representative in some way, they're independent in some way, and they're able to really carry the ball to move the process forward. That's just the next slide of just a little information about what their tasks are. So you can see if you get engaged in this process of being on the committee or the convention, it's a lot of work, it's an important set of jobs.

One of the things the convention has to do -- you can see from that list -- is really be the ones to sort through options. And so it's really making sure that that committee or group of people have some access to those options. So I wanted to point out a couple of other groups in the room who might be doing some interesting work. Already, our representatives from White Earth have shared a little bit I know internally with some of their work on citizenship and membership, which is a really critical piece that a lot of people get hung up on and work with. Virgil and others have talked about some of the issues around economics and business enterprises. I think Osage has done some really important work in that area, too. So really thinking hard about these resources in the room, going to other tribes and saying, 'How did you think through this issue?'

Also seeking out expert advice. Maybe it's not necessarily another tribe that you're going to, but you're finding some expert who's worked through these issues and again there are those kind of people in the room as well. Tracy Fisher, who's way down here on the end, and again I'll point to Todd -- these are two folks who have done a lot of work parsing through what needs to go in a constitution versus what needs to be the stuff that follows the constitution like on the legislative and statutory front. Cheryl Carey back here has done some work with her nation in thinking through, 'What can you do in terms of administrative organization of your Nation that in a sense isn't even the constitutional work?' The constitution has to carry certain kinds of water and other kinds of water needs to be carried by the organization of government itself. So again, there are experts, peer experts and professional experts in the room who would be the kinds of people who could provide advice and information to your committee on issues of these sorts.

I wanted to just say a little bit about leadership education, because that's really one of the pieces that this committee has to do as well. I think that that also gets us down into thinking about our model again. When you're moving to this implementation and putting identified solutions to work, that's a little bit about what Frank was saying about believing in the constitution, of really making that constitution work by living it and implementing it. And here's a statement from one of our speakers yesterday -- I think former Chairman [Frank] Ettawageshik is not with us today -- sorry, this is what I get for skipping through the slide show; can't find the things I want -- I'm going to give you a minute to read this. This was actually a quote that showed up in not even the tribal newspaper, but in sort of the county press. This was a statement that former Chairman Ettawageshik made after losing the election. Now what to me strikes me about this is that this isn't the, "˜Well, you know, I guess the people voted for whoever they wanted or whatever.' It's not this kind of bitter statement of, "˜I lost.' It's a very generous statement that says, "˜I'm going to work with the next administration. I helped put this government together.' Remember Frank saying he'd worked for over 20 years through the reaffirmation process, through the process of showing up at the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] -- one of the times I've heard him tell a story when he was working with getting the recognition is -- the BIA wouldn't even look at their papers. And so they literally, he or another lobbyist, would go into the BIA tribal governance recognition offices every Monday and move their statement to the top of the pile so BIA would get to it. Six years they went in and moved it to the top of the pile every Monday kind of thing. So he was in the trenches for this for 20 years, and yet this is the kind of statement he can make at the end. And that's because he is living the constitution. He's implementing that constitution through his life, through his beliefs, through his work. And as that constitutional committee or convention or group of people is reaching out to leadership, what they want to be reaching out around is to say, "˜You know what, legacy leaders are what this nation needs. Legacy leaders who can make statements like this, who 50 years down the road, we're going to point to as a founding mother or founding father of our contemporary nation.'

We work with a nation in the southwest and in fact it's one of the nations I worked for, for over 25 years. Well, when I first began to work with that nation, everybody pointed to them and said, "˜Oh, my god, what a visionary leader they have.' That leader failed, however, to put into place fundamental governing institutions that would protect the nation against bad future leadership. They didn't put into place institutions that could prevent leaders or councils from kind of co-opting the government to its own purposes. And over the course of the last decade that nation has actually been co-opted to purposes that are not necessarily in the interest of the population. And so oddly enough where as when I entered the work in this field 25 years ago and people said, "˜Oh, look to that nation, great visionary leader,' no one is looking now at that person and saying, "˜A founding father,' because he failed to put into place those institutions. Instead we look to that nation and say, "˜Hmm, a missed opportunity,' A missed opportunity to leave a legacy of change and new direction for that nation. And in a sense that's kind of what you see up here with Frank is I think people are going to look down the road at him 50 years from now and say, "˜That was a founding father.' And we see this in other nations too. The Confederate Salish and Kootenai tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation -- that Steve talked about a little bit yesterday -- they went through some really fundamental constitutional change in the '60s and again in the '70s. And people really do look back on them and say, "˜Our founding mothers and our founding fathers did that hard work. They gave up the opportunity for short-term personal gain but they live forever in our memories.' And that's a really important part of the outreach to tribal leadership and sitting council, political elected leadership in this period of change.

I think the last thing I want to say is to pick up on something that Judge [John] Tunheim said almost in passing yesterday. At the beginning of his statements, he started off really kind of where Frank did of saying, "˜You've got to review the law and the documents that are in place.' And I would add to what Frank said, it's not just reviewing the historical treaties but reviewing contemporary treaties as well. Does your constitution abide with the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples? Does it pick up on some of those things -- that Tunheim was mentioning yesterday too -- around the international statements on the political, civil and human rights accords that the UN [United Nations] have adopted? Because those are valuable pieces for Indigenous nations as well, which are international nations as well as being nations within the United States' structure. I would say that in that statement he also talked about reviewing the culture and the history of the nation to see if there's anything in the culture and the history of the nation that you really have to take account of in the constitution -- and here was the critical piece that he just slid past -- that's going to help you implement the rule of law. And then he almost said, "˜Oh, that's more of an international nation issue,' but I sat back and thought, "˜No, that's an issue for every single Indigenous nation in this room.' Are there things in your tribe's history and culture that you can rely on in writing the constitution or in talking about the constitution to people that are going to help it get to this kind of implementation phase, that are going to help people believe in it, adopt it and live it because it reflects who they are? Are there ways that you can organize government that reflect who that nation is that then lead to the implementation of the rule of law in a lived way? And I think really good constitutional reform does that. And it's also the reason why we see all those innovations that Steve talked about yesterday and that David Wilkins talked about yesterday as well. Think about how innovative Native nations have been in the structure of their constitutions, in the structure of their legislation, in the structure of their administrative bodies. That innovation, in many cases the stuff that really works, is because tribes have thought hard about what it is that exists within their histories and their cultures and their ways of doing business that are going to lead to people really believing in their institutions of government and having them really, really work.

That's really all I have to say. If there are questions that you have arising from kind of just paging through those slides, I'm really happy to take any of those questions. And I just want to end it with I know you're all in different places. Some are at the very beginning, some are approaching the end with documents that just need to be affirmed by their citizenry and maybe affirmed into some sort of more formal way before implementation. Some of you are really in the process of saying, it may be...well, the Sioux is a good example of this. They had some constitutional changes about two years ago and they're in the process of just trying to live them now. And so they're back to that sustainability circle -- number four over there. So people are at all different places and I just want to encourage you and congratulate you and encourage you to rely on each other and on the folks in this room as resources in your progress forward. Thanks, and I think we're ready to hear some more stories from the field from Pat [Riggs] and from Jim [Gray]." 

Greg Gilham: Engaging the Nation's Citizens and Effecting Change: The Blackfeet Nation Story

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Producer
Native Nations Institute
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Greg Gilham, Former Chair of the Blackfeet Nation's Constitution Reform Committee, discusses the process the committee developed to move constitutional reform forward.

Native Nations
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Citation

Gilham, Greg. "Engaging the Nation's Citizens and Effecting Change: The Blackfeet Nation Story." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 25, 2010. Presentation.

"I do want to commend Erma [Vizenor] for her presentation because she's hit on a lot of issues that our process up in Blackfeet Montana is going through. And we're probably, I think, a third of the way into our entire process. We started in October of 2008. We were appointed, there were five of us appointed to a committee to sit on this committee and do constitutional reform for our program. I'll get into that a little bit, but with 30 years of law enforcement experience, putting handcuffs and shackles on people, I can tell now what they go through.

Our Blackfeet Nation has a land description that I want to go over; a million-and-a-half total acres of land. Our reservation sits on the Canadian border to the north and we're adjacent to Glacier National Park to the west. 400,000 acres are owned by non-Natives on the reservation. We have 500,000 acres owned by the tribe and 600,000 acres owned by members. We have resources that we're very, very proud of on our lands and we have 136,000 acres of timber. Some of it burned in the last couple of years. We have 28 freshwater lakes and we got a real good opportunity with Glacier National Park next door to have a very good tourism set up. But because of our constitution as it is now, we're not getting anywhere. We're not building a stable government, we're not bringing in industry or tourism or business. I just wanted to relate to that. We have 16,482 tribal members, all have to fall within that quarter-degree of Indian blood, and about 9,200 live on the reservation and about 7,300 live off.

We were organized under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 and it was adopted in 1935. Less than 10 years later our tribe was so concerned about this new IRA constitution that they requested a meeting with a Senate committee to try to address what they could do about this problem constitution that they were having to abide by. They were basically telling the Senate hearing that -- who by the way showed up by train and met with our tribal government then -- and their biggest concern was, 'What can we do to get ourselves out from under this new constitution, this new structure of government?' They basically said, "˜Well, you can certainly, you're allowed to make amendments to fit what you guys would need. You necessarily don't need to get yourself out from under it.' Well, since then we've had nine amendments to our constitution. I know Erma talked about enrollment. The only amendment to our enrollment that was done was accepting that quarter-degree mandate to be a member and that was done in 1963. This governing body that we have consists of nine council members who are all elected at large throughout all the members have an opportunity to vote them in. It doesn't allow for non-residents to affidavit vote or absentee vote from off the reservation, so in order for your vote to count and elect the councilors on reservation you have to show up at the polls.

In 2008 our tribe did, through the efforts of a single councilman who has gone to [a] 'Native Nation Building' [seminar] before a few years ago, Rodney Gervais, he wanted to see under the structure of Native nation building an opportunity for the membership to look at getting ourselves out from under this IRA or reforming our constitution. So in essence he was able to convince the majority of the council that he sat with at the time to put a referendum vote on the ballot for the 2008 June election that we had. And this referendum specifically asks the membership, 'Do you want to see a change in the Blackfeet tribal government by amending the constitution and bylaws to include separation of powers?' If the tribal membership agrees to this restructuring, a committee of five persons will be appointed by the tribal council to conduct community meetings and come up with recommendations on a separation of powers, utilization of Blackfeet traditions, values and ethics and other amendments which will go to the people for a secretarial election. Overwhelmingly, the membership that did cast their vote at the polls passed this and they did want to see a separation of powers and a new reformed constitution.

Once the referendum is voted on with an approval to reform, we found out in our process that the election occurred in late June and, of course, the referendum did pass and it became law basically. Our council kind of sat on their hands and didn't formulate this committee right away. So we, in essence, lost about three months before our group was selected to begin our reform process and hold community meetings and so forth. But some of the suggestions that we found out that was important was that the council should solicit applications from the membership to sit on a committee like this. It's important that they take a good look at who they should appoint. I was very fortunate because when we have our community meetings, we don't need to ask security to show up because they basically rely on me. Selection shall be made upon closing of the application process and it should be important that each applicant vying for a seat on this committee answer a questionnaire. We found out that some of the important facets of applying for committees or boards within any tribal organization is if we can convince these folks that are making the appointments to take the time and read what these applicants are writing, as far as their commitment to any board or committee that is in place. I feel that I was appointed not only because of my law enforcement experience but because I made sure that I let them know that I was committed to this process. So some of the things I wrote down was what do you want to become a sitting member to this board or committee? Are you committed to sitting on this committee and dedicated to this process for however long it will take? What attributes or characteristics do you possess that qualify you for a seat on this board? Relate your personal, professional or traditional background and experience that would add to this committee.

When that referendum passed, I had a brother-in-law of course that was elected. It was his first time to be elected on the council. And I saw this referendum and the language that we just saw a little bit ago. And I thought, if more people would look at what was actually put in place, how our referendum read as far as restructuring and adding a separation of powers, more people would look into that and see how important a new constitution is only going to strengthen our government. Most of my career was working for our Blackfeet Nation government and you don't have to tell me any horror stories, I can certainly relate a lot to you. We do have a council that or councils in the past that have pretty much dictated what goes on day in and day out. Of course you have problems with people that hire relatives for certain things and so forth.

Some of the things I jotted down for the council was to select a diverse and dedicated group of committee members that maintain their commitment to this process. And this is important; their credibility will need to start with their appointment. Credibility is really, really important. I know that Erma talked about it in their process, in her effort to try to get this reform. Of course you have all of your naysayers and so forth that want to collectively try to stop your process, slow it down or do whatever they can. Unfortunately for our process, we're right in the middle of that right now in the last couple of weeks. It's important that the council support the effort for reform. We have nine councilmen and all nine of them are in support of reforming our constitution and that's very rare to see a consensus of nine versus none for a reform of a constitution. They basically understand the concept of Native nation building. I believe all of them have attended a session on building of Native nations. They understand how our government is functioning now and what they can see in the future as far as a new reformed constitution. They have all participated in forums and surveys regarding this reform process. The majority of them have sat on focus groups.

Credibility will take its form if the committee remains autonomous. With the support of this sitting council we have remained very autonomous and that helps with the credibility. Any political pressure or micromanaging will lower the committee's credibility perception by the membership. Early on we had run into that difficulty, but since then we've worked diligently with the council and I think we're all going in the right direction as far as a reform process. Council should support the effort by shelling over the dollars. What I mean by that is if you're committed and you have an appointed group that has to go out to these communities, has to go out to the membership, get them to buy into this reform process, it's going to take some money, it's going to take a lot of time. We were shooting initially for a six-month process of beginning our appointment and I guess it was eight months. We were hoping by the following June that we'd have something in place as far as a new reformed constitution but that was a year and a half ago now.

So far the process has cost about $150,000 and most of it is having several meetings a week with communities throughout the reservation. We have seven base communities that have a good population base and places we can meet. We try to get in touch with most of the membership, but we found out early on that education to this reform process was most important. We initially had community meetings throughout the reservation and like Erma said, very few people showed up. We were finding out that the reason a lot of them showed up is because they had never read the constitution as it sits now, they don't understand it. So why should they give their two cents when they don't understand our constitution as it is today? Well, we had to change direction immediately and hold some educational workshops.

We invited Stephen Cornell out to the reservation in January and he took part in a symposium of sorts, a conference, workshop for...all we could hold was 200 people and for the most part we were fortunate that we did get enough participation from the public in our effort to try to educate them. We educated them on a history of the constitution; we educated them on Native nation building. We pretty much related some of the efforts that we planned in the future as far as this reform process goes. We had a very, very good turnout and of course we had to shell out some money ourselves in order to be successful in this process. I think it went over very well. We had good participation; we had a lot of enthusiasm built up. Well, after this two-day event we didn't, we as a committee didn't maintain this enthusiasm and right away we were finding out that, 'Geez, that was really, really great.' So since then we've made some adjustments and we've sat down as a committee and thought of ways that we can continue our education process.

We've videotaped most of our sessions, whether it was committee meetings, workshops, community meetings, whatever and we plan on putting a documentary together since our process in 2008 began. This documentation, we're going to provide it to whomever would like to see the process that we have gone through in our steps to try to get community involvement, try to re-adjust our constitution to fit for our future generations. Our symposium workshop that we had in January, we're getting that edited and we're going to start distributing DVDs out to anybody and everybody that wants one. It was a very educational bit that we did.

Right now we have five members, I'll just go over a little bit of their background. I of course am the chairman. John Murray is the tribal historic preservation officer for the tribe. I believe he still has to get his dissertation done but he's pretty close. He said he's 63 years old. Virgil Edwards, he's a successful businessman locally. And George Kipp is the vocational education director at the community college. Linda Warden has worked with the youth in different capacities throughout the reservation. As you can tell, we had a pretty diverse group. John and Mr. Kipp, they both have a cultural and traditional background among them. Each of them respectively, they hold certain sacred bundles through our tribal program.

Once we get through with our process, which I can probably say is going to take another one or two years, we're going to present a reform constitution to the council. They'll ask for a secretarial election and that election process, it's a 90-day turnaround according to 25 CFR. I know that we were fortunate to have the Minnesota Band of Chippewas challenge the registration process that the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] mandates within their secretarial election. They felt that closing a registration process and the mail-in voting wasn't going to get enough members to vote on this issue of constitutional reform. During their request for a waiver they were granted authority to register the voters up to the day that they vote. So rather than worry about a 30 percent turnout, which made it a legal election, they were able to have 76 percent turnout because people that showed up to vote at the polls were allowed to register at the same time in order to vote. So we're in the process of using their effort to insure that we have enough votes so that we don't lose out on our effort for a long process of trying to reform our constitution and then have the membership...

Community advice is do not include enrollment changes as [part of the] process. That's what we're fighting with the grassroots group right now. They feel that our effort to throw in enrollments is going to kill our constitution reform. And it will. We've maintained that we won't bother that issue. The tribe should provide reform with an adequate budget. Although tribe remains the governing authority, they must provide committee with autonomy. Transparency, be open in everything you do. Public education is the only tool to combat apathy. This is what will mobilize the community. Committee planning and procedures, a media, public relations, get the information out. We have a website and it's under www.blackfeetvoice.org [note: this site is no longer active] and we have everything we've done, all of our research and all of our resources are available online. We have a telephone number, and that's it."

Herminia Frias: Engaging the Nation's Citizens and Effecting Change

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Native Nations Institute
Year

Herminia Frias, former Chairwoman of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, discusses the citizen engagement challenges she encountered when she took office as an elected leader of her nation, and shares some effective strategies that she used to engage her constituents and mobilize their participation in and support for moving the nation forward.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Frias, Herminia. "Engaging the Nation's Citizens and Effecting Change." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 24, 2011. Presentation.

"Thank you, Cheryl, for your kind introduction. And like she said, my name is Herminia Frias, but most people know me as Minnie. And in fact, I ran for council at a younger age and I was elected to be on tribal council as the first woman, the first chairwoman and also the youngest chair of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. Most of the community knew me as Minnie and most people know me as Minnie. And it was kind of funny because I had two kind of campaign slogans that I used to run for council. One of them that I used was I created an acronym LAW and I said, ‘LAW stands for Listen, Advocate and Work. That's what I'm going to do for you.' And then I did all my campaign information and everything around LAW and then wrote everything that I planned on doing, and it really was what I did for the whole time and believe me, people held me to that. ‘You said you were going to listen,' and it's very important to listen. But the other thing that I did is I did a little campaign slogan that said, ‘Don't be a weenie, vote for Minnie.' So I don't know which one got me elected. But either way, it was really an honor to serve the nation for as long as I did and I had a great opportunity to meet so many wonderful people and to really take what I had learned and to be able to help the nation move forward. But a lot of people knew me because I was a social butterfly. If there was issues going on in the community, I wanted to know about it. I was out there talking to everybody. So I was engaged in the community. If I didn't like something that was going on, I'd ask questions and I'd figure out how to get things done.

And I started my career working with the Pascua Yaqui Tribe as a social worker. So I really got to experience what was going on at the community level and some of the hardships and some of the poverty and some of the struggles that our community members were dealing with. And I realized that in order to solve these problems, it wasn't about being just the social worker and helping them to get by day by day, but it was really looking at it at a systems level and taking a step back and looking at our tribe, looking at our nation and thinking about what do we need to do as a nation to help our people move up. There's all these individuals that I was working with that suffered from serious mental disorders that were kind of lost and I was out there working that system for them. I knew every program within the tribe and outside of the tribe because I needed to find those resources for them. And I thought, ‘There's something here that has to be improved,' and that really inspired me to get into policy, to run for council, and to really pay attention to what's going on and to think about the community as a whole and how we move forward. It wasn't about me wanting to be chair. That wasn't even my intention. I just wanted to be on council so I could help. But it was really about how do I help the citizens of our community move forward? They've got a lot to say. And I didn't like people speaking on our behalf. I had gone to Washington on a few trips with my tribal council before I was on tribal council, and it just irked me to see our lawyers speaking on our behalf. I worked for a congressman, Congressman Tom Udall from New Mexico, and I would see lots of tribes from New Mexico come in and their attorneys did the speaking for them. So I made sure that when I was on council I was doing the talking. As the chairwoman of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, I was doing the talking. Sure, I'd have my attorney there for all the technical stuff, but you needed to tell me. I read so much and said, ‘Teach me what I need to know because I'm going to do the talking. This is why the people elected me.' And the same with the rest of the council members; we went up and we represented the tribe. It wasn't about someone else. But that's just a little bit about the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and my background and how I got involved in politics as a community member.

And one of the things that, for my tribe, we're a tribe of 14,000 and we're located here in Tucson, Arizona, the reservation. But just to give you a little bit more history is we're a federally recognized tribe, so we don't have a treaty with the United States. But we went through this whole federal recognition process. Before I was even born it started. So it was past leaders that started this federal recognition process and they knew that it was an important process, that it was important for us to be federally recognized. We were Indigenous people, we had our culture, we had our system, but we had all moved to all different parts of Arizona. So we had a group of people that kind of understood what was going on. We had another group of people that maybe understood it a little bit better. And then we had other people that really didn't know what was going on and we had all these different communities located throughout Arizona. And many of you are not from Arizona, but here in Tucson we had one community that said...we have three communities here in Tucson. The reservation, we have a community in...actually we have four communities. We have a community in South Tucson, which is a little pocket in Tucson, in the middle of Tucson. We have another community, Old Pascua, which is within Tucson and then we have another community in Marana, which is [north] of Tucson -- it got incorporated a few years back, Marana did. And we have a community up near Phoenix, our Guadalupe Community, and then we have another one in Scottsdale, our Penjamo Community.

Now all these communities had been established long before the reservation was established. So when we were going through our federal recognition process, they decided to give us a piece of land way on the southwest side of town and said, ‘Here, go ahead and start moving all your tribal members over there. This is going to be your land, so everybody start moving.' So the people who were actually going through the process of getting this done started going to all the communities and telling them, ‘Pack your stuff, we're moving to the reservation.' Sound familiar? And the problem was not just people telling you to move, but the fact that we had already had ceremony on that land; that was our community now, we had built a community there. And once people, your own people, started telling you, ‘Pack your stuff, we're moving to the reservation,' and not even understanding what a reservation was. ‘Are we going to be wards of the federal government? Can we leave the reservation? Are we going to be fenced in? Is there going to be barbed wire?' There were just so many unknowns and yet the communication isn't like it is today. We didn't have internet. Not everyone had phones. It was about traveling back and forth and letting people know this is what's going on. So there was a lot of resentment and people decided not to go and said, ‘You can have your reservation and go ahead and move, start your reservation over there. We're staying in our communities.' And they did. They stayed.

Now these are not formally recognized communities as far as the municipalities are concerned or the federal government, but these are communities that we recognize as a tribe. So what ended up happening, and I share this story because I share it as a way of a learning experience about what not to do or not how to do it and it's not necessarily because they had bad intentions, the intentions were good, it's just the process that they took was not the best. And what ended up happening was there was distrust. Not all that information was shared. ‘Who are they to tell us, I don't even know him. He's related to me I think, I don't know, but they're telling me to move.' That distrust, there was anger, resentment. Those are the feelings that we felt, but when you think about it now and you think about all of the different things when you talk to your communities as tribal leaders and you say, ‘Trust in the government.' What is that? Knock on the door, ‘I'm here from the government, I'm here to help.' Yeah, right. People develop apathy. You've heard this throughout the presentations in the past few days, like, ‘Nothing's ever going to change, things stay the same. They say they're going to do one thing and they don't.' And in our case it also created these fractionated communities because we had communities that stayed in their own place and initially were not recognized. But later, 10 years later when we actually wrote our constitution, which is far from perfect, at least one thing that is in there is the recognition of our traditional tribal communities. So as a result of that change and that force to move these were the types of feelings, emotions that our community felt and hopelessness. You hear that a lot but that...I'm not here to depress you. These are just the facts. This is what happened.

Now again I use that as an example of how things have happened and how not to do things [because] I've learned things the hard way, kind of hard knock, how not to do things because I did it and I said, ‘Ah, I should have done it a different way.' But like I said, I was very involved in the community and I learned that it is extremely important to involve your community. It is extremely important to involve your citizens because your citizens are the nation. We talk about governance, we talk about government's role, and a lot of times meeting with different people, different tribes, people begin to believe that the tribe is the government and it's not. The government is just a system set up to govern. It's not the nation. How can a tribal council govern if it has no people? The nation is the people and that often gets confused in a lot of nations, or a lot of people that feel, ‘Well, the government's not doing this, I just leave it to the government, I just...' They're not the nation. So it's very important to know that. And the people, the citizens must believe in what the vision of the tribe is, of that nation is. So it's important to engage them to have them understand, ‘This is where we're going, this is why we're going there. What is our vision so that we can all get there together?' If we all understood the vision back then about why we wanted to be federally recognized, it probably would have been a little bit easier process but we all didn't know. There was a vision, but we just didn't know what it was. You need the citizens, because they're going to be the ones to determine sustainability and success.

As a chair for a tribe and even as a social worker, what good are your programs and services if people aren't going to use them? If there is a really good program out there like a cultural preservation program that the people want, you want them to advocate for that in the next budget. You want them to keep that program going. If you don't have enough money to sustain that program, you want people to take the time to volunteer to be able to continue to have these programs. It's not just about having the government give you everything and provide for you, but it really is going back to that sense of civic responsibility, your sense to your tribe. Not the government, not that leadership, but to your nation, what your responsibility is to each other. And then what I learned too is that -- I was young when I became chair, I was 31 -- is that perspective. I didn't have nearly the experience that many of the former tribal chairs that I served with had. They were there in 1960; I wasn't. They were there working on the cause for years and years and years before I even entered kindergarten. So it was so important for me to talk to them and to engage them. Not just the former leadership but the people in the past. There are so many beautiful stories that I heard in my life by just talking to some of the elders and listening to them and just thinking, ‘Wow! It is amazing.' And not just the leaders, but even in my work as social work to listen to those stories of the challenges that people had and to see how they have lived their lives and worked very hard. It's inspiring. And those were the kinds of stories that kept me going and kept me thinking. Hearing about people who have had...we've heard some of the tribes talk about suicide. That is a very painful and heart-wrenching experience for a family and a community as a whole, but to see the resilience is really inspiring. And those are the kinds of stories that kept me going and that's why it was so important for me to listen to what other people were talking about, to listen to other people's experiences because I hadn't experienced all that stuff. I had my own stories to share, but they weren't the same. I can only speak from my perspective. It was so important to hear from other people so that we can move the tribe, our nation forward.

And another reason it's important to get your citizens involved is to build that mutual relationship. I kind of hit on that a little bit earlier that it's not about your expectations of your tribe but your expectations to your nation, to your own citizens, to each other as a family. We talked a little bit earlier about conflict of interest and about familial relationships. Well, that goes far but it goes even further when you talk about ceremonial relationships. We had a judge that had to, she had to, she couldn't hear any cases because it wasn't that she was related to everybody in the tribe but she was ceremonially. So these are things that go beyond that you are a big family and as a family there are so many opportunities to help each other move up. But it's important to get the citizens engaged so you have that mutual relationships that it's not just, ‘You do this and you do that,' but we both do it and we all move forward. And it also helps with that reduced entitlement and give-me attitude when you have that mutual expectation.

When I used to get community members, I had this one elder, he was 90 years old and he was running for council but he was all full of energy, he still is. And I remember he was running for tribal council and somebody in his 30s came up to him and said, ‘What are you going to do for me? What are you going to do for me when you run for council?' And he says, ‘Well, what do you want?' And he's like, ‘Well, do you have kids?' He says, ‘Yeah.' ‘Well, what do you want?' ‘Well, I want to go to school and I want to do this and I want to do that.' And he says, ‘Well, then why don't you?' And he's like, ‘Well, aren't you going to help me?' He says, ‘Well, I'll tell you right now you missed the bus.' And that guy was like, ‘What?' ‘You missed the bus. You need to start doing these things right now. You have a family you have to raise. It's not just about you anymore. Now not only do you have to help yourself, now you've got to raise your family. You missed the bus.' So we started telling that to all these young kids, ‘Don't miss the bus. You don't want to be older and start asking for tribal council for all this stuff. Get on that bus and do what you need to do to get it together the first time around while you still can. And then help the rest of your nation move forward.' But it's really about reducing that entitlement and that give-me attitude. And at first I had ‘eliminate' but I didn't put that because ‘eliminate' is extreme; it's really about progress. We want to get it down and eventually eliminate it, but it doesn't happen overnight and it's attitude change. But at least we can start chipping away at it and start reducing it until it doesn't even exist.

So some of the...how do you do this? How do you engage your community? The toughest thing is to earn that trust back. That is tough. Because like I said, you go knocking on the door, ‘I'm here from the government, I'm here to help,' you've got to show them that you're there. You've got to prove that as a leader, you're there to help your community members, your citizens be productive, be proactive, be engaged. The citizens need to have respect for the government and at least believe that the government is legitimate. It's not this, what Rob Williams was talking about yesterday, kangaroo [court] city. It's not a joke, it's not a Mickey Mouse tribal council, it's not ‘just forget about it, I'm not even going to bother asking for anything [because] I'm not related to an important person, my family's not on the council, I'm on the blacklist.' It's really about fairness, equity and not who's who. And it happens everywhere, but as a nation, as your own nation, there's so many opportunities to build it the way you want to build it, not the way it's been built necessarily, but the way that really reflects who you are as a nation, who you are; matches your culture, what's important to you, your values, your tradition. It's an awesome opportunity. And that was one of the things that really excited me about when I was on tribal council. I was like, ‘Wow! Where do you get this kind of opportunity?' Even though it was hard and I took a lot of hits, it was still, ‘Wow! What an opportunity!' I wasn't always this happy. Sometimes I'd be like, "Uh! What a challenge.' But, when you really take the time to look back it's just like, ‘Wow! When do you get an opportunity or a chance to look at your nation and say how do we do this better. How do we create a thriving nation? A thriving nation, not just let's get to tomorrow, but let's get to tomorrow and think about the future. How do we get there?'

So some of the strategies about...some of the strategies to do this and to get your community engaged, there are many, and I'm sure and in a minute we'll share some of those that you may have done, but some of the strategies that I put together is really about transparency within your government, sharing with the people what is going on. Yesterday we talked about one of the tribes that published their budget. I did that at an employee meeting before we passed the budget, put it on a big PowerPoint, ‘This is where all our money's going. These are perpetual funds. This is how much your program costs. This is this and that. These are our capital projects that we have for the next five years.' And people were shocked. ‘Wait, what are you doing?' And I had a council member tell me, ‘Be careful what information you give them because they're going to expect more.' It did make my job tougher and they said, ‘Benevolent dictatorship, that's what it is, benevolent dictator. It's for their own good, just as long as you know you're doing the right thing.' Sure benevolent dictatorship is a whole lot easier, but it doesn't mean it's right. It sure made my job a lot tougher, but I knew that I had to do my homework and I had to be up to par when it came to that budget. I had to know where everything was going.

But I shared that and I also shared our plans. When we had a big project coming up like, for example, there's a big hotel going up, it was important to share that with the community and let them know what the economic impact was going to be of that hotel, let them know that if it's going to have an impact on government services, how much that loan is going to be, how long we're going to pay for that loan. Let them know what the return on investment is going to be in the long run. And also, I always saw it as, if we're going to invest in economic development, we've also got to invest in the community and education. It's really about a balance. You can't just put all your eggs in one basket but you've got to...people want to see something, too. They can't just say, ‘Well, we got a really nice casino and an awesome hotel but I'm still part of the crappy school system. I'm not getting what I need for me in the future.' So it's got to be that balance. You've got to think about how you're going to help your nation as a whole and not just think about it as one way. Really, you've got to think about it in the bigger picture. But there's opportunities for you to share this information and also opportunities for you to engage the community by having committees, having boards, advisory boards For my tribal council when I was there that was very tough to do, very tough because as Steve [Cornell] was talking about earlier a lot of the thought was, ‘We're the tribal council, we're supposed to do everything.' But I thought, ‘Wow, there's so many other people that are not politicians that could do a much better job on an education board or a cultural committee or a youth council or advising on healthcare or social services or substance...' There are so many opportunities you can look at within your community to develop these types of advisory boards, committees, councils. It doesn't all have to be tribal council. There is more opportunities for the rest of the community to get involved. Also improve communication, share information that's going on, publish your tribal council minutes in the newspaper, share on the radio if you have a radio station. If you don't, work on maybe establishing one or using the internet. It just depends on the type of environment that you're in. You may be able to use this, you may not, but these are just some things to think about. And you may not be able to use it today but you may be able to use it in the future.

Another thing that we've seen a lot and we did within our school on the reservation is incorporate the nation's history in the education curriculum. Have them teach tribal history not only to the students but also to your employees so they understand what their role is, so they have pride every day when they go to work and say, in our case, 'I work for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe.' I used to meet with my employees once a month, last Friday of the month with all of the employees and just give them a ‘this is what we're doing,' and always thank them -- tribal member or non-tribal member -- for the work that they did for our nation and always try to help them understand that the work they were doing was important. You have opportunities to help these non-tribal members or even tribal members that maybe don't know that much about their own history by sharing that with them, in orientation. We'd have an orientation. It was only...ours was short, it was only about two hours, but some tribes have ongoing orientations, classes, certificates, that people who work for the tribe have to pass. That's not a bad idea. That's pretty neat. Wish we would have done something like that. It doesn't mean we can't. But these are just ideas of what you can do and also with the students -- identify and create civil responsibilities. What is your role in the community as a citizen?

When I was working for a non-profit I was working with a lot of youth who...it was a substance abuse, HIV/AIDS prevention program but one of the things that we made sure that the youth did -- they got counseling and services and field trips and stuff like that -- but one of the important things that we did is we engaged them in the community. Service learning, we called it. They had to volunteer. We'd take them to these fairs [and] they were the ones giving out the questionnaires, they were the ones doing all the stuff and they really took ownership of that program. They were our...they could target that audience better than I could as a peer, as a young 13-14 year old, they could go talk to somebody about substance abuse, about HIV/AIDS where...at first I thought, ‘I wonder if these kids are going to want to do it.' And they did it, they loved it, they wanted to be involved. And these are young people. You can do that within your community.

We talked about the roles of tribal council, the role of government, the role of everybody else's role but what about your role, your responsibility to your tribe? And there are ways too to incorporate that into policy, into your constitution. It's not just as part of your enrollment, it's not just about blood quantum, lineal descent, who you are, but what are your responsibilities? And we see that a lot. In my tribe we see that a lot. ‘Well, these people just moved into the reservation, they don't even know what being Yaqui is.' Well, teach them. It's not just about moving on the reservation and getting on the top of the housing list, it's about sharing your culture, your history with each other and feeling [Yaqui language] in our case. So there are ways to do that is to identify ways that you can create that. Having a cultural committee or a council of elders, a steering committee that'll help you create that, incorporate it into an ordinance, a constitution, whatever fits your community or just these are the principles, this is what you'll do.

So how do you ensure an engaged citizenry? Well, it's a process and it is a trust issue, but if you have some of these, some of the infrastructure there, the communication, it boils down to transparency about what you're doing. We heard Chairwoman [Rebecca] Miles yesterday talk about what you do behind closed doors. There are a lot of stuff that's confidential, but you have to explain that to the community so they know why. They have to understand why, otherwise it's just going to be that question mark, ‘Why do they always do that?' But communication is so important and it's so important for you to keep that level of trust. Not everybody's going to trust you, don't get me wrong. I'm not Pollyanna. I know how it works. But it's about getting there. And I think that's my last slide which is my conclusion is about progress. It takes time. Things don't happen overnight. One step, two steps back, a giant leap, a tumble and a fall, but as long as you pick yourself up and you continue to have that vision. And the tribal council can't have that vision without the buy-in from the community. They're the ones that are going to move it forward. When you hear about these stories that you've heard about, one tribal council starts something, another council removes it and starts it all over again or just quashes it, somebody else...If the community had really, there was an opportunity for the community to say, ‘No, you're going to keep that project because it's important to us,' then maybe all of that flip flop wouldn't happen as much. So you need to think about progress as a process, as a long-term process. And believe me, that was a reality [check] because there were so many things that I wanted to get done. People said, ‘Slow down, slow down.' And then I had to realize, ‘Yeah, you know what, I've got to take the time to share what the vision is and to show them the steps of how we're going to get there, because right now I'm just showing them the end-all product, but I'm not really being honest with them by telling them that it's going to require a little bit of sacrifice here, a little blood and sweat and tears here.' You have to share that with the community. It was amazing though once you did start sharing this that people started saying, ‘Wow, nobody ever told me that. If they would have told me that it would have been alright.' But it's a good thing I didn't follow that council member's advice. It did make my job harder by sharing more information, but I'm not on council anymore but a lot of people still ask me, ‘How does the system work, who do I need to talk to, how do I get this done?,' and I have no problem sharing that with them, ‘This is what you need to do, this is who you need to talk to,' because to me it's our tribe.

So just remember progress takes time and as leaders I know that you get inundated with what they call these social ills, ‘I've got to take care of this problem right away, I've got to do this,' but it's so important to think about the long term, the future, and to use your citizens to help the tribe move forward. Really, there's so many opportunities for them to be involved -- I just named a few -- but there's so many opportunities for them to become involved that'll help the nation and they'll be a part of it, a part of the success."

James R. Gray: Educating and Engaging the Community: What Works?

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Native Nations Institute
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James R. Gray, former Chief of the Osage Nation, discusses leadership and governmental reform through educating and engaging the community.

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

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Native Nations
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Topics
Citation

Gray, James R. "Educating and Engaging the Community: What Works?" Remaking Indigenous Governance Systems seminar. Archibald Bush Foundation, Saint Paul, Minnesota; and the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Prior Lake, Minnesota. May 3, 2011. Presentation.

"I have to admit that getting to go last, you get an opportunity to make some observations a little bit off the prepared script. And one of the things that's been going on this week -- that I'm sure all of you are aware of -- the recent events in Pakistan and the President's actions, recently. And I wanted to use this as an example to kind of comment on some of the discussions that I've heard over the last two days. One of them had to do with the questions of how much involvement the elected officials need to have in an action in order for them to properly take credit for it or to feel like they're accountable for it. And I think this is a big discussion. It occurred in the topic of economic development yesterday. I think it's occurring today in the discussions of government reform and the actions of your Nation. As an elected official, how much involvement do you personally have to have? Well, I think everyone is pretty well aware of the fact that if you're an elected official, you get way more credit than you deserve. And although I appreciate the low nut references and everything else, it's true. You do get more credit than you deserve. But with that you also get more blame than you deserve because a lot of things happen under your watch that you don't have control over but yet, regardless of the politics of your tribe or my tribe or the Nation, you're still accountable for it. Now had that accident, had that event that occurred in Pakistan to get Osama bin Laden failed, would they have blamed the Navy Seals? Nope. They would have blamed Obama. And that's just the way it is. Now you just take that as a given if you're an elected official. When you swear an oath to defend your Constitution and fulfill your duties in office that just comes with it.

Now having said that lofty idea here, now let's get down to the practical matters of how do you... what's the art of being able to do this? Now this is the part that I want to talk a little bit about because elected officials don't have to micromanage the process to ensure its success. They just have to make sure that the process they enact gives everybody the maximum amount of ownership so that the process results in an outcome in the best interest of the Nation. And I take seriously Sam's comment earlier that maybe what's in the best interest of the Nation may not be in the best interest of certain elected officials. And I'm aware of that but I promise you, whether you do it or don't do it, elected officials will always have that risk in doing something or not doing something. So the question comes back to you eventually, at what point do you make that decision if you're holding office? Because getting elected is only half the fun; and I say that facetiously because we all know how elections are in Indian Country. But governing is an entirely different matter. And doing the things that the Nation wants done is your biggest charge. And if you can do that and balance the differences between your own political interest, which you may put ahead of your Nation's interest, or putting the Nation's interest ahead of your own, these are questions that only you can answer. But I will say this, having been through several elections myself, having won my share and lost my share, I can tell you this, our motivations for moving the Nation into the need for government reform was not based on my elections. It was based on what I felt was the needs of the issues of our people.

I campaigned on the issue of government reform when I ran. And I found that when I did, I not only won but every member of the tribal council who also ran that same year who ran on that issue, they won. The people who didn't campaign on government reform didn't win. So as we got into the office we realized we had a bit of a mandate we felt to move this issue forward and realizing that it was going to require federal action in order for us to actually do government reform. And I take seriously the comments of our friend from Mandan Hidatsa Arikara who knows that the federal involvement in a tribal government needs that reform. And sometimes, in order to get the reform, you have to go to the feds to get yourself freed up to do that -- and that's what we did -- and realizing that that is a difficult proposition, having to ask permission rather than ask forgiveness. It's a difficult choice for anybody who's in the business of exercising tribal sovereignty. But when I went back and tried to look at this, capture it in my mind in preparation for this presentation, I realized that in order to step forward two or three steps you may have to take one step backwards first -- and that was to get that federal law passed, that reaffirmation of the Osage sovereignty where the United States government recognized the inherent sovereign right of the Osage Nation. I especially like the word inherent because that means the United States Congress did not give the Osage Nation their sovereignty. We had that sovereignty before the United States was even here. As Hepsi [Barnett] pointed out, we existed for millennia. We did not need the United States government to tell us we were Osage. But for certain purposes, of being able to grant ourselves the kind of sovereignty exercised in the modern era, we had to use the federal systems that were in place now that limited our ability to exercise the kind of sovereignty that we wanted.

We saw the obvious problems that we had. We had an interior solicitor tell us that the only Osages that they recognized were those that were still alive from the 1906 role. Realizing that we were less than five members left in 2002 we knew we didn't have much time to act. The second thing was, is that we had disenfranchised three-fourths of our tribal population from having any political rights whatsoever in the tribe. Now don't ever underestimate the power and the impact of a hundred years of paternalism on a tribe. Nothing can destroy your self-confidence, your ability to feel like you are in control, the ability to take action on behalf of your citizens, when you've had those rights completely jerked out from under you. And the old story goes that the Stockholm syndrome -- for those of you who may be familiar with it -- it's the Patty Hearst kidnapping issue. Suddenly after being kidnapped she adopted the attitudes and the politics of her kidnappers.

In some ways, when I campaigned for reelection in 2006 after our constitution was passed, I actually said this to a group of Osages who were demanding that I go back to the BIA and get permission to do what we already did on our own. And I said, 'look, I know we need the BIA. I know we need our federal trustee. And I will act in accordance with the constitution that allows me to work with them on a government-to-government basis because I know we need them. But don't ask me to love them because they have not returned that love to the Osage people.'

When we came out and did out constitutional reform, it did not happen with the active participation and support of our local BIA office. As Hepsi pointed out, it was quite the contrary. Many of our citizens were employed by the BIA so it had made it especially hard to try to work with our trustee knowing full well that when they were not at work they were busy trying to work up an agenda against this initiative. We overcame a lot in a very short period of time. And how did we do it? Well, it wasn't because of me jumping up and down. Maybe it was, I don't know. But I will say this; we took the initiative straight to the people. We did not waste a minute's time after Bush signed that bill into law. I think we took two months off. It was right during the holidays. By February we appointed our commission. And by April they were already having meetings. And by July Hepsi showed up, put the team together and got them focused. But once we did that we made some very clear directions.

The purpose of educating and engaging our tribal citizens; we believed this. We really did. It wasn't just rhetoric. We truly believed that the more information our citizens had about what was before them and what the challenges are, but more importantly what the opportunities were, we would be more successful in the end because we believed that the more informed citizenry will make for a better Osage government. We also had to get the buy-in and support so that they felt like the process that we laid out for the commission to carry out on behalf of the elected officials was going to be demonstrated in a way that any attendee that showed up at these events, to provide input into the government reform commission, that they felt like they owned that process. When they walked out of there they felt like their voices were heard, their concerns were documented, their questions were answered if there were. And there was a lot of demands for change and improved accountability. There was a lot of venting going on and it was fair. And the fact that we had our commission who were citizens themselves sitting in there hearing this, not me or the members of the council, but citizens there, it became more of an open conversation. And realizing all the tribe did was give them the funds to go do it. And I made a point to stay away as much as I possibly could. I actually attended one commission meeting and I pretty much got ran out of there by the commissioners, which was perfectly appropriate. Mary Jo Webb is an elder and she looked me up and down and said, 'you're not going to do this.' So I was just like, 'okay, okay, I know I'm not supposed to be here.' But that was the important thing. It wasn't my process anymore. It wasn't the Chief's commission, it wasn't the Chief's process; it was the Osage people's process.

The roles and responsibilities the Government Reform Commission was charged with was writing the new constitution based on input from our tribal citizenry. We sent questionnaires -- I think Hepsi covered a lot of this -- the Government Reform Commission meetings that they held, town hall meetings were held throughout Oklahoma and even across the United States. The areas for growth; in hindsight we did a much better job, I thought. Now others may disagree, but I felt like the work that we did in strategic planning, which came immediately right after the constitution was passed and elections were held and new government was installed... The last thing I wanted to look like, not only to the Osage people but to the world around us that interacted with us -- whether it's corporations, oil and gas companies, other agencies that had to deal with the Osage Nation -- I wanted to make sure we didn't look like what we call back home, like the dog who caught the car. Because we've been chasing this for a hundred years and once we got it -- what's the movie? The Candidate, Robert Redford; after he won this crazy election, he sat there and looked at his handlers and he goes, 'now what?' And that's kind of how I felt. I really did. I was like, whew.

And like Hepsi pointed yesterday, we thought the hard work of getting the constitution was the end of the work of itself. But we had no idea the work of implementing a new government, creating sound governmental institutions, continuing to have the buy-in from our tribal members to begin the process of nation building... Because like I said, 75 percent of our tribal members had no political rights for a hundred years, or at least leading up to those hundred years. By the time we finally got them, they were so used to being ostracized and left out of the process that it took really hard work to get them physically and mentally and spiritually and emotionally engaged in their government. And it was a real challenge, I'll tell you that. So the strategic plan process was designed to create a 25 year long range plan covering six major areas; education, healthcare, economic development, natural resources, governance and justice. What was that last one? 'Line!' Do you remember? There was a sixth one, I remember, what was it? It'll probably come back to me when I'm done. I'm sorry.

But as we went through this process, we had a team of teams of Osage citizens that went on the road and sat down and visited with our own citizens, applying the similar model that we did with the Government Reform Commission. This initiative was led by the executive branch funded by our Osage Congress. We had documented sitting down with over 2500 citizens in eight states across the United States, because most of our citizens do not live on the reservations, they live in New Mexico and Texas and California and Arizona and Colorado, Kansas. We still are connected in many ways but physically in order to get out there to have those conversations with them we had to go to their communities. So we went through that process, we documented the 25 year strategic plan in all these areas. Culture preservation, yeah, thank you. And as we did that, we put together a list of every single program and department within the Nation that we had. We put together every single project that the Osage people wanted and identified that they wanted to see us work on. And inside that grid we were able to identify every program that either had a leadership role in developing that program or support role in developing that program. At the end of the day we came up with nearly 300 projects in six major areas of the Osage Nation.

Putting together a plan, putting together a constitution is a process that I believe was probably the biggest thing that I did while I was Chief. It's not the length of time that I served that mattered to me, it's what I got done when I was there. For whatever it's worth, I don't regret any of that. I don't even regret losing. And I like what Frank's comments was because mine were very similar when I lost my election too because at that point I realized it wasn't about me anymore. It was about the Osage people and what was in their best interest. And was it in the best interest of the Osage people that I be a snit and pick up my toys and run away? Or was it in the best interest of the Osage Nation that I sit down and direct my staff -- who was also packing their bags -- to assist the incoming administration with everything they needed to know? So that when they came in on the first day of work they knew where everything was, they knew what the pending issues were, they knew where all the projects were, they knew where all the personnel grievance issues were, they knew where all the status of all our litigations were, they knew everything that we knew when we left.

And I'll say this -- we're probably getting way off topic here so I'm just going to go ahead and finish up -- but I'll say this. If you want to be remembered, I guess, and have a legacy personally, politically, it would be nice to be able to have total control over that process, but at some point you realize that that's not what it's about. The legacy is not so much what you personally do. The legacy is how much the Osage people or how much your tribe feels that they have ownership over their own sovereignty and their own government. And if you look at it from that standpoint, I know that my place in Osage history is okay because even after the process was over and the election was over, our Constitution is still there and it hasn't been changed. All the people that were elected in 2002 in the 31st council are no longer holding elected offices today. The people who were responsible for the Government Reform Commission are still actively involved. The people who were part of the team of teams in the strategic planning are still actively involved. Some of those folks are holding elected offices today in our new government.

And the new Chief of the Osage Nation, in his state of the Nation address just two months ago, pledged to continue to implement the Osage Nation strategic plan. To me, I always felt like that was probably the biggest complement he could have paid me because again, I tried to create a road map and I tried to give people some direction based on what they themselves have told me they wanted to go and to marshal the resources of the Osage Nation to give that to them. And in respect of all the people who had a chance to follow that process, whether it's in my own tribe or whether it's in your own community... I'm not saying a cookie cutter approach is the best because obviously, the presentation that was before me was incredible. I really appreciate the value of what the Tiguas did. And I can tell you that many of you who are thinking about doing something like this, realize that you have a wonderful opportunity to leave a legacy for yourself, to leave a legacy, more importantly, for your people, and if you can, there are rewards for that that go far beyond the next election cycle.

And I can tell you that when I came to office this in 2002 we had $300,000 in smoke shop revenue in our accounts. We opened seven casinos, we put 1800 people to work, we have an annual payroll of $50 million annually, we're a quarter billion dollar industry in Oklahoma, we're as big as Devon Energy, and we have a Constitution and a plan to take us to the next level. Now as far as I'm concerned I can sleep good at night and I don't have a problem supporting what's going on with our own tribe. I may never hold elected office again but I can tell you these were the best eight years of my life because I got to do some things I never would have dreamed I'd got to be able to do. So I wish you all the kind of success that I had. Thank you."

Honoring Nations: Jeannie Barbour: Chickasaw Press

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Jeannie Barbour, creative director for the Chickasaw Nation, shares the history and success of the Chickasaw Press and discusses how it serves as a concrete expression of Chickasaw self-governance.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Barbour, Jeannie. "Chickasaw Press." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 18, 2009. Presentation.

"[Chickasaw language] and good morning. It is an honor to have the opportunity to make a presentation about the Chickasaw Press to you all this morning. I would like to thank the Honoring Nations staff for their hospitality and the great work that they do with Indian tribes. It is obvious by your accomplishments that you have asked yourselves the same all important question, 'How can I best contribute to my tribal community?' The basic necessities of housing, healthcare and education provide communities with positive quality of life, but we must also be vigilant in the preservation and revitalization of each of our unique cultural practices and lifeways. Tribal language, history, arts, traditional healing practices and oral tradition define who we are as a people. Our elders are honored because of their knowledge of these things and we recognize these things will help prepare our children for life in a complex world. Throughout history, Indian people have recognized the need for civic engagement.

Encouraging civic engagement has always been an essential mandate for Chickasaw government and its people. It is the belief that all citizens can contribute ideas, energy and action for improving their communities. After Oklahoma Statehood in 1907, there was a systematic effort by the federal government to dismantle not only Chickasaw government but Chickasaw society as well. This had a devastating effect on tribal communities. Many Chickasaw people left as a result of relocation policies of one sort or another, draining the Chickasaw Nation of vital human resources and knowledge. However, Chickasaw people practiced civic engagement by supporting one another through the long dormant period that was the first part of the 20th century. They continued to meet. They continued to practice stomp dance, share their songs, speak the language and band together as a unique and distinctive people. Astute members of the tribe began to take advantage of opportunities presented by history's events in the 1960s and '70s. By the 1980s, the Chickasaw Nation was seeing the fruits of their vision for economic self-sufficiency. Through diligence and hard work over the past 30 years, the Chickasaw Nation has experienced incredible governmental and economic revitalization. Tribal members who had left were invited to return to the Chickasaw Nation, bringing with them skills and knowledge that would benefit all Chickasaw people. Tribal members that chose to remain outside the boundaries of the nation were also embraced. Chickasaw leadership recognized the need to develop programs designed to reconnect some of these people with traditional knowledge, history and practices still present in many Chickasaw communities in Oklahoma. There was a lack of documented Chickasaw history available. Only a handful of historical accounts of Chickasaw history existed. Very few of those were written by Chickasaw people or even from a Chickasaw perspective. It was decided that a solution to this challenge was to generate our own research and scholarship.

The Chickasaw Press was created in 2006 as part of a larger initiative to help in this process. Community involvement in the planning and establishment of the press was considered vital. A committee of Chickasaw individuals and others with knowledge of publishing, writing, scholarship and research were brought together to discuss the structure and the mission. The group prepared a proposal outlining their plan, which was presented to tribal leadership for approval. In a very short time, the Press was up and running and publishing books of significance to Chickasaw people. The Press is neither a vanity press for public relations nor a print shop for brochures and pamphlets. Instead, it was designed on the model of a peer-reviewed university press. Eight staff members consisting of individuals trained in editing, graphic arts, writing, marketing, publicity and sales are employed by the Press. Currently we are building the necessary support structures for the Press to achieve sustainability. These include tribal funding and a Press business plan looking toward self-sufficiency; also, programming to recruit and create Chickasaw historians and scholars.

The Chickasaw Press publishes books about Chickasaw history and culture. This knowledge is critical to the preservation and continuance of a shared Chickasaw cultural identity, particularly as our population increases both within and outside of our boundaries. Generating and publishing our own research is not only an act of ownership over our own history but is also an exercise of self-determination and cultural sovereignty. Since Chickasaw Press's inception and including our new releases scheduled for the end of this month, we will have published three biographies of important Chickasaw historical figures; one volume of Chickasaw history essays; a companion volume of oral histories and profiles; one book of Chickasaw poetry; two professionally photographed pictorial essays of contemporary Chickasaw society, culture; and a volume of paintings of Chickasaw elders by renowned Chickasaw artist Mike Larson. In an effort to provide information about other tribes as well, a biography of a noted Potawatomi artist is scheduled for release through the Press in the fall. Dozens of oral histories, citizen interviews, contributions by Chickasaw poets and photos of contemporary citizens populate the pages of these books. Some of the books are replete with images of Chickasaw contemporary and traditional arts, traditional games and food. Places of natural beauty and historic significance within the Chickasaw Nation are also showcased.

The books, in important ways, make Chickasaw history and the contemporary culture come alive. It is not unreasonable to suggest that any nation needs its own literature to be viable in the modern world. These books encourage civic engagement simultaneously, on a national level and on a personal level. Chickasaw people are hungry for this kind of affirmation. Although we do not have measureable data at this time, the creation of the Chickasaw Press and the tribe's division of history and culture have sparked a greater interest in and more discussion of Chickasaw history. Press staff members have participated in the development of history classes spanning ancient Chickasaw history to present day. Four hundred people attended the first session in December of 2007. Seven hundred attended the class the following spring.

The Press has also participated in revitalization efforts of Chickasaw language by sponsoring the publishing of the language book Let's Speak Chickasaw. This book is in its second printing since its release just a few months ago. Some of our books deal with sensitive areas of Chickasaw life and history. There has been reluctance in the past to publish oral traditional stories handed down from generations of Chickasaw storytellers. These stories represent, in important ways, information about the Chickasaw universe and tribal people's place in that universe. Our official tribal storyteller and her chosen apprentice started working this week with a Press staff writer and editor to document some of the tribe's traditional stories before they are lost. Tribal storyteller Glenda Galvan told the Press, 'For the first time, because the Chickasaw Press exists, I feel confidence in our ability to publish and thereby preserve these sacred stories accurately and respectfully.' She had been approached by other publishers down through the years about these stories and had rejected each inquiry. She also told us only now that the Chickasaw Nation has a tribal publisher makes her feel comfortable about sharing her stories that have been passed through generations of her family.

Because the Chickasaw Nation hopes to create new generations of Chickasaw researchers and scholars, it is establishing a new state-of-the-art cultural center/research center as well as Department of Chickasaw Studies, all within the Division of History and Culture. Our goals are number one, to interest young Chickasaws in researching and writing about Chickasaw history and culture, and to recruit Chickasaw scholars to come home to work as in-house faculty in the Chickasaw Studies Department. We value traditional oral knowledge as well as academic knowledge. The research center, Chickasaw Studies Department and Chickasaw Press serve as part of an overall infrastructure to facilitate the teaching and learning of Chickasaw history and culture. The Chickasaw Nation realizes that it is not an island unto itself. Tribal citizens live and share civic engagement responsibilities with non-Indians in Oklahoma communities. An ever-present challenge facing the Chickasaw Nation is that non-Native people know very little about tribal sovereignty, self governance or Chickasaw history. Sharing history with others through these tribal initiatives addresses this issue in a non-confrontational manner. The better others understand the Chickasaw Nation and its people, the better its government can work with them in government-to-government relationships.

In closing, as a director I would like to say the Chickasaw Press stands as an original and significant example of tribal self-governance. It is based on Chickasaw values of community, sharing and education. Its specific mission is to revitalize and strengthen tribal cultural identity. The Chickasaw Press is based on the following beliefs: that history and culture are dynamic and alive; that knowledge of tribal history creates a shared identity and understanding of our current circumstances and needs and a basis for future decision-making; that we should take ownership of our history and practice ethical, culturally appropriate research methods; and that if more of our neighbors know about us, the more effectively we will be able to sustain productive government-to-government relationships and good will.

American Indians are not an extinct people. Their cultures have a past, a present and a future. Generalizations about Native people contribute to stereotypic notions that make no allowance for individuality or for any possibility of change over time. Cultural identity should be maintained and valued. Indian people have made a substantial contribution to the world and specifically to America. It is important that Native writers express themselves.

In the interest of civic engagement, it is important that presses print their work. It is our hope that other tribal nations will consider developing their own presses. We are currently writing a handbook outlining the process we took in this endeavor. When it is complete, we will share the booklet with Honoring Nations to distribute to those of you who are interested. Again, thank you. We at the Press wish each and every one of you every success in your work." 

Honoring Nations: Hepsi Barnett, Tony Fish and Joyce Wells: Reclaiming Native Nations (Q&A)

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Native leaders Hepsi Barnett, Tony Fish, and Joyce Wells share a deeper level of detail about the roots and impacts of their nations' Honoring Nations award-winning programs.

Resource Type
Citation

Barnett, Hepsi. "Reclaiming Native Nations (Q&A)." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 16-18, 2009. Presentation.

Fish, Tony. "Reclaiming Native Nations (Q&A)." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 16-18, 2009. Presentation.

Wells, Joyce. "Reclaiming Native Nations (Q&A)." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 16-18, 2009. Presentation.

Michael Lipsky:

"I'd like to ask the first question of Tony Fish. You said...you were very eloquent on the importance of restoration of community members. But I wonder if there was any conflict within the community as you began to do this work, and how you interacted with the community in order to help people understand what you were trying to do?"

Tony Fish:

"Initially, there was some conflict within the community. A lot of people [were] not buying into the idea that we should try and bring these people back into our communities, or give them a second chance in society at that. A lot of the initial response was, 'Well, it must really pay to be bad then. Should we go out and be bad so we can get this?' And my response to them was, 'No, it doesn't pay to be bad, but what good is it going to be to continue to downtrodden our citizens like this.' And then at that time, that's when I brought in to the scope of things about our culture and what we did early on as far as a Nation and a tribe on how we handled the people who committed crimes. And through that and through constant fostering of ideas to create the safer communities and going out into the communities and just talking with them and bringing people with me who had been incarcerated. A lot of times you cannot tell them from the next person you're sitting beside, so it was an eye-opener for them."

Michael Lipsky:

"So do you have questions for our panelists? Yes. We have a microphone. Would you tell us your name and where you're from as well as ask the question?"

Mary Lee Johns:

"My name is Mary Lee Johns. I'm from the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. I'm the senior advisor for Rio Tinto Mining Company; it's an international mining company. My question is for Tony. Since the reservations have incredibly high amounts of problems with violence and a lot of problems with drugs and all that stuff -- that's not my question -- but being that that's kind of the setting right now, I was just wondering on your reservation or your area, when these individuals come back from being incarcerated -- actually I have two questions -- one is how do you, do you do some kind of like ceremony to bring them home so that, like a sage ceremony or anything to cleanse them or anything like that? That's one question. And then the second question is how do you keep them from getting back involved with their old buddies and continuing the crazy life?"

Tony Fish:

"To answer your first question, at each of the facilities they have a Native American group. And in that Native American group, there's a spiritual advisor. And what we do is we provide the sacraments -- the sage, the cedar, the sweet grass -- we provide that to them. They have somebody come in and they bless those sacraments and before they are released. They have their own ceremony where they do exactly what you're talking about, the purification and to bring good honor back upon them. And the...could you repeat your second question?"

Michael Lipsky:

"How do you prevent them from going back to their old buddies?"

Tony Fish:

"It's basically, it's an incentive approach. We try as hard as we can to deter them. If we feel it's going to be a bad situation for them, then we may not be able to help them with that. So we kind of...we don't hold services back, but we may halt services in order to try and maybe change their mind a little bit. Sometimes they want to go out and try it on their own and see for their self. And then they come to us and say, 'You know what, you're right, it's not working. I'm clay: mold me.' So that's basically what we try to do."

Michael Lipsky:

"Questions? Please introduce yourself."

James R. Gray:

"My name's Jim Gray, I'm Principal Chief of the Osage Nation. I have a question for Joyce. In Oklahoma, as you well know, there's a lot of slash in the makeup of our citizens in our communities -- Choctaw slash Chickasaws, Choctaw slash Cherokee -- and so if you have a lot of citizens that may be of mixed Indian blood in the public school systems, do you broaden that out to include those or is it primarily just focused on the Choctaw students that are enrolled?"

Joyce Wells:

"We go into the classroom as a whole. So we have a very diverse group of students that we visit with. And that was one of the things that I think Clair thought about when she started this program and then we tried to follow up with as well. That our Assistant Chief Gary Batten, what his comment was to me was that, 'We are of the community, so if we can help our neighbors then that's the way to do it, is in those second-grade classrooms.' So everyone is involved in that second-grade program and it works out really well."

Michael Lipsky:

"Thank you. Question. And you are?"

Audience member:

"Just a quick question: why'd you pick the second grade?"

Joyce Wells:

"I believe that when Clair was doing these studies on this, they thought that that would be a good age group to help mold them in some of the activities that they were starting to act out upon. With the Choctaw Nation, we are very blessed to have a really good Head Start program. So we know that they're getting targeted in that age group. So we moved on to the second grade and she kind of looked in that area. With that said, numerous schools have contacted us wanting us to do follow up programs for the third, the fourth and fifth grade. That's something else that we would love to get going as well. Like I said, it's a long process. I don't know, someone was talking earlier today that everything, they want it just to happen, and I'm one of those individuals. So it's [taken] me to have the patience to realize it will all come about in due time."

Michael Lipsky:

"Joyce, is Clair still in the room?"

Joyce Wells:

"Yes."

Michael Lipsky:

"Would it be okay with you if we asked her to say something?"

Joyce Wells:

"Yes, yes, yes."

Clair Richards:

"Initially when I approached the Choctaw Nation -- to answer both questions -- the tribal leaders, I said, 'Do we want this to be only for the Choctaw students?' And they said, 'Absolutely not. This is for everybody. If this is good for our kids, it's good for everybody. And it's good for the entire town, it's good for the entire community.' So that's the first answer. And the second answer is when I came in again to that same meeting, I had this grand idea of being in every elementary classroom, first through fifth grade, and following up every year so that the kids have it from the very beginning. But that was completely not possible. So second grade was early enough that the kids would still be very impressionable. I'm the youngest of three. I thought my brother and sister were pretty much as close to God as humans could be. So it's a very impressionable age. And the teachers in the classrooms were very easy to work with and very welcoming of the project."

Michael Lipsky:

"Thank you very much. Any questions? You are?"

JoAnn Chase:

"Hi, I'm JoAnn Chase. I have the good privilege of being on this Honoring Nations Board of Directors. I just want to say thank you, first to all, of the panelists. This is one of the most enjoyable experiences I look forward to. The participation and the depth of the dialogue and the inspiration that we leave with is just a real blessing. So thank you to all of you. I have, however, a specific question for Hepsi. And I was really intrigued by the legislative approach. And you made some reference to that obviously over a legal remedy, but I was hoping maybe you might just talk a little bit more about some of the challenges and the risks that were involved in that approach and how you overcame them. I have also the privilege of knowing the Principal Chief, and know that he's a very powerful and forceful and tenacious and well-respected advocate. So I can appreciate his role very much in that. But if you would talk just a little bit more, I think it would be helpful to the group, and I'd certainly be interested in hearing a little bit more about, why that approach over a legal remedy?"

Hepsi Barnett:

"Well, I think obviously we had tried to work through the courts and we had really exhausted that remedy. And I think for a lot of people, they were ready to give up at that point. And what really started it was when the new tribal council came in, the 31st Tribal Council. They really came in because the Osage people wanted to see that change. They had had a taste of when...during that three years when that government was, really it was almost imposed as well through the court system, but there at least was some Osage citizen input into that process.

So they had taken a few individuals who had brought the case, the Fletcher case, and they had had them work with folks on the federal side to create a constitution, our constitutional form of government. Again, it was semi-imposed, but some great progress occurred during those three years. And so I think that for the Osage people they saw that change was possible even though that remedy had been exhausted. And so they really looked to that tribal council; that newly elected tribal council. There was a complete turnover in the tribal leadership and everybody that came in with the new tribal council came in on sort of that campaign promise of bringing membership to all Osages.

Well, then they actually were elected. I think it was a bit of an upset. And they were elected and then they were really faced with the challenge of, how are we going to do this? And so they really began to analyze what the options were. And fortunately for us we had some very good contacts in Washington. An Osage was in Washington, Wilson Pipestem, a lot of you may be familiar with him. They really looked to Wilson to help provide them some expertise that he had as a lobbyist and a lawyer in Washington. If we wanted to do this, if we wanted to go back to the United States Congress, what are the steps that we need to put in place to do that? And so I think the advice from Wilson is, you have to create allies at the state-government level, in terms of the representatives from Oklahoma.

And so at that point, the tribal leaders began to work with the state leaders. And I think they created some very good relationships at that time with the state senators and with the representatives from Oklahoma. And they really, at that level, led the charge. The implications -- I mean, I don't really know how things work at the federal level -- but I know enough at our own level to know one of the first questions asked: 'Is it going to cost us anything? What are we going to have to give up at the federal level?' And I think once there was a recognition that we weren't asking for a settlement, we weren't asking for money, we were just asking them to reaffirm our inherent sovereign right that every other tribe in the United States under the policy of self-governance had.

And so they really took up the cause and that reaching out intergovernmentally was really key to making that possible. So I know that that sounds -- I may be simplistic the way that I'm presenting it -- but I think, and as I'm sure, I think there's a panel here on intergovernmental relations. That for tribes today, in order to make the progress that we need to make so that our people prosper, reaching out intergovernmentally -- both locally in your own communities and then at the state level and then at the federal level -- we have a lot of things to manage besides our own people, but that is just really a cornerstone I think in terms of today's, the realities of tribal governments today."

Michael Lipsky:

"Yeah. Let's take one more question and then...yes."

Susan Jenkins:

"I'm Susan Jenkins with the Cherokee Preservation Foundation. [I] was really interested, Hepsi, in your comment about the citizens-led 25-year strategic plan. Could you explain that a little bit more please?"

Unknown:

"Good question."

Hepsi Barnett:

"Well, again, we were just coming at the tail of the government reform process. I had the privilege of working with that government reform commission as a staffer. And like I said, there was a lot of pressure on us. There was obviously, like I said, with that level of change, there's a lot of conflict to manage. We were trying to do that in a collaborative fashion. In other words, we wanted it to be a win-win. We wanted this new government coming in to be a win-win. We didn't want to compromise, we didn't want to accommodate. We wanted to really collaborate. And what that meant was, we had to get out and we had to do a lot of listening to what the people had to say. I feel like that effort was successful because of that reaching out and engaging the people and it had been a long time since that had happened. Like I said, for most of us as Osages, we weren't really involved in the government. There were no, virtually no young people involved in tribal government. And so going out into the communities, telling people that, 'You matter as an Osage. We want to hear from you,' that went a long way.

And so when Chief Gray came in, was re-elected into the new government, his first charge really to me was...I think he came in one morning, our Congress was meeting and he said, 'You have two hours to create a plan for strategic planning, a 25-year strategic plan, an outline.' And I said, 'You've got to be kidding me?' And he said, 'No. I want to go to Congress and I want to get them to fund this.' He had pitched it to them and they said, 'Well, we want to see an outline of the process.' And so for me, like I said, it was fortunate that I had just came in from government reform. So [it] really took the elements of that that were most effective and sort of embedded that into the outline or the process for strategic planning. And really what it entailed was, usually you hire these consultants. They come in, they write up your strategic plan, it looks real pretty and it's great. And then they hand it back to the tribe to implement. Well, when it's a citizen-led effort, it doesn't look nearly that pretty, but I think what we found was that it meant something to the people. So they thought of things that a consultant or even myself or a tribal leader would never think of in terms of what their priorities were. And again, they had the opportunity to say, 'Yeah, now we have this new government, what are we going to do? And what do we want it to look like for our grandchildren?' And so creating that vision for the Osage people during that time was really critical. And I think going out, having those public meetings, we used a lot of techniques similar to, yes, that she was using. Not so much the moose thing, but engaging people in terms of using exercises that really provided the structure for them to get up and talk about what they wanted.

We had a very short amount of time in each of these community meetings, and so we structured it so that it was experiential and people had to get up. And we started really with the history. The very first thing we did was we put up a great big -- have you seen those big sticky boards? We put up a great big sticky board and we gave them however much time to talk about something that they knew about Osage history. And so we first rooted it in, who are we as Osage people? Because what people tended to write about when they talked about what something that they personally knew about in terms of our Osage history was we had them first, sort of create who are we, what are our principles, what are our values, what's most important to us, by having those people write down what they knew about history. So we created this timeline with individual family stories. Once we had it tied to who are we, then we could start to talk about where we're going. Because it's very difficult to determine where you're going if you don't know where you've been as a people.

From that point forward, we then started to talk about the future and I think that that was a, that little exercise in and of itself really set the tone for us to engage in a real conversation about what we wanted. And so what came out of that was sort of six focus areas that we looked at in terms of creating a vision for -- and Chief Gray help me out here if I forget one of them -- but it was education, health and wellness, culture and language, economic development, governance and justice -- and I've left one out, yes -- minerals and natural resources, which is just a given at the Osage Nation. Not a shareholder. It's not quite as important for me yet. So we looked at those six target areas as we began to focus on creating a vision for each. And another interesting thing that I think, that I hope will be a takeaway here is that we didn't have those six focus areas compete with each other when we prioritized. In other words, we felt like each of those areas was important enough to stand on its own. So that when we were creating priorities we created priorities for each of those areas versus having those areas compete against each other. Thank you."

Michael Lipsky:

"Well, now you know one of the things you do when the dog catches the car. I hope you'll join me in thanking our speakers for starting us off so well. Thank you so much."

Priscilla Iba: Osage Government Reform

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Osage Government Reform Commission Member Priscilla Iba discusses the historical factors that prompted the Osage Nation to create an entirely new constitution and governance system, and how the Nation went to great lengths to cultivate the participation and ownership of Osage citizens in the reform process.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Iba, Priscilla. "Osage Government Reform." Emerging Leaders Seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 26, 2008. Presentation.

"I am honored to have been asked to speak to you today, and will speak to you on the Osage government reform process. I served on the Osage Government Reform Commission, and hope to give you some insight into our process of completely changing a government that had been imposed on the Osage people for 100 years.

First I want to give you a very brief history of our former government. Then I'll take you through the phases of the reform process and highlight some of the challenges we had and how they were overcome -- or still remain challenges. Lastly, I'll read a short speech I gave to the newly elected Osage Government.

In 1881, in an effort to adapt to the changes facing our nation and to be recognized as equals with the United States, Osage leaders wrote our own constitution modeled after the United States Constitution. This meant consciously separating our traditional cosmology from our government. Primarily due to the push for allotment and statehood for Oklahoma, in 1900 agents of the United States illegally abolished our constitutional form of government.

The U.S. Congress imposed the 1906 Osage Allotment Act.

  1. It concentrated all power within a resolution style government, known as the Tribal Council, although the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] had the ultimate power over Osage affairs.
  2. The entire reservation was allotted, and because we had purchased our reservation, we were not forced to give any of it away.
  3. We also retained our mineral rights as a tribe, and each Osage was also allotted a share of that trust, termed a headright. These 2,229 were the original Osage allottees.
  4. This Act dictated the voting members to be only Osages who had inherited some portion of a headright, and were descended from those original allottees. These were also the only people who could run for office. Through the years many Osages fought to keep the Allotment Act intact, because it was unclear what would happen to us as a tribe without it.

For a number of years, candidates for the tribal council ran on the promise to obtain the vote for all Osages. In the 1970s, the U.S. courts gave us permission to reform our government and decide our membership. That government was abolished because an Act of Congress was necessary for us to be able to choose our governance. It was our own people who encouraged the U.S. government to rule the new government invalid.

In 2004, after much work by our 31st Tribal Council, our chief, two of Oklahoma's U.S. Legislators, our very able legal team, and support from the National Congress of American Indians and other political experts, President [George W.] Bush signed Public Law 108-431, An Act to Reaffirm the Inherent Sovereign Rights of the Osage Tribe to Determine Its Membership and Form a Government. This set the process in motion.

There were some decisions to be made before the Osage Government Reform Commission began to function.

  1. The Osage Tribal Council and our Chief decided who would be on the commission. Each council person submitted two names, then selected 10 commissioners and two alternates from that list of names. The people nominated could not be related any closer than cousin to anybody in the government and could not be employed by the tribe. You can imagine how difficult even this first step was.
  2. The Council, as our acting government, had to decide who would be eligible to vote in the referendum. They resolved that the people who would be able to vote would be the descendents of those original allottees on the 1906 Roll. The Osages eligible to vote could be shareholders or non-shareholders.
  3. The Council decided that a new government would be in place by our next election, which was 16 months in the future.
  4. Leonard Maker, the senior tribal planner, wrote a plan for the probable path this reformation would take.

The people making up the Commission were truly a cross section of our nation. Whether this was a part of the selection process, I don't know, but it was a very good balance. Most of us had to learn about our own government and were not knowledgeable of other governments. Obviously there was a huge learning curve ahead of us.

It also happened that we were all shareholders (headright holders), and we did not all know each other.

Our primary charge was to listen to the will of the Osage people and bring into existence the governmental choice of that majority. This was something that we took very seriously from the onset. We may have been slow starters and stumbled many times, but this was our glue. We were humbled by this mission and were determined to fulfill it.

We also knew that autonomy was absolutely necessary for us to do the job, and that we could not be influenced by anyone in the present government. That crucial independence was given to us. We do not believe reform is possible without a trustworthy commission who is free of political influence. We did report back to the Council and request any resolutions that would be needed to complete our job.

To say that it took us a while to get going is an understatement. Early in the process, we relied heavily on Leonard Maker to guide us. Later I will go more into the dynamics of our beginning. I just want you to know that it appeared we were getting very little done in the early stages.

I'll give you just one example of our difficulty in getting started. Whenever we get together now, we always laugh about this incident.  It's not really all that funny. At one meeting, it took us at least 45 minutes to decide what food we would have at the Grayhorse town meeting.

Since our meetings were all open to the public, and we voted to have them all filmed, you can imagine how we can only shake our heads at our early ineptness.

After the arrival of our coordinator, we were able to move forward with amazing speed. We all felt that a new government would not have happened without her knowledge, hard work and guidance.

It seems imperative that the coordinator or the reform commission chair have a knowledge of governments in general, is intelligent, is available to work ridiculously long hours, understands the culture, knows how to work with people and how to get them to work, and is loyal. 

We had at times three other staff members that we couldn't have done without. They did all the clerical work, record keeping, errand running, and many other jobs. This staff must be organized, hard working, computer literate, and loyal. They had to be able to get along well, especially in stressful situations.

Much of the early part of our tenure was devoted to deciding things that had nothing to do with a government. We were pleased to be able to make many of these choices, but they still took up a lot of time. In addition to the basics of electing officers and deciding how we wanted to run our meetings, we had to outfit an office and hire staff.

We had to get to know each other quickly.

Our education in government started right away. Leonard had prepared a booklet with information on various reformations made by other tribes, and we had a very enlightening seminar with the Harvard Project and The Native Nations Institute. Soon after this, we had a seminar with the Indian law department at Tulsa University.

We were told that we could request meetings with anyone and obtain any sort of information we needed, but we didn't have a clue who we needed to talk to or what sort of information we needed in the beginning. We were working hard, meeting every week, but we really didn't get moving until our coordinator, Hepsi Barnett, got there.

This is the way our work progressed:

  1. Our commission meetings were held weekly and always included a time for attending citizens to give opinions.
  2. We held over 40 town meetings to hear what the Osage people wanted in a new government.
  3. We planned to get a packet to all Osage people with lots of information about government reform. This happened late, and it was not as comprehensive as we would have liked.
  4. We hired an excellent Indian law attorney. Our decision not to hire an Osage was met with strong approval and disapproval.
  5. Many mailings went out with applications for tribal membership and information about upcoming functions and elections.
  6. A camp was held in the summer for high school-aged students to help them become familiar with governments in general and especially the history of and the issues facing our Osage government.
  7. We mailed out a survey with many governmental issues that needed to be decided. The responses -- combined with all the input from the town meetings and commission meetings -- were used to help formulate key questions put forward to eligible voters in a referendum in November 2005. This referendum marked the first time all Osages, 18 and over, had voted in a tribal election since 1900.
  8. This referendum was not in the original plan, but we felt we needed this mandate before we could proceed.
  9. Results from the referendum, Hepsi's research on other constitutions and governments, submissions from many Osage people, and work done in the drafting committee were all used to help write an Osage constitution.
  10. Near time for the vote on the Constitution, we had a two-day workshop with Osage attorneys, our council, and a few others to go over the "final" draft with a fine-tooth comb.
  11. There were still many commission meetings left to get the truly final copy ready for a vote.
  12. The Constitution was ratified on March 11, 2006 in a second referendum vote. The Osage Nation adopted, by a 2/3 majority vote, a new constitutional form of government which includes executive, legislative and judicial branches with a separation of powers between the three.
  13. We helped with the transition from one government to another. We met with program directors, casino executives, the treasurer, and anyone else we could think of and requested their records and specific information that would help make the transition easier.

This was a very challenging and rewarding experience. Maybe knowing some of our tough issues will be helpful to you.

  1. Trust within the commission was the first hurdle we had to overcome. Early on it kept us from forming workable committees, which kept us from putting together the information packet for the Osage people. However, once the commissioners began to trust each other, we listened to each other with completely open minds. We were a hard, fast unit. We were of one purpose and that was to create a government that the people wanted.
  2. It took some of us a while to really own this reformation process. Hepsi saw this as her first goal to help this happen, and she did. 
  3. We had 16 months to complete the work. Obviously, this is a very short time. More time would have helped when our best-laid plans went awry. However the finished product is a good one, and can be amended when the need arises.
  4. Getting a valid list of all the Osages who would be eligible to vote took some time and hard work by both our staff and those in the CDIB department.
  5. I believe we could have done a better job with our town meetings.
    a) We started having them before we were really knowledgeable enough.
    b) We had a time limit for comments early on, but we didn't do a good job sticking to it. It is very difficult to cut off an elder when he's trying to make a point.
    c) Many of our meetings were dominated by negative rants, so that constructive comments were harder to be made.
    d) We saw as our job to listen to the people, but many of the people really didn't have enough information to comment in these meetings.
  6. There were issues that kept coming up, so that it was difficult to cover the many topics that needed to be discussed at town meetings. An example was membership. Many wanted to take the opportunity to create a roll different than the 1906 Roll, since there were many names that had been challenged by the Osage Government at the time. Even after the referendum determined that the 1906 Roll would be used, time at meetings was still taken with the issue.
  7. Untrue gossip dogged us for the whole process.  
  8. We had a unique situation with shareholders in the mineral estate. They were the only people who could hold office and vote before this reformation. There were many who didn't want to give up this elite status.  
  9. Even though we felt we had a very good election company, they made some serious mistakes, which fueled gossip about the reformation process. 
  10. It was a challenge to provide for minerals administration and development in the constitution. The people chose the option of a mineral council made up of shareholders, elected by shareholders, who would function as an independent agency within the Osage Nation, but with no legislative authority in the Osage Nation government. It will take a while for everyone's roles in that to become clear.

Hepsi has said that 'wholesale government reform is complex and messy.' Hopefully, we will constantly be learning and striving for the best possible government for all Osage people. The future is bright, but still challenging.

  1. The Osage people all over the country have been participating in a 25-year strategic plan. Many methods to gather input and engage our people that were used in the Government Reform Initiative are being used in this process.
  2. We on the Government Reform Commission know that the constitution produced is not a perfect document. We know that times will change so that the initiative, referendum, and amending processes provided in the constitution, while not made easy, are certainly available so that the Osage people can constantly improve their governance.

I gave a short speech to our incoming government leaders, and I'm tempted to hit them with it again. I think the points I made might be of interest to you emerging tribal leaders embarking on a new life serving your people. In comparing the Reform Commission with these newly elected leaders, I said to them:

Here are some things for you to think about.

  1. Each of us represented ALL the Osage people, not any special interest group. Our backgrounds were diverse, as yours are. That's important in seeing issues from all directions. However, we couldn't let our personal ideas and desires get in the way of looking at the big picture. You will have to constantly remind yourselves of what your job is and who you represent. You are here for all of us.
  2. It was a challenge for us to get started. In the beginning the most difficult and possibly the most important issue for success is trust. Believe me, it is not an easy thing to do for people who don't know each other well, particularly a bunch of Osages. In order to establish this, all the hidden agendas must either be exposed and discussed or dropped. Trust was crucial to doing our job as it is yours.
  3. With trust comes respect. Everyone should give it and be worthy of it. Having respect for each other and his/her ideas was the only way we could fulfill our mandate.
  4. The truly amazing thing about the Commission is that we were free from political influence. We could do our jobs on behalf of the Osage people only. Of course that is a little more difficult for you, but we expect it of you. The beauty of our government is that we don't have parties. You each have one group to serve, and that is the Osage people.
  5. The learning curve was great for most of us as it is for you. Everyone has to get on board quickly.
  6. Personalities and egos: All of us on the commission were actually amazed that we could disagree so wholeheartedly on various issues, and not be angry at each other. Having a shared goal makes all the difference in the world. 
  7. Our work was humbling. We always knew that we had been asked to do a job for the Osage people, and that was such an honor. Your job isn't about power. It's about service, service to the Osage people.
  8. What we learned: Of course we had much to learn, as you do, about governing. There are other things that are equally important and long lasting. We learned:
    a. to listen, to listen, to listen.
    b. to work as a group while still allowing everyone to have and share individual ideas.
    c. to respect each other and truly care for each other.
    d. what an honor it is to serve the Osage people.
    e. to truly listen to all ideas, especially those contradictory to our own.
  9. This government is new to the Osage people and to other Native people. We are setting an example for many, and many are watching us. There are people who would like for this government to fail, and sadly some of them are Osage. Please do everything in your power to show the world that we can govern ourselves fairly and with grace. Make us proud, not embarrassed.

Thank you for your time."

David Montgomery: The Quinault Indian Nation's Q-munity Roadmap

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

In this interview with NNI's Ian Record, Quinault Indian Nation Budget Officer David Montgomery provides a comprehensive overview of Quinault's Q-munity Roadmap performance-based budgeting process, and discusses how citizen education and engagement has proven crucial to the success of this groundbreaking initiative. 

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Montgomery, David. "The Quinault Indian Nation's Q-munity Roadmap." Leading Native Nations interview series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. February 22, 2012. Interview.

Ian Record:

"Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I’m your host, Ian Record. On today ‘s program we are honored to have with us David Montgomery. David is a citizen of the Quinault Indian Nation and has served as Quinault’s budget officer since 2009. As his nation’s budget officer, David is overseeing the development and implementation of what is known as the Q-munity Roadmap, an organization-wide transformation focused on strategic planning, budgeting and performance management. David, welcome. Good to have you with us today."

David Montgomery:

"Thanks. Glad to be here."

Ian Record:

"I’ve shared a few highlights of your personal biography, but why don’t you start by telling us a little bit more about yourself. What did I leave out?"

David Montgomery:

"Okay. No, you did a good job, but basically I’ve been with Quinault for a couple of years and I’m their budget director and we worked together in our organization to develop this transformational process that has since gotten the interest of governments all around the world, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, because they’re learning -- non-Indigenous governments, mainstream governments -- are learning that there’s actually a lot that they can learn from us: our tribalistic, our collaborative approach that doesn’t exist in many governments. So what we’re going to be talking about today has been shared with governments from as far away as Denmark, Canada, all around North America."

Ian Record:

"That’s great. We’ve seen a lot of that with the work that we do on Native nation-building, research that [shows] Native Nations are teaching governments and peoples around the world on how to do things and how to do things right.

So we’re here today to talk about the topic of tribal administration and program service delivery, specifically what the Quinault Indian Nation is doing in this arena. I’m curious, let’s begin talking about the Q-munity Roadmap, and just so people understand how it’s spelled. It’s the letter 'Q' and then 'munity Roadmap.' Why and how did the Q-munity Roadmap come about, what was it seeking to do, what was it seeking to change?"

David Montgomery:

"So basically what happened is maybe five years ago, we really looked at our processes and we were trying to decide what we could do better and after analysis we discovered that even though we were a self-governance tribe, even though we had sovereignty and self determination, year after year we were just doing the same thing and if you traced it all the way back 20 years it was the exact same thing that the federal government was doing more or less. So we realized we were not, we didn’t have the capacity to really change it and make our budget, make our government truly our own and that’s because of all the things that were set up by the federal government that were just carry over because it’s hard to change those things. If you do the same thing every year, that’s easy. But when you really want to make dynamic changes, that becomes very difficult, especially if you have a complex organization with lots of employees like we did. So we went back to the drawing board and said, how can we re-imagine all these administrative processes that we’re doing to actually become a truly self-governing nation that meets Quinault priorities."

Ian Record:

"So can you compare you talked about essentially self-administration. That’s really what you were doing from what you’re saying that when you took over the federal government’s programs, you didn’t really change how things were done. Can you compare and contrast the Q-munity Road Map approach with how the Quinault Nation’s administration function before?"

David Montgomery:

"So before, we used what’s called incremental budgeting, which is where you just take last year’s budget and roll it forward, and almost every government uses this, so I’m imagining most tribes in the United States do. It doesn’t lend itself to making changes. You just if there’s more money coming in you usually give a percentage increase to people. If there’s less money coming in you do across the board cuts. But as an example, if you do across the board cuts, it doesn’t make a lot of sense cause if you think about your household budget you might have rent and food and maybe you’re dining out and some entertainment cost. So if you all of a sudden got a demotion and took in less money, you wouldn’t cut all of your budgets equally by 10 percent, 'cause your rent’s still the same; you’d cut your entertainment budgets. And so as a government we wanted to think about it that way so we wanted to be able to fund our priorities and take money away from the things that weren’t important to us anymore, even though we’d just been carrying them forward for 20 years. So we got away from the incremental budgeting approach. And we also, another issue is we were doing a lot of strategic planning, which is a great exercise and a lot of tribes do it, but then what happens after it’s adopted and it becomes official is it just sits on the shelf and no one does anything with it. And the reason for that is not because it’s not a good plan, it’s not because people don’t want to, it’s because there aren’t the mechanisms set up to do that because the budgets themselves aren’t tied to what the strategic plan says. So if the dollars are appropriated X, Y and Z, but now you want to do A, B and C, X, Y and Z is still going to get done because that’s where all the money’s going. So we need to be able to shift that."

Ian Record:

"It’s interesting you mention this, and we’ve heard this from a lot of other tribes and tribal leaders that they really began to make transformative change happen and sustain that change over time when they got a strategic vision of where they wanted to head, and then the daily administrative decisions that they were making were viewed through that lens of where are we trying to head, what’s the long term picture we’re trying to create."

David Montgomery:

"Yes, that’s exactly correct."

Ian Record:

"So I was reviewing some of the educational materials that you prepared and discriminated to your employees and your citizens as you are unveiling this initiative and trying to get people behind it, and it mentions in these materials that the objective of the Q-munity Roadmap is to combat bureaucracy and align the government with the needs and wishes of its citizens, and it acknowledges that prior to the unveiling and the launch of this initiative that you really weren’t satisfactorily meeting the needs of the citizens. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you assessed and came to that realization that we’re not meeting the needs of our citizens, we’re not making the kind of change that they want to see happen."

David Montgomery:

"Exactly. So basically it’s no secret that almost all governments around the world have very little trust with their citizens. That’s just a constant and so that was the same with us. You had the federal system -- BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs], IHS [Indian Health Service] -- that was running things. We were unhappy with that. Our citizens were unhappy with that. Then we took over and we do the same thing so why would our citizens be pleased with that. We were doing all the strategic planning, we were saying we were going to do all these great things and then nothing was happening so constantly we were building people’s hopes up and then we weren’t following through. And so that’s how we determined we really need to change what we’re doing because it’s not about what government wants to do, it’s not about what’s easy for us, it’s about what the people actually need and that’s ever changing. And so we were trying to set up a government structure that could be dynamic and could adapt with the changing needs and wishes of our citizens."

Ian Record:

"So the official statement from the Nation introducing the Roadmap to employees and citizens explains that the initiative is an ambitious quest and is 'more than anything we’ve done before.' How so?"

David Montgomery:

"Basically we turned our whole organization upside down. We really focused on strategic planning, which at first a lot of people said, 'Oh, I need to do my real job. I don’t have time for this sort of stuff,' but in reality, strategy, long-term strategy is what drives your organization. So we forced people to spend, the whole management team to spend a lot of time on strategic planning and really trying to figure out what our strategies were. Then we went through a budget process that was unlike anything they’d ever done before. They really had to quantify what they wanted to do, how it was related to our strategic plan and how you were going to measure it, which we’d never done before so there’s accountability. And then we went through a quarterly reporting process which again has performance metrics and measuring and checking progress against our strategic plan. And all of this had never been done before. Basically if you became a manager you could just do the same thing every year for your whole entire career without a lot of oversight or accountability and never really having to change. So if you think about our organizational culture being that way for 20 years or more and then all of a sudden you’re just making all these changes at once, then it makes everyone really uncomfortable and so when people get uncomfortable they don’t want to make these changes and so that’s why we really tried hard to put together these educational materials you’re referencing and get our organization onboard. Because you can’t generally make one of these changes at a time cause they’re all interrelated so you have to kind of do a big initiative all at once."

Ian Record:

"So you mentioned how you you’ve used this word 'transform' multiple times already in our conversation about what you were trying to do with the Q-munity Roadmap, and reading the materials I think in many ways it’s revolutionary what you’ve been working to do in terms of how the Quinault Indian Nation government operates. And you mentioned turning the administration upside down, turning it on its head and really reconceiving for your administrators how they do their jobs. How have you worked to get the Nation’s employees onboard with this? How have you worked to cultivate their buy-in and get them to realize that you’re empowering them to really make lasting change?"

David Montgomery:

"That was a big issue for us. It was a really top-down, command-and-control approach, and so when we conceived this new Q-munity Roadmap, we decided that we wanted to get our employees involved from step one and so we hosted an all employee launch party -- which I worked with Human Resources to do that -- and we did fun employee morale-boosting activities combined with this launch of our initiative because we wanted employees to associate this initiative as something positive for them, because it’s not going to lead to layoffs, it’s not going to make their jobs harder. That’s actually going to make their jobs easier in the long run and then we invited them all to participate and to be involved because we said, 'It doesn’t make sense to us that only senior managers are doing the budgets and being responsible for performance when it’s the frontline staff that are doing the job and actually interacting with our citizens and our customers.' And so we feel if we are going to be a responsive, effective government we have got to get their buy-in, we’ve got to get their knowledge and input into our process. Otherwise it’s not going to work. It’s going to be kind of more of the same. And so we had this launch party and then we also passed out logoed apparel so jackets and T-shirts and even bags, pens, pencils, all these different things with our brand on it and even though the employees didn’t at first maybe know what all this was about they all like free stuff most employees do. And so then the next day you could see employees walking down the hallway wearing this stuff, using the pens, using the pencils and so it gave the appearance of buy-in in our organization which helped push the momentum forward."

Ian Record:

"And do you think those sorts of efforts while seemingly maybe small efforts taken as a whole really send a message to the employees that this is something we’re doing, we’re not simply doing something that the feds have done. We’re taking ownership and claiming our own future?"

David Montgomery:

"Yeah. We wanted them to know that this is us, this is our process and that they actually get to be involved. They’re going to be decision makers. So one thing that we did in our budget process is we required every employee of a program to sign off on the manager’s proposal, which doesn’t necessarily mean they agree with everything but it’s saying that they were given the opportunity to provide input, because all too often managers would come up with the game plan and the employees wouldn’t know what it was. So then how is the employee supposed to be working towards this common goal if they’re all just kind of doing what they think is a good idea? So if they get together and they talk about the direction, they look at the strategic plan, kind of see our vision and then they as a group come up with what they want to do and how they’re going to measure it then the performance increases exponentially."

Ian Record:

"So pretend for a moment that I’ve just been hired by the Nation, the Quinault Nation, to work in one of its social service programs. Can you explain to me what this Road Map is and what it means for how I’m supposed to view and how I’m supposed to do my job?"

David Montgomery:

"Yeah. So first what we would do is we’d talk to you about the strategic plan, because that’s our foundational document. We’d say, 'As a social service employee, this section of our plan -- which would be wellness -- has to do with you. We want you to be familiar with this. This lays out where we want to be in ten years. This lays out our long-term and intermediate goals and we need every employee, and in this case you as a social service person, to be helping us to achieve this goal.' Next we’d say, 'This is your actual budget proposal, work plan, offer for your program. This is where we took the strategies in the strategic plan and your program manager and staff came up with these goals and objectives and this is how they’re measurable.' Then I’d let you know that we are going to be checking in quarterly and we want to see progress against these, so if you’re going to be a successful employee in our organization, you really need to stay focused on these things that we’ve identified or that actually you’ve identified as things that you want to work on. And then I’d also tell you that these are dynamic, these are ever changing. What’s a problem today may not be a problem ten years from now, and in fact it shouldn’t be. If we’ve done our job, we are making some progress on these things so always be thinking about what we can do differently, what we can do better or how things are changing and then when we come through a rewrite of our budgets then we want your input. And then I’d explain to you that every quarterly we do quarterly reporting, which is where we take those same goals and objectives and we ask you to report your progress. And then the last thing is for a 'job well done' programs we take that quarterly reporting information and we translate it into a magazine format that can go out to our public so they can understand full circle how it went from their strategic plan vision all the way through our government organization and came out the other end with a positive impact. And so I’d tell you as an employee you should be really wanting to be featured in that magazine as a 'job well done,' because that means that you have done what we have asked you to do in the strategic plan."

Ian Record:

"Isn’t that real important? And you see this as an issue in all governments -- whether tribal or non-tribal -- where there’s not enough recognition for a job well done, that these administrators, these frontline staff were toiling in anonymity for their entire careers without any sort of recognition or acknowledgement of the change that they’re making."

David Montgomery:

"Yeah. Exactly. That’s a big problem, and actually in Indian Country people are afraid of failure because there’s a really high expectation for success, but what I’ve observed is if you’re trying so hard to study things and consider them and make sure you’re doing the right thing, then you’ll almost fail by default because the program just continues and you’re not doing anything about it. So what we did when we started this new process is we said, 'Don’t be afraid of failure.' Do what you think is right because there’s very little that we can do that would be such a catastrophic failure that it would bring down our whole organization. In reality, it’s just a small failure and if your managers are always looking at things then you can just correct and it’s like a blip on the radar screen, nobody even notices it. But you have to create the culture where people feel like they can make mistakes."

Ian Record:

"Yeah, and we don’t see that everywhere in Indian Country. There are many tribes that -- and a lot of whom have those old federal systems -- that they’re just simply self-administering now where you make one mistake and you’re gone."

David Montgomery:

"Yeah, exactly.

Ian Record:

"And then in the process you’re not building up any of the institutional knowledge that you need to make change last over time."

David Montgomery:

"Yeah. And you wipe out innovation and creativity, because if you’re being innovative and being creative, you’re probably doing something new and if you’re doing something new, you’re not going to get it 100 percent right on the first try."

Ian Record:

"So you mentioned performance budgeting. You mentioned that a new employee -- as you’re explaining to them how their job works -- that they have to essentially follow what’s dictated in the budget proposal for their department. Performance budgeting and the process that you’ve put in place, the bottom line is the Nation has limited resources, you’re going to have more proposals come in requesting more money than you have. So how do you as the budget officer and how does the Q-munity Roadmap, the people charged with carrying out that plan, how do they I guess vet those proposals, how do they rank them, how do they prioritize them, then how do they distribute the funds?"

David Montgomery:

"So basically what we’ve done is we’ve created results teams which since we...that’s what they were called when it launched, and since then we’ve morphed them into our strategic-planning teams, but what they are is they’re frontline employees mostly, some mid-level managers and community members, and they’re organized by domain in our strategic plan, which is kind of functional areas. So for example we’ll take wellness from the social services example earlier. There’s a wellness team that’s responsible for the strategic plan, but then also when it’s time for budget, they review all those proposals and provide recommendations and do an analysis of how closely those proposals align with our strategic plan, because at the end of the day that’s the document that we look to to make those hard decisions."

Ian Record:

"So give me an example of how the performance budgeting process works for say law enforcement, kind of from the beginning to the end."

David Montgomery:

"What we look at is we look at outputs and outcomes as our performance measures. A lot of governments they don’t do any performance measures at all, the rest that do mostly focus on outputs. And so just to get the terminology straight, an output would be like number of tickets issued. So it’s a measure of productivity, which is good, but as an example if you’re a government decision-maker, the number of tickets that you issue doesn’t necessarily correlate with any sort of positive impact on your people. Instead you need to focus on outcomes. So if we’re trying to eliminate drunk driving, for example, then maybe we would look at the number of citations for drunk driving issued or maybe we would look at something else, maybe a measure that goes to the court system. How are those being resolved that are being prosecuted? All those things are great, but what we really want to see is a measurable outcome, which is a decrease in drunk driving-related deaths. And you can go through that exercise for almost any program, and you want to come up with both because you want measures of productivity, those are short-term that you can really keep track of, but you want the longer-term measures of outcomes. Are you making a positive impact in the lives of your people?"

Ian Record:

"So where do we talked about where the employees fit in in this process, particularly those maybe below the level of a department head or senior manager. Where do the citizens of the Nation fit in this Q-munity Roadmap process? What role do they play and what has been your challenge, I guess, and how have you addressed the challenge with getting their buy-in?"

David Montgomery:

"Basically, the citizens, we don’t expect them to be experts on our government process, on our bureaucracy if you will, so we engage them at the very beginning which is strategic planning. We want them to tell us where they want to end up and how they think we should get there. Then we go through our process and our own internal accountability and the next main point where they get engaged is when we send out this magazine. It’s kind of a first-of-its-kind publication because it takes anecdotal information which you’d see in a normal magazine, lots of pictures, things that are easy to understand, but it combines the performance data and the strategic-planning initiatives. So we’re trying to translate this highly technical and complex government system into something that the citizens can understand with the thought being that once they get this magazine and they read about our progress and they also experience the services and they observe what we’re doing, then the next time we go into a strategic planning cycle they’re more informed and educated about what we’ve done and then as they give us their feedback it’s real relevant and up to date and so we just keep it’s like a feedback, we just keep going through this cycle."

Ian Record:

"Have you seen their view of government improve as they’ve seen that loop come back to them and they’re seeing progress being made on their wishes, what their long term vision of the future is?"

David Montgomery:

"Yeah. Right now, we’re admittedly only three years into it, so we have a lot of improving to do, but basically I’ve heard almost nothing but positive feedback. At first, in the first year and a half it was rough because we were changing the organization and when people don’t like change they want to bad mouth it. But now that they realize they can’t get away from it, they’re actually, employees are starting to like the accountability because they can prove to the citizens and other people, 'This is what I’ve done for you. This is what I’ve done to earn my paycheck.' And so I’ve had managers and staff tell me, 'Thank you for implementing this. This is keeping us on top of things, this is making us more productive and this is making us feel better about our jobs,' which then that message is spilling over into the community, so even though the community still maybe doesn’t totally understand what’s happening, they know the government is making an effort to improve, to be more effective and to be more responsive."

Ian Record:

"So this is a good segue into my next question and it deals with the fact that you mentioned at the beginning: that you’ve been presenting the work that Quinault’s been doing to audiences from all over the world. And in those presentations you quote a U.S. Navy Admiral who said, 'Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.' Why do you site this quote in your presentations and how is it relevant to the Q-munity Roadmap process?

David Montgomery:

"Basically because when you do a big change like this, it requires a lot of courage. It does. But when you think of courage, normally you think of charging into battle or something like that and that’s not what this is about. If you come into it and expect a success in six months, in a year, even in two years, you’re probably not going to see it. So what you have to train yourself to think about is it’s courageous patience. To make a big change in a complex organization with lots of engrained systems, you’ve got to stick with it and you’ve got to fight those battles, those small battles every single day until it becomes part of the organizational culture and then it’s sustained that way."

Ian Record:

"So you mentioned that it’s only been, this Q-munity Roadmap has only been in place about three years now. But can you talk from your perspective in terms of how the Q-munity Roadmap and this new innovative approach to governmental budgeting is improving the Nation’s provision of programs and services to its citizens?"

David Montgomery:

"Number one, we’re just more effective and accountable for how we spend our money, because before we didn’t really know and we didn’t know the difference between success and failure because we weren’t really measuring it. And so what gets measured gets done and so now we’ve identified these are the things we think are important, we’re going to measure them and now they’re getting done at a higher rate, because all of a sudden managers are having their attention directed at that. Another benefit to our citizens is we are becoming much more competitive for grants and so we’re tracking all this data, we’re following our own strategic plan and at the present time those are really big concepts, important concepts with federal funding agencies and private foundations. They want to see a community vision that you’re following with performance metrics. So that’s why I always encourage other tribes to do that, because as federal funding is becoming more tight, we have to become more competitive to get a share of that money, and then we can stop competing with each other and start competing with cities and others..."

Ian Record: "So following up on that, how is the Q-munity Roadmap enhancing the Nation’s ability to achieve its long-term strategic goals and is it realizing its desired effects?"

David Montgomery:

"Yes. When you look at a long-term goal, you can’t really assess that in three years of course, but it appears to be trending in that direction. We had done -- this last strategic plan was our fourth strategic plan, and by all accounts the first three were abject failures and now people are saying, 'Wow, this is actually leading to something.' And so we feel that in ten years, when we look back at this, we are going to be much closer to our desired future condition than we’ve been with any of the other plans over the last ten years. So we are excited, but only time will tell."

Ian Record:

"Well, David, I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts, wisdom and experience with us."

David Montgomery:

"Yeah, thank you. It’s been a pleasure."  

Ian Record:

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