cultural identity

Gwen Phillips: Defining and Cultivating Strong, Healthy Ktunaxa Citizens

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Producer
Native Nations Institute
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Gwen Phillips, Director of Corporate Services and Governance Transition with the Ktunaxa Nation, discusses how Ktunaxa people gained a sense of Ktunaxa identity and belonging traditionally, and the different criteria that Ktunaxa is considering including among its citizenship criteria today.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Phillips, Gwen. "Reforming the Ktunaxa Nation Constitution: What We're Doing and Why." Tribal Constitutions seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. May 1, 2012. Presentation.

“But as a nation in our treaty making, in our self-government expressions, and even prior to assertion of those things in a formal way, we’ve already said, ‘We don’t care about status and we don’t care about residency, that we as a nation will determine who are citizens.’ And so we’ve created a number of categories, one of which is a descendancy through blood. But another one is adoption and there’s another one that basically -- well, it’s kind of a quasi adoption. An adoption would be sort of the formal place. But there’s another one that’s a recognition clause, and it’s kind of in contention right now, because some of the elders, the real elders -- and I’ll talk about the people that were there 100 years ago -- they’ll tell us that, ‘Come, sit, let me talk to you.’ After a while -- and you were sharing these stories with us at the break -- pretty soon that person’s a Ktunaxa. They think Ktunaxa, they act Ktunaxa, they speak Ktunaxa, therefore they are Ktunaxa. That’s the old elders, and then you get the ones that were sort of in the residential school place and subject to a lot of racism and subject to a lot of racial-program criteria and all of the above, and they get kind of, ‘Uh, no, you’re white or you’re this or you’re that or the other.’ We’re coming back to that point of recognizing -- because of the loss of our language -- that it might be important for us to say, ‘Hey, you speak Ktunaxa, you want to speak Ktunaxa, you want to be a citizen?’ That we might actually tie something to the language ability, because we need people to speak, and if people see a privilege of being associated with us and are willing to actually be a keeper of that language, some of us are going, ‘I don’t care what color you are. If you will be an active keeper of the language, we will turn you into a Ktunaxa person.’ So there’s differences in opinion about what a Ktunaxa is, and as we describe strong, healthy Ktunaxa citizens, it doesn’t say anything about blood. It’s all about the way you behave, the things you do, the associations that you portray, etc.”

Gwen Phillips: The Relationship Between Constitution, Culture, and Citizenship

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Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Gwen Phillips, Director of Corporate Services and Governance Transition with the Ktunaxa Nation, discusses some of the issues that the Ktunaxa Nation is deliberating as it engages the question of how to redefine its criteria for citizenship.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Phillips, Gwen. "Reforming the Ktunaxa Nation Constitution: What We're Doing and Why." Tribal Constitutions seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. May 1, 2012. Presentation.

“And we have to be really cautious as we use words, because words create worlds, we’ve come to see. And worlds are different all over the place. They’re different for every one of us, the world that we come from in our immediate. So the constitutions that we create really have to be reflections of ourselves in our immediate place and space [Ktunaxa language], the word [Ktunaxa language] means something that is actually connected to the earth. The picture in the middle is some hoodoos, and in that particular region of our territory is where our creation story is said to have taken place. The very end of it, when the humans were brought to the earth. ‘We came from the dirt,’ it is said, so [Ktunaxa language], the suffix of that or the root word of that one with the added suffix of [Ktunaxa language] means taking your life from the earth. [Ktunaxa language] means literally as me, a human, my children, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren. So when you understand the connection of those phrases, those terms, it’s immediate and it’s huge. It’s not saying necessarily that we own the land, that we take our lives from the land. [Ktunaxa language] -- also Ktunaxa words. The Ktunaxa language is one of the isolate languages in the world. It’s not related to any other language. It’s only spoken by my people. It breaks down into no further dialects. In Canada we have 11 aboriginal language families. My language is one of those 11, and it’s the most critically endangered of all of those languages at this point in time. My land, my language, my people. If nothing more, our constitution has got to speak to, understand, and reflect those concepts back to ourselves.”

James R. Gray: Rebuilding Osage Governance from the Ground Up

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Native Nations Institute
Year

In this informative intervew with NNI's Ian Record, James R. Gray, former Principal Chief of the Osage Nation, details his nation's effort to design a new constitution and government from the ground up, and provides an overview of the thorough education and consultation process the nation developed to ensure that its new governance system reflected the voice and enjoyed the support of the Osage people.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Gray, James R. "Rebuilding Osage Governance from the Ground Up." Leading Native Nations interview series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, The University of Arizona. Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 17, 2009. Interview.

Ian Record:

“Well, I’m here with Chief Jim Gray, who’s chief of the Osage Nation. Thank you for being here today.”

James R. Gray:

“Glad to be here.”

Ian Record:

“We’re here today to talk about Native nation building, governance, and specifically what the Osage Nation is doing to not only rebuild this nation, but build a healthy community for its citizens. I’d like to start by asking you the same first question I ask everyone I sit down and chat with and that is, how would you define Native nation building and what does it entail for the Osage Nation?”

James R. Gray:

“To me, the definition of nation building has to do with setting up a structure of how a nation does its business. And there’s a lot of different ways governments do that around the world. I think in our case, we had to go back to our past and our history and understand that we’ve always had some form of institutional governance that predated the Europeans. We wanted to capture as much of the theme of that as much as we could in the modern era that we live in. And so in terms of how we integrate nation building is that we really did try to understand as a nation, how you do business with other governments, how you take care of your own people, how you make decisions, how you resolve conflicts, and how you provide some measure of accountability for your citizens? And in the process of that, nation building is the foundation upon which we build these institutions, but that’s the purpose.”

Ian Record:

“The next question I’d like to ask you, ask for your view of a statement of a fellow tribal leader who once said, ‘The best defense of sovereignty is to exercise it effectively.’”

James R. Gray:

"I think that’s an excellent point. I think a lot of tribes -- certainly during the last century -- really operated under the notion that if you stay quiet, you stand under the radar screen, they’ll leave you alone. And I think what is happening in the last generation of tribal leaders and tribal governments is that they’ve kind of broken out of that model and have taken the initiative to the states, to the federal government, to the communities in their area and say, ‘You know, we have the ability to help solve community-wide problems. We have the ability to address the social problems that we have in the community. We now, in other words, instead of blaming somebody else and just operating under the radar screen, we’re taking just the opposite approach, which is taking the fight to the streets and taking the...using the sovereignty of the nation to create programs and departments and initiatives that actually address the needs of our community.’”

Ian Record:

“It’s interesting you mentioned this issue of going back and really taking a look at your culture and seeing what from your culture you can incorporate into your modern governance. The NNI and Harvard Project research has found that for Native nation governments to be viewed as legitimate by their people, which is absolutely critical to its success, that they must be both effective, and also culturally appropriate. How is Osage trying to tackle that challenge?”

James R. Gray:

“Well, I think we borrowed quite a bit from some of the research that you all have done over the years and looked at it from our standpoint about how we would go about trying to effect the kind of institutional change that had to take place at Osage and realizing that for a hundred years that we did not have that right and we did not have that capacity to do that and we did not have the support from our own community to even try. When we endeavor to try and go down that road to recognize that the United States and their efforts to reaffirm the inherent sovereign rights of the Osages to make these decisions for themselves through legislation, it empowered us in a way that we weren’t really fully grasping what exactly we had accomplished immediately. But after some reflection, we realized we had a blank slate. We had an opportunity to remake Osage in a way that made sense for us. And realizing that so many other tribes have traveled down this road before, we felt like we could maybe not, and certainly that wasn’t the point, was to copy what any tribe had done, but to learn about the process and realizing that, ‘Let’s not devote ourselves to a whole lot of time on certain outcomes. Let’s devote our time to a process that is inclusive of all Osages that includes Osages on the reservation, of the reservation, those that are full blood, mixed blood, those that have head rights, that don’t have head rights, that are educated, that are not educated, employees, department heads, programs. We tried...we cast the widest net possible to include all the voices of the tribe in to this conversation about what kind of government you wanted and realizing that that effort was not going to be something that we were going to be able to predict accurately what that outcome was. But if we did the process right, it wouldn’t matter.”

Ian Record:

“Dr. Cornell of the Native Nations Institute and the Harvard Project has often framed the process of nation building as centrally a process of remaking that nation’s governance tools. And based on everything I know about Osage, that’s precisely what you guys are doing.”

James R. Gray:

“Yeah, everything from...going from a one-branch government to a three-branch government clearly indicated to us that what the Osage people were saying is that they did not want a...they wanted checks and balances and they wanted accountability and they wanted some attention given to the needs of the people through a process that they were maybe familiar with by living under the United States democracy or the state democracy where they live, that it was something familiar with them that they knew that if we set up this way, then we knew that our money would safe, we knew that there would be certain responsibilities on elected officials. We knew that communication was going to be more important than it had ever been in the past, two-way communication. And so the effective marching orders that we got from our own people was to build a system of government that was focused heavily on accountability, focused heavily on getting people with the right ethical backgrounds to actually do the work of a public servant. And to create institutions that actually had powers, and it wasn’t a power based on personality, it was a power based on law. And these were dramatic changes from where we’d been for the last hundred years, but that’s what they want, and that’s the government that’s been created for us. And so building those, taking those words and put them into action has been the work of the last three years of building institutions, separating our business from politics, and ensuring that every citizen, no matter where they live, is legitimately involved in the political process of the tribe.”

Ian Record:

“And building that government really took a major step forward in 2006 when the Osage Nation ratified a new constitution, entirely new constitution and a new system of government. And I guess without going into too extensive historical detail, but for perhaps a general overview of what prompted the Osage Nation to undertake reform in the first place?”

James R. Gray:

“I think the idea that Osages in the '90s had a taste of what political empowerment meant, especially those Osages that did not have an interest in the mineral estate, the 'non-shareholders' as they called them back home. And the non-shareholders outnumbered the shareholders by a two-to-one ratio by that time. And given the unfortunate fact was, is that a fourth of Osage head rights had been willed out of the tribe over the years. And it wasn’t stopped until the early '80s, I believe, that they actually amended the 1906 acts to prevent any further head rights from going out of the tribe. Because often time, before that, an Osage would marry a non-Osage and if they died earlier, then they could put it in their will that that spouse would get their head right. And then that spouse would remarry someone else and then they would have kids and those head rights were gone, they never came back. So a fourth of the value of Osage mineral state has gone out of Osage hands over the years and that created a bit of a problem, too. So you had a really odd situation in the early part of this decade where the vast majority of the Osages weren’t even part of the tribe, they weren’t considered members, they did not have any political rights, they couldn’t vote, they couldn’t run for office, and there was no hope that they were ever going to. And still, the head right issue was something that I think is still part of us today, it is still a protected property right of all the individuals who had head rights before, still have those head rights now, myself included. And the thing that I think is probably the biggest challenge for us was to ensure that that head right was going to remain intact and we weren’t going to lose any more. And while we may not be able to get those head rights back under the normal way in which we had lost them, there seems to be a growing sentiment among our people that we need to redefine what being Osage is. And that included recapturing our culture, recapturing our history, and providing other programs and job opportunities and educational benefits and health benefits to all our citizens. And at the time, we were building casinos and we were making money and really we were never in a position to actually, independently fund these kind of things either. So we had an interesting cross section of a cultural renaissance that’s been going on for the tribe over the last 25-30 years, where our ceremonial dances are populated at a level that we’ve never seen before and a resurgence of reclaiming our culture and our language and our history and our ancient history, combined with the financial resources to defend issues that are important to us and advance issues that are important to us and address the problems in our community. We have the ability to reorganize our government. So all these things came at once. So the fact that all that happened in the last seven years is pretty remarkable, it is. And it’s almost historic in a sense that if you can imagine what a historic moment is while you’re living it, it’s kind of hard to, but at the same time, it’s kind of...it’s like watching the wall fall down in Eastern Germany. You knew something big was happening. You knew that that wall wasn’t going to go back up. You knew that this change was permanent. Now it may not look the same 20 years from now than it does right now, but that change means is that the dynamics of what the Osages are going to be like and what kind of government they’re going to have is going to be up to the Osages and not somebody else.”

Ian Record:

“Following up on that, if you can paint a picture for us of what the previous constitution system of government looked like and how decisions were made, how the government functioned. Why was it deemed, ultimately, why was it deemed inadequate?”

James R. Gray:

“I think I touched on some of that already when I talked about the fact that it disenfranchised a great number of our citizens. But between the years of 1906 and 2004, the Osages -- well 2006 -- the Osages for those hundred years lived in a...what they call an imposed system of government. That means it wasn’t one of our creation, it wasn’t one that we had, would’ve picked for ourselves if we had the right to do that. The Indian agent at that time abolished the tribe’s 1881 constitution, opened up the rolls, and had a ratification of sorts, of a new form of government that was eventually passed by United States Congress in 1906 called the 1906 Osage Allotment Act. But it did so much more than just the allotment. I mean yeah, it did an allotment, but it did a whole lot more than that. One of them was is that it defined who an Osage was. It defined what rights the Osage had. It defined what powers their Osage tribal government was to have, which was an eight-member elected council whose primary function was to approve oil and gas leases and oversee the allotment of the lands on our reservation. And over the years...and of course there was a chief and an assistant chief who served basically a formal role. It wasn’t a title that actually endowed any authority except to break a tie, and that was it. And we had chiefs under this system; I think we’ve had eight or nine chiefs over the years that have served in that capacity. And there was always an attempt by an element within the tribe to reform out of that and going back to the 1950s. And throughout the years they had always tried to break through and tried to get the attention, but like I said, when you’ve tied the membership of the tribe to collecting a per capita check every quarter, tying those two issues together as a legal issue, you can see how difficult and literally impossible it was for the tribe to achieve any kind of reform even though their heart ached. You had to die in order for your children to be a part of the tribe. There was something almost morbid about it and it wasn’t anything that we created. And realizing that so many head rights had gone out of Osage hands over the years that by the time I came around and the 31st council came around in 2002, there was a growing appeal from our own people that said, ‘We need to fix this membership issue.’ And ironically, it was the biggest wholesale election upset in tribal council history. You’d have to go all the way back to 1912 to find a period of time when the entire council lost their job in one election, and the chief, and the assistant chief. I think only one person survived and she was the rebel. So as it turned out, you ended up having a brand new slate of people coming into office with a mandate, if you will, of reform. And so during that period of time, it became real obvious to me that that was the first thing we took up when we go into place was to address this membership issue and the sovereignty issue of actually finding a way to be able to get out from under the structure. And we realized that we couldn’t go to the courts, we could only go to Congress, and that was the message we received from the appeals court ten years earlier or eight years earlier when they made that decision. That this is an issue for Congress to fix, not the courts, and so we did that. And as far as the government structure and how it operated, basically over the years, we had become the so-called de facto government of the Osage Tribe because there was nothing else there. So we became administrators of federal grants, federal programs, and different departments of, whether it’s title six or 477, NAHASDA, we ended up being the de facto entity that would receive these funds and administer these programs, but even a benevolent dictator is still a dictator to a lot of the people who had no role in selecting them or electing them. So the vast majority of Osages that received benefits from the tribe utilized their CDIB number in terms of determining population, things like that, service area. And even though we were in charge of administering, we knew that this was inherently flawed. That you’re trying to represent a group of people that had no role in putting you in office and they outnumber the people who did by a two-to-one margin. So it didn’t come as a big surprise, but it is remarkable in a sense that we did grow out of that through what limited democracy we did have through an election. Through selection of eight people and a chief and assistant chief who ran on the issue of reform at a time when that would’ve been unheard of 50 years earlier.”

Ian Record:

“So the election happens and then constitutional reform begins to unfold. And I’m curious to learn more about the approach that the nation took in commencing with constitutional reform, what process it employed.”

James R. Gray:

“Yeah, we realized that probably the best thing that, the smartest decision that the 31st Council did, and if I recall it was a unanimous decision by all members, that we wanted to create a government reform commission. We didn’t want any elected official who was holding office at that time to have any role whatsoever in sitting on that commission, or anything like that. So we instituted a very interesting approach that what we will do is we will nominate people that we believe are effective representatives, that have open minds, that have the capacity to learn and listen, and make sure that they conduct a process that is fair and open and inclusive as possible. And so everyone got to put like five names, including the chief and the assistant chief, and we put them all in the box, and then all of us in a secret ballot, voted our top five. And so we had this very elaborate election, selection process that nobody knew who their favorite was, there was no coordination, it was all done right there at the moment. And everyone picked their top five and put it in a hat and then the secretary went around and started putting the names on a grease board, started putting names, lines next to each one of them. And effectively, we put together the top ten individuals that were in that commission, were the ones that were selected. And some of them are elders, some of them are cultural leaders, some of them are successful business people, there are people that have backgrounds in government, the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs], there was lawyers. It was a very interesting cross section of many, many Osages that I felt really did capture the historic significance of it immediately upon getting installed into that office.”

Ian Record:

“So what major challenges, we often hear about constitutional reform taking place throughout Indian Country and some sort of process, some sort of dialog at least. And we often hear that the reform actually doesn’t happen for a variety of reasons, and I’m curious to learn from you what sorts of challenges or obstacles did Osage encounter during the reform process. What things did you perhaps not expect or said, ‘Oh we’ve got to be very methodical in how deal with it if we’re going to keep this process moving.”

James R. Gray:

“I’ll tell you one story. This happened about five months into the commission’s work and after a series of meetings that the commission had, and like I said, these people come from a very broad cross section of Osages. And as you may imagine in their initial meetings, they didn’t know each other, some of them didn’t like each other, some of them didn’t understand each other and there was all those usual feeling their positions out. And I think it became real clear that after a series of meetings over those first few critical months, they weren’t getting much done. And at one meeting they got up and they said, ‘You know, we’re probably going to have to go back to the council and tell them we just can’t do it.’ And this one little lady that sits on there is the vice chair, her name’s Priscilla Iba, you’ve had her to your events before. I remember this to this day. If there was ever a Patrick Henry of the Osage Nation it was Priscilla Iba who just stood up and this nice little meek librarian at the City of Tulsa Library who spent her whole life working in that field and very serious, very earnest, but taking the seriousness of what she was being asked to do by her people and realizing that she had to get up and say something and she is, she’s very introverted. She’s not the kind of person that’s going to go...she’s not that...she’s just very quiet and meek and very careful with what she does. She’s earnest and genuine; she’s got a heart of gold. She got up there and talked to all those other commissioners and she just put her little foot down and said, ‘I am not going to be a part of something that fails. We are going to roll up our sleeves and we’re going to get this done.’ Now she said a lot more and I wasn’t there, but the word I got back from several different people at that commissioner’s [meeting] that had told me later on that, ‘it was that speech by that little woman is what made me stick it out.’ Now I can imagine that there has been situations like that with other tribes where they felt like they just hit a wall because they couldn’t get through some of these initial personality issues or feeling the weight of the responsibilities so much that they just shut it off and say, ‘Look, this is too big for us.’ You can easily see how people can come to that conclusion. But it took real courage and it took somebody on that commission who was just like them to get up and say what had to be said. That little speech turned that whole room around and they got serious and they got busy and they got back on track and they finished their job.”

Ian Record:

“Did you also encounter during the process, I guess, blowback from community members who may have been either comfortable with the status quo or who just were kind of wary of such a fundamental systemic change as you guys were undertaking?”

James R. Gray:

“Yeah, we had that, and they had their opportunity to say their piece during that process, but it seemed like there was such a momentum that even all the members of the council who, in the waning months of their term, because we’re talking about this constitution was ratified in March of ‘06. So we’re talking like February of ‘06. There was some members of the council who were getting calls from some people who felt like, ‘We don’t need to do this.’ And they started echoing their sentiments in the council chambers. And I felt like, if we were to have another election with just shareholders voting, which was just a few months away, that I really didn’t think that this change was ever going to happen. And I said, ‘You know, it may not be the perfect governing document and it may need to be amended, but the bottom line is that there’s people out there in our tribe, your relatives, my relatives, our relatives, our friends, our neighbors, the people in our community, they’re expecting to vote in this election and we have an obligation to give them something. But if you’re going to stop the commission from having this referendum, which is what they were talking about doing, just shutting it down, then you’re going to have a civil war here. And I really don’t think we have to go that route, that way.’ As a matter of fact, I made it very clear in that tribal council meeting that if we don’t do this and we don’t allow the people to vote on their constitution, then in three weeks I’m announcing a constitutional convention here in Pawhuska and whoever’s in the room’s going to be the ones that draft that constitution and that’s what we’re going to have. But we’re going to have a constitution one way or the other. And I know I get the heat too from people having second thoughts and questioning whether or not we’re doing the right thing, and all this stuff. And whenever you are at that moment of critical mass, you got to go back to why you even did it to begin with. And you've got to restate all those reasons why we did this. Why did we go to U.S. Congress to get the law changed? Why did we start a government reform commission? Why did we want to go listen to what everyone else had to think about what their government was? And why did we want to write it down? Why did we did we put it in the constitution? Because it allows people authenticity of knowing that they’re efforts actually translated into something real. To abandon the game at this juncture would’ve set this nation back a generation and it would’ve been very, very difficult to get us back to that day where we were at that point. And I think something happened. It was one of those kind of moments where I think people really kind of come to grips with the fact that we’re going to have to go forward, especially when I knew they were going to do a constitutional convention where...it was funny. But I really do think there was some hesitancy right there towards the end. But at the end of the day, two-thirds of the people voted in favor of it, and it passed big. And that constitution enabled us to go forward and have the elections and do all the rest of the stuff that we needed to do since then.”

Ian Record:

“This is a follow-up question. I’ve been struck by some of the tribes that I’ve worked with on the issue of constitutional reform about the rush to reform. The problems are so immense. And there’s been a consensus reached in the community that the main reason for a lot of these problems, or at least part of the problem, part of the reason for these problems is we have an inadequate constitution and system of government. We got to change it. But what we see in a lot of communities is that there’s not even a basic understanding of how the constitution affects peoples’ daily lives. And is that something that you guys struggle with, of this not only public education around reform and public’s input of reform, but actually, even before that saying, ‘Here’s what our constitution says, here’s how that translates into your daily life, here’s how it keeps us making good decisions,’ etcetera, etcetera. Is that something you guys encounter?”

James R. Gray:

“I think in practice, once we had the constitution because unlike other circumstances that you all probably encountered where some of the tribes are struggling with the process of amending their IRA [Indian Reorganization Act] constitution or in Oklahoma’s case, Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act, constitutions, and realizing that we were specifically exempt from those two laws, but that was because of the way the 1906 Act had tied those two issues of per caps and membership together. That we didn’t fit neatly into those categories that the other tribes did that allowed them to have some measure of self-governance. But even over time when they had to amend it or change it, it was still, you’re going to the Bureau for the approval and you still had to play the subject to the larger federal system that, what they were willing to allow, what they weren’t willing to allow. And so that always held a lot of tribes back. And in our case, we had an act of Congress that was our IRA and as a result, it made it very, very difficult for us to do it through the normal channels of changing the CFRs or something like that, because once we went out and started talking in the community, before we went to Congress we had a 90-day hold on a resolution. That was all we could pass, we could not pass laws; all we could pass was resolutions. And in that resolution, we wanted to go to U.S. Congress and amend the 1906 Act to allow everyone to participate without messing with the head rights. And I wanted to wait. I wanted to have some public comment. I wanted to have some meetings with the community. And we got some feedback from them and they said, ‘Don’t stop there. Yeah, go ahead. Fix the membership. Do what you have to do, but let’s get our sovereignty back while you’re at it.’ And that was the surprising thing. That didn’t come from the council, that came from the people -- a stack of written documents that were written to us by Osages living all over the country that wanted to see us change -– wholesale change. And in the practice of doing that, we had something to bounce back from. And maybe it was easier to change an existing constitution, maybe it was harder; I don’t know. All I know is we went from an act of Congress on provisions of what our governance was to a constitutional government. So we went from having really no constitution, to having one. And so that process, like you pointed out, became the challenge of this government, which is say, ‘Look, the power of the principal chief’s office is not embedded in my personality,’ which had been in the past, what power the principal chief had for a hundred years. It wasn’t based on any law that said, ‘You have the right to veto. You can do this. You can do that.’ There was no statement of authorities other than the fact that I broke a tie. And that 31st Council, I think they passed over 2,000 votes. I broke five ties and not one of them were good. They were...when you got a divided council like that, you’re going to make half the room happy and you’re going to make the other half mad. You don’t win those things. If you’re the chief, that’s a lousy spot to be in. And so realizing that that was the only authority I had, this constitution empowered the executive with CEO-like authority in our tribal government; to represent the nation, to speak for the nation, to actually have the power to veto the legislation and do things like that. So the education process of our own people, realize that even though this is what they wanted, they said it on paper, seeing it in practice was a completely different thing, was a concept that was foreign to not only the tribe, the people, but the program directors who operated services for the tribe, the process of reporting responsibility to the chief was not something they had to do before. Now they do. And there’s all these other communications that have to back and forth between the two branches of government.”

Ian Record:

“So you undertake reform, you complete it, and you essentially produce an entirely new system of government. And I was wondering if you can talk about perhaps, the three or four major features of that new constitution and system of government, how they differ fundamentally from the previous systems.”

James R. Gray:

“I say the biggest change obviously is the membership, the definition of who a citizen is. Anybody who is a lineal descendant of that original roll that was done in 1906 is a member of the tribe with no more rights and no less rights than any other citizen. Those fundamental principles shifted the balance of power in the tribe, it shifted the politics of the tribe, it shifted the priorities of the tribe in such a big, big way that I don’t even think now I could really grasp how significant of a change that was because for so long we were just completely focused on the price of oil. Because if you weren’t increasing the price of oil, your political future was bleak because the future hope of any tribal elected official was that there was always going to be oil and gas production to ensure a healthy head right check every quarter. And people voted based on how they did during that time they were in office. So even though the tribe had very little control over the price of oil, our political fortunes were totally tied to it, but it dominated the politics of the tribe, it dominated what we felt was important. It identified who the representatives were going to be. And so for the longest time, I can tell you that that was probably the biggest significant thing because once we went a one-man, one-vote government, the whole priorities changed. Language, culture became very important; jobs, economic development became very important. Diversifying an economy out of a total reliance on oil and gas became very important. Education became incredibly important. Health care became very important. Even though we did some of that all on the way during all those years, it never became a mandate like it became with this new government. Because you had all these different people who had all these different interests at work here. The second thing, I would probably have to say is the structure that the minerals council, which is now an independent agency within the tribe that still does the oil and gas leasing responsibilities, and their elections are by shareholders. So that’s the one vestige of the old government that we went with, that we kept intact. And those individuals continued to interact with the BIA and their regional offices and the oil and gas industry. They still do their oil and gas summits. They still do the communications directly to the shareholders. And the shareholders will still continue to be the voters in those elections. So that’s the other significant thing. I think the third thing, and of course there’s other, but I think to stop there would be the empowerment of our tribal court and the executive branch. Basically the tribal court...the courts, the executive branch and the legislative branch all resided in the tribal council for a hundred years. All three of those functions were all there. When we broke those things up into three individual parts, no one was more powerful than the other; every one of them had a role to play. The thing that is probably the most significant thing is realizing that to all those elected officials that serve on the legislature, they felt like this was a diminishment of the old tribal council’s authority because they could not jump in the middle of a court case, they could not come in and overstep the chief and direct a program and actually run a program. I made it real clear, if you just look at the constitution, you look what people said, they didn’t want 12 program directors, they wanted 12 legislators that were going to be in charge of protecting the purse of the nation as well as passing law or enacting legislation and realizing that that was one full-time function that was never given enough attention in the past because we never had the power to make law. So the legislative branch had a massive education program that they had to undertake to understand how laws are written, how the committee systems work. They had the National Society of State Legislatures come in and give them training and there was just this amazing fundamental shift. And those were probably the big three.”

Ian Record:

“So we’ve already touched on this issue of citizen education and engagement, and I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about that particularly with respect to its importance in the constitutional reform process. If you could talk a bit about the steps that you guys took to ensure that the peoples, the voice of the people would be incorporated fully into this new constitution system of government. The voice of the people came from a lot of different sources, and some of it came strictly as shareholders interested. Some of it came as residents in the housing community. Some of them came as residents in our three villages. Some of it came as a form of an employee club kind of wish list of the things they’d like to see done in the tribe. Some of it came from the little Osage clubs that built up over the years like in Southern California, Northern California, Texas, and New Mexico and Arizona. There’s Osage organizations of people who live out there that they get together and socialize. All of them participated in involvement in one level or another in communication to myself and other elected officials about how they wanted the government run. As far as the process goes ongoing, me and the assistant chief went on the road a couple of times over the last few years to go back and just say, ‘Hey, did we get it right, are we still doing...here’s where we’re at right now, here’s what’s going on, here’s the challenges before us today. Anybody got any questions?’ And of course with the blogs and the internet becoming a source of, ‘Hey, did you hear what the chief did’ kind of stuff, a lot of times I’ve spent on the road trying to just knock down rumors and things like that and realizing that some of the stuff they hear is coming from the least informed individuals in the tribe. And so naturally, they latch on to any kind of conspiracy theory and things like that so it becomes...communication is becoming more and more of an issue. And the method by which we communicate is through our tribal newsletter and our tribal website. The tribal newsletter has gone through a lot of fundamental shifts and changes. We’re trying to create, by Osage law, a fourth estate that actually, there will be an independent newspaper that will report on news of the Osage Nation free of any interference from the tribal congress or my office and the courts and realizing that that is a truly remarkable achievement for any tribe, especially a new democracy like ours. But recognizing that once Osages got a taste of democracy, they want the whole meal, they want an independent press, they want the structures in accountability, the treasurer of the Osage Nation has to issue an annual report. There’s all these fundamental calls for action to insure accountability because the Osages have never really seen the tribe have this kind of money before. We have seven operating casinos today generating $200 million a year in economic activity. We’re the largest employer in Osage County by far. We’re the largest employee of non-Indians by far. We do a lot of charity; we do a lot of community outreach. We have outstanding agreements with the state and federal agencies, local communities, municipalities, school boards, county commissioners, drug courts with the district courts. We have a lot of relationships that we’ve created because the priorities of the nation had changed.”

Ian Record:

“So you mentioned it’s been three years since, a little over three years since the new constitution was passed and new system of government was created. I’m curious to learn what sorts of growing pains you’re encountering as you continue to build and expand and strengthen this amazing system of government.”

James R. Gray:

“I think the biggest challenge for us is communication. I think we have to be better at communicating to each other. We need to be able to do constructive debate. I think that sometimes in a tribal political environment, or even in politics in Washington or at the State Capitol, you’re going to run into elements in our community that are more on the fringe of responsible discourse. And I think the...combine that unbridled right of free speech that is now in our constitution with the access to the internet, with the access to the blogs, with the personal agendas being advanced by a lot of different folks, some of it worthy of attention, some of it not. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide what’s important. Communication, clear, open, a degree of transparency that not only provides for assurances and accountability, but also, accountability and transparency with a certain caution that you are going to protect the rights of the individuals, you are going to preserve personnel files, you’re going to preserve health records, you’re going to preserve the Social Security numbers that are contained in our enrollment list in our membership office. So there’s an obligation that we have an open records act, that we also have an obligation of creating a privacy act to go right along with it just so that we balance out the needs of the individuals against the needs of the tribe and the responsibilities both have. And there’s a lot of work to do in this area. There’s a mountain of work to do in this area. And probably right now we’re just struggling through the simple little petty power politics that happens with a new tribal, a new government of any kind. So unfortunately we’ve been digressed a bit by some of those side issues, but the primary function of the tribe is to take care of its people. And the institutions that the nation has are all there. We have a mandate from the people to protect and preserve our culture and language. We have a mandate from the people to create jobs and economic diversification. We have a mandate to the people to ensure the protection of the Osage mineral state. We have enormous beneficial financial resources from our gaming operations. All seven of our casinos are paid for and they’re all just bringing in money right now. And so we’re at a point now where we can reinvest those dollars in all different kinds of ways, reclaiming our history and being able to tell our story because we’ve never been able to do that. Going back to setting up systems of accountability to ensure the compliance is done for federal and state and tribal laws that have overlapping jurisdiction in our communities, making sure that whenever we hire someone, that they are allowed due process rights. And so political hires are separate from all that. Everyone else -- just like in the federal government system -- has their own employee protection rights. They have it in state governments as well because those employees are career employees. They’ll be there long after I’m gone still doing their job. And they should be, if they’re going to commit their career and their family to living in Pawhuska and working for their tribe and working at capacity, that at the very least, the tribe owes them a commitment to assure that their pension is not going to get jacked with or their personnel rights are not going to be destroyed. And they’ll be expected to do a good job and if they do a good job, they’ll be financially rewarded for that. There’s a lot of things that’s put upon all of us to build this nation up right, and it’s an enormous challenge. It’s something that I did not really anticipate fully until I actually had to roll up my sleeve and actually get in the business of doing it.”

Ian Record:

“Well it’s probably good you didn’t fully anticipate it or you might have had second thoughts. Equally impressive, from our perspective, as the constitution is the comprehensive strategic plan process that you guys embarked on directly on the heels of the ratification of the new constitution. As if the constitutional reform wasn’t exhaustive enough, you said let’s do comprehensive strategic planning for the entire nation. Why did the nation decide it was so important to take that step at that time?”

James R. Gray:

“I came up with this idea actually when I was campaigning for chief in 2006, when I was running for re-election. And I was sitting back there at all the political forums and I would just sit in the back row and usually I would let everyone else go talk first. One day I just sat there after going to about my 15th or 16th one, you hear the same speeches from the same candidates who followed me at all the other events that we went to and I took a note pad and I just started putting a dollar amount next to every campaign promise that was being made by every elected official. And so when I got up there and spoke, and at this particular event I spoke last, and I said, ‘Well, because of the casinos that we have right now we probably generate about $25 to $35 million annually...,’ that was the existing numbers that we had at the time, ‘...of revenue, of which about $20 million of it is spent on government operations. So that leaves us about $10 to $15 million that we get to save, invest, reinvest, create new program services, build, buy land, do all this other stuff; all the things that you’ve been hearing. I just want to let you all know...,’ and I was just talking to everybody in the room and I said, ‘...I just added it up, there’s roughly from when you add the oil and gas refinery to the, we want to build our own lake, we want to buy all our land back, we want to...and all of a sudden you start putting an actual dollar number next to this and I’m sitting here looking at about three-quarters of a billion dollars of campaign promises. And I just told you we only get about $10 to $15 million a year. Now, how are you going to prioritize the stuff that you know you could do now against the stuff that you want to do, but you know it’s going to take a long time to get there and realizing that there’s going to have to be some kind of prioritization of ideas that need to be implemented under this new government?’ And so after I got elected, and I was talking to our senior planner after I gave my speech, after I was inaugurated the second term, I said, ‘How many tribal leaders do you know of when given the opportunity to give a speech to this audience on this occasion would use it to give a policy speech?’ And I said, ‘I feel like I missed the opportunity here to do something really grand,’ but unfortunately all I talked about was strategic planning and realizing that with limited resources -- but significant -- it was necessary for us to prioritize what we wanted this government to do.”

Ian Record:

“And I know that in this strategic planning process, the Osage Nation essentially followed this same inclusive comprehensive approach to getting the citizens’ input.”

James R. Gray:

"I think we used that as an element of the process. Like I talked to you about earlier -- that I wasn’t really interested in the outcome. I just wanted to make sure that everyone had enough ownership into that thing that they felt like that’s their plan too. It’s not my plan; it’s the people’s plan. We drove that home again and again and again. I said, ‘Look, you’re going to be the one...we already know what our past is. We’ve seen, we’ve lived through it, and we know it from shared stories that we’ve had, oral traditions and things of that nature. Today we’re here to talk about the future and we want you to write it. And as an Osage citizen newly endowed with inalienable rights to pursue that goal is the focus of this work.’ So we walked everybody through it and it created such a tsunami of excitement, enthusiasm, optimism, political engagement that we have never seen before from the citizenry because they really did take that seriously. And we didn’t just go once. After we did the initial round of the town hall meetings we came back, we brought together a group of Osage citizens that were program directors, elected officials, judges, employees, community leaders, cultural leaders, elders, people who lived off the reservation, and we brought them all back to go through the results of all those town hall meetings and consolidate these projects and these ideas and notions of governments exercising their sovereignty in all these different ways, broke them down into six different categories. And then we broke them down even further into projects and we rewrote basically what we felt was probably the appropriate way to put it back out to the people in the form of a survey. And we asked them, ‘Based on these descriptions that you’ve told us, how would you rank the most important ones?’ So they were given the opportunity to yet again provide additional input. After we got the feedback from those surveys we were able to break them down in the six categories -- economic development, environment, education, health care, government and justice and minerals and natural resources -- and in those six categories, it had specific things that they were supposed to do. We listed all the programs and departments and institutions of the government in a different grid and depending on what the project was it indicated which program department was responsible for carrying it out, which one would support, which one was going to lead and so we had our marching orders. It gave us such clarity as to what was going to happen and how we were going to get there. That was the remarkable achievement and that’s why it was so much more of a valuable management tool, as was the constitution was for the people. The constitution gave you the road map, the strategic plan put you in the car and filled up the tank, who gets on the bus. I mean it was...in other words, you had to get that first and then you build upon it all these other things. And part of that strategic plan was to give us some sense of direction, that with this government, we can achieve all these things. And that became the major accomplishment out of that whole process.”

Ian Record:

“Doesn’t also, too, make your day-to-day challenge, your daily challenges as an elected leader that much easier, when you have that strategic plan to use as a guide to make those decisions to decide whether to put this fire out or not, or put that fire out or not?”

James R. Gray:

“Right. Like I said, it’s an excellent management tool because you know what your priorities are. You walk in the door every morning to go to work. You know what you’re going to do. Now, there’s uncertainty all the time in this business as a tribal leader. You never know what’s going to happen. There could be a water leak in the casino that forced [you] to close it. I mean you deal with the crisis of the day, but once that has been addressed, then you have all this other stuff that’s already been laid out for you. And our challenge right now is getting our employees and our directors in a structure, an employment structure that rewards their hard work, that doesn’t just reward quit and stay, that rewards accomplishments, that puts the programs on a performance-based management tool. All these things came right out of strategic planning. Then we realized, it’s not going to be easy getting some of these individuals that worked under that old system their whole careers to switch to something brand new without the necessary trainings. So we had to invest a lot into their education on working in teams and understanding the performance-based budget, and understanding how to draft their budgets. For years, the CFO [chief financial officer] did everyone’s budgets. And when I came in, I tore that thing down and really, I said, ‘Look, if you want to be paid as a director, then I think you should know what your budget is.’ So with all the assistance and providing from the accounting and taking them to classes and getting software installed on our computers, all the directors did their own budgets, and it was a major accomplishment. I mean these kind of changes don’t happen overnight. You have to really invest in education and training of getting your people motivated. And that’s that old saying, just because someone has the right degree, from the right school, that had X amount of years in the workforce, if they’ve got a lousy attitude, they’ll never work out. If you’ve got someone with just the bare minimum educational qualities, with just the bare minimum of work experience, but they are so on fire to do a great job, you can do so much more with that individual just because their attitude’s changed. And my job primarily is to keep people fired up about this and acknowledging our successes whenever we have them and reward these guys. And so the real challenge for us is to take the strategic plan off the paper and put it into a service and put it into program and put it into action. And so that’s the process we’re in right now. We’re doing this massive reorganization of the employee structure. How we pay, the merit pay system, all the things that we’re doing with training and education, working in teams, breaking this up into divisions, and getting ourselves out of that old tribal council mentality that any of these [Osage] Congressmen can come into your office and tell you who to hire, who not to hire, who to contract, who not to contract with, where you’re going to put your desk to where you’re going to order your pens from. That kind of micromanaging is gone and so they’re empowered with those responsibilities, but if they’re going to have the responsibilities here’s the parameters and here’s the training you’re going to get.”

Ian Record:

“So we were just talking about your...this issue of leadership and how the new system, the new constitution and the new system of government has essentially empowered you to do your job better, to manage more effectively, to administer the decisions the [Osage] Congress makes more effectively. I’ve heard the challenge of being a tribal leader described as drinking from a fire hose, in terms of trying to manage all the pressures that you face on a day-to-day basis and forge ahead on behalf of the nation, moving the community forward. And I was wondering if you could speak to that challenge and how, perhaps, what advice you would give new leaders as to how to handle that load, forge ahead and actually make a difference in the long run.”

James R. Gray:

“I think in my situation, because for four years I didn’t have that kind of responsibility, and in the last four years I have had that kind of responsibility, it became real clear to me that chief of the Osage Nation under this government has a lot more responsibility to communicate. There’s a lot more communication responsibility both internally and externally. I think we have a duty, more than anything else to let people know, certainly those that live within the Osage Nation, but aren’t Osage, that we’re not out to get them or we’re part of the community; we’re a good corporate entity that does a lot charity, that does a lot of community projects, that does a lot of outreach, that does a lot of outstanding agreements with municipalities and county governments and state and overlapping federal agencies that have a variety of different kinds of jurisdiction here, that interact with the tribe, that there’s an external component, almost like a secretary of state application. And if you don’t do that, if you’re not paying attention to that, that stuff can kill you as a tribal leader if you don’t take care of those things. So you’ve got to have someone that’s paying attention to that so that you can meet those obligations. Internally, like I told you before, the work that we’re engaged in right now of building, creating building blocks of institutions of governance that...in fact, contracting and employment policies and our due process rights of individual citizens and employees, whether they’re Indian or not, have enormous implications upon the tribe to have some kind of adequate procedures in place, whether it’s by law or by administrative procedures. In the effect of actually trying to create a nation that has all these moving parts and all these gears of information coming in and out, you can really tell where the gaps are because you end up spending more and more time on certain issues, the same issue over and over again. And so you’ve got to have a good, quality internal staff that actually manages the programs, anticipating the next big fight or dilemma or challenge or obstacle, and be able to look around the corner a little bit and try to prepare for that. Then you have the outstanding issues that you can only achieve by litigation, that you only have to achieve by getting legislation passed, and things of that nature. So your job as a leader is managing a thousand moving parts constantly and realizing that you don’t have the capacity to deal with all of that yourself. So the best advice I can give to a tribal leader is to hire a bunch of people way smarter than you because if they’re relying on my IQ then we’re in a lot worse shape than I thought, but at least I’m smart enough to know that if I can get some smart people to come work for this tribe and give them the resources and turn them loose to do those things, to anticipate the next fight, to deal with the crisis of the day, to implement the future strategic plan, to live within the confines of the constitution, to work with our counterparts in Congress, to work with the state and local governments in an effective manner that projects real sovereignty, one that we don’t ask permission to exercise, one that we exercise because it is inherent and to say that, but to do it is the implementation and to do it effectively with the right people and the tools that provide for the accountability and the transparency that the people expect. That is the...that, in essence, is the kind of thing that you have to do as a tribal leader.”

Ian Record:

“Well Chief Gray, I really appreciate your time. Thank you for sharing your experience and your wisdom and your perspectives on Native nation building with us.”

James R. Gray:

“All right. You’re welcome."

Honoring Nations: Oren Lyons: Governing Our Way to a Brighter Future

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Onondaga Chief and Faithkeeper Oren Lyons shares his perspective on why governance matters to the sovereignty and long-term prosperity of Indigenous peoples, and stresses the importance of adhering to the long-taught instructions that have ensured the survival of those peoples to this day.

People
Resource Type
Citation

Lyons, Oren. "Governing Our Way to A Brighter Future." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Sante Fe, New Mexico. February 7, 2002. Presentation.

Oren Lyons:

"[Iroquois language]. That's our greeting for, general greeting across Six Nations country and the Haudenosaunee, people call us Iroquois. It means ‘thank you for being well' and it's important. '[Iroquois language]' means 'peace' and it's the same word for health. [Iroquois language]. ‘Health and peace,' that's our greeting. Thank you for being healthy. Thank you for the peace. We'll come back to that because that's instructive. Time is relentless and so is Andrew Lee. He put together a program, you know, when you look at it and say, ‘Well, how are we going to get through all this?' But here we are. It's Saturday afternoon and we have gone through all of the points that were put out in the program and very well as a matter of fact. It's been very enlightening and I really enjoyed these sessions because I learned so much, there's just so much that I guess we all had the same feeling. 'Boy, I wish everybody was here from my nation so they could have heard this.' So what that means is that somehow we have to transfer this information that we have back to our peoples, back to our nations, and to give them some hope and direction because we are in perilous times, there is no doubt.

Now I thought that we should begin and I should take the time and I will take the time to go through our greeting, our [Iroquois language] we say, the opening or the words before all words. Before we open any session in any meeting, big or small, we start with these words and so I thought you should hear them because as my grandmother said last night as she was talking, my aunt, and she said, ‘There are words, there are directions,' that she doesn't hear much anymore, but they are there and I know all our nations have them and when Regis [Pecos] was talking and he was speaking, when Peterson Zah was speaking his language, he was saying these very words and even though we didn't understand the language, we understood that these were the words and they are the same. They're the same for all our peoples and we're so fortunate that any of our elders can stand and speak for all of us. That's how common we are. Language of course is the soul of a nation and that's what's been put forward. And if you don't have a use for a language you lose it or if somebody transfers your uses to another language then that's what you use. Indian nations -- we didn't lose our language, it was taken from us, it was beaten from us, it was forced from us. We didn't lose it. So we have to fight back for it. We need it. There's a lot of information and instruction in our languages. When we lose these languages, all that instruction is gone. Ceremonies that we run will be gone. So we have to fight for it. Each generation has to pick up that fight and that's where we're at right now.

It's interesting to me, one more statement on the language, is that we're getting a lot of political play these days for the code talkers. Here in Washington people are talking about the code talkers, but the irony I think is missed by most people but probably not by our people. You know, those code talkers -- and there were many -- there were...I know there were the Ojibwes, I know that there were many other languages used but those languages, those Navajo languages that was used this war, the second World War saved thousands and thousands of American lives, thousands, and these were the very languages that they were beating out of us. And what if they were successful? How many lives would America have lost? Isn't that ironic that the very thing that they were taking from us saved...maybe saved the war. Who knows? It was mentioned here that we should forgive and we have and it's amazing but we don't forget. As you know, Indians never forget anything...ever! But we have forgiven and there's an amazing amount of good will in Indian Country to our brothers. We espouse common cause very easily. It's amazing, but I think that's a reflection of our nations, of our cultures cause that's just the way we are.

And anyway, we always start these meetings with the thanksgiving acknowledge we call it. We say first...our first acknowledgement is to the people. So all of the people who are here, all of the people who are not here, those who are sick, those who could not make it, we acknowledge all the people of the world, whoever they are, wherever they are, and we give a big thanksgiving.

And then we acknowledge the earth itself. [Iroquois language] we say, 'Our Mother.' We acknowledge the earth and all the life that she brings and all the generations of faces looking up from that earth...coming...coming...coming. We acknowledge the earth and we give a big thanksgiving for the earth, Our Mother.

And then we acknowledge all the grass and all the bushes and all the medicine that grow on this earth and we think about that. We're grateful and we're thankful and we put our minds together as one and we give a big thanksgiving for all of the grasses and medicines and bushes on the earth.

And then we move to the trees and we think of the leader of the trees, the maple. And we think of all the trees in the world and their duties and we give a thanksgiving, because they continue their duties and it supports us and we're grateful. So we put our minds together as one and give a big thanksgiving for all the trees of the world.

And then we move to all the animals that run in the woods and run in the fields and that live in the rocks and we think about them and we give a thanksgiving for all of these animals for they carry out their duties and their duties provide for us, support us. We think about them and we give a thanksgiving for all the animals of the world, big and small.

And then we move to the waters and we think about the waters, all these waters, the springs, the streams, the rivers, the lakes, the oceans, our life and what it does for us. The water that we cook our foods, we wash ourselves, we cook our medicines; without the water there would be no life. And so we put our minds together and we give a big thanksgiving for all the waters of the earth.

And then we think about all the fishes and the life that's in the waters and how great they are and how they sustain us. And we think about that and we think about the leader, the trout, and we say, ‘The river runs through his mouth' and we say, ‘This is wonderful.' We give a big thanksgiving for all the fishes of the sea and all the life within it. So we put our minds together as one and we give a big thanksgiving. So be it, our way.

And then we move to the birds, those that fly. These are very special. These birds do many, many, many duties. And the chief, the leader, the eagle is the one that looks out for all. And we think of even the smallest, the tiniest, the hummingbird and the songs that they give us that can raise our spirits when we don't feel good. They wake us in the morning, they remind us every day this is another day. They are messengers and we give thanks for all the birds of the world.

And then we move to our grandfathers, the four winds, the ones that bring the seasons. And we think about them, these powerful forces so great in strength that we do not want to see their ultimate strength but we may as we were warned. But still, we love these grandfathers, these winds of the four directions that plant the life on this earth and bring the seasons. And we put our minds together as one and we give a big thanksgiving to the great winds from the four directions of the earth.

And then we think of our grandfathers with thundering voices that bring the rain and when we hear them in the spring we're grateful and we run and we give thanks, special thanks because it means we are going to have rain for another season when they speak, these grandfathers with thundering voices. And we give thanks for them because they water our people, they water the trees, they water the earth and they replenish all the fresh water. So we put them in our minds and we give a thanksgiving.

And then we move to our grandmother the moon and she looks after the female, she works with the female. She sets the duties for the seasons. She raises and lowers the great seas of the earth, very powerful. We call her the night sun. She shows our way at night. And we put our minds together and we give a big thanksgiving for our grandmother the moon.

And then we think of our eldest brother the sun, without whom we wouldn't have light today as we can look outside and we can see he is doing his duty and we are served by that and we are fortunate. He works with the earth to bring life, together they produce life, this eldest brother, a mighty thanksgiving. Each day we are fortunate. Someone once said here, ‘Tomorrow never comes' and that may well be. So today is here. So we put our minds together and we give a big thanksgiving for our eldest brother the sun.

And then we move to the stars, those beautiful stars. They hold a great deal of knowledge and our people used to know the knowledge. But we now say we don't know much anymore. But yet they still guide us at night, yet they still lead us and they lift our hearts with their beauty and they bring the dew in the morning and work with water. And so we put our minds together and we give a big thanksgiving to the stars in the heavens.

And then we move to the spiritual beings and these spiritual beings who look out for us every day, these spiritual beings whose duty it is to work with this earth and help us, support us. They're the ones that catch you just before you fall; they're with us all the time. And they're with us if you want to work with them and if you want to ask them, they're there, these spiritual beings, and we don't know who they are and they work in many ways. And so we put our minds together in a big thanksgiving for these spiritual beings that work for the Creator.

And in our lands we give thanks for [Iroquois language], this man who was given a message to us 200 years ago that helped our nation survive, that gave us the directions that we needed, spiritual message. And so we put our minds together and we give a thanksgiving for [Iroquois language].

And then we come to the Creator, [Iroquois language], giver of all life; this might force who sustains us, looks after us, provides for us. Finally, with all our minds and thinking of all the things that we can think of that he has given us. We put our minds together in a mighty, mighty thanksgiving and we give a thanksgiving for [Iroquois language], the Creator.

So then we say we have now finished our first [Iroquois language], which is the words before all words and now we have provided a context as to who we are and what our duties are and we go about our business. And so with that I thought I could share that with that with you. [Iroquois language] So now we'll begin the business.

They told us, make your prayers, get up and make your prayers and then go to work, 'cause nothing happens without work. So the context then, who are we? In this great earth that we heard about, where is the human being and what is our responsibility because we have intellect, because we have hands, because we can build things and especially because we have the foreknowledge of death? We know that we are going on. Animals know when they are going, they prepare. If you watch your dog, in the morning when he goes out and he's making a bed and he disappears for a day and then two days then three days and five days and he doesn't come back because he knows it's his time. We used to know that too. We've lost a lot of things. Animals know, but they don't know beforehand. We know beforehand, so that's our responsibility. That means we have to look up for life and that's our responsibility and that's where leadership comes, that's where governance comes and that's where the relevance of our peoples today in today's context is very important because of these great knowledges that our nations have. We don't want to lose them. Everybody will suffer by that loss.

So now we want to talk about identity. You heard about it. What is our identity? Our identity is our land. That's our identity, it's our land, it's our water, it's where we live, it's where we've lived for thousands of years and who knows how long. I get such a big kick out of anthropologists and archaeologists and historians who say, ‘Well, you Indians have only been here 10,000 years yourself,' immigrants talking to us. We've been here a lot longer than 10,000 years and we know that. And I told them that. I said, ‘I'll just simply wait because eventually your science will turn it up.' They get very angry. But identity, yes, that's us, that's our land.

My uncle took the time when I was just graduated from college, took the time, realizing that I was head strong, kind of full of myself and feeling pretty hot...pretty hot stuff here. He said, ‘Hey, let's go fishing.' I said, ‘Good idea,' because I knew he knew where the fish were. We went in a boat, we got out in a boat and we were over by where the bass were and sitting there quietly, got our lines in and he said, ‘Well, I see you're just graduated from the university.' And I knew right then I was in trouble. I was in a boat, I couldn't go anywhere and he was the one that had the motor on the other hand. But it was interesting because he said, ‘Well, you must know who you are then. You know a lot of things.' ‘Yeah, I learned a lot of things.' ‘Well, you must know who you are.' ‘Yeah, I know who I am.' So I gave him my Indian name, I gave him my clan, gave him the nation and every time I would add something then he'd say, ‘And that's it, huh?' After a long struggle I finally had to be quiet for awhile and then he says, ‘You need some help?' I said, ‘Yeah.' ‘Good,' he says, ‘good.' He said, ‘Look at that tree up here,' and he pointed to a cliff and there was a beautiful tree not very old, a spruce it looked like, beautiful. He said, ‘You're the same as that tree.' He says, ‘Your roots are in the earth, that's your Mother.' He says, ‘You're the same as that tree.' He says, ‘You're one in the same, you're a little ant, your mother's the earth.' He said, ‘That's who you are.' That was the biggest lesson. I never forgot it and that's what we have to remember.

So identity, the land, that's what I mean, you're part of the earth. It's us and it's our responsibility. So how do you maintain this responsibility? Well, we were instructed to one, give thanks, which we did and two to enjoy life. We're instructed to enjoy...you're supposed to enjoy life. You're not supposed to be walking around like them pilgrims we saw come over, they were so grim. They only wore black clothes and worked seven, no six days. They worked six days. Our people thought they were kind of crazy. They took their little children in the middle of the winter and they put them in the water and they were just born and some of them died. And our people said, ‘What are you doing?' And they said, ‘We're saving them.' We never really figured that out yet. ‘We're saving them.' But anyway, they were pretty grim, but our people are not. They like bright clothes. Look at my shirt, nice. One time when we were talking with these...white, they're my brothers, they're Dutch...we were making an agreement, a treaty called the Two Row. After all was said and done, they said, ‘Well, how will we know one another?' And we said, ‘You will know us by the way we dress.' Now, think about that. If you have a hard time, they'll see a lot of us these days, won't they, by the way we dress. What does it mean ‘by the way we dress?' That means your culture, that means who you are. So wear something, carry something, show who you are.

Now, my clan is the wolf and we had a lot of discussion here about the wolf and I'm glad my young nephew Aaron brought that up. He talked about the wolf. A good question, ‘Who is the wolf?' Well, the clan, that's me, I'm the wolf. I'm proud of it. And people ask me, they say, ‘Well, what's your sign?' I say, ‘The wolf.' And they get confused, but the signs that they talk about come from another land and another idea and another way. We have our identities, we know who we are, and I'm so glad you spoke about your clans, who you are because that is really important, that's our identity. And who is the wolf then, who is the wolf? Really, even among our people, an enigma. We know powerful, we know spiritual, and we know our white brother looks at the wolf the same way he looks at us. He likes us because we're proud, he likes us because we're fierce, he likes because we fight hard. So he takes his picture and puts it on his uniform and says he is a warrior or he is an Indian because we're fierce and we fight, but that's not who we are and that's not who the wolf is. Anyone will fight when you're coming in your front door. The mouse will fight you if you corner them. You know you've got to be careful, he'll bite you. You have to respect. And so who is the wolf, then?

We were having a ceremony in the longhouse and it was a great feather dance, the Creator's dance, and we had a singer coming from [Iroquois language], Mohawk, and he was singing and I was listening. I couldn't understand exactly what...so I went to my grandmother and I said, ‘He's talking about? The wolf?' She said, ‘Yes.' She said, ‘That's an old song. I haven't heard that in a long time'. And I said, ‘What is he saying?' And she said, ‘In this road to the path to the Creator, this beautiful path that we all go on and we're walking,' she says, ‘we're walking and on the sides of the road are the strawberries, the leader of the fruit, strawberries all the way out.' 'And we're walking,' that's what he saying in his song, his preamble before we begin the dance. And then he said, 'To my side my grandfather the wolf, on his own path, side by side we're walking, we're walking through the Creator's land.' And that gave us some indication of who our brother the wolf is because I think, yes, I think he represents the natural world and I think how it goes with the wolf goes with us. We're the same and we're also the same with all our brothers. And so how it goes with us will go with them, although they don't know yet, don't understand yet. So somehow we have to educate and explain to them that we need all of us to survive, we can't lose one. We can't lose great leaders like the wolf or the bear; again, spiritual, again, powerful medicine, we know that.

We say in Onondaga, Haudenosaunee, that the leader of all the animals is the deer. Now with the deer with his horns we come around and in between these horns like radar and he can see far beyond his eyes here. He's all over the world, as the wolf is all over the world, as the eagle is all over the world the leader, they're all over. That's how you can tell they're leaders, they're everywhere. Not all animals are everywhere, but these are leaders. And so, yes, who is the wolf? I think the wolf represents humanity, life as we know it. We lose that, we lose everything, us included, and it will be miserable and slow. You're not just going to fold over and die, you're just going to die slowly, one generation after the other. It's going to take generations suffering. We don't want that. So how do we stop that? By keeping our ceremonies, by keeping our dances, by giving our thanksgivings. That's what he said. ‘As long as you give thanks, life will go on.' Simple instruction. Are we too busy, are we too busy to take the time to give thanks? So those are questions that we have to answer ourselves in today's time when time is relentless. It is relentless because we've entered into the same time frame as the rest of the world so we feel the same thing. There are some people who still operate on the time of the earth and they're quite happy, they're quite content. They just go along with the day. Kind of a nice way to live, but it's not the way things are today.

And so the identity: land. Then with the land is the jurisdiction. And jurisdiction is the ultimate authority over that land and if you don't have jurisdiction on your land, then you don't have the land. You're just there until somebody wants to move you and they will. Our people have a great history of being moved. You know about it. We know where we live, we know where we come from and still remember. We had great leaders who gave their lives for our people, great leaders who would look at us today and wonder, wonder about us. Do we have the strength? Do we have the conviction? Do we have the will to survive as our peoples, as who we are? We've talked about political will. Well, that's the bottom line, political will. If you don't have the political will to survive, you won't. You have to fight and you have to fight on all levels and yet in all of this is a common cause and the common cause is survival. There was an old Indian leader who came from the west, I don't know what exactly his name was but he said, ‘There is going to come a time when people will cease to live and begin to survive.' What did he mean by that? He's talking about quality of life and that's the values we talk about. What is the quality of life? Is the quality of life a BMW? Is that your quality of life? Or is it your grandchildren singing Indian songs? Is that a quality of life? It's up to us to choose that. Every generation has to look out for itself. You can't live your children's lives. You have to give them enough instruction to survive. That's our responsibility, instruction. Each generation will have its leaders, each generation will have its heroes and each generation will have those people whom nations will despise. All of us are spiritual beings and every day when we get up we try to keep the spiritual center and be a good person. We don't want to be too good over here because then you just follow this way and of course you get too bad then you follow this way. So every day we have to make choices of who we're going to be today. And any one of us on any given day can be the worst enemy of our people ever...every day. These are decisions every day. So we need a lot of instruction. We need ways to keep in a good way. So we said with ceremonies. Now we'll move on. We'll move on.

In the borders of nations, you have three specific borders in the area of sovereignty. You have a geographic border. You can see a map and you can draw yourself a couple borders here. You have a political border. That border can look fuzzy. And then you have an economic border. Now you're really getting fuzzy. If you don't watch all three borders, you lose your sovereignty. Money, necessary, currency, around the world. At the U.N. [United Nations] or in Europe now we have the Euro. They now have a common currency. They've decided that they're going to work together and become like the United States. It seems to be working. Now we have to live every day in this society and societies, they're all different. But we have to keep our own identity and so think about that, every day think about your geographic border, think about your political border, and think about your economic border and try to keep them clear because the clearer you keep them, the stronger you are, the more sovereign. And you're at risk all the time.

So we heard about women. Somebody said women are important. Well, I guess so. When they talk about...I'm traveling around the world, which I do a lot and they're, ‘Oh, you're a chief'. ‘Well, yeah, one of the leaders'. The first question they ask, ‘Can a woman be a chief?' I said, ‘No'. I said, ‘No more than I could be a clan mother'. But the question comes from Western society. The question comes from what they call the battle of the sexes, the conflict that Western society has between men and women and the battle that women have gone through to even be recognized as equal and not quite yet. But we knew long ago, our people knew long ago that women were the center of our nation. We're partners. We've always been partners, full and equal, with duties of the woman and duties of the man. Not difficult. No one better than the other but working for the good of the family and working for the good of the nation. Not a problem, this idea of equality. It's old to our people, but our brothers in Western society is just beginning and having a hard time with it. So we should not be carried away by their discussion. We should retain and understand our own and we all remember and know that women are sacred. They carry life. We can't do it. And I think that's why the white man fears them. But I don't know.

Now, what is the danger that we face today? The dangers that we face today is this idea of government and governance, we were talking about it and I hear a lot about it. And people that have played sports, lacrosse or basketball or hockey, and these sports in particular, transition is a big factor. And if you can lay your attack on a transition, you catch your opposition in a vulnerable position and you can score. The transition game, it's getting to be a common talk. We knew about this transition game long ago. So changing, the nation is changing, you're in transition, you're in this contest and if you're not aware, you're vulnerable. So if you're changing from a traditional government to an elected government or have changed, you're still in transition. You're vulnerable because it's not your rules that you're playing by. Somebody else set these rules. So not only have you played a game, you've got to know the rules and know them good enough so you don't get caught in transition. And what are you transitioning to? From Indian to what? Envision and looking forward to who? But what I hear that gives me such great hope, strength, enthusiasm is every single one of the projects and schools people are talking about hanging onto the ways and borders. And that's where we're at.

The variety of realities that exist are the varieties of realities that are across this nation. There's a full spectrum. So we have to watch and as we move into the international field and we have people probably on their way back or assessing the last meeting at the U.N. in Switzerland and very important that Chief Justice [Robert] Yazzie was there and we had a discussion the other day. He was explaining what was going on in Geneva as they discussed your and my fate in an international forum. Were you there? Do you know about it? Eventually you'll hear about it. There's coalitions of states out there, Canada, United States, Australia, New Zealand, coalescing against Indigenous people. We had a statement here from the federal government said, ‘Self-determination is essential...essential...to our good governance.' And yet our number one opponent at the U.N. is the United States against self-determination. Did you know that? You know how long we've been fighting them on that simple term? Well, it's not quite so simple, is it? Self-determination: the right to determine for yourself who you are. It carries great political impact and since 1994, when we put the draft declaration for the Rights of Indigenous people to the Human Rights Division in ECOSOC [U.N. Economic and Social Council] at the U.N., out of 45 articles they have only since 1994 agreed with two. Forty three of the articles of self-determination and human rights they have not agreed to. That's the kind of fight going on over there. The Haudenosaunee led that delegation to Geneva in 1977 and I was one of the leaders there and the people responsible. One hundred forty four people in that particular event, North, Central and South America. Indigenous peoples of the western hemisphere, we said, ‘That's who we are.' And the last meeting they had there was over 1,000-1,100 delegates, Indigenous people.

They moved to establish a permanent forum for Indigenous issues in ECOSOC. We are now developing the rules and regulations for governing that. That's going on and the ECOSOC will be in May at the U.N. in New York. It's going to reflect all the peoples of the world. But from the time that we stood outside the U.N. in 1973 petitioning to speak to them on behalf of the Lakota Nation, who was struggling at Wounded Knee, they wouldn't let us across the street. Phalanx is the police. We couldn't cross the street to the U.N. In 1992 I gave the first address to the United States body at the U.N. in their forum from their roster. And if you didn't' have the longevity of knowing the fight in between those years you would have said, ‘We haven't moved a step,' but obviously we have. So you have to have a perspective. You've got to know about these things. The same slam you're fighting at home, these fights are going on over there. You've got to support the people that are there. It's hard, it's expensive, it's really excruciatingly slow. We just last year, from the Clinton Administration, got an agreement that we were peoples, in brackets yet, but still. They didn't even agree to that before.

So I want to end this little discussion with some news from my country. Good news, I think. It makes me feel good. On the 14th of April we are going to raise the next Tadodaho, the next leader of the Haudenosaunee for the Six Nations, we're called the Iroquois. This title is 1,000 years old and although I feel apprehension for this man that's going to take this position because it's such a difficult position, yet, I have a lot of real hope. He's a good man. He was one of our very best lacrosse players. He was one of the very best defensemen we ever had. And now he's going to take this position. His name is Sid Hill. About 46, pretty young for the position but he is working hard and I think he's going to do it. So in the process and procedure of governance that we do and how we raise our leaders, we're going to raise this leader and there isn't going to be any Bureau of Indian Affairs there and there isn't going to be any Department of Interior and we're not asking anybody for anything. We are just doing what we should be doing, which is to raise our leaders in our way and the process is 1,000 years old. It's hard, it's tough to maintain that in these times but we have. And I never realized until I started traveling how important that was. And I don't think a lot of our people, our own people, realize how fortunate they are to still have chiefs because all of our nations know about chiefs. They revere these people, very selfless leaders. We still have them. And I've been on that council for a long time now, since 1967, and I can say one thing, that there is no budget for the chiefs. We don't get paid. I think that might be a good idea for governance. You will certainly change the people who want to be in charge. No, nobody wants to be the chief where I come from. It's too much work, it takes you away from the family and I heard it the other day, when you're working for the [Iroquois Language] you can even lose your family and it's happened, I've seen it. It's hard but it's important. It's what you call leadership in governance. What is the purpose of leadership, but to defend and promote the welfare of your nation and your people and to really be concerned for that seventh generation, the long vision?

So we have to raise our leaders and I thought Lance [Morgan] had a good idea. I said, ‘He's really put his finger on the problem that I see with elective systems which is that two- to four-year fight that goes on which can be really fierce in Indian Country, disruptive and no continuity.' And I thought his idea was a good idea. Maybe we should look at that because you want continuity. And it's nothing to it except to change it. You know you can do that if you just have the political will. That's all it takes. So having been taken far out and finding our way back, we have to take advantage of all of these things. And I tell you that I could take all the events...I can take it home to our people and say, ‘We can learn from every one of these projects. They're positive, they show spirit, they show the will of our people.' And I congratulate you. We've just got to keep it up and somehow we have to share and we have to be better coordinated to work with each other and support each other wherever we are. And so we have to give up some of our people we love to hate, long-time battles. We have to really set them aside now and work together and be more understanding and be more tolerant with the problems of all of our brothers wherever they are, the nations and their struggles.

They're asking...the world is asking for the wisdom of the elders of the traditional Indigenous people, all over the world. I know because they call me. And I'm just the runner. I'm just a runner. All I do is talk about what the nation knows and I'm careful about that. I'm learning all the time. I know who the leaders are and I know what it takes to be. So we have to support them. And in our own way now...by being at this meeting we're all runners. We now have to go back and take the message home and share it and be concerned. It is the future. It is our people. And it's not only our people; it's the rest of life. I don't think that it's too late but we are, the human race, approaching a point of no return. We are approaching this point of no return. The ice is melting in the north as we speak. Global warming is here, we're in transition and the work that we're going to be doing today we are not going to be doing for ourselves, we are going to be doing for the next two or three generations. That's who's going to...who will gain by our work. Not us. We have to understand that we're going to have to take what's coming and not be weak and raise our leaders to meet these problems and they're going to be big. And if you think two towers going down in New York was a problem, wait. You're going to see some real problems coming. That's when we have to be strong and that's when we have to rely on the wisdom of our nations and remember them and hold them and keep the language. And with that I'm going to end my discussion. I'm going to, I think, urge you as we say [Iroquois language] -- try hard, do your best. [Iroquois language]"

Honoring Nations: JoAnn Chase: Cultural Affairs

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

JoAnn Chase reports back to her fellow Honoring Nations sympoisum participants about the consensus she and her fellow cultural affairs breakout session participants reached concerning the need for Native nations to fully integrate culture into how they govern, and also to ensure that their governance activities strengthen their cultures.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Chase, JoAnn. "Cultural Affairs." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Sante Fe, New Mexico. February 9, 2002. Presentation.

JoAnn Chase:

"Good afternoon everybody. As Heather [Kendall-Miller] helps put some of the notes from today's discussion that we had up there, I couldn't help but just look outside and see the beautiful blue skies today and another gorgeous day in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and just really give thanks for the opportunity to come together and meet together and gain from and learn with one another and exchange knowledge base and we thank you for the food that we have and for each other. So that may be a really appropriate way to start off our report on some of the really vibrant and terrific discussion that we had about cultural affairs programs.

We came to a simple bottom line, and I think it almost summarizes the whole extent of our discussion, which is that as we talk about building successful Indian nations, we cannot build Indian nations without a strong comprehensive fully integrated cultural component. And so the discussion, we actually engaged in some detailed discussion, but citing some examples just to the Honoring Nations of really driven cultural programs that are models for us to look at. The Ojibwe language program, for example, at the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe; the Elders Advisory Council for the San Carlos [Apache] Tribe; the Navajo Nation Archaeology Department at Navajo Nation; the Poeh Cultural Center for Pojoaque [Pueblo] that some of us will have the privilege of visiting today; the Navajo Studies Division at Navajo Nation are just among some of the examples of really terrific things that are being done.

Lots of our discussion actually centered around language, and language preservation being such a key component of who we are as Indian people. And somebody I think summarized it so appropriately that said, 'Without language we don't have culture,' and yet we face the challenge in so many of our communities of losing those languages. So how do we break down some of those internal barriers that exist? How do we break through some of the imposed structures that are upon us? We can't just rely on our school systems. Our school systems don't necessarily serve our families. What kinds of creative thinking can we do, and think beyond those imposed structures that we have had to exist under, so that we can in fact have language programs that involve intergenerational components and that involve our families collectively? Much of the discussion was also around it is so important to involve the entire family in the language process.

We talked about some ways of just preserving and protecting and maintaining language including taking the initiative to control our own schools, to make our own laws. Somebody in our group said that their tribe actually had...was [unintelligible]. I believe it was Marge Anderson at Mille Lacs that, in order to graduate from the school system, one had to have proficiency in the language and demonstrate fluency. With that bold move by the tribe and certainly then the program to support that so that that can happen. Involving speakers with the very young, we mentioned that; promoting pride in being Native and using the Native language. There was an example of a group of young people who, first graders who stepped out and sang songs in their own language and actually integrated some Western culture with some sort of rap overtones. And we asked Chairwoman Anderson to demonstrate for us. She refused to do that, but nonetheless, the point I think was so well taken that the language itself instills the pride and is such an important component of maintaining that pride and that the young people, the transformation, as they became more proficient in the language was so apparent the way they held themselves, the way they communicated, the brightness in their eyes and just the general happiness with who they are, which clearly related to their ability to speak the language. We know that's so tremendously important in maintaining our cultures.

We talked basically about strategizing to reach out to families, again breaking down some of those boundaries that exist and thinking creatively. After-school programs, evening programs, weekend programs so that we are indeed involving our families, concentrating on some of the internal mechanisms within tribes.

We talked about thinking beyond basic boundaries and we know that there's some wonderful programs out there. We have relatives that boundaries that exist have been imposed upon us and recognizing that they've been imposed, thinking beyond them, reaching to our relatives in Canada, reaching to our relatives in Mexico, looking outside again in supporting and exchanging our culture. Again, integrating those aspects of our culture into the...a comprehensive approach to building nations.

Let's see if I'm missing things here. We talked so much about language and why it was important. Then we actually then transitioned to some really important conversation about economics and we know that there are so many economic challenges for tribes. In fact, so much of this program about nation building is concentrated on engaging in initiatives and tribes being forced to sometimes make some difficult decisions about economic initiatives so that they actually can continue to build the nation. And the importance of recognizing that culture may not immediately...incorporating components of culture into a comprehensive nation-building strategy may not have immediate quantitative economic returns, but that certainly there are many, many returns that through a qualitative analysis bring tenfold back to the tribe and that, importantly, that if we look over the longer term of economic analysis we do see that cultural components built into nation building, in fact, do have economic returns, and encouraging that kind of thinking so that we aren't forced into decisions of we're not going to support the culture because we don't see the dollars immediately. These cultural components are a drain on our economic development initiatives. Clearly we know that that's not to be true and to continue to take measures that defy some of those thinking that we know really are conclusions that in the long run prove not to be true at all.

We talked about things like bringing artists together, thinking again creatively, reaching outside of our communities, involving, as I said, intergenerational components between elders and youth and so on. And then we talked a little bit about tribal politics and the necessity of getting tribal leaders involved and committed to cultural programs and recognizing of course that tribal leaders certainly have...are pulled in so many directions these days -- they need to be in Washington, they need to be working with state legislatures and so on -- but that, indeed, if they are not committed to the cultural programs and cultural adaptations that there is a real shortcoming in the kind of leadership that they're providing to the tribe. Basically it came down to walk the talk. There's some danger in a lot of rhetoric among particularly tribal governmental elected officials of supporting culture but not necessarily taking the appropriate actions to support that culture. Again bold steps like promulgating laws that incorporate culture into the overall development of our nations is clearly important. And so there was some very provocative discussion around that, making sure that we hold tribal leaders accountable to the kind of rhetoric and at the same time making sure that we do take the measures that we can to ensure that our elected officials are engaging and participating and supporting necessarily various cultural initiatives.

We talked a little bit about tourism and involving outside communities in our cultural affairs and how that can be creatively done. Of course we know that there may be some dangers, we've seen some of our initiatives taken from us, exploited, exported in ways that aren't healthy to us, but indeed, with careful thought there are some wonderful things that can happen so that not only are we building the culture within, but that we're also contributing to the broader fabric of society as well. Some strategies: we talked about using crisis to our advantage to teach and to pull in culture. It's that which sustains us to get us through those difficult times and we know that there's a lot of crisis in Indian Country so reaching to those foundations that keep us strong. Be opportunistic and look for opportunities to interject ideas and principles that come from culture, taking advantage of the situation, seizing the initiatives. Create formal roles for cultural leaders that bring their advice and ideas to the forefront. We mentioned the San Carlos [Apache] Elders Council as a perfect example of that and obviously they play a tremendously important role in the tribe. Funding, staffing, equipment and training for cultural centers, because clearly there's a service to those communities and we know that we need to be aggressive in seeking ways that we actually are able to provide funding and staffing and equipment. Those seem to be challenges for us all of us in so many programs but we must continue to pursue ways to actually ensure that there is that kind of training, there is the kind of equipment, there is the support necessary.

I think that's predominately the essences of the conversations that we had and I can say one more time, all those wonderful points and strategies really boil down to one main point and that is that we cannot build Indian nations without a very strong, a very comprehensive and a wholly integrated cultural component."

Honoring Nations: Elizabeth Woody: Environment and Natural Resources

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Elizabeth Woody reports back to her fellow Honoring Nations symposium attendees the consensus from the environment and natural resources breakout session participants, synthesizing their deliberations into four key elements for nation-building success in the environmental and natural resource management arena.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Woody, Elizabeth. "Environment and Natural Resources." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Sante Fe, New Mexico. February 9, 2002. Presentation.

Elizabeth Woody:

"My name is Elizabeth Woody and I'm born from the Bitterwater Clan on my maternal side. My people come from the Hot Springs, a place where [unintelligible] vacation resort is now and Wyampum, which has been submerged, which means the Echo of Water Upon Rocks and [unintelligible], which is the is the Place Where Water Turns to Blue on the Willamette River.

In our group, the four pieces that we came up with that seemed to be central was the recognition of tribe's ability in sovereignty, and this meant having confidence in your staff, having confidence in your position and footing with other agencies in the state, which ties into sovereignty. We felt that this also meant that people were strong in their historical and cultural identity and that they valued the tribal conception of science along with good science and biology. We recognized the culture and identity of our tribe is from a land-based knowledge and from all of this we have our rootedness, meaning we're not going anywhere.

The second part was the infrastructure was in place, meaning that the people who administer these programs or are directing these programs already had an infrastructure in place, they were able to build upon them, find out the missing pieces, design missing pieces to fit in there, and that these structures also gave them the formal authority in leadership that was described earlier.

Three, support from tribal and community leadership. Again that goes to the spiritual aspects of the leadership that comes from election and your leadership that comes from lineage. Also underneath of this was the listening and communication piece, meaning that they had the ability to listen to their constituency, they were able to listen to, for example, the ranchers making compliment to the tribe saying, 'We had a stream, the water hasn't ran here for 15 years. What did you do?' And she was able to say, 'Well, hmm, there was a benefit to what we did, which extends beyond the boundaries of the tribal reservation,' for these benefits are measurable and definitely something of value to the communities that surround them.

And then the fourth piece that was significant was the strategic critical thinking; this includes long-range planning and implementation. It also includes -- that's the forward piece -- and the backward piece it was just the traditional knowledge and subsistence that's been handed down from time immemorial by the Creator's law or recognition of medicinal plants and our companionship with them and our relationship with them that's been since the beginning of time. So those are the four pieces and there were a lot more to it, but it all boils down basically to these elements."

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times: Edward T. Begay

Producer
Institute for Tribal Government
Year

Produced by the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University in 2004, the landmark “Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times” interview series presents the oral histories of contemporary leaders who have played instrumental roles in Native nations' struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights. The leadership themes presented in these unique videos provide a rich resource that can be used by present and future generations of Native nations, students in Native American studies programs, and other interested groups.

In this interview conducted in November 2001, former Vice Chairman and Speaker of the Navajo Nation Council Edward T. Begay talks about his long and distinguished career with the Navajo Nation, as well as his commitment to preserving Navajo traditions and creating a sustainable, culturally appropriate economy for his people.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Institute for Tribal Government.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Begay, Edward T. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Window Rock, Arizona. November 2001. Interview.

Kathryn Harrison:

"Hello. My name is Kathryn Harrison. I am presently the Chairperson of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I have served on my council for 21 years. Tribal leaders have influenced the history of this country since time immemorial. Their stories have been handed down from generation to generation. Their teaching is alive today in our great contemporary tribal leaders whose stories told in this series are an inspiration to all Americans both tribal and non-tribal. In particular it is my hope that Indian youth everywhere will recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by these great tribal leaders."

[Native music]

Narrator:

"Edward T. Begay, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, was born in the Church Rock Community of New Mexico about six miles east of the City of Gallup. The boundaries of the Navajo Reservation extend from northwestern New Mexico into northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah. The reservation is larger than many states and the Navajo Nation is recognized as the largest Indian tribe in the United States. Ed T. Begay's grandparents encouraged him to get an education in the dominant culture. They sent him to Rehoboth Mission High School rather than a Bureau of Indian Affairs school. He then attended Calvin College and received his degree from Southwest Business College. He was later awarded an honorary doctorate from College of Ganado. After service in the U.S. Army from 1959 to 1960 he came to Window Rock and served as head of the Data Processing Unit for the Navajo Nation. During this time he saw issues that needed to be addressed and thereafter began a long public service career with the Navajo Nation. The structure of the Navajo Nation government has changed over time as the people have taken greater control over their affairs. In the 1860s tensions grew between the Navajo, the U.S. Army and non-Indian ranchers who had settled in the area. Although many Navajos resisted, Kit Carson rounded up approximately 8,000 and force-marched them to Fort Sumner. Several thousands died on the march, the four-year imprisonment and the march home. This episode of misery but also survival is known as the Long Walk. The Peace Commission and the Treaty of 1868 allowed the Navajo survivors to return. The treaty set aside a reservation, a fraction of the original homeland. And in exchange for peace the U.S. Government promised basic services to the Navajo. The tenacious Navajo people built their lives and communities again. In the 1920s a Navajo Nation Business Council was established by the U.S. Government to deal with oil companies that were seeking leases on Navajo lands. Then in the 1930s the first Navajo tribal council was organized. In 1989 the National Council was again restructured. A legislative branch was created and an Office of the Speaker established. The 88 members of the council are elected based on the population of 110 chapters. The Speaker is the CEO of the legislative branch. Ed T. Begay was elected to two terms to the Office of the Speaker, first in 1999 becoming the third Speaker of the Navajo Nation council. Before his terms as speaker he had already built a distinguished career in service of the Nation serving as a council delegate for the Church Rock and Bread Springs chapters for more than 30 years. He proudly served on several committees including Education and Economic Development and Planning. From 1983 to 1987 he served the Navajo Nation as Vice Chairman with then Chairman Peterson Zah. Ed T. Begay is committed to the project of developing the economic self sufficiency of the Navajo people. Government work on many levels fascinates him. Today he serves as a Highway Commissioner for the State of New Mexico. He is also engaged in an initiative that will document Navajo traditions and culture. He has two daughters, Charlene Begay Platero and Sandra Begay Campbell. He is the grandfather of twin toddlers whom he says, ‘really like to use their voices.' The Institute for Tribal Government interviewed Edward T. Begay in November, 2001 in Window Rock, Arizona."

The Navajo Long Walk of the 1860s, Kit Carson and the peoples' four-year imprisonment at Fort Sumner

Edward Begay:

"Through my grandfather Jesus his grandfather was the official, he was a Spanish man and he was the official interpreter for the Navajos in Fort Sumner. So by virtue of that my grandfather's grandfathers and mothers they were part of that Long Walk. Well, I guess by reading about them later on in life sometimes it's irritating from a standpoint that there was no human rights in those days. I guess there was but nobody emphasized that so it was more or less on the plunder and conquer approach. Sometimes a bit of resentment but then you have to take it into perspective in terms of history and what was taking place and try to work with the attitude that's in place."

As a child, Ed Begay learned about leadership and the rules of the Bureau of Indian Affairs from his family members

Edward Begay:

"My sisters and I were raised by my grandparents and my dad eventually he moved back to Tohatchi where his family, his mom and dad were. But as...I don't know, about five or six years old my grandfather always talked about different policies that are being placed upon Navajos by Bureau of Indian Affairs. Why he is so astute to that is him being the chief rancher and cattle rancher and raised horses so they always talk about grazing areas and units of sheep and how many you're supposed to be limited to such and such numbers in order to fit the pasture. So as small as I was just listening to the elderly people discuss I became very keen aware that there is an ongoing struggle in terms of federal government's rules that are placed upon Indian people, in our case Navajo people. And my grandfather Tom Jesus was very involved in leadership role. He was...I guess some people nowadays would say he was a headsman of a group in a community. And from there on it stemmed into Navajo chapter government so he was chapter president for I don't know how long. But from the meetings he would always bring back what the government policies are and the programs that they want to undertake -- they, meaning the Bureau of Indian Affairs representatives."

Learning the dominant culture at a Christian boarding school and at home the teachings of grandparents

Edward Begay:

"As I was growing up my grandmother and grandfather they wanted me to get educated in a dominant society. So rather than that they placing me what the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school they put me in private school. It was an interesting experience. Not knowing a word of English and I thought to myself, ‘Let's see how would I do best in learning other language and who would speak to me so that I would readily understand and also be able to maintain it and also practice it?' But I wasn't the only one, there was...at the whole class, the first students in my age group, we were all similar. There was one or two that understood the English language. Of course in those days they taught from the simplest book in pictures. So in that way I can readily relate what they're trying to describe and name names and the action that they produce to get your verbs and so forth. But once in awhile when we would play by ourselves, we would talk Navajo and we were punished, I guess we were disciplined for doing so because the teachers and the people that were advising us, they wanted us to learn and speak fluent English and understand the printed page and so forth. It was interesting. But we paid attention to the discipline that was involved and oh, discipline meaning along the lines of military type of discipline where we'd go to...time to go eat breakfast and lunch and dinner we would all get lined up according to size and we would march not so in military steps but we'd march and go in groups and then we would sit in the dining room. We learned etiquettes of the world. Then also in terms of play you've got to give a fair consideration for the other person. That's a key in terms of getting along with people and in terms of you had to share responsibilities in different areas, in classrooms, keeping the classrooms tidy and not only that but also in the dormitory situation and also in terms of studies and all different subjects. To me ... and learned was that it meant something as a tool, as a tool that you could use in life. It wasn't just something like the temporary stuff. These are the things that one would learn and keep and maintain because I keep going back to grandparents. If you learn something, if they teach you something, you better pay attention and understand and be able to apply it because their teaching was, ‘If you can learn well, then you will be positioned to teach your children later on when you get married and have your own children. And if you don't know, then it will get chaotic.' That was the teachings of our grandparents.

The need for flexibility when operating in two cultures

Edward Begay:

"Learn the phrase, when you're in Rome do as the Romans do and that goes a long ways. I tell you it can even work today. It's just like yesterday I was attending the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission which is to redraw the state legislature boundaries and also congressional down in Arizona, been following it real close. So we had to play their game. That's what it means. You have to speak the language that they use that they can understand and that they pay attention and that's the phrase that it'll go a long ways for. Many people if they could understand that rather than saying, ‘I'm Navajo therefore I can't be open to what the discussion is about or the subject matter that's being discussed.' If you do that then they leave you behind so you've got to keep up with it. There's a constant awareness that one must be aware of."

Learning and teaching discipline in the military

Edward Begay:

"Then I got my assignment in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. I used to train troops for 18 months. The people that, the majority that came through that army camp was Puerto Ricans and they thought that they could just run over me by being stubborn and all that. So I said, ‘Okay, if that's what you want to do, I've got the patience and I'm in shape and we could run and run and run.' That's how I got my point across. They don't want to run, ‘Okay, you pay attention to what I'm teaching.' So as long as I'm on the platform I'm in charge, you do as I say because I know what I'm talking about because these are the things that I got taught and therefore you have to learn the discipline. About the third day I was understood pretty well. They know who's in charge and why. One of them asked, they said, ‘Why?' I said, ‘If you don't learn discipline here, when you get into actual combat you'll be the first casualty.' I said, ‘That's why I'm teaching you discipline to pay attention and understand the commands that are given. When I say hit the dirt you say how hard. That's for your safety. No other reason just for your safety.' Once you put that thought across then it goes a long ways for being understood and provide timely leadership and also surprisingly by the time they finished four weeks or eight weeks, they come and thank you for all the lessons that you taught them. That's gratifying."

Ed Begay began his service with the Navajo Nation in data processing

Edward Begay:

"They thought I was a computer whiz then but then the community that I come from, Church Rock, they have this chapter, local government of the Navajos. I would go to these meetings and I would just sit in the audience and there were some things that I thought they were overlooking, I thought they were elementary so I would address that in a timely manner. So one day they said, ‘Young man,' they said, ‘if you think you're so smart, we're going to put you in as chapter president. What would you say then?' I responded to the gentleman and I said, ‘If that's a challenge, as soon as you vote me in I would provide leadership for you, the community.' I said, ‘Leadership means that I have to tell you what to do, when to do it and how to do it. And then you have to pay attention.' I said, ‘That's what you're asking of me to do, then you vote for me.' So that's how I got elected chapter president and I served, didn't finished my term, three years or so then I got nominated to serve on the...to be candidate for Navajo Nation council delegate."

He was in the forefront of forming the Navajo Area School Board Association

Edward Begay:

"So we got organized and from all over the reservation and they said, ‘We want to get in that circle where the decision is made, approving budgets, hiring personnel and program changes.' So I was one of the organizers for federal legislation where the Bureau has to recognize a school board membership where they would be responsible for Bureau of Indian Affairs school. So I got elected from my chapter to Fort Wingate High School Board, one of the original and served there and by virtue of that there was at that time 67 schools on Navajo, Bureau operated, funded. Then each of these all had school board members eventually. When the federal legislation came through, we got organized so that we have an area association that oversees these school operations. A lot of work but we got it done, it's in place, it's working."

Meeting resistance to reform

Edward Begay:

"Some people naturally in any society there's always resistance but that just adds a lot of energy that you want to do better and you want to convince them and that's the approach that I took, especially with the people that understood what the agenda was, which was to be properly authorized so that could be in charge of these schools as a school board elected by the community that we come from where we send our children."

The influence of the 1960s on the Navajo people, using their voices

Edward Begay:

"Being out there in various communities, working and also being part of communities in different places, yes, I think Navajo people got swept into those movements and I guess in that way they realized, Indian people realized that, hey, you could be outspoken and be heard and you could write your opinions and like writing to the editor in news media or get interviewed and get your thoughts across. A lot of people would pay attention to what you have to say if you take it a positive way with the human interest in it, yeah, people will pay attention."

He has devoted 35 years to the service of the Navajo Nation

Edward Begay:

"I've been reelected since 1970 up to 1982; '82 I guess I could have continued but at that time, 1982 I was asked by Peterson Zah that he was running for chairman of the council and he asked me if I would consider being his running mate as the vice chairman of the council. So I resigned from my candidacy as a council and came up with the Peterson Zah to seek the nomination and election for primary and general, which we did. So I served as vice chairman of the council from 1982 to 1987. For reelection we lost reelection by 750 votes."

Restructuring the Navajo government following the years of Peter McDonald

Edward Begay:

"I was out of office that period of time. However, as all politicians do that you work behind the scenes to get your ideas and programs in place. So I worked a lot in that period of time in that fashion. And some of the sitting council friends and relatives they were active participants in that. I think they're just...I knew being on the council prior I knew that this was going to come about sometimes. By that I mean that the Navajo Nation council is the governing body and whoever's chairman or president, if they want additional powers to do certain things, they have to go back to the council to receive that authority. During Peter McDonald's term in '87, '88, '89 at that time quite a bit of or most of the power was delegated to the chairman then. So when Peter McDonald came back to regain his seat he knew he had all the delegated authority so he didn't pay attention to what was being advised by the council. He said, ‘I'm duly authorized, therefore you have no say.' So the council said, ‘Okay, we'll test this.' So they stripped him of all the delegated powers and reserved unto themselves. They brought everything back only the position of the chairman and the vice chairman. It came down to they tell him when to come to work and when to quit and what he can do and what he can't do. That's where all the eruption that the council did wrong and that they were abusing their power at allegation and so forth. But that's, to me that's the bottom line. So he had to pay attention to the council. So by virtue of the restructuring, all the powers that were delegated to the chairman then was given...the council took it all back and they did distribute that power to the standing committee of the council. That's the way it is now, which is Title II as amended. And then by virtue of that they created the office of the president and vice president, they created office of the speaker for legislative branch to preside over the council and also oversee the day to day activity of legislative branch. And then of course we have the judicial branch, which is headed by chief justice to do all the activities. So they worked those things out and that's what we have in place now."

The Nation has turned down gaming

Edward Begay:

"I think in the area of authorizing legalized gaming on Navajo I think it's a mix. The elderly people, those that pay close attention to culture, say that it's not the proper thing for the Navajos to establish because it creates a lot of disruption in the family, disruption in the spending pattern and then also disruption of marriages and all the related vices that goes with outright gaming if one does not closely control and monitor. I think that's one of the basic reasons why they kind of, the Navajo people kind of says, ‘Slow down a minute.' And then there's some other segment of Navajo population they like to establish gaming so that we could capture all the monies from other people rather than from the Navajo people themselves. But in order to do that I think education is the key to that."

The place of traditional wisdom in the everyday decisions of life

Edward Begay:

"In my personal life in the early years I was brought up as believing in the practice of Navajo beliefs meaning Navajo prayers, meaning Navajo songs and certain things of doing. People call it rituals but it's just the way Navajo practice their beliefs and practice through the ceremony, that's how I was brought up. But when I got into a Christian school then I was taught about the discipline of Christian practice and to me they are very strict. It's not just hearsay. By that I mean they're in thick books, they're all spelled out and you could, if there's a certain subject matter you wanted to address or find out why they are written you go to those source and they'll explain it to you, detail. Before I lose my train of thought, that's where I would like as a speaker to council now before my term is up I'd like to get those, some of those principles in Navajo practice to print and into maybe a law but the people tend to say you shouldn't do that. But I myself believe it should be written down, you should have books on it so my grandkids that follows me would know what I was talking about, they could go to that reference. The way it is now you have to find some elderly folks to be your reference on those songs or prayers and practice. On the other side, in the Christian faith it's all written down so that there's no room to wiggle ‘cause it's there. But for myself, if you just pay attention to those principles that are written down and then also the principle of Navajo that are handed down verbally we understand I can almost put it together just from my own belief and there's some variations but very little if you pay attention to those fine print. I think that that helped me in life to have a strong faith in myself and also the good Lord above that guides me and provides me wisdom to make all these supposedly hard decisions, tough decisions. But if you have those things in place those are just day to day decisions one makes to survive in life."

The need for real commitment to the task of developing economic self-sufficiency

Edward Begay:

"At the same time we have to pay attention to orderly development in all these different areas because there's so much regulation, environmental protection laws. We have our own environmental protection laws in place now. If one could pay attention to all those I think there's a business opportunity for an entity. The Navajo Nation talks about developing Navajo entrepreneurship but they just say it in words, they need to put it in practice. But at the same time the people, the Navajo people, business people need to have a personal initiative, drive, which means you have to sacrifice to achieve what you're after because nobody's going to give it to you. If you wait for that, there's a long list for handout. The handout just lasts a little bit but if you're in private business I think you have unlimited opportunity that I think which we Navajo individuals yet to grasp fully so I think that's a challenge for not only Navajos but I think it's for Indian communities."

On whether the tribal council shares his views on economic development

Edward Begay:

"I wish 87 other members did, they would be a very dangerous council to work with meaning that they would just blow up the opportunity, that's what I mean. But they express it but when it comes to financing then everybody starts hedging back. Let me just use the word loosely or even the full meaning, they hate to take risk. I feel if anything you want to do worthwhile for yourself or for your family or for your neighbors and your kin folks, you have to take some risk. But you've got to know the risk that you're taking up front rather than just surprise type of thing. I think that's a virtue that people have yet to fully learn."

The Navajo Nation and the U.S. Congress

Edward Begay:

"This might surprise you but the strongest advocate that the Navajo has is a Hawaii senator, Senator Dan Inouye. He's very interested in Navajo language, he's very interested in culture and very interested how we do things. I guess...he says it intrigues him and it also challenges him. Secondly is from New Mexico, Senator Pete Domenici. Sometimes he gets upset with us but I always tell him, ‘Senator, you have nowhere to go. We're here to stay.' So he's very helpful. Senator Jeff Bingaman although he doesn't take our advice at times, but then he too has to pay attention to Navajo. Then you get to the Arizona side it's a different story. By that I mean they tend to take care of the dominant society's interests first, then if there's some left over they might share it with you or support you, DeConcini, Kyl. Then to Utah the Mormons have all these wonderful things for me the people should do but when the pressure is applied they have a tendency to shy away. There again, they take care of their own first and if there's some left over we'll share with the Native Americans. This is in terms of proper funding from the federal government. That's what I'm alluding to and also for ongoing support for economic development. By that I mean if United States government can at the twinkling of an eye can appropriate $40 billion, no argument for some other places they can't even take care of their own here. This is sad. But that's in the real world."

Asserting Navajo sovereignty on every level

Edward Begay:

"That doesn't mean we have to sit down and say, ‘We're going to give up.' No, that just adds fuel to our work and for myself, I get involved in the state legislature, county government, chapter government, United States government and international. Last fall three of the council members we were delegates to United Nation in Geneva, Switzerland. They meet for two weeks. Anyway I was there for one week and then my counterpart Chief Justice Yazzie took care of...sat in the second week so we had full coverage. So that's where in that forum as a government, you have to go there as a government to be effective I learned. But when I gave my statement on some issues all those people turned around and faced the Navajo delegation when we made a presentation because we were there as the Navajo government. Interesting, it was very interesting. And they pay attention to what you have to say and they said they value the recommendation that you present to them. That's a very rich experience in terms of worldwide governance I call it. That's where each Indian Nations of the United States and Canada should be. Hopefully Navajo Nation will get a seat one of these days."

The most important quality in leadership

Edward Begay:

"The key things is your upbringing, putting it to use at the higher level, higher level meaning in the government with the mass, let me just say the mass population of your group. You have to be dedicated. I guess some leaders they want to go for individual achievements. It could be done but they come and go to me. But if you're serious in being dedicated to impact and also improve the livelihood of your people you have to be honest with them. I think a lot of leaders come and go because that's where they fall. They're not honest, the true sense of the word honest with their people. I like to pride myself in being honest and level with the people that I represent meaning that I just tell them just the way things are at and also give them the consequences that might be involved if you continue to...sometimes it's not a pleasant thing to do. To achieve that you have to be honest with yourself in order to be honest with your fellow man."

Edward Begay's family

Edward Begay:

"Right now I'm a widow. I lost my wife 10 ½ years ago. She was Cecilia Damon Begay was her name. She was very supportive. I think one of the reasons is her upbringing and also the educational background that she had. She was a graduate of UNM in health science and she was a registered nurse. We have two daughters, Charlene Begay Platero, a son-in-law John Platero. Two weeks ago they adopted twin babies, a boy and a girl so they are proud parents as I speak. My daughter's a UNM graduate and she has her discipline in marketing. She works for Navajo Nation Economic Development in the area of all these activities marketing. She's an outspoken lady. She's a Rehoboth school board president until she resigned last week ‘cause she has two babies to tend to. She works really well with the state legislature and the State Department, New Mexico and working her way into the Arizona portion, coordinating in the area of economic development and ongoing things. And my son-in-law works, he's a foreman with the giant refinery just out of Gallup so they live in Gallup. My younger daughter Sandra Begay Campbell, she's a structural engineer for Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque and her husband is a mechanical engineer. Yeah, my daughter Sandra got her master's degree out of Stanford University and presently she just last January she was appointed to the University of New Mexico Board of Regents, appointed by the governor and confirmed by the New Mexico Senate."

His daughters did not speak the Navajo language in the home but many years later Speaker Begay and other leaders agreed to utilize it in government activities

Edward Begay:

"Surprisingly they understand but they can't talk fluently back to me. But that was my own fault, my wife and I's own fault. We consciously made a decision early on since both of us did not understand English, speak English when we went to school, as we went through school we had a tough time, at least I did, I had a tough time doing English composition. I always switch words around and I was thinking Navajo instead of English language and so we made a conscious decision that we would talk English to our daughters and that way they could excel. And they did I think, in my mind they did but then they had to go back and pick up learning Navajo and I think they can do that. They understand but it's just a matter of practicing speaking, a conversation with their aunts and so forth. But other than that I think in some cases Navajo families we speak mixed language, Navajo and English, we intermingle then that way you would understand me fully if I spoke to you in that way or the same way with the Navajo. If I spoke to them in Navajo and English to them they would lose the true meaning of my conversation or the idea I'm trying to convey to them. Knowing that, President Begay and I and Chief Justice Robert Yazzie, we said during our term or at least my term be supportive of them and they supported me is that they would preserve Navajo language and culture in all aspects of our governmental activities. That's what we're going with. It's a struggle. They say, ‘What are you saying?'"

Achievements and disappointments

Edward Begay:

"I guess there's several but just achieving the goal of getting educated and also provide leadership to Navajo people, not only the Navajo people but provide leadership to the county. I was a county commissioner for two terms in McKinley County and right now I'm serving as a highway commissioner for the State of New Mexico serving second term, the only individual that was appointed twice. So if I complete my term I will have served the State of New Mexico in that capacity for 12 years. And in that earlier statement I made was that when you're in Rome do as the Romans do and that's what I do best in those settings is provide leadership in that commission in terms of budgeting. But if I could only have that opportunity on the Navajo council it would have been wonderful but on the commission side I just deal with five versus I have to deal with 87 on the council side, that's the difference. I think the other one is achieving to be the Speaker of the Navajo Nation council elected twice, the second term being elected by a commission. So I'm the third Speaker of the Council, which is I think an achievement in terms of it's a new concept and being able to come and being the third one that in itself to me is a special achievement."

The legacy he would like to leave

Edward Begay:

"One of them probably be is just being fair and being honest and always promoting Navajo interests. Then also too is that I've been able to work with any government meaning that I said before that I'm electable in Navajo setting and also getting appointed to a state commission position and do an excellent job for them. That way they reap the benefit of the achievements that I made in those areas."

The dream of documenting Navajo traditions in a lasting piece of work

Edward Begay:

"Under my current term one of my plans was that I'm going to put Navajo Common Law to writing. As we speak one of my staff members is...I just gave them outline and I said, ‘Now you fill in the blanks.' In there it would be a guide, a guide and also a constant reminder for whoever reads this that these are the concepts and the practice that were used by our ancestors and this. But if they do it proper in reverent manner they could never go wrong so we'll have a book on it I hope."

The Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times series and accompanying curricula are for the educational programs of tribes, schools and colleges. For usage authorization, to place an order or for further information, call or write Institute for Tribal Government – PA, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon, 97207-0751. Telephone: 503-725-9000. Email: tribalgov@pdx.edu.

[Native music]

Videotaping and Video Assistance
Chuck Hudson, Jeremy Fivecrows and John Platt of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

Editing
Green Fire Productions

Photo credit:
Navajo Nation
Edward T. Begay

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times is also supported by the non-profit Tribal Leadership Forum, and by grants from:
Spirit Mountain Community Fund
Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, Chickasaw Nation
Coeur d'Alene Tribe
Delaware Nation of Oklahoma
Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe
Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians
Jayne Fawcett, Ambassador
Mohegan Tribal Council
And other tribal governments

Support has also been received from
Portland State University
Qwest Foundation
Pendleton Woolen Mills
The U.S. Dept. of Education
The Administration for Native Americans
Bonneville Power Administration
And the U.S. Dept. of Defense

This program is not to be reproduced without the express written permission of the Institute for Tribal Government

© 2004 The Institute for Tribal Governmen

 

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times: Wilma Mankiller

Producer
Institute for Tribal Government
Year

Produced by the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University in 2004, the landmark “Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times” interview series presents the oral histories of contemporary leaders who have played instrumental roles in Native nations' struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights. The leadership themes presented in these unique videos provide a rich resource that can be used by present and future generations of Native nations, students in Native American studies programs, and other interested groups.

In this interview, conducted in July 2001, former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation Wilma Mankiller traces her ascendancy from a child of the termination and relocation policies of the 1950s to becoming the first female elected to serve as principal chief of her nation.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Institute for Tribal Government.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Mankiller, Wilma. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Tahlequah, Oklahoma. July 2001. Interview.

Kathryn Harrison:

"Hello. My name is Kathryn Harrison. I am presently the Chairperson of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I have served on my council for 21 years. Tribal leaders have influenced the history of this country since time immemorial. Their stories have been handed down from generation to generation. Their teaching is alive today in our great contemporary tribal leaders whose stories told in this series are an inspiration to all Americans both tribal and non-tribal. In particular it is my hope that Indian youth everywhere will recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by these great tribal leaders."

[Native music]

Narrator:

"Wilma P. Mankiller, former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, was the first female in modern history to lead a major tribe. Mankiller was born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, in 1945 and today lives on the land allotted to her paternal grandfather in 1907 just after Oklahoma became a state. The family name, Mankiller, she explains is derived from the title assigned to someone who watched over Cherokee villages, a kind of warrior. Wilma Mankiller herself is a protector of her people and a kind of warrior for justice. Her goal as a community organizer and leader of the Cherokee Nation has been to help bring self-sufficiency to her people. Most of Mankiller's childhood was spent close to the land and in strong relationship with other Cherokee people. In the 1950s the Bureau of Indian Affairs encouraged the family to move to San Francisco under the Bureau's relocation program. The adjustment was extremely difficult for the Mankiller children but Wilma Mankiller was later able to benefit from participation in the social reform and liberation movements of the 1960s. She was inspired by the events of 1969 when a group of students occupied Alcatraz Island to bring attention to the concerns of tribes. Also in California her understanding of treaty rights and tribal sovereignty issues was deepened when she worked with the Pit River Tribe. Mankiller returned to her ancestral home in Oklahoma in the early 1970s. Her ideas for development in historic Cherokee communities caused Chief Ross Swimmer to take note of her work. Mankiller's work was interrupted by a near fatal accident and 17 operations. But through near-death and convalescence she emerged renewed and even more dedicated to work for her people. Chief Swimmer convinced Mankiller to run as his Deputy Chief in 1983. When Swimmer resigned to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, Mankiller assumed the duties of Chief as mandated by Cherokee law. She was strongly opposed by tribal members who did not want to be led by a woman. She ran for Chief on her own in 1987, was elected and ran and won a second term. Wilma P. Mankiller has made a great impact on her own people and other Americans as a tribal and spiritual leader. She received the Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year Award in 1987 and to her great pride one of the health clinics that she helped found bears her name. In 1998 President Clinton presented Mankiller the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In an interview conducted by the Institute for Tribal Government in July, 2001, Mankiller spoke about the historic struggles of the Cherokee people, her development as a tribal leader, her battles to win the post of Chief and the important issues for tribes today."

The Cherokee people

Wilma Mankiller:

"In 1492 we were in the southeastern part of the United States in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, a little part of Virginia, a little part of Alabama and the whole southeast. The Cherokee people I think went through a lot of different phases and a lot of different discussions about how to relate to their new neighbors. Certainly like every other tribe in the country we were forced into treaties where we always ended up ceding land and eventually lost a lot of land in the southeast just through treaties and through war and many other events. But at different periods we were at war. At other periods we had an official policy of almost accommodation where we tried to figure out how to get along with our new neighbors and whether we were in a war era or whether we were in an era of cooperation. It didn't matter, we lost our land and lost many of our rights anyway and so no matter what our official policies might have been."

The Cherokee Nation rebuilds itself after repeated injustice and assault

Wilma Mankiller:

"One of the most famous stories among the Cherokee is that when Jackson was a soldier and fighting one of the major battles that a Cherokee person actually saved his life, a Cherokee warrior saved his life and he lived to regret that. Later Jackson made his reputation as an Indian fighter and as a military man and then later when he became President, almost one of the very first acts was to try to convince the Legislature to pass the Removal Act, which eventually resulted in the Cherokees being dispossessed of their land in the southeast. Most people refer to the Cherokee removal as the Trail of Tears or the Trail Where They Cried because of the large loss of land and large loss of lives but actually all the tribes in the southeast went through the same sort of removal process. The Choctaws and the Creeks and the Chickasaws, the Seminoles, many other tribes went through the same situation. Our story I think is just the one that's more familiar. Our land where we had lived forever was given away in lotteries to White Georgians after the Cherokees were removed and this land's very different in Indian Territory than the land in the southeast. The political system, the cultural system, the medicines, the life ways, everything we'd ever known was left behind so our people arrived here with everything in disarray. Many people dead, everything familiar gone and yet what's absolutely remarkable about Cherokee people is that they almost immediately began to reform the Cherokee Nation and rebuild their families and rebuild their communities and rebuild a Nation and it's just absolutely amazing that they were able to do that given what had just occurred. So everybody helped each other. Most people were farmers and had small animals and they lived basically on a barter system where they...if one had eggs they would trade them to somebody else for milk or if one grew corn they would trade them to somebody who grew tomatoes or that sort of thing. People had a strong sense that if they were going to survive they had to rely on each other."

Life as a child at Mankiller Flats, family, community, connection to the land

Wilma Mankiller:

"My father was a full blood Cherokee who went to...attended boarding school. In those days when my father was a child they took children without permission from the parents. They literally came out and picked...to this community and picked up my aunt and picked up my father and took them to boarding school. A lot of people have stories about losing their language in school, in boarding school but my aunt and my...neither my aunt nor my father ever lost the ability to be very fluent in Cherokee. I think in part because they had each other to talk to. He had a lot of mixed experiences at boarding school but the one thing that he learned at boarding school was he learned the love of reading and of literature, which he passed on to his children. My mother is as best we can tell she says she's Heinz 57 varieties but she's Irish mostly and a little bit Dutch. She is also from this community. She went to probably maybe the seventh grade or something. Very well read, very politically astute. I guess she's what everybody would want for a mother. She is always steady, always gives her children unconditional love. My brother went to Wounded Knee and her advice to him was, ‘Well, just don't get shot.' It was mostly a life of a relationship with the land because we had a large family and a small house and no electricity or indoor plumbing or any other amenities and only one person several miles from here had a television. So our life was really very centered around the land. And we all took turns gathering water from the spring for household use and for consumption. It was the same spring that my grandfather had used and my father had used and so there was a sense of connection to the place and to the land. And so when I think of my childhood I think mostly of being outside and having a very close relationship with the land."

The family relocates to San Francisco in the 1950s

Wilma Mankiller:

"I think the Bureau of Indian Affairs basically told my father that he could have a much better life for his children if we moved away. And it seemed like a way to make sure that we were provided for and all that. That was the main sales because at the time we couldn't conceptualize a world beyond Muskogee. We'd been to Muskogee to the State Fair and to even talk about going to someplace like California was, we were unable to think about it in anyway. It would be like us sitting here saying, ‘I think I'll go to Mars,' and it was a world we couldn't visualize and couldn't imagine. We just knew that it was away from here and we'd have to leave home so we were not happy at all about that and in fact I asked my parents if I could stay here in Oklahoma with relatives. It was a very difficult time. I remember vividly the day we left on the relocation program, we're all piled in the car and headed to Stillwell and I sort of looked very carefully at everything to try to memorize it, the school, the road and everything else. And I always knew I would come back, even at 10, I knew that I would come back. We left a very isolated and somewhat insular world here, a very Cherokee world and got on a train and several days later we ended up in San Francisco with all the noise and confusion and everything else going on and we actually...the Bureau of Indian Affairs arranged for us to go to a hotel. I'll never forget, it was called the Keys Hotel in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco which is the Red Light District of San Francisco and we saw and heard things that were inconceivable to us. I remember my brother Richard and I hearing a siren and we could only relate that to what we knew so we thought it was an animal and we were trying to identify what kind of animal was making that sound. In fact I hated school ‘til I got to college. I couldn't stand school and found every opportunity that I could to avoid school because we were so different. We were country kids and we dressed like country rural people. We had the name of Mankiller. Children can be very cruel and so we were treated differently. We were immediately labeled as different and so...in school...so school became an unpleasant place. And as I got a little older we started going to the San Francisco Indian Center and that was the place where we met other people like ourselves who were from someplace else and just trying to figure out a way to...how to carve a life out in the city. And so that was extremely helpful."

Mankiller learns social issues from family: seeds of activism

Wilma Mankiller:

"There were always Indian people at our house and there was always discussion of what was going on in the world, what was going on in the communities and so eventually there were a lot of people who had ideas about relocation, which was really a very misguided policy and just about things in general. In terms of a political background or figuring out how to be engaged in the community I probably figured out how to do that just by listening to people at home. At the time I did not appreciate that. All I saw as a child and as a teenager is that dad would bring home people and my sister and I would have to give up our bedroom so these strangers could stay there but it sort of soaks in. Or dad didn't have money for us but he always had a $20 bill that he folded up and kept way in the back of his wallet that he would give to a family down on their luck. And so we would rather he had taken us to the beach or given us the money for the show and then later you realize that all that has an impact on you."

The family lives at Hunter's Point, an African-American community

Wilma Mankiller:

"And I still value that time because it gave me a close view of how an African community works from inside the community. There's a lot of strength and a lot of leadership, untapped leadership in African-American communities that nobody ever taps into and when people sit around and wring their hands about what to do about inner city problems, I think, ‘Why don't they just go sit down with the people and ask them?' In fact the first volunteer work I ever did was with the Black Panther party, which was again not like at that early stage not like the media portrays it but there were people who wanted to provide breakfast for elderly people and do a lot of...provide programs, a lot of really good things. And then in 1969 when Alcatraz was occupied, it was kind of a watershed experience for me and my whole family and four of my brothers and sisters moved over almost immediately to the island and helped out and so it was just an unbelievable period of time."

Mankiller discovers new strength from the Women's Movement

Wilma Mankiller:

"It was a marvelous time because before that I think we had like many women of my generation we had lived our lives through the men we were with and through our children and through other people, our lives were in response to somebody else, they weren't who we were and so we were always in a secondary role. We were...at the time I was doing work in the Native American community and I was the person who wrote the speeches for the men and arranged their press conferences, wrote the proposals and always tried to convince them that we should do one thing or another but never articulated my own ideas and so it was a time of awakening for us and kind of coming into our own."

Mankiller cultivates leadership skills directing a youth center in Oakland, attending San Francisco State University and working with the American Indian Resources Center

Wilma Mankiller:

"I gained skills on how to run a youth center period. I had no idea when they offered the job to me what it entailed. You had to develop curriculum, hire teachers, find the building. I thought, ‘Oh, this'll be a neat job.' Well! Anyway, so I ended up having to locate the building, find painters, fix it up, develop a curriculum and I loved the job. It was an inner city street after school program really and it was called the Native American Drop In Center. And all the kids would come after school to be there and work on their homework or have recreation and we did all kinds of things to help them feel good about themselves. At the time there was a Mescalero Apache singer named Paul Ortega who was making the rounds and so we had his music playing all the time and Jim Pepper, a Caw musician and other people like that to show them some role models, Native American role models. We taught the girls how to make shawls and taught the boys how to dance and drum, lots of things like that. It was fun."

Mankiller works with the Pit River Tribe in Northern California

Wilma Mankiller:

"Well, I think I was inspired at Alcatraz, by what had happened at Alcatraz to be more involved in things around me and I actually saw the Pit River Tribe on the evening news and they reminded me so much of people here. They were rural, Native American people who seemed familiar and so I called up their lawyer who had done an interview on the evening news and I volunteered to do some work for them, whatever they wanted me to do. And so mostly I worked as a volunteer at the legal offices in San Francisco but I spent a lot of time with Pit River people on their land and learned a lot. They were the first group of people I worked with who framed Native American sovereignty issues in an international context and saw the issues as international issues and not just national issues. So that was very helpful for me. I learned a lot about treaties, the treaty rights and the relationship between the federal government and tribal governments during that period at Pit River and in part because I worked for them as a volunteer at the legal offices and I've also helped them put together their history books and various things like that. But I learned a lot just sitting on the porch of some of the elders there at Pit River and I still have a very vivid image of these older people, Charlie Buckskin and Raymond Lague going and finding this little precious box of old papers, which supported their claims to their land near Mt. Shasta. And they treated those papers almost like they were sacred objects because it was their claim to their homeland. So that was a wonderful experience for me and my association with them was for about...until I left, until probably the mid ‘70s I was associated with them."

Mankiller balances life as a single mother, as a student and activist

Wilma Mankiller:

"I don't think that I balanced it very well for most of the time I was doing all that. I think that I had a singular focus on getting things done and so I just did the best that I could under the circumstances. My children went with me wherever I went. My children went to meetings, my children went to Pit River; whatever I did my children did those things with me. I co-founded a Freedom School in Oakland while I was there along with other Native American people and my children, I took my children out of public school for well over a year and they went to school in the Freedom School. Whatever I was involved in they were involved in."

In the mid 1970s Mankiller decides to return to Oklahoma

Wilma Mankiller:

"I think that part of the decision had to do with wanting my children to experience being part of a Cherokee community, part of it was that I wanted to do more local work and wanted to work with my own people. I had helped gather documentation for the 1977 conference in Geneva on Indigenous Rights and so I was dealing with very lofty principles of international law as they relate to Indigenous people and that's all well and good and certainly that work needs to be done but it was hard to reconcile that work with coming home and finding kids sniffing paint and people needing housing and needing healthcare."

Mankiller begins work with the Cherokee Nation in 1977

Wilma Mankiller:

"Basically I recruited Native American students from around the state for environmental training at a small college near Oklahoma City. When I took the job I had no idea where Midwest City was or where all these other tribes in Oklahoma were situated or anything. I hadn't been home that long but I thought, ‘I can figure it out.' And by the time I got processed and onboard it was early November of '77 and I had to recruit students for the spring semester beginning in January but I did it. I got the students there and did what I was supposed to do. Well, I sort of kept moving up. I started writing on my own, grants for the tribe and for projects and I've always liked writing and liked development and so then I moved into a development position and then eventually moved from the field office to the main office and moved into planning and then ultimately ended up doing community development work."

Chief Ross Swimmer moves Mankiller to tribal headquarters

Wilma Mankiller:

"Well, I had pitched to him before he started doing community development the idea of doing more work in communities like mine which is a rural Cherokee community. And the people who seemed to me to be getting the most services from Cherokee Nation were people who knew how to work the system and who had the ability to get to the Cherokee Nation. By and large they were many more mixed blood people than full blood people who knew how to get around and get things done and were much more pushy. And people in communities like mine were not getting served. And so I had written a paper, co-written a paper with a colleague at work and pitched the idea of doing work more in historic Cherokee communities. And so that...when he started thinking about doing community work I came to mind because of the paper I think."

Cherokees in small communities

Wilma Mankiller:

"I think they felt and I think they continue to feel a sense of alienation from the tribal government because the current system of tribal government that we have and which I was elected to bears little resemblance to our original way of doing things and the original way of doing things was that tribal communities had a great autonomy and their own leadership and there was no single leader or set of leaders who had unilateral authority over all the people. And so the only time all the Cherokee villages came together was probably in times of great catastrophe or an external threat and there was great respect for the local community leadership. And so Cherokee, the Cherokee Nation, like many tribes that have a form of government that's no longer their traditional form of government, have relatively low voter participation because people see the government as a place to go and get services but not the government in the sense of it being an integral part of their family or their community."

Mankiller's life is transformed by a series of events beginning in 1979

Wilma Mankiller:

"When I came home, I didn't come home and necessarily enter the world of the Cherokee Nation and politics. I came home to the traditional Cherokee world and I guess I'd missed it and I guess I didn't feel whole without that so I spent a lot of time going to stomp dances, I spent a lot of time with my uncle who's now passed away who led a ceremonial dance, a stomp dance, and my world was very different and my view of the world was very different. And so I saw the world from a different perspective and in that world disagreements were settled sometimes by medicine. There was good medicine where people could heal each other and provide comfort in times of stress or trauma or heal an illness and that sort of thing using traditional medicine. And there were also people who could use negative medicine to harm people. And during that period of time I learned from traditional Cherokee people that there were certain signs, if you were quiet and looked for signs that there were signs that you could see of an impending disaster or like a warning or something. And one of the things that they told me was that owls were messengers of bad news and so I became kind of leery of owls. The night before something really bad happened to me, two of the people who were part of what was my world then, a guy named Bird Wolf and his wife Peggy who are both full blood Cherokee people who are very involved in the ceremonial grounds came by to visit. And we spent the evening talking about, in part about the extent of which Cherokee medicine still had a huge role in the life of Cherokee people. And it was really interesting because that night that they were here we had...the house became surrounded by owls and in a way that it's just even hard to believe today that this happened because it was not the kind of behavior I've ever seen before and rarely heard of. But the owls actually came up to the window and they were everywhere, all over, and it was really very frightening. But I didn't connect that with anything going on in my life, it was just kind of a frightening situation."

In a head on collision with a car driven by a friend, Mankiller survives but her friend does not

Wilma Mankiller:

"And I remember briefly seeing the car, of course not seeing her but seeing the car, and then I didn't wake up for several days. But what was interesting and life changing is that I came so very close to death during that head on collision that I could actually feel it. I know what it feels like and it's actually very enticing and at the time I didn't know anything about near death experiences or hadn't read anything about them and so I didn't see a light or a lot of things the other people see during that period of time but I felt bathed in the most wonderful unconditional love and I felt drawn toward death. It was like this is what I lived for, everything I'd ever lived for and it was the most emotionally all-encompassing feeling that I've ever had. And I remember during that period of time when I was moving toward that feeling and was going to settle there that an image of my children, Felicia and Gina, who were young and I...that image sort of called me back and pulled me back from going there and staying there. So I think that had a profound impact on me, just the fact that I no longer, when I came out of that experience, I no longer feared death and so I therefore no longer feared life. So in a way I think because of some thinks that happened to me after that, I think that that accident prepared me for what was to come because I came out of that whole experience a different person."

Mankiller and Charlie Soap organize the Bell Community Project

Wilma Mankiller:

"Bell Community is not unlike other Cherokee, historic Cherokee communities. It was probably 85 to 87 percent of the people were bilingual. It was considered to be a rough community, a very troubled community. The school was in danger of closing cause so many young families were leaving. They had no water, no central water line. About I would say 25 percent of the people in the community had no indoor plumbing. There was a need for new houses. There was a lot of dilapidated housing in the community; very few services or programs. Many people weren't even enrolled in the Cherokee Nation tribal government and so anyway they wanted housing. In order to get housing they needed water and in that community it made more sense to do a water line. And so the Chief wanted to try to do a self help project there and so Charlie and I facilitated that process. And so the Chief and Charlie and I basically were probably the only three people who believed that people would actually rebuild their own community. So anyway we got the community together, we worked for them. They organized a steering committee with local leadership, elected from every single corner of the community and planned their own program with us as the facilitators. We just kind of kept a timeline and brought resources when we needed to, an engineer to design the system, funds to pay for the material, developed a system for organizing the labor so that it was done in a consistent way. And at the end of probably a little less than a year we finished...they finished an 18 mile water line using volunteer, totally using volunteer labor. Women worked and men worked and every family was represented."

Chief Swimmer asked Mankiller to testify for him before Congress

Wilma Mankiller:

"He had more confidence in me than I had in myself. Oh, my god, I had no idea where I was going, what I was doing and everywhere I went...I went to testify before a committee for the Chairman Yates was presiding over and after I finished my stumbling testimony he said, ‘Where's Ross Swimmer?' But, my goodness, my first trip was a disaster. It got better after that but he certainly had a lot more confidence and I'm sure he got lots of phone calls saying, ‘Who is this woman?' And then he asked me to represent him at various meetings and that sort of thing when he was ill as well."

Chief Swimmer asked Mankiller to run as his Deputy Chief

Wilma Mankiller:

"Initially I said no because I couldn't imagine myself making the transition from a community organizer and kind of a social services person who was a little bit bookworm-ish to a politician and our tribe's a very large tribe and elections are real mainstream kind of elections with...during that time they used some television, a lot of radio, a lot of direct mail. I just launched my own campaign, completely separate campaign without knowing anything about it but I used my own money and bought ads and did a lot of things to get myself elected."

Mankiller deals with resistance and hostility during her campaign

Wilma Mankiller:

"I tend to be a positive person and try to be very forward thinking and focus on the future. And there's a Mohawk saying that's probably my favorite saying that says, ‘It's very hard to see the future with tears in your eyes.' And so you can't spend a whole lot of time dwelling on negative things or crying about negative things or it blurs the future. So you have to kind of stay focused and keep moving forward. I think the accident prepared me for all that because it literally never touched me. I never saw their attacks as anything personal having to do with me. I saw them having to do with something going on with themselves or just a disagreement they had with me on an issue. I never took it personally and I think I was very fortunate throughout my entire political career that I was able to do that. I'm able to stay real focused on what I need to do, whether it's build a clinic or win an election. It's not about me, it's about a much larger issue and if I would have let my energy be drained off into thinking about me or my reaction to hostility, I'd have never got anything done and so I just didn't focus on it. I think that in any given political situation, people who put themselves out there to be elected know that there's immediately going to be a contingent of people who are very hostile, some overtly hateful who are going to be that way for reasons of their own that have little to do with me. And then I think people have a legitimate right to disagree with their leaders and so they have a right to have their own view of things."

As Deputy Chief, Mankiller heads the tribal council

Wilma Mankiller:

"Well, at first, because the entire tribal council had opposed my election they weren't real crazy about my being their president and so it took awhile to establish a relationship with them. And once they saw that I was going to be serious and focused and wasn't going to be drawn into games or negativity in anyway, that I was about the business of the tribe, I think they settled down and we settled into kind of a routine. And of course they thought the world would crash and burn when Ross Swimmer resigned two years after I was elected Deputy Chief to go head the Bureau of Indian Affairs and then I became principle Chief. Then they were just absolutely alarmed. So there were a number of threads running then. I think they one thought that things were going to be terrible for the last two years of Ross's term which I filled and on the other hand they thought, ‘Well, we'll just live through these two years and we'll defeat her in the next election,' which was the 1987 election. So it was a very difficult time because our constitution allows for the Deputy Chief to move into the Principle Chief's office if he resigns or vacates the office. If the council had had to make the decision I would have never been selected. They would have selected somebody else. So I was left with his staff, his mandate, a council that didn't support me and I had to figure out a way to get some work done in that situation."

Mankiller runs for Chief with the enthusiastic support of her husband and family

Wilma Mankiller:

"Charlie was very enthusiastic and very, very supportive of my election and I would not have won election without his support because he's very fluent in Cherokee and was able to talk to a lot of people who, older people and other people who would not I don't think had voted for me -- men -- a lot of people would not have voted for me had he not been able to sit down and talk with them in Cherokee and explain to them why I should be elected. So he was critical to my election. My whole family was supportive. My mom got out and put up signs and my sisters served as poll watchers so everybody was extremely supportive of me during that whole period of time.

Her priorities as Chief

Wilma Mankiller:

"When I came to the Cherokee Nation in 1977 as an employee there was almost no healthcare system. Our options were two Indian hospitals one Claremore Indian Hospital, the other one was Hastings Indian Hospital and being able to take the plans put together by tribal health staff and tribal members and make those plans real is probably the thing I'm most proud of. We basically were told by the people that we needed to decentralize healthcare and move it closer to the people. So during my tenure we built a $13 million clinic in one community, $11 million clinic in another community, we bought a hospital in still another community and renovated a building in another community and when I left we'd started another $10 million project in another community and so we built a lot of healthcare facilities that are closer to people. And the one in Stillwell in this town, our hometown, is named after me. The council...I was out of town and the council passed a resolution naming the clinic in this town the Wilma P. Mankiller Health Center, which is interesting given the fact, given how I started out with the council."

Relationships with other tribes

Wilma Mankiller:

"It would seem natural to me because I had been involved in the San Francisco Indian Center with many tribes and had done a lot of work among other tribes. Having relationships with other tribes seemed not only natural and normal but desirable. I wanted to know what they were doing and oftentimes some of the smaller tribes with far less resources than the Cherokee Nation were doing far more innovative than what we were doing at the Cherokee Nation. So I learned things from them, we shared information, we tried to support one another and help one another. And so I think that for some tribes I think they get a little tired of always hearing about the big tribes like the Cherokee Nation or the Navajo Nation and so there's a little bit of that but I think by and large there was a great relationship. The two times when tribes had to select people to represent them with President Reagan and with President Clinton and both times I was selected by the tribes themselves as one of the people to go and meet with the President. So was Pete Zah, my partner in a lot of this work."

Cherokee lands and environment

Wilma Mankiller:

"I personally had taken a hard and fast rule, pro-environmental rule so we weren't approached by a lot of people who would do damage to the environment so that was never a real huge issue for us. I think someone came once, you could always tell these guys that are coming from organizations that'll devastate the environment, they generally have a Rolex watch and a great spiel about how they can protect the environment and do all this stuff and so we would send them away."

During his lifetime, the great Chief John Ross revered the judicial system of the United States. Mankiller comments on the system today

Wilma Mankiller:

"I think I was less shocked than the rest of America by the Supreme Court's involvement in the 2000 election because I've seen how politicized the judicial system can be. We're very fortunate in the 10th Circuit in Denver for our region to have I think a pretty fair set of judges but that's certainly not the norm. I think that I've come to understand how very political the justice system is and you can simply look at the number of Native American women and men that are in prison and the number of Black men and Black women that are in prison and look at, compare that to White people who have committed similar crimes and understand a little bit about the judicial system in this country. And so I didn't have...I don't think I had the blind faith that other people had and I've never had the optimism that John Ross had that the judicial system was indeed just. So I wasn't shocked by what the Supreme Court did at all, not at all. I think it's significantly diminished the stature of the Court in the eyes of most Americans."

What progressive people can learn from opposing forces

Wilma Mankiller:

"Well, I'll tell you, the right wing has certainly figured out how to organize families and communities around the issues that are important to them and I think that people on the left in the ‘60s let the right just walk away with issues around spirituality and religion and a lot of other family values and they practically turned religion and spirituality in a bad word because they have such a narrow interpretation of...the right has such a narrow interpretation of religion and spirituality. I think we have a lot to learn about how they listened to the people then organized around issues that are important to everyday people. I think there's that lesson. For me, because I live in a state that's very conservative and there are a lot of right wing people, I'd rather deal with up front, right wing people than I would these squishy liberal people who are just as racist, just as greedy and are just as unsupportive of Native American rights who will read these wonderful stories about Chief Seattle and quote him in their meetings but who wouldn't lift a finger to help tribes and tribal sovereignty issues or tribal rights or who would not stand with Indian people in times of trouble. Give me an out and out racist any day than someone who will have the liberal chatter at a cocktail party and have more of a smoke and mirrors way of doing the same thing."

Interdependence and our responsibilities to the earth

Wilma Mankiller:

"What I mean by interdependence is I think that the Creator gave Indigenous people ceremonies to help us understand our responsibilities to each other and the responsibilities to the land and I think that the original instructions we were given as Indigenous people are what keeps us together as a people and that everything's connected to everything else. And so to me a life is not worth living unless you're engaged in the community around you, unless you have some sense of interdependence with other people and with the land and so when I speak of interdependence that's what I speak about. I think that the message we hear on television and magazines and films about doing for yourself and only thinking about yourself and that sort of thing, I think we should reject those messages and remember that we have a responsibility to each other as human beings and we have a responsibility to the land."

Major challenges for tribes today

Wilma Mankiller:

"We have just a daunting set of health, education, housing and economic development problems but the central issue I think for people is going to be...the central question is going to be, ‘How do we hold on to a sense of who we are as Indigenous people?' We can't do that if we lose traditional medicines, traditional knowledge systems, any sense of connection to our history and to our stories and to the land. And we've lost everything if we've lost that."

The prophecy of Charlie and the two wolves

Wilma Mankiller:

"Since almost the time of contact the Cherokees have debated the question of how to interact with the world around us and still hold on to a strong sense of who we are as Cherokee people. And the question became more confusing and more difficult as Cherokee people began to intermarry with Whites. And so at some point in history Charlie the Prophet appeared, a Cherokee man appeared before a meeting with two wolves and he warned the Cherokee people that they would die if they didn't go back to the old ways, the old Cherokee ways of planting their own food and living according to the old values. And I keep that statue and I have also a poster in the hallway of this same prophet to kind of remind me that it's an ongoing and continual debate among Cherokee people. How do we hold onto a sense of who we are as Cherokee people and still interact with the society around us? And I think that Charlie the Prophet when he was talking about the Cherokee people would die if they didn't go back to the old ways, he wasn't talking about physical death, he was talking about a spiritual and a cultural death and so I think his message is an important one that if we're to survive as tribal people and enter the 21st Century and beyond that the single most important thing we can do is to find a way to hold onto our culture, hold onto our life ways, hold onto our ceremonies and songs and language and sense of who we are."

The Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times series and accompanying curricula are for the educational programs of tribes, schools and colleges. For usage authorization, to place an order or for further information, call or write Institute for Tribal Government – PA, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon, 97207-0751. Telephone: 503-725-9000. Email: tribalgov@pdx.edu.

[Native music]

The Institute for Tribal Government is directed by a Policy Board of 23 tribal leaders,
Hon. Kathryn Harrison (Grand Ronde) leads the Great Tribal Leaders project and is assisted by former Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse, Director and Kay Reid, Oral Historian

Videotaping and Video Assistance
Chuck Hudson, Jeremy Fivecrows and John Platt of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

Editing
Green Fire Productions

Photo Credit:
Wilma P. Mankiller
Clinton Presidential Materials Project

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times is also supported by the non-profit Tribal Leadership Forum, and by grants from:
Spirit Mountain Community Fund
Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, Chickasaw Nation
Coeur d'Alene Tribe
Delaware Nation of Oklahoma
Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe
Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians
Jayne Fawcett, Ambassador
Mohegan Tribal Council
And other tribal governments

Support has also been received from:
Portland State University
Qwest Foundation
Pendleton Woolen Mills
The U.S. Dept. of Education
The Administration for Native Americans
Bonneville Power Administration
And the U.S. Dept. of Defense

This program is not to be reproduced without the express written permission of the Institute for Tribal Government

© 2004 The Institute for Tribal Government 

 

Regis Pecos: The Role of Core Values in Cochiti Governance and Renewal

Producer
Archibald Bush Foundation and the Native Nations Institute
Year

In this excerpted video, former Cochiti Governor Regis Pecos provides an overview of the core values that are integral to Cochiti's culture and way of life, and shows how his people relied on the application of those core values to overcome a catastrophe and rebuild its nation and community.

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

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Pecos, Regis. "The Role of Core Values in Cochiti Governance and Renewal." 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 2, 2011. Presentation.

"[Cochiti language] is, in my language, a greeting to all of you. I wanted to first express my appreciation and thanks to the, our sister and our elder who shared with us this morning a prayer and a song. And sitting back there as she sang really, it's not difficult to become emotional. If you think about how, over time, these songs of our people have been shared and really, no matter what language, it resonates deep with inside of us because those are the voices of our forefathers, those become the voices of all those who've gone before, that we are connected to, and so it's a beautiful way to remind all of us of the sacred trust that we have to all those in our communities, to all the children, to all those who are yet to be born. And I want to thank the Bush Foundation, as well as the Native Nations Institute. One, for creating the opportunity for this kind of discourse that really also needs to be said in congratulating all of you, in all of your respective capacities, to take this time in our collective journey to stop and reflect. I want to share with you, and I'm going to use my Native language because I think like the song shared with us, to begin this dialogue today, it's only in our language that we can fully come to appreciate and understand what enormous responsibility we have, at this particular time in our journey, and how everything that we do affects so many more into the future. But it also is a way to honor all those who have gone before who, in their time, rose to the challenge to define our inheritance, all that defines who we are as Indigenous people. And so I want to begin in sharing with you, something very intimate about Pueblo people. And I want to begin -- I have only 30 minutes -- and I'm going to take you from our time our origin or emergence or creation, all the way to 2012 in 30 minutes. So we're going to be on a fast track here. But, for us, this is how we describe from where we come from, what we're connected to that defines our present day sacred trust, to those who have gone before, but to those yet to be born...

This we call the gifts of the Creator. From this the Creator also gave us something that we call our traditional calendar, the day-to-day, the week-to-week, the month-to-month. In all of our societies and all of our cultures we all have a cycle, don't we? We all have a cycle and here for us it's broken up into winter, spring, summer, and fall. But each of us know intimately something very similar to this calendar no matter where we are as Indigenous people. And this process, during the course of the year, is an annual renewal of these core values, reminders, validators, confirmation, reaffirmation of all that is connected to our core values. Year round we engage in this process. And if I went to table to table to ask, when is a time in your life when you find the greatest joy and peace in your existence? I'll bet to say that every one of you will point to a time somewhere in this cycle of our traditional calendar where we are engaged in ceremony and we feel the peace because there is an expected kind of behavior that connects all of us. We hear the children laugh, we see the love and respect given in accordance to our elders, we see those who are singing, those who are dancing, those who are supporting ceremony by observation and support and encouragement. Don't we? And we find incredible sense of joy and peace engaged in this process.

But, over time, our elders also spoke that along this journey that there will be times along our journey that there will be many challenges to these core values. For the Pueblo people it came at a time when conquistadors came to New Mexico, threatened the core values: our land, our way of life, our people, our families, our resources. And what was the response? As all of you in your time as you reflect upon your past and your history there have been similar challenges to your core values, the core values of who you are. And often our forefathers knew the only way to continue to sustain a way of life, to protect all the gifts of our Creator, was sometimes to give their lives to resist these threats. Right? Our forefathers gave often their lives so that we would inherit all that we have that sustains who we are as a people.

And so the Pueblo people in that time revolted in 1680 to move back the Spanish colonizers in what is now New Mexico. Upon their return was our first challenge of adaption. In order that Pueblo way of life, as the Creator gave to us, would survive they compromised necessarily and adapted to embrace Catholicism in order that our own way of life as was a gift from the Creator might survive. It also compromised to embrace an overlay to Pueblo government as they knew and as we knew it since time immemorial that results in a layer that is still part of that adaption today as we have governors and lieutenant governors, viscales, which is an overlay. But they adapted to protect our own internal leadership that continues to this day. And in that process of the first adaption, to protect what the Creator gave us, affected our governance system, creating one of the rare theocracies in this world where there is no separation of church and state. If we go through the rest of history since the time of colonization that all indigenous people have experienced, in all parts of the world, but for all of us in this country, right?

I just want to quickly take you through a timeline that would look something like this for everyone. Since colonization, since the U.S. experience, here we are, us, today. And here are our parents. Here are our grandparents. Here are our great grandparents, and so on, our connection to the past. In the last one hundred years, there is a personal connection to the imposition of federal policies and laws that threaten in the same way our core values. Our lands have been reduced, policies prohibiting the practice of our own way of life, policies and laws that attempted to destroy our family institutions, to destroy our communities. But 1934 became an important imposition for us to remember because 1935 is a reminder of one of the most significant impositions of recent history that affects the very foundation and framework of governance in our communities, the transformation, the detribalization of our own traditional governance systems, right? And the way in which many of our communities, that kind of imposition has resulted in the kind of dysfunction that results in similar dysfunction in this country. That when you turn on the television, turn on the radio, and all you hear is adversity and antagonism between the republicans and the democrats, right? Sometimes we think whether or not they are for the citizens of this country because it all is about what, the maintenance of power driven by the economics. And if we can imagine that kind of dynamics at one level, think about what that does in small communities where that kind of imposition results in tremendous conflict, sometimes unresolvable it seems. But let us think about that imposition and the lasting impacts and let us think about what happened in 1980 during the Reagan administration, where sometimes the unconscious imposition, in the name of development, results in equally devastating, the destruction of our core values with this kind of imposition for planning and development that has resulted in a whole other overlay, that results sometimes as it did for us; one of the first experiences, experiments in this country with private investment on reservation lands. And sometimes this kind of scenario drives us away from the core values paradigm of decision-making when we consider the cost and the benefits of imposed development.

On our reservation, as a result of these kind of proposals imposed, was a master plan for development. Forty thousand people -- where our Pueblo leased half our reservation for 99 years, creating an unprecedented non-Indian government that in time would compete against us. But an associated development with a master plan of this kind, unheard of, was a construction of the tenth largest man-made lakes in the world and in this country that destroyed in the process, revered places of worship. How could it be that this kind of decision would be made by leaders in our community? Well it happens when we move away from our core values, to disregard the costs and the benefits whether or not these decisions are compatible with the protection of something as sacred as our core values. And so it was for a predominately oral society, a traditional governance system, we had to work from within, stepping back as you all are in your respective capacities to assess what is happening and what is likely to happen if this continues. The obvious for us is that we would become a minority on our own reservation within just a few years if the master plan and the development were to be pursued and it became a reality; forty thousand on a reservation where we number just around a thousand, leasing half the reservation for ninety-nine years. I have a grandson who would be an elder in the community before that expires in 2065.

The destruction and the desecration is something we can undo with regard to where our emergence and our origin centers. So the elders said do what is possible to undo the mistakes made. And so now for the last thirty years we have been engaged to undo this master plan from within developing probably one of the first community development corporations as was recommended by the Reagan administration as a way to separate traditional governance from governing major business and development. But we chose to move in the other direction to really use the core values as the heart of our decision making and strategizing in how to reclaim, how to re-control so that those children yet to be born in fulfilling our sacred trust might still have a homeland. For the children yet to be born can still have a place to call home; that they might inherit from us, the language that connects them to the core values the Creator gave to us that they still might have a meaningful way of life connected to family, connected to community, connected and revering the relationships to the resources and the environment. But most importantly, that they maintain at the core of their existence, the kind of love and respect and compassion that comes with living core values as central and being the heart and the soul of what the Creator intended in the gifts the Creator gave us, in the traditional calendar of engagement of reaffirming and validating that that is what is the meaningfulness of our lives is to have that connection.

So over time there has been all these impositions using education as a classic example with the creation of boarding schools in 1890 taking children from our families from our communities to destroy all our core values, to wipe it out of existence so that we would become like everyone else in this country. Right? But our forefathers resisted. Think about when we became eligible as native people in this country with head start. What we still have not reconciled is one other classic example. That when we embraced head start we never asked the question of where is it a head start to? Is it a process of accelerating fluency of English at the expense of our mother tongue central to our core values? Since the time of forced integration of Johnson O'Malley into public school, the racial and discrimination that was epitomized in that time that resulted in many adults in their time making conscious decisions that they would not teach their children their mother tongue because of what they experienced. Right? A threat to our mother tongue. And today in this time of self-determination, let's ask ourselves that as we're controlling BIA schools, as we are now contracting schools through grant schools, tribally controlled schools now in our own communities, let us ask ourselves, what are we doing differently in this time of self-determination from those times when we didn't have control and that we were critical of? Right? Does that make sense? What are we doing differently in this time of self-determination from now that we are in control different from those times when we didn't have control and that we were critical of?

Education has been one of those other classic examples that has been elusive; knowing full well that that formal education process is a process and a movement from our core values. Right? At the expense of diminishing the influence of our cultural education connected to our core values. Think that in 2011 there are a few places in all of Indian Country that really has been able to strike a balance in the way that we educate our children. What we've not been able to do to maintain the connection of all those who we encourage to go out and to get an education in hopes that someday they might come home to be a part of the capacity of our communities, to create the kind of insulation so that we can preserve and maintain the internal aspects that connect us to those core values while we create the capacity of another concentric circle as we have in pueblo governance to deal with the external forces so that we insulate and protect the oldest form of our government system closest to our core values where we have been able to strike that balance internally, maintaining the leadership of our spiritual leaders, of our clan leaders who have their own role for the maintenance of this the maintenance of our traditional calendar so that what we have built over time are these concentric circles.

But all of these concentric circles that define shared responsibilities that insulate and protects the internal core and maintenance of our way of life while the capacity in another concentric circle deals with all the external forces with state government, with federal government, with business and development. But the center of the heart and soul of the strategy is how do we maintain the indigenous knowledge tied to our core values while we are able to deal with development in ways that does not threaten the survival of our core values, with our connection to all of these core values, as business and development can, in ways that in this time of self-determination to think about this in conscious ways that in this time of self-determination we cannot afford to do this. We're here today, us. The decisions we make today affect our children. Right? The decisions we make for those of us who are grandparents are already there affecting grandchildren. How many have great-grandchildren? The decisions we make today, we're already here effecting multiple generations but a hundred years hence. Our responsibility is to maintain these connections. The worst that we can do if we are unconsciously making decision not connected to the core values is to do this; is to contribute to the disconnect of future generation to our core values and thus breaking the relationship and connections that have existed since the time of origin of emergence of creation that has sustained our relationships our connection as the Creator intended along this journey.

For us in Cochiti, the threats to our survival, to our core values was real. But over the course of the last thirty years we have really used our core values to return to our policy making, our decision making to those set of core values to fully evaluate using the core values of all decisions with this very simplified cost/benefit analysis. That if a decision is going to be a threat to our core values it better have greater benefits because what we cannot afford to do in this time is to contribute to what the federal government failed to accomplish in all that it did to conceive policies that disconnected many from their homelands in the creation of the reservation, the laws that they created to kill our mother tongue with language prohibition, laws that they created to disconnect us from our way of life when they created codes and laws to persecute religious practitioners, laws and policies they created to dismantle family and community, laws and policies that they created to completely reorganize traditional governance systems, laws and policies the federal government created to completely remake our jurisprudence system, laws and policies this federal government created and implemented to disconnect us from our most precious resources. Right? But here we are today, starting with a prayer, with a beautiful song that represents that connection to our core value; using language as a way to communicate; rethinking how we maintain a way of life, our sense of spirituality. Here we are reflecting on how we restore our governance systems; that in the name of revenue and employment and development that it cannot be the ultimate compromised and demised to our core values. Here we are evaluating how governance, more comprehensively, is interrelated to all of the core values in this core values paradigm and not isolated. And how in isolation, if we treat it that way is a demise to the rest of the core values in this cost/benefit analysis, absent the core values.

And so I'm here simply to share in a very short period of time what holding true to our core values as the Creator intended has resulted in a second chance to maintain that connection as we have done in our little community of Cochiti, challenging the United States of America in its desecration and devastation of our place of worship and prevailing; undoing a master plan that would have brought forty thousand people leasing half the reservation with a non-Indian government. No one gave us a chance but we prevailed. Stopping hydroelectric power at that same sacred site, suing the federal energy regulatory commission. No one gave us a chance but we prevailed. That's our story. But we built from within using the core values using the oldest forms of government, no constitution, unwritten, using our oral societies, its customs, its traditional laws and applying it outwardly and externally to protect our core values at every turn drawing from that source, of that spirit and prayer that comes with our connection to those core values. We prevailed in all that David and Goliath challenges.

I want to simply say to end this that the elders speak that along this journey for all of us as indigenous peoples, each generation is faced with incredibly profound challenges and sometimes for all of us its overwhelming. Where we are today in our journey collectively as indigenous peoples, we've never been. Right? We've never been faced with quite the same set of circumstances but all we have to do is to reflect upon what our forefathers overcame, to look at their courage, their vision, their resiliency that sometimes what we feel so overwhelmed with, at a time when all these federal polices and laws have resulted in fragile nature of our core values, but they have survived and they have survived as a result from all those who have gone before who were never willing to compromise, all of that because that is what defines who we are as Indian people. The question becomes how will in a hundred years from now, how will those great, great grand-children reflect upon this time? And how...and will they be as kind as we are to our forefathers as they reflect what it is we did in this time that connected them to that time since origin, emergence or creation. That's our challenge today. But here you are in a very significantly profound time of stepping back and reflecting and asking, what am I contributing to? Am I contributing to sustaining and strengthening our core values in my community? Or are the decisions that I'm making taking us further away from our core values? And lastly, I just want to stop and ask, for all of us to ask this thought provoking question. What will our children inherit from us? What will your grandchildren inherit from you? And what will your community look like in the next one hundred years? These are all questions that you can't find anywhere else but within you. And you can be driven to connect them in this similar fashion if we hold strong to the core values.

And I really think as I was sharing with my good friend here that it is incredibly rewarding to know the courage that you all possess to simply be having this kind of discussion because it is a time in history, as long as we maintain and sustain this discourse, I think history will look kindly upon all of you and all of us as a time that we step back to reflect, to see where we've come from, to look at the complex challenges that have deep roots in the past but to be conscious in thinking of how I'm going to contribute to what those children of the future will inherit from us. And it truly is in time, I feel strongly, that will be represented by a definition that this really was a conscious time of a major renaissance of our people. That's how I look at this time. And I want to thank you for your courage and your own resilience because I know the difficulty in each one of our communities to be having the discussion that you all are. So thank you all and I hope this is a useful reflection in a very quick way."

From the Rebuilding Native Nations Course Series: "Why are Some Native Nations More Successful than Others?"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Native leaders offer their perspectives on why some Native nations have proven more successful than others in achieving their economic and community development goals.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Barrett, John "Rocky". Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 28, 2009. Interview.

Ninham-Hoeft, Patricia. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 26, 2009. Interview.

Nuvamsa, Ben. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 25, 2010. Interview.  

Pierre, Sophie. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Phoenix, Arizona. October 21, 2008. Interview. 

Sampsel, Roy. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. August 31, 2010. Tucson, Arizona. Interview.

Ben Nuvamsa:

"We have this long history and teachings and so on. And if we hang onto those beliefs, core values, and so on, that really is the foundation from which we can build. So in successful nations, tribal nations, we're able to do that; to define who they are, understanding who they are, but also have a plan. A plan that's looking down, some people say seven generations. We don't just plan for ourselves, for tomorrow or next five years but long-term. We have to have a global vision of where we want to be. And if we can define that, then we can reduce that down to something that's gonna be achievable. And I think that economic development, economic success, goes back to having a good strategic direction where you want to be. The same way with us as communities and so on and to be able to build our healthy communities so that...it's the same kind of thing. What do we want to achieve? Who are we? And at Hopi, for example, it's just going back to the values of who we are as Hopi and Tewa people and defining our communities that way...and then setting our governance accordingly."

Patricia Ninham-Hoeft:

"I think it starts with short-term and long-term vision. That those tribes that are successful have a vision for what they think they're community should look like a hundred, two hundred years from today. And they've taken the time to make steps backwards to map out how to achieve that vision and then they start working on it together. And that they explain that vision to the entire community so that everyone is on the same page and they can help. And I think part of getting to that place of success means that we, as individuals in our community, have to change our mindset that we have to stop being the victim. We have to stop blaming our history for why we're not successful and we have to start living and defining our future as it is today. So values and ideas that worked for us in the past, they probably still work for us today, but it's the way we express them, the form that we use to live our daily lives has changed and we have to get with that. And when we do that when we start defining and taking charge of our own future then we'll start realizing our vision."

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"Common attributes, I think, of successful nation building are stable governments, expanded representation, lawful behavior, and something that lends itself to consistent performance. All those go back to constitutional forms but they also... those are really accomplished by diminishing nepotism which is, you know, since everyone is related in an Indian tribe, that is an issue. Financial accountability is a huge one; separation of powers seems to be a common attribute; and most importantly to make all that fall within a cultural relevance that means something to the culture of the tribe and the people."

Sophie Pierre:

"There's lots of reasons why...I think that for our case, the fact that we have made it a priority, that we listen to our people, that we, and that we ensure that we're engaging our people, our Ktunaxa people, with every aspect as we move forward I think that that's really what has really helped us to be successful."

Roy Sampsel:

"Where you have a strong sense of history, a strong cultural sense, it allows for that to be the foundational building blocks on which nations can then advance as they begin to take on either the political, social or economic needs of their tribes are. [...] A piece of it, I think, is individual history that the tribes have gone through and whether or not they have been able to sustain leadership continuity over time. I don't want to over emphasize that because it doesn't mean that young, new leaders don't emerge and make tremendous leaders. But if there is a cycle in which this isn't able to be built upon, and if everything has to start new, then what you end up is the lack of the foundational building blocks that allow for success to take place over time."