cultural preservation

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 

 

Honoring Nations: Shannon Martin: Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture & Lifeways Director Shannon Martin presents a history of the Ziibiwing Center and discusses the work it has been engaged in since it won an Honoring Nations award in 2006.

Resource Type
Citation

Martin, Shannon. "Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 18, 2009. Presentation.

"[Anishinaabe language]. I'd like to acknowledge, first and foremost, this land and the tribes that reside here and the ancestors of those tribes as we gather here and we bring all of our hopes and our blood memories and our ancestral peoples here to this symposium -- this wonderful opportunity that was provided to us by the Honoring Nations and Harvard Project staff.

So with that, my name is Shannon Martin and I'm the current Director of the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinaabe Culture & Lifeways. We are a tribally owned and operated cultural center and museum that belongs to the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan. Our project started through a grassroots initiative that was based upon addressing the newly enacted Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act [NAGPRA]. And through that grassroots effort, a small cultural society was formed by those originating members. That cultural society was termed the Ziibiwing Cultural Society. Ziibiwing in our language means 'by or near the water.' And it was named to represent a historical gathering place of the Saginaw Chippewa of the region, there in central Michigan.

But through that work, the Ziibiwing Cultural Society began to identify repositories of tribal proceedings and treaties and other historical documents that were languishing in the basements and attics of former tribal council members and chiefs and leaders. So congruently, the work to address the stacks of inventories and of information of, items of cultural patrimony; those summaries were stacking up in the tribal government offices. The Ziibiwing Cultural Society began to address those inventories and [came] up with a plan to begin working towards bringing home ancestors through repatriation and disposition, and then also distinguishing that place to be the repository for the tribal archives and the tribal collections and treasures.

So from that humble grassroots beginning, the Ziibiwing Cultural Center of Anishinaabe Culture & Lifeways emerged and we opened our doors in May of 2004. So we have a short term of being a tribal museum. And we learned from some other established tribal museums and acknowledging their work and their reciprocity in sharing their information with us. In doing this work, Honoring Nations again provided us with those opportunities to create tools so that we can in turn be reciprocal and redistribute the information that we've acquired and best practice and what we've learned. So in that way, [Anishinaabe Language], the Harvard Project and Honoring Nations, for the privilege of being here today. In this presentation, I would like to focus on the work that we have been doing post-honors award.

At this exact moment, there's members of the Ziibiwing Center team who are mitigating the desecration of an ancestral burial ground in downtown Flint, Michigan. This sacred site was disturbed by construction activity in January of 2008. So this unfortunate situation has been complex at every turn -- from January 2008 when the [inadvertent] discovery took place -- we have come to find out. Through a series of meetings with the landholders -- who are a non-profit organization, an urban rehabilitation housing organization called the Genesee County Land Bank. We've been present at these meetings since that discovery with their representatives as well as the City of Flint -- because they were working in concert with the City of Flint. So we're sitting through a series of meetings, from January 2008 until this past spring, trying to come up with a mitigation plan and a resolution to the situation.

So in working through those complexities, our team discovered that there was negligence at many levels -- negligence that was taking place from the first assessment of the site, in which -- historic preservation letters are supposed to be sent to all of the federally recognized and state historic tribes in Michigan. These letters never made it to our offices. So there was some negligence going on between the federal agency, who is HUD [U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development]. They were providing some funding towards this rehabilitation project. They designated the City of Flint to be the federal designee and to do the work and be the contact. So between the City of Flint and the Genesee County Land Bank, fingers were being pointed at each other as to the mystery of where these historic preservation letters somehow vanished to. So with that, we came in at that point when the damage had already been done. And then the following consequences of that were that essentially, the Genesee Count Land Bank and the City of Flint expressed that they do not have, did not have the funding to mitigate the situation.

So these talks have been continuing since then and finally, this summer we have come to a proposal and a resolution. But the tribal council from the Saginaw Chippewa tribe has been actively involved in this situation since the get go. They supported the Ziibiwing Center team in letting us go down there to assess the situation when it first happened. And in an unprecedented event in their tribal history, the tribal council issued a cease-and-desist order that they presented to the Genesee County Land Bank in the City of Flint and which -- they honored that cease-and-desist order even though the tribe had no jurisdiction there. It was within the tribal historic territory but, with no jurisdiction, they still honored that cease-and-desist order to stop all construction activity at that site as we were having these talks, meetings and negotiations to mitigate the situation.

So on June 2, 2009, the Genesee County Land Bank and the tribe agreed to a mitigation proposal. That proposal essentially stated that the tribe would assume responsibility of coordinating this recovery and reburial effort, including incurring the cost to do this. So it was, the tribe was at these discussions, these negotiation tables, and the Genesee County Land Bank just wanted to bulldoze all of the dirt piles back into the ground and cover it up and reseed it. But through our assessment we just couldn't let that happen. Our team met with tribal attorneys, we met with the tribal council, we sought advisement from tribal elders. Because of the state of the situation, splintered ancestral remains and fragments were scattered throughout all of this dirt that was pulled from the earth. So mixed in with that, with our ancestors, was modern day garbage, trash, broken glass, old housing debris from the original structures that they raised and just an assortment of, what we've coined at the site as, 'Euro-trash.' So in doing that we didn't want to, we couldn't allow them to push the earth back in. So in that instance, we jumped into action and began to outline that proposal to mitigate the situation and tribal council voted on June 2 to advance that mitigation proposal. The Genesee County Land Bank and the City of Flint agreed to the proposal and we began to put into place, through a short time frame, a window of opportunity, the Ziibiwing Center was tasked, by the tribal council, to coordinate this effort.

So we began the recovery process on August 13. And through that recovery effort we are doing it at a low cost as possible; it's powered by volunteers, who are coming to the site daily to assist us. And then we have consultants on site; so we do have a credentialed archaeologist who's working with us on site to monitor the work and to provide the basic archaeological skill sets to begin sifting, for volunteers to sift, through the dirt. So we're looking at over 76,000 cubic feet of dirt that was pulled from the earth in four dugout basement sites; so it spans a city block. But there are four sites that we need to address. Splintered ancestral remains were, we have assessed that they're in every dirt pile, so we have to carefully sift through those piles and respectfully separate those ancestors from the rest of the unassociated debris. So the monitoring by the archaeologists and by field supervisors -- these individuals have stepped forward to provide that necessary expertise to us. They've been working in concert with us since this discovery and they are foregoing some of their own family and personal and professional obligations to help us and being at that site about six days a week that we are currently operating this recovery effort.

So in doing our work at the Ziibiwing Center, it can best be summed up by this quote. It's a quote from over 100 years ago that really resonates with our team. And this was penned by a journalist who was in Chicago by the name of Finley Peter Dunn when describing the purpose of newspapers. He said, 'In that work we must comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.' And at Ziibiwing we love to afflict the comfortable. The Flint ancestral recovery effort is doing just that. We are shaking the hallowed halls of various academies throughout Michigan, and I'm sure throughout the Great Lakes region, because this effort is beginning to attract statewide and national attention.

So in that, we are kind of being a lightning rod for unsolicited criticism and paternalistic overtures of assistance from professionals in the field -- archaeologists who would just love to come in and provide the necessary monitoring consultations with the end result that they get to take the goods home, the goods back to their university. So we're not letting that happen. Then the criticism comes and they're telling their colleagues in the 'Academy' that they should just bulldoze it back in. So that's their recommendation, since they can't be there to do the work the way that we want the work to be done. Now they're saying, on the flip side, that it should just be bulldozed back in with all the associated debris and contents. So in that work we're dealing with the criticisms and trying to shield as well the archaeologists and the graduate students who are working with us. One of the graduate students in a Saginaw Chippewa tribal member and he's at Michigan State University -- and his wife Nicole is also a graduate student there, too -- and they're our primary field supervisors. But they are catching a lot of flack, as well as the archaeologists; there's three archaeologists working with us. The Academy is criticizing their work; they're rogues. All sorts of attachments have been given to them and now they're seemingly being outcast within their own profession. And some of their colleagues have even called them up and said, 'Being a part of this project and working with the Saginaw Chippewa you are essentially ruining your professional reputation.' So we're working through those issues as well.

The Genesee County Land Bank, upon this mitigation proposal when we've completed what we need to do there, they would like to donate this land to the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan. So once we've recovered the ancestors -- reburied them and restored the land to meet our needs or to suit our protocols -- the tribe can then oversee and manage the land and take title of it so that that area can never be disturbed again.

And finally, the project is contributing to the tribal community in accomplishing cultural capacity and kinship building. Tribal members are being drawn to the site and are assisting daily. Many of whom expressed that they felt a need to be there, they just had to be there, they said. All ages of tribal members are working with us on this project. And this is the first time that many of them have expressed that they have wanted to be actively engaged within their own community, their own tribal community. One grandma who travels with us -- our staff -- almost daily, she said that she never really felt like she fit in her tribal community until this project. She works in the elements and in the hot sun with us carefully sifting and finding and recovering our ancestors.

I also have to acknowledge clients. We have -- the Ziibiwing Center has a strong relationship with the residential treatment center and the behavior health program. We've developed some curriculum based on the permanent exhibition within the center and we work with those clients once a week. Well, now that work has taken new life through this project. In that, the residential treatment center clients travel down to the Flint site about twice a week to assist in this effort. And they have said that working there, taking care of the ancestors, doing the physical labor, practicing spiritual protocols at the site has strengthened their road to recovery and has provided them with more spiritual connection to one another and to their own heritage.

So with that, that's the most pressing work, at this point, that the Ziibiwing Center has been doing since our honors award. I'd like to also mention some other defining moments in our work that includes the successful transfer, which will be taking place of culturally identifiable human remains. That claim was jointly done in May, this past May, with Central Michigan University in Portland, Oregon. So we are going to be bringing home 144 minimum number of individuals and 350 associated funerary objects that will be reburied on tribal land in the ancestral cemetery. We were also awarded an Institute of Museum and Library Services, Native American Native Hawaiian Museum Services grant for fiscal year 2010 to develop our disaster and emergency preparedness plan so that we have those systems in place to protect the tribal treasures and to protect our human resources and visitor-ship. And then just a few days ago we were notified that we were awarded an award through the Tribal Archives Libraries and Museums for Institutional Excellence in Museums, which we'll pick that award up next month.

Other work that we're doing on a local level, working again with behavioral health, is that we're going to begin looking at developing curriculum that addresses domestic violence as well as Two Spirit history and identity. Many clients have expressed that their addictions and their struggle in their lifetime is due to identity issues. So we're going to help provide the context for that history and provide curriculum to behavioral health in that effort and we'll start instilling that history and that pride back into the community because of the imposition of, as we know, the colonizer and our views on that today.

I'd like to close by saying Miigwetch, first and foremost, to an old friend who's on staff, Misko Beaudrie. She was able to connect Audrey and I yesterday afternoon to members of staff at the Peabody Museum. And Sandra's here. Audrey and I met with Sandra and Diana this morning to begin talks of repatriation for nine ancestors that are currently housed here at the Peabody and their associated funerary objects so we're going to be putting together that road map and put that in place. We'd like to acknowledge the Peabody staff for making time for us this morning, so that we can begin those relationships here at Harvard and bring home our ancestors from this area that were taken.

So as we work together to repatriate those ancestors, our work still continues on being a place that comforts the afflicted in addressing multi-generational historical trauma, through exercising our cultural and spiritual sovereignty. And our work will also continue in afflicting the comfortable. So presenting our history, presenting our culture, protecting our intellectual and cultural property and infusing it all with our spiritual life ways,  again on our terms -- just seems to really afflict those who like to rewrite our history and tell us how we should be.

So Miigwetch to Honoring Nations for this recognition and this privilege for being here and to spend time with all of you these past few days. Audrey and I have just been commenting and talking about all the inspiring things that we've learned while we've been here. If you can, we have a few copies of this product, which was a direct result of our Honoring Nations award. We were able to publish and distribute a four-year report. In the words of the Video Professor, try my product."

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

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

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

Resource Type
Citation

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

Duane Champagne:

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

Hilda Faye Nickey:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Honoring Nations: Elvera Sargent: The Akwesasne Freedom School

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

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

Resource Type
Citation

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

Duane Champagne:

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

Elvera Sargent:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Food Sovereignty: How Osage People Will Grow Fresh Foods Locally

Year

Growing fresh and local foods for Osage people is now a revived approach to food sovereignty for the Osage Nation so efforts to find the most successful methods are being looked into by leadership and community members. On Feb. 7, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture along with the Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology Okmulgee hosted the eighth annual workshop for ‘plasticulture’ farming workshops...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

HorseChief-Hamilton, Geneva. "Food Sovereignty: How Osage People Will Grow Fresh Foods Locally." Indian Country Today. February 12, 2015. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/food-sovereignty-how-osage-people-will-grow-fresh-foods-locally, accessed May 5, 2023)

Revitalizing a Traditional Seed to Revitalize Osage Culture

Producer
Indian Country Today
Year

Vann Bighorse, director of the Wah-Zha-Zhi Cultural Center in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, is keenly aware that Osage traditions are getting closer to slipping away–permanently.

A current project to preserve Osage culture and revive a millennia old tradition is now three years in the making. The Cultural Center has been building a collection of heirloom seeds and recently started growing traditional foods for traditional purposes. The Cultural Center currently has a small garden located at the facility. It is a small garden with huge potential, and Bighorse knows this project has to happen now...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Jefferson, Anna. "Revitalizing a Traditional Seed to Revitalize Osage Culture." Indian Country Today Media Network. February 12, 2015. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/revitalizing-a-traditional-seed-to-revitalize-osage-culture, accessed October 18, 2023)

Radical New Way to 'Museum': A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center

Year

Many people think of museums as dusty, static, boring places. They’re where you go if you want to see old bones, old artifacts, and the odd diorama. They’re not living, breathing spaces where cultures come alive.

Enter the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center in Zuni, New Mexico, which has done its best to change that perception. According to Jim Enote, the museum’s executive director, this unique museum gives guests an opportunity to join the Zuni community’s conversation – and experience an organization whose groundbreaking work is shaking up the field of contemporary museology...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Steinberger, Heather. "Radical New Way to ‘Museum’: A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center." Indian Country Today Media Network. September 18, 2014. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/radical-new-way-to-museum-ashiwi-awan-museum-and-heritage-center, accessed June 7, 2023)

Chickasaw Nation: The Fight to Save a Dying Native American Language

Producer
International Business Times
Year

A 50,000-year-old indigenous Native American tribe that has weathered the conquistadors, numerous wars with the Europeans, the American Revolution and the Civil War is now fighting to preserve its language and culture by embracing modern technology.

There are 6,000 languages spoken in the world but linguists fear that 50% of them will become extinct within the next century. In the U.S., 175 Native American languages are spoken, but fewer than 20 are expected to survive the next 100 years.

The language of the Chickasaws, known as "Chikashshanompa", is a 3,000-year-old living language that is categorized by Unesco as being "severely endangered"...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Russon, Mary-Ann. "Chickasaw Nation: The Fight to Save a Dying Native American Language." International Business Times. May 8, 2014. Article. (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/chickasaw-nation-fight-save-dying-native-americ..., accessed March 22, 2023)

Seneca Nation Implements Native Plant Policy

Author
Producer
Indian Country Today
Year

The Seneca Nation of Indians are spearheading a movement to reintroduce more indigenous flora to public landscapes on tribal lands in Upstate New York.

The tribal council unanimously approved a policy that mandates all new landscaping in public spaces on Seneca lands exclusively be comprised of local indigenous species. The new policy also encourages private Seneca landholders to choose local North American floral...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

ICTMN Staff. "Seneca Nation Implements Native Plant Policy." Indian Country Today. April 22, 2014. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/seneca-nation-implements-native-plant-policy, accessed November 6, 2023)