cultural values

Pte Hca Ka, Inc. (Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe)

Year

This tribally chartered corporation developed a culturally compatible management system for reestablishing buffalo as a focal point for socio-economic development, community cohesion, and self-determination. Pte Hca Ka, Inc. operates a mobile meat processing facility, and is currently seeking acquisition of 22,000 acres for a buffalo habitat that would become the first tribal national park. By integrating Lakota traditions into an economic development strategy, Pte Hca Ka, Inc. not only operates a profitable enterprise, but is also restoring cultural values into the Tribal economy and fostering pride and dignity among Tribal citizens. Pte Hca Ka, Inc. has been featured in numerous documentaries and has won widespread praise as a culturally appropriate development effort.

Resource Type
Citation

"Pte Hca Ka, Inc.". Honoring Nations: 1999 Honoree. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2000. Report. 

Permissions

This Honoring Nations report is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development.

Tulalip Alternative Sentencing Program

Year

Born out of a need to create a judicial system that Tulalip citizens can trust and that also helps offenders to recover rather than just "throwing them away," the Tulalip Tribal Court Alternative Sentencing Program supports efforts to establish a crime free community. Focusing on the mental, physical, and spiritual health of offenders, while incorporating cultural values, the program melds indigenous and therapeutic jurisprudence, Honoree Program Descriptions going beyond placing offenders in jail. Tulalip citizens now better reflect the sentiments of a traditional saying, "To pull that canoe, you have to pull together."

 

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

"Alternative Sentencing Program." Honoring Nations: 2006 Honoree. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2007. Report.

Permissions

This Honoring Nations report is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development.

Robert Innes: Elder Brother and the Law of the People: Maintaining Sovereignty Through Identity and Culture

Producer
American Indian Studies Program
Year

Robert Innes, a citizen of the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan, discusses how traditional Cowessess kinship systems and practices continue to structure and inform the individual and collective identities of Cowessess people today, and how those traditional systems and practices are serving as a strong source of practical sovereignty for the Cowessess First Nation. 

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Innes, Robert. "Elder Brother and the Law of the People: Maintaining Sovereignty Through Identity and Culture." Vine Deloria, Jr. Distinguished Indigenous Scholars Series, American Indian Studies Program, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. February 19, 2014. Presentation.

Manley Begay:

"Years ago as a young man, I read just about every book that Vine Deloria Jr. wrote and was just fascinated by this gentleman. And the more I read, the more I gained some insight into his thoughts and ideas and concepts about Indian life and Native ways. And some were controversial, some were absolutely interesting, made me laugh, made me cry, it made me happy, made me sad. And I always thought to myself, ‘I sure want to meet this guy one of these days.’ Lo and behold, I did. I not only met him, I ended up spending time with him. He became a good friend of mine. We served on the Board of Trustees for the National Museum of the American Indian for many years and then after that we became plaintiffs along with five other folks against the Pro Football, Inc. [NFL] and we were engaged in a 17-year long legal case basically fighting stereotypical imaging of Native people in the world of sports entertainment.

And during this time I saw him as a younger person to becoming sort of this elder scholar. And he carried himself in a very modest way and it was demonstrated by his love of wearing denim jeans. You would, I don’t think I ever saw him wearing khakis or dress pants. He always wore denim jeans. And he spoke with great conviction about his ideas and thoughts and everybody listened. And he would become one of the most important authors and scholars of our time in American Indian Studies. And the Vine Deloria, Jr. Distinguished Scholar Series was created in 2008 by the American Indian Studies Program and this series assembles a series of lectures featuring writers, activists, Indigenous leaders and scholars to discuss the issues that Vine felt were so important to Indigenous Country. As such, this series is an event that speaks to the core mission of the American Indian Studies Program by spreading the voices and visions of Indigenous scholars to the greater public. We were hoping that his wife Barbara Deloria would be here. Unfortunately, Barbara will not be with us. Hopefully she’ll be here in April I think, when our third speaker is here.

So this brings me to our guest this evening. Our guest is Professor Robert Alexander Innes. He’s Assistant Professor and Graduate Chair at the University of Saskatchewan. He’s a Plains Cree member of the Cowessess First Nation and actually he’s, his second home is Tucson. He spent a lot of years here working on his doctorate and he finished his dissertation in 2007. His dissertation was titled The Importance of Kinship Ties to Members of the Cowessess First Nation and in January 2007 he was appointed as Assistant Professor in the College of Arts and Science, specifically the Department of Native Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. Before that time, he was a pre-doctoral fellow in the American Indian Studies Program at Michigan State University. He completed his M.A. [degree] at the University of Saskatchewan in 2000 and his thesis was titled The Socio Political Influence of the Second World War Saskatchewan Aboriginal Veterans 1945-1960. He earned his BA at the University of Toronto with a major in History and a double minor in Aboriginal Studies and English and a transitional year program at the University of Toronto in 1996. His research interest is around factors that lead to successful Aboriginal institutions, contemporary kinship roles and responsibilities and Indigenous masculinities. He has numerous articles published in a variety of journals and he recently published his book titled Elder Brother and the Law of the People: Contemporary Kinship and Cowessess First Nation and it’s being published by the University of Manitoba Press. And he’s also currently co-editing a book titled Indigenous Men and Masculinities, Legacies, Identities, Regeneration. Tonight Professor Innes’s talk is titled "Elder Brother and the Law of the People: Maintaining Sovereignty Through Identity and Culture." So with that, it gives me great pleasure to present to you Professor Robert Alexander Innes.

[applause]

Robert Innes:

Hello. Hello. Thank you for the prayer. That was a great way to start open prayer with that. I’d like to thank Manley Begay and John and Gavin and the American Indian Studies Program for inviting me to this very prestigious talk, this series of talks. When I was here going in the program, I was fortunate enough to be around when Vine Deloria was teaching some classes. I was unfortunate, though, because I didn’t actually get to take any classes from him. But I was lucky enough to be able to sit in on a couple of classes that one year that he taught when I was here. It was interesting because it was a course on, I don’t even know what the course was called, but I imagine it had to do with treaties, sovereignty, but it was through the Indigenous Law Program and there were three AIS [American Indian Studies] students: Ferlin Clark and Kevin Wall and...who were Ph.D. students at the time, and Ray Cardinal, who was an M.A. student. They were taking the class. So they had those three AIS students and the Indigenous Law students and I remember sitting there and first of all being kind of in awe because it’s Vine Deloria, right? But what was interesting I guess for me was to see how cutting he was to people who didn’t respond the way he thought they should respond and how funny he was in the way he cut them up. And I remember the law students, I don’t know if there’s any law students here from that program, hopefully this is all friendly here -- AIS students and faculty and stuff -- but what I found was interesting was that the AIS students, those three AIS students were the ones who were really carrying the load and later after the class one of the law students says, he was, I guess he had taken kind of a beating in that class from Vine Deloria and he says, ‘Boy, that guy is sure into context.’ And so the three AIS students turned to him, ‘Of course he’s into context.’ But I guess for the law students they weren’t used to that.

It’s an honor and a privilege to be part of this series. I like most people were heavily influenced by Vine Deloria when I first started reading and going to university and also the fact that the footprint that he left for this program in help starting this program and the legacy he’s left not only for American Indians and Indigenous people worldwide and Native studies worldwide, but for this particular program is pretty significant and to be included in the series with the illustrious speakers that have come before and that are coming this year, it’s quite an honor and also because well, this is my program. I went through here. I was down here for two years and I feel really humbled to be asked to be part of this program or this series.

This talk I’m going to be, what I’m going to be talking about is the research that I conducted while I was a Ph.D. student here in the American Indian Studies program and what I was looking at was the importance of kinship to kin-type Cowessess members. And the reason why I was, that was an idea that I had for research was it had to do with my personal history with the reserve. I, like a lot of people with Cowessess, was an urban member and I’ll talk a little bit about that in the paper and also was up to the 19, late ‘80s, not a band member at all, not even federally recognized or as we call a 'status Indian.' And after I received my status and became a band member, I was a little bit nervous about interacting with the band. I grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I grew up in Winnipeg and with a lot of Native people we were living in Winnipeg. Winnipeg has probably one of the largest Aboriginal populations in definitely in Canada maybe as well as the United States and so I wasn’t afraid about Native people. It was just when the law was changed to allow people to get reinstated and get their status back, there was a lot of tension, and what I found with Cowessess, that wasn’t the case. When I was doing my research on Aboriginal veterans, I went to Cowessess and interviewed some veterans and one of the veterans I interviewed was my grandfather’s cousin and while I was there I talked to, I was talking with his daughter who is my mom’s second cousin. And at that point my aunt had moved back to the area, didn’t move on to the reserve, but she lived in the town next to the reserve. And she had had a difficult time in the residential schools and had a difficult adulthood and as a result she was not mentally...good. She was a little bit delusional. She was known affectionately in town as 'the bag lady' because she always had the bundled buggy and the ...and heavy jacket no matter what the temperature was. But everyone liked her, she was friendly. And so I told her that that was my aunt and that we were, that we were from part of Cowessess and she knew, she didn’t know who she was by name, but I said, ‘The bag lady.’ And she’s, ‘Oh, the bag lady,’ and then she realized that that was her second cousin. So then she turned to her son and said, ‘Next time you meet her, you shake her hand because she’s your relative.’ And this was the first time I met her. It was the first time I met her. And then I realized there was something to this, about why is that she reacted that way and why was it that all the Cowessess people that I had met up to that point and since had talked about and talked to me as an urban member and talked about other urban members in a way in which defied or didn’t go fit the norm and way in which people were supposed to have interacted with new, newly regained status people. So this is why I decided I wanted to do this research.

So with that I’ll begin. I just want to say that the talk is 'sovereignty,' and although that’s not really a term we use much in Canada, that’s really associated more with Quebec and independence of Quebec so we don’t really use this. I mean, it’s used, but it’s not a lot, not a lot for Aboriginal people. People talk about self-government or self-determination, but I’m not there, I’m here, so I’m using that term here. But just so you know, that’s not really our term that we use, although some people do use it. The main argument I wanted to make here is that the way in which Cowessess people exercise their contemporary kinship is, has been a way for them to assert their sovereignty, to assert their self-governance.

Raymond DeMallie has argued that kinship studies are a significant, but often ignored area of research within American Indian studies, suggesting that AIS scholars’ aversion to kinship research has been due to the latter’s close association with anthropology. According to DeMallie, kinship studies, with their evolutionary and cultural relativist theories, abstract taxonomy, and endless charts, seem far removed from and irrelevant to AIS and to Native communities. Yet, in pointing to examples of the negative impact of kinship breakdown on the Grassy Narrow Ojibwe and the possibility for positive change with the revitalization of the Pine Ridge Lakota kinship unit, or tiyospaye, DeMallie states that kinship is ‘fundamental to every aspect of Native American Studies.’ Accordingly, he challenged AIS scholars to ‘explore the richness of the Native American social heritage and find creative ways to build on it for the future.’ For my Ph.D. research, I took up DeMallie’s challenge by examining the importance of kinship relations in the maintenance and affirmation of individual and collective identity for members of Cowessess First Nation located in southeastern Saskatchewan. How many people know where Saskatchewan is? Come on. Okay, how many people know where Montana is? Okay, look up, right up!

Specifically in my study, I examined how Cowessess band members’ continued adherence to principles of traditional law regulating kinship has undermined the imposition of Indian defined in Canada by the Indian Act. By acknowledging kinship relations to band members who either had not been federally recognized as Indians prior to 1985 -- when the Indian Act membership ‘changed’ -- or were urban members disconnected from the reserve, this acknowledgment defies the general perception that First Nations people have internalized the legal definition of 'Indian' and in the process rendered traditional kinship meaningless. It also questions the accepted idea that conflict is the only possible outcome of any relationship between old members and newly recognized Indians. The importance of kinship to Cowessess band members blurs the boundaries (as defined by the Indian Act) among status Indians, Bill C-31s -- that was the bill that changed the membership quotes -- Métis, and non-status Indians, thus highlighting the artificiality of those boundaries.

I argue in my book or in my research, well, in my book too, which was recently published -- did I tell you? No? -- I argued that the attitude of older Cowessess band members toward new members stems from kinship practices that are historically rooted in the traditional law of the people that predates the reserve era and that have persisted since at least the nineteenth century. In the pre-reserve era, Aboriginal bands in the northern plains were relatively small, kin-based communities that relied on the unity of their members for survival. Band membership was fluid flexible, and inclusive. There were a variety of ways that individuals or groups of people could become members of a band, but what was important, what was of particular importance was that these new members assumed some sort of kinship role with its associated responsibilities.

For Cowessess people, these roles were behaviors that were carefully encoded in the traditional stories of the Cree cultural hero [Cree Language], or Elder Brother. Our Elder Brother stories were the law of the people that outlined, among other things, peoples’ social interaction including the incorporation of individuals into a band. Incorporating new band members served to strengthen social, economic, and military alliances with other bands of the same cultural group. However, many bands in the northern plains were multicultural in nature, so the creation and maintenance of alliances cut across cultural and linguistic lines. Cowessess First Nation is an example of a multicultural band because its pre-reserve composition comprised of five major cultural groups: the Plains Cree, Saulteaux, Métis, Assiniboine, and English half-breeds. The total band membership of the contemporary band is just over 4,000 people, with over 80 percent living off reserve. So 80 percent of the 4,000 live off reserve. This represents the third largest of the 75 First Nations in Saskatchewan and the largest in southern Saskatchewan. Band members live throughout the province and in every province and territory in the country, and in particular in many of the urban centers -- Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto. However, over 1,000 band members reside in the provincial capital of Regina, which is about an hour-and-a-half drive west of the reserve. Band members also have relocated to several foreign countries. Many of these off-reserve members are men and women and their descendants who first left the reserve in the 1950s in search of employment and education. A significant number are also what is called 'C-31s.' These are, that is women who left the reserve to find employment and/or married non-status Indians and therefore lost their status, but then regained their status with the passing of Bill C-31. So once they regained their status, their children also gained status, which is what happened to me. My mom lost her status and when she was able, when the Bill C-31 was passed, she regained her status and I gained status, although it wasn’t that easy, you had to apply for it and there was red tape.

So for Cowessess then, people started to leave Cowessess by the 1950s. Men, so there were, there have been many, multiple generations of people through Cowessess who have never lost their status, but who had never lived on the reserve. These are, so there were people who lost their status, there was also multiple generations who had become disconnected from the reserve who were also impacted by the way their interaction with the reserve. My study describes how kinship for contemporary Cowessess band members -- in spite of the historical, scholarly, and legal classifications of Aboriginal people created and imposed by outsiders -- persists to define community identity and interaction based on principles outlined in the Elder Brother stories. Classifying Aboriginal people has had a profound impact on the ways that non-Aboriginal people view Aboriginal people and on how some Aboriginal people view themselves. Cowessess members’ interpretations become of great significance in order to understand how contemporary First Nations put into practice their beliefs about kinship roles and responsibilities and demonstrate that these practices and beliefs are rooted in historical cultural values.

The legal systems of pre-contact Aboriginal people, as James Zion points out, were based upon the idea of maintaining harmony in the family, the camp and the community. The failure to follow prescribed regulations could --according to what happens to Elder Brother in the stories -- result in severe negative consequences. Conversely, adhering to the positive behaviors that Elder Brother displays was seen as the ideal that all should strive to attain. An understanding of the stories facilitates an understanding of the incorporation of members into Cowessess band in the pre- and post-reserve period. The stories are also helpful in gaining insight into contemporary peoples’ ability to maintain certain aspects of their kinship roles and responsibilities. Now I’m not going to talk about the way in which Cowessess people incorporated people into their band in the pre- and post-reserve period. However, I will just note that incorporating people into bands was important for maintaining, as I said, creating and maintaining alliances with people, economic and military alliances, and this didn’t matter what culture group a person was from or even what racial group. In the early 1900s, there is evidence that at least seven white children were adopted into the,  people went from Cowessess to Winnipeg, which is about a three-hour drive or so, four-hour drive, east, and adopted seven white children. This would have been the early 1900s. So this is after post-reserve period. So not only were they incorporating people into their reserve pre-reserve, but also post-reserve.

Traditionally, stories acted to impart the philosophical ideals upon which Aboriginal societies should function. As Robert Williams notes, ‘The stories socialize children and reminded adults of their roles and place within the universe, Indians have long practiced the belief that stories have the power to sustain the many important connections of tribal life.’ The telling of stories, such as those of Elder Brother, was a means by which to convey Aboriginal philosophical meanings to the people. Elder Brother was a paradox. He could be very generous and kind, yet he also could be selfish and cruel. In the stories when he is kind, he is usually met with success; when he is cruel, he often meets a disastrous and sometimes funny, sometimes humorous end. His adventures and misadventures acted to guide the peoples’ social interaction, and because of this he is highly regarded. As Basil Johnston states about the esteem the Ojibwe have of Nanabush, ‘For his attributes, strong and weak, the Anishinaabeg came to love and understand Nanabush. They saw in him themselves. In his conduct were reflected the characters of men and women, young and old. From Nanabush, although he was a paradox, physical and spiritual being, doing good and unable to attain it, the Anishinaabeg learned.’ Niigaan James Sinclair further states, ‘Now as before, stories reflect the experiences, thoughts and knowledge important to the Anishinaabeg and collectively map the creative and critical relationships and maintain relations with each other and the world around us and when shared, cause us to reflect, to learn, to grow as families, communities and a people. Stories also indicate where we are in the universe, how we got there is not a simple one-dimensional act, but a complex historical, social and political process embedded in the containments of our collective presence, knowledge and peoplehood.’ Elder Brother stories conveyed Cowessess traditional law to the people and thus functioned as a legal institution. While this institution was unlike those in other parts of the world, it functioned in the same way. As Zion and Robert Yazzie explain, ‘When a legal institution articulates a norm or validates a custom, that is ‘law.’’ The Elder Brother stories explained the rules and expectations for normative behavior. These ideals were enshrined in the peoples’ notion of themselves, with each retelling of Elder Brother stories and with each act that could be attributed to those stories.

A number of legal scholars have linked the traditional narratives of Aboriginal peoples, whether stories, songs or prayers, to their traditional legal systems. For example, Williams points out that ‘stories are told in tribal life to educate and direct the young, to maintain the cohesiveness of the group, and to pass on traditional knowledge about the Creator, the seasons, the earth, plants, life, death, and every other subject that is important to the perpetuation of the tribe.’ John Borrows states that the traditional tribal customary principles are ‘enunciated in the rich stories, ceremonies, and traditions within First Nations. Stories express the law in Aboriginal communities, since they represent the accumulated wisdom and experience of First Nations conflict resolution.’ Donald Auger asserts that ‘the knowledge gained by individuals from storytelling was that of relationships and the importance of maintaining balance and harmony.’ Elder Brother stories reflect the moral normative behaviors that Cowessess band members were expected to follow. Through these stories, as Johnston notes, their sense of justice and fairness was promoted. While I was doing my research, in looking at Elder Brother stories, I was fortunate to stumble across a collection of stories by Alanson Skinner. Alanson Skinner was an anthropologist and in the early 1900s he travelled to Southern Manitoba and Southern Saskatchewan and he made a stop at Cowessess and collected a number of Elder Brother stories. What becomes evident in the stories that I saw from those stories that he collected was that there were these, this is where I found that the embedded codes or laws within for the people.

There was one story for example that he recorded had to do with Elder Brother being adopted into a family of wolves and although with the stories that were collected from Cowessess it’s unclear whether the wolves were already related to him or not, but what does become interesting, what does become apparent was that Elder Brother was adopted into this family and when it got time for him to leave, the father wolf said, ‘Okay, why don’t you take my son with you. You can adopt my son.’ So he took his son as his nephew and they went on the journey which is what the Elder Brother does, he journeys around a lot. And he told his nephew, ‘Make sure you don’t go by the water.’ But he did. He ended up being captured and killed by the Great Lynx, water lynx. And what we see is Elder Brother in the story rescuing his nephew and the way in which he rescues his nephew combines ingenuity, responsibility to family and these are kind of the way in which these values were passed on were through these stories and how Elder Brother would act. This is one of those stories where Elder Brother did what was good. He doesn’t always do what’s good. There’s a lot of stories he doesn’t do what’s good, but in this story he did good. He was able to rescue his nephew, bring him back to life and then move on their way, which leads to another story about a big flood. But what was important is that story outlines a number of the prescribed behaviors required in the maintenance of respectful kinship relations with Cowessess people. It shows Elder Brother demonstrating positive qualities to which people should aspire. The story highlights the value of inclusion by certain facts. Although Elder Brother was not related to wolves, although that might be disputed, he was adopted into the pack and considered a relative. The younger wolves were expected to address and treat him as an older relative and he assumed the roles and responsibility expected of a relative. In the same way he was adopted by the wolves, Elder Brother is permitted to adopt a younger wolf that Elder Brother calls nephew. However, it is when Elder Brother and the young wolf were on their travels that the kinship roles and responsibilities become more explicit. Elder Brother is responsible for the well being of the young wolf. When the young wolf goes to the water, against the instruction of Elder Brother, the listener learns that there are negative consequences for not heeding the words of elders. In searching for and rescuing his nephew, Elder Brother fulfills his responsibility not only to the young wolf but also to his other relatives, the old wolf. By entering the White Lynx village, Elder Brother exhibits characteristics like bravery, daring and ingenuity, which are all important for young males to internalize. These qualities were central tenets towards societies whose primary duty was to protect and provide for the people. In this story, Elder Brother exhibits positive characteristics with a positive outcome.

Now when I was reading these stories and I was at the same time I was conducting a literature review and I was thinking, ‘Wait a second, there’s something not right here. There’s something not right in the literature.’ The literature, the history and ethnography of Aboriginal people in Saskatchewan were all tribally based. There’s always a Plains Cree histories, Saulteaux histories, there were Assiniboine ethnographies and histories, but that didn’t reflect the experiences that I had and didn’t to me reflect the realities of Cowessess. The experiences of Cowessess First Nation members do not reflect scholars’ interpretation of Saskatchewan Aboriginal people. Scholars have emphasized tribal histories that highlight intertribal contact and relations, but nonetheless maintained distinct tribal boundaries. Tribal history approach masks the importance of kinship in band formation and maintenance. This approach is useful for understanding general historical trends of specific cultural and linguistic groups and provides the context for multi-cultural and mixed bands. However, it does not quite acknowledge that most Aboriginal groups on the northern plains of Saskatchewan were multi-cultural in composition. Why were they multi-cultural and why have scholars failed to convey their multi-culturalism was one of the things I was really thinking about when I was approaching my research.

Multi-culturalism for First Nations, for Aboriginal groups on the northern plains was important for survival, was important for military survival and economic survival. The customary kinship practices of the Cowessess people and other groups were spelled out in the Elder Brother stories. However, many scholars have not recognized or understood or simply ignored the law of the people. Without this fundamental understanding of Aboriginal cultures, many scholars have had to resort to extrapolating relations at the band level to relations at a tribal level, thereby distorting a view of Aboriginal societies. The tribal history approach ignores the importance that kinship played in band formation and maintenance. Extrapolating band-level relations from those at the tribal level has presented a confounded view of Aboriginal societies.

As a doctoral student, Neal McCloud, a member of James Smith First Nation, which is just located a couple hours north of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He wanted to write a history of the Plains Cree. James Smith is a Plains Cree reserve. He soon relates however that his project would not be as straightforward as he first thought. ‘I had always assumed that my reserve, James Smith, was part of the Plains Cree Nation because that’s how my family identified. However, as I began to talk to various old people from reserve, I became very aware of the contingency of the label 'Plains Cree.' I became aware of the ambiguous genealogies that permeated my family tree as well as the narrative ironies that emerge when one tried to create a national discourse. In addition to the discovery of my own family tree, I became increasingly aware that the situation on James Smith was widespread and the assertion of a pure essentialized Cree identity or even a Plains Cree identity was extremely misleading and limiting.’ McCloud began to realize that the people of his reserve, like many in Saskatchewan, were of mixed ancestry. He found that ‘the reserve system solidified, localized and de-simplified the linguistic diversity and therefore the cultural diversity, which once existed in Western Canada.’ McCloud discovered that members of James Smith were descendents of Plains Cree, Saulteaux, Métis, and Dene people. The tribal specific approach fails to explain the existence of multi-cultural bands such as Cowessess and James Smith in the pre-treaty period. Contrary to tribal view, most Aboriginal bands on the northern plains in Saskatchewan were kin based and multi-cultural. Plains Cree, Saulteaux, Assiniboine and Métis individuals shared similar cultural kinship practices that allowed them to integrate into other bands.

Now to be clear, mutli-cultural bands like Cowessess did not form singular hybridized cultures, but rather were able to maintain multiple cultures. That is, this is not to suggest however that cultural sharing did not occur, but that there were significant numbers of various cultures within bands that allowed these individuals to be incorporated into the band without having their culture, without having to acculturate into one specific cultural group. So when Alanson Skinner published some of his findings, he talked about clans. He talked about clan systems with the Saulteaux. Now I should mention, the Saulteaux are what we call 'Saulteaux' are Plains Ojibwe. Those are Anishinaabe people. So he was talking about the clans of the Saulteaux people. And so on Cowessess, he found that there were two clans, the Eagle clan and the Blue Jay clan. Now what was interesting is that there were no clans for Cree people. Cree people didn’t have clans. So the only clans that were on Cowessess in the early 1900s were these two clans for Saulteaux people. So 30 years after settling on reserves, Saulteaux members of Cowessess were still known to belong to their clan. So they had lived on the reserve together for over 30 years but still had maintained their clans. Skinner also collected, these stories that he collected, another thing was interesting. He collected these stories, these Elder Brother stories, and he published them in 1913. But what he did when he published them, the title of the article that he published it under were Plains Cree Stories. He published them as Plains Cree Stories with a footnote saying that these stories were the same with the Plains Cree and the Saulteaux people and the Saulteaux people instead didn’t use the term [Ojibwe language], they used the Nanabush. So we see how the essentializing of their cultures are beginning with what Skinner, but other factors are at play here as well.

There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that there was some culture sharing between Plains Cree and Saulteaux band members. One elder once told me that the old people like my grandfather spoke what she called a 'half-breed Cree.' Now when she said half-breed Cree, I was thinking she meant Michif, which is the Métis language, a mixture of French and Cree or English and Cree so there’s a Michif language. But that is not what she meant. She said it wasn’t, that wasn’t what they spoke. They spoke a Cree/Saulteaux language. So there was a mixture of Cree and Saulteaux. Their languages would start to become mixed. So I asked her if she could understand that language and she said 'no,' she couldn’t understand that language because for her she was Assiniboine and that wasn’t her language. And so she was still identifying as an Assiniboine woman who spoke or at least could understand Assiniboine, but could not understand half-breed Cree, as she called it.

Individuals from various cultures were able to coexist in the same band because they shared similar cultural attributes. A central cultural trait was the way in which kinship was practiced. They all followed the same kind of kinship rules. They all followed the same kinship rules. It didn’t matter if they were Assiniboine or Cree or Saulteaux or Métis and what’s important is that the Cree and Saulteaux are very similar linguistically and culturally they’re very similar. Assiniboine, they’re Siouxs, those are Sioux people, very different language, but they also follow the same kinship practices and so did the Métis. And the Métis are very important when considering the fact that they are supposed to be and they usually are described as being both culturally and significantly racially distinct from First Nations people. But if they were that distinct racially and culturally distinct, why was it there are so many Métis people in the bands pre-reserve? And I do talk a little bit about that, well, talk a lot about that in my dissertation.

In 1985, when Bill C-31 amended the Indian Act and altered band membership codes, many First Nation people voiced their displeasure. The new membership codes allowed those who had lost their status and their children to regain their status. The majority of them were women but there was also a mechanism in place for men to voluntarily give up their status and usually they had to meet certain criteria to enfranchise, what’s called enfranchise. But the majority of people who had lost their status was women when they married non-Indians. As reported in the media, these tensions, and there was tension between, there was lots of tension between those who had status and those who didn’t. As reported in the media, these tensions were due to competition over resources and issues of authenticity and governance that were probably too complex to capture the mainstream, the attention of most Canadians. Bill C-31 and the complex set of policies and legislation implemented by the Canadian government to define federal Indian status and band membership engendered issues of authenticity, government funding for First Nations and influenced individual and collective responses to the new members. The legal debate couched in terms such as tradition, culture, self-government and colonial oppression made it clear that many First Nation people had either internalized the imposed definition of 'Indian,' had employed these definitions for their own benefit or had political reasons for supporting the continued if temporary use of the definitions.

Cowessess First Nation’s political leaders were not a part of this national debate over Bill C-31. In the interviews I conducted with Cowessess people showed that in contrast to positions of most First Nations leaders, Cowessess band members had a relatively high tolerance for members who had regained their status through Bill C-31. These feelings are consistent with the cultural values expressed by band members, which placed importance on maintaining family ties and which are consistent with the values of kinship found in the law of the people. Many responded, mentioned that they felt that it was wrong that First Nations women had lost their status when they married non-Indian people and believed that women were entitled to being reinstated. Others stated that Bill C-31 didn’t go far enough because there are still many relatives who are not eligible to be reinstated. This is not to say that all were in agreement with Bill C-31. However, the overwhelming majority of people I interviewed formally and talked to informally felt that Bill C-31 was a positive for the band.

In fact, this one quote, this one interviewee that I had summed it up best and here’s a quote: ‘It never really made much of a difference, Bill C-31. Other reserves were different than Cowessess in their treatment to Bill C-31 where most of their members, the other reserve band members, stay on reserve and for them bringing in people who were Bill C-31s created a bit of jealousy. So many other bands made a rule that Bill C-31s weren’t band members. Cowessess did not do that, probably because we are more open than that in that most of our people live off reserve. Our people have been marrying other people for a long time, white people included, for generations by now. In that sense it -- including Bill C-31 band members -- is nothing new to us. We are a small reserve. They’re all Indians. On our reserve, 80 percent of our people leave and marry other people so in that sense when Bill C-31 came along, you had two extremes where one was very strict about who were Indians, the other extreme maybe people wouldn’t want to be inclusive of the members they bring in. So Cowessess would be more on the other extreme of being more accepting. There are some Cowessess people who have a hard view, but the majority don’t.’ So this explanation acknowledged their historical marriage practices of Cowessess people how that acted to incorporate people into the band and it also recognized the fact that Cowessess people understand that marriage practice, this kind of marriage practice was a cultural trait. Though there were some who viewed Bill C-31 as having negative impact, most saw it as having a positive, as a positive for the band. Many were, they were happy that their relatives were able to regain their status. Many respondents however also stated that Bill C-31 didn’t go far enough. Nonetheless, in the interviews it became clear that unlike other bands Bill C-31 members were welcome in the band.

In 1992, another event happened that demonstrates the way in which Cowessess people viewed kinship and the impact it has on their social and political situation. In 1992, Canada and the province of Saskatchewan signed an agreement with 22 Saskatchewan First Nations. This was the Treaty Land Entitlement Framework Agreement. Now this framework agreement, what it was, it provided the mechanism by which First Nations would be able to gain the land that they were entitled to through treaty, but had not up to that point. Cowessess made a claim to be a part of that group, but their claim had not been validated. To have a claim validated, a First Nation had to demonstrate that the original band census that was used to survey the reserve was incorrect. The stumbling block for Cowesses was that the federal government had insisted that the band members, the original band members census for Cowessess had been 470, which was 130 more than the reserve was surveyed for. However, Cowessess had argued in fact it was much greater than that. One of the stipulations to get the TLE [Treaty Land Entitlement] claim validated was that an individual’s name had to appear on a band’s annuity pay list in two consecutive years to be counted towards the claim. Cowessess couldn’t prove that. Cowessess negotiators had noticed that there were many people who had accepted annuities one year, but who then never again appeared on the pay list. Cowessess argued that these people did not appear the second time because they had died. Indian Affairs argued that the people might have gone to other bands, taken Métis scrip or left Canada entirely to join relatives on American reservations in Montana or North Dakota. Cowessess researchers determined that the people in question did not appear on any other band list in Canada or United States nor in the scrip records. They also found no trace of them in the records of the Hudson Bay Company, which would have been an important source of income. Cowessess then argued that these people be included in the claim by linking their disappearance from historical records to Edgar Dewdney’s 1880s starvation policy. What’s that you say? I’ll tell you.

In the 1880s, the Canadian government under the orders of Dewdney who was at that time the Lieutenant Governor of Northwest Territories, implemented a starvation policy in order to persuade 3,000 to 5,000 Indians, First Nations people to leave the Cyprus Hills region of Saskatchewan, which is in southwestern Saskatchewan. He considers his policy a success. ‘I look upon the removal of some 3,000 Indians from Cyprus Hills and scattering them through the country as a solution to one of our main difficulties as it was found impossible at times to have such control as was desirable over such a large number of worthless and lazy Indians, the concourse of malcontents and reckless Indians from all the bands in the territories. Indians already on the reserves will now be more settled as no place of rendezvous will be found where food can be had without a return of work being extracted.’ Terrence Pelchat, the Treaty Land Entitlement Manager for Cowessess during the time of the negotiations, linked Cowessess's position regarding the pay list to Dewdney’s policies. ‘Cowessess claimed that these persons died on the prairies during the year between treaty payments. It was the federal government policy at that time to withhold food and rations to certain Indians and Cowessess's claim was that Indians starved on the Plains because of it. We argued that the federal government should not benefit in that case because it was their policy, their own policy that killed them and they can’t benefit now by not paying Cowessess land benefits because Cowessess members were dead and couldn’t show up for the pay list counts.’ The federal government has never acknowledged a starvation policy or its devastating affects on Cowessess people. The government was reluctant for a discussion of this issue to enter into the public realm so Indian Affairs decided not to challenge Cowessess on the issue. They agreed to include these people on Cowessess though each name had to be reviewed individually and verified to see if they could be included.

So what happened with Cowessess is that they got up, when they got up to about 810 names, or sorry, they got up to about 700 names. They got up to about 700 names and Cowessess said, ‘How many more names do you have?’ They said about 300. The negotiators said they couldn’t go that high. They cannot, every name that they presented was getting verified, was getting included, but they knew, the negotiators knew they couldn’t go that high so they decided that what they could do is, they can reach a negotiated number. Now the down side was that they didn’t get the claim that they should have got but they may never have gotten that claim because the federal government wouldn’t have paid the money or at least that’s what the negotiator, the federal negotiator said. So they ended up with a number of 810 negotiated. So the only band in Saskatchewan with a title claim that doesn’t have a hard number with their figure, but they have a negotiated number 810. But what that says, although they know they have a good 190 more names. So they went from 470 to 800, but they know they had 1,000. Those people that were not included were all people that died as a fact, they claim that died of starvation due to the starvation policy and that was from one band. That was from one band. So the importance of the TLE to Cowessess then in terms of asserting their culture identity is summed up by this, to the question, do you think there was any kind of connection between the TLE and the importance of family?

This participant responded by saying that TLE, sort of tying TLE to treaty rights, maintenance of family and the social dislocation of band members. This is his answer. ‘Yeah, you look at what we didn’t have. We were entitled to this [certain amount of land] and we didn’t get it. What did we miss because of the result of that? We have 3,080,’ at this time, ‘We have 3,000 people. 80 percent of them live off reserve. Well, could it be because we didn’t have half our land? Could it be that the half that we didn’t get, we lost a quarter?’ They lost another quarter, so they didn’t get a whole bunch of land through TLE, but they also lost a quarter of their land was alienated illegally through fraud. So they lost another part of their land. ‘Could it be we lost a quarter of it through government fraud? What happens when people leave? They no longer have the support of the community. They have to take their children somewhere else and they raise their family without the support of back home, without the support of the reserve. If you don’t have the reserve to live on, where are you? Where are you going to go? I guess that is why Cowessess has such a big membership leap. That’s why so many people left the reserve by the 1950s. That’s why we have so many people who have left. So to me, that is what TLE means. When you look at it from a treaty rights point of view and it wasn’t until we got $46 million, it was only then that I realized how valuable our treaty right was and that TLE is a treaty right and that treaty right was supposed to somehow guarantee the security of Cowessess people and if we never got that, then that’s what happened. Our people lost security. So that’s what happens to Indians when they don’t have their land. Indians lost their status of the reserve. Indians without land are nothing. So that is what TLE is. It represents what happened historically. It answers why there are so many off the reserve. It answers why the social conditions are the way they are. It also offers some kind of hope for the future now that we can reconnect with the land. We know what the land represents to us, how we can use that to our benefit. I think we have a hell of a future. Maybe I won’t see it, but I know my family will. So TLE in terms of land, I think we just don’t know how important it is to us. To me, that’s what I think. I think that the treaty right to land can be fulfilled. I think what would happen if all of our treaty rights were fulfilled. We don’t know what we have until we see it’s gone. When we get $46 million, you know what you were missing before and you know what the treaty right was that you were fighting for. Nobody knew that I don’t think. We had our past leaders, they understood the importance. If they didn’t fight for it, we would have,  what would we have?’ So the TLE for this band member represents hope, but it also represents the fulfillment of treaty. It represents the connection to family. It also represented, he also mentioned that it also represents the sacrifice of the ancestors. Their ancestors provided a legacy. Even though they were not originally not counted as being a part of the band, they were part of the band and the $47 million, that’s how much Cowessess received in their claim. As a result of the TLE was the legacy of those band members who starved to death on the plains as a result of the Canadian government.

Traditional stories help us to understand how Aboriginal people view and practice their kinship relations. This is perceived by many as being what differentiates them from mainstream Canadians. It is of little wonder then that DeMallie has implored Native Studies scholars to be creative in their approach to recognize and gain a better understanding of the importance of Native kinship patterns. Kinship patterns do not exist in a vacuum. They interact with the social environment that surrounds the people who exercise them. Like other cultural aspects of the band, kinship practices of Cowessess have changed considerably since members have settled on the reserve. Some of these changes were forcibly imposed on them while others were adapted by members to meet the challenges of the new era. What may be surprising to many is the degree to which contemporary kinship practices, whether customary or new adaptations, still observe the principles found within the law of the people. Elder Brother stories help to explain Cowessess kinship practice of the pre- and early reserve period when people were easily incorporated to the band including the adoption of white people, as I mentioned earlier. The Canadian government’s assimilations policies however sought to undermine the law of the people including the regulation guiding kinship practices. These attempts were in many respects successful, yet for many Cowessess people, the notion of kinship -- as epitomized in Elder Brother’s behavior -- continue to obtain demonstrating the ideals of the traditional law of the people remain implicitly central to principles guiding band member’s social interaction. The extent to which current Cowessess members tell the stories or even know the story is not certain. What is apparent however is that the values encoded in those stories have persisted. These valued didn’t just come from anywhere, they came from these stories and from pre-reserve and early reserve periods to the present. Unfortunately, scholars have not taken Elder Brother stories into account when describing historical northern plains Aboriginal societies, even though many Cowessess members may not have heard any of the Elder Brother stories,

So in conclusion, the way in which Cowessess people have interacted and continue to interact and practice their cultural kinship has allowed them to make certain arguments that, political arguments like with the Treaty Land Entitlement, like the way in which they have incorporated Bill C-31 members, that have, and we don’t know to what extent the other bands could have benefited by using this approach, but what we do know is that by incorporating their kinship practices that they have been able to maintain over the years has helped them in putting forth political argument that will in the end strengthen their sovereignty and provide for a better future for them. Thank you.

[applause]

Manley Begay:

Thank you, Rob. Like I said, listening to Rob makes me think of north of the 49th parallel, it’s just so close and there are a lot of interactions between First Nation peoples up in Canada as well as those down south. For instance, my people, I’m Navajo and we have relatives all the way up into the northern part of Canada, the Dene people. We’re very close relatives. We speak the same language. And so as Rob was talking about his First Nation I was thinking about, it’s really a story of love because of interrelationships and intermarriages that went on and about the federal government’s meddling in the affairs of Native people leading to some misconstrued policies that really screwed things up. It’s about some sense of regaining strength, losing strength and regaining strength once again and providing a sense of hope for what could be the future. So these are sort of things that came out at me and ultimately, I was thinking about love again because of the interrelationships that went on and how do you move a society forward. So those are things that I sort of thought of as Rob was talking. A couple questions, by the way we have food next door in 332. So if you go out the door here, just turn right and just follow the arrows and there’s food and refreshments there as well. Rob might want to field some questions. No questions? Okay, let’s go eat. Questions please.

Robert Innes:

It’s good for me.

Nance Parezo:

I’ll ask him something.

Robert Innes:

Sure.

Nancy Parezo:

Somebody did listen. We all listened. Rob, there’s a lot of groups like I was thinking of St. Regis with the Iroquoian groups. Do you think if people started redoing the histories on a lot of the groups that are going back you’d find the same type of things going on that you’re finding up here? It’s kind of a unit-of-analysis question back to your dissertation days. And how can we think, if we’re doing more history, how can we keep it being so isolationist like it was in Skinner’s day? These are little, these are communities that are like floating in time and space and that was never reality. So what do you think we can do?

Robert Innes:

Well, I think that, yes, I think that for most communities, I don’t know about all communities but I always think that generally speaking that most communities you would see that there are, the makeup of communities are much more complex than we think. I would think so and that most communities had mechanism to incorporate people without making them give up or inculturate, assimilate into the group that they’re, but it all depends though, there are, in Saskatchewan there were the young dogs who were Cree-Assiniboine, sorry, yeah, they’re Cree-Assiniboine that did develop a hybridized Cree-Assiniboine culture. So it does happen that the people do come together and create a new culture or if individuals go into a group, they may assimilate, but it depends on how many people are going into the group. So for Cowessess, there were significant numbers of each of these groups that they were able to maintain their culture or distinct culture, distinct identities.

Nancy Parezo:

I was thinking like the...too who are going both through time with alliances with the Crow sometime and then Blackfeet and that’s just,

Robert Innes:

And we don’t know, even on Cowessess with Saulteaux and Cree, because they were already fairly close culturally and linguistically and they were starting to become hybridized with the language, but the Assiniboine weren’t. So that was kind of interesting. It might have something to do with the degree of difference of the culture that people are interacting with.

Manley Begay:

More questions?

Audience member:

It’s really interesting to think about populations being these very dynamic things and how, and I know nothing about Canadian politics, but in the U.S. the policies have all been created around the homogeneity and stagnant nature of the populations so that now what you start to see as people do move off their reservations and live and love and marry in urban settings and more and more children are not full blood one tribe, you see tribes now trying to address do they have to lower their quantum. It’s almost like it’s inevitable with the structure that’s in place that the federal government can make it so that there is no one who is American Indian anymore.

Robert Innes:

Well, that’s where it becomes I think falling into the categories that are being placed out by the colonizer. So what I see with Cowessess is that there were, to be a Cowessess band member you could have been part Assiniboine, part Cree. My mom, my grandmother was Métis, my grandfather spoke a Cree-Saulteaux language, but still we’re Cowessess people. But most people would identify as Cree or they would identify as Saulteaux so they essentialize their identity. And when I ask people, ‘What kind of reserve is this? What’s this reserve? Would you say it’s Cree or Saulteaux or what, ’ Some would say Cree, some would say, but a lot of people said mixed. But when we take on the definition that you have to be three quarters or whatever Cheyenne to be a part of this band or this tribe, well, chances are there was never any, it’s been a long time since there was a full-blooded Cheyenne. Not to say they weren’t full-blooded Indians, but I would guess that prior to the reservation, settling on the reservation that they were culturally mixed. But because we accepted and we have to accept or we don’t, but people have, this definition that well you have to be three quarters Cheyenne, now, and the clock starts fresh from Dawes Act on, I guess. So yeah, I think that’s how we, by following that way then that’s when you can tell that the kinship practices are being undermined.

Manley Begay:

Any other questions?

Audience member:

Do you speak your language?

Robert Innes:

No, I don’t. No. The language on our reserve is, there’s only a few speakers left. There’s only a few speakers left. Part of that I think, it was interesting because I was talking to, they’re teaching it in the schools, teaching Cree in the schools, which is interesting because she was from another part of the province which is a predominately Cree community, very little intermarriage with other groups. She was saying that the language that she hears people talk, they have this ‘shhhh’ sound she says and she was attributing it to Michif because she’s saying that’s Michif, but I’m thinking, ‘No, that’s not Michif. I think that’s Ojibwe. That’s Anishinaabe and that’s the way they speak.’ So that’s part of the, I think that’s where that comes from, but yeah, the language is almost gone with the fluent speakers, although they’re introducing it in the schools.

Audience member:

How are they reintroducing it then, because if there’s only several or a few fluent speakers, then how is it, ?

Robert Innes:

What they’re introducing is Cree. They’re not introducing the language that my grandfather spoke or they’re not introducing Assiniboine or even Saulteaux. They’re introducing Cree. So this is part of the essentializing of the identity because they see themselves as Cree or Saulteaux, but they’re not going to be introducing this mixed language.

Audience member:

So what’s your thought process on the other nations now that are starting to lose their languages?

Robert Innes:

Well, that’s, one of the things you hear a lot is that if you don’t have your language, you’re no longer Indian. How can you be Indian if you don’t understand the language, you don’t understand the concepts that are in the language? And I don’t quite agree with that, I can’t. But I see the importance of the language and the importance of reclaiming the language. However, I think what happens is that people -- when they think of culture and think about Indian culture --they think of the more public displays of culture, the language, traditional ceremonies, powwows. They think of those public displays, but they very seldom think of the everyday things that you do that comes from your culture and that really defines you as who you are, and that to me is how you interact with your relatives and who you consider to be a relative. So when there’s someone sick at the hospital and 40 people show up and they’re told, ‘Well, this is only for immediate family,’ and you say, ‘Well, this is only like a third of us.’ And Native people are like, ‘What’s wrong with this,’ because everyone’s thinking, ‘This is the way everyone is.’ But reality, no, no one’s, not everyone’s like that. And so although I think that language is important and those other public displays of culture are important in defining and asserting and creating and maintaining culture, but they’re also the more difficult. It’s a lot more difficult. A friend of mine, he wanted to learn how to speak Ojibwe and he’s done a pretty good job in doing it, too, as an adult and we were living in Toronto at the time. He went to an Ojibwe language class. There were 35 people there. There were about 10 or 11 white people, the rest were Ojibwe. About three weeks later, four weeks later, there was still the 10 or 11 white people there, but only one Ojibwe because it’s not easy. It’s not easy. But maintaining your kinship is much easier. I’m not saying that you should do one over the other. If you can do both, you should do both, but I think to acknowledge the importance that kinship plays and how it is culturally rooted is I think important.

Manley Begay:

Clearly culture is very complex, culture is ever evolving, culture is not static, and I think Rob has given us a lot to think about. So with that we’ll conclude, but let’s give him another round of applause.

Robert Innes:

Thank you.

[applause]

Deborah Locke: Disenrollment: My Personal Story

Producer
Tribal Citizenship Conference
Year

Deborah Locke, adopted by a Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa couple when she was a small child, shares her heartbreaking story of how she and her adopted siblings were disenrolled by the Band decades later because they were not the biological descendants of Fond du Lac Band members and also because they did not meet the minimum blood quantum requirement as established by the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe constitution.

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

People
Resource Type
Citation

Locke, Deborah. "Disenrollment: My Personal Story." Tribal Citizenship Conference, Indian Law Program, William Mitchell College of Law, in conjunction with the Bush Foundation. St. Paul, Minnesota. November 13, 2013. Presentation.

Sarah Deer:

"Our final panel today is looking at the question of disenrollment. So we have a number...we have three speakers who are going to each discuss one angle or one facet of the controversial issue of disenrollment. So we have legal, personal, and traditional perspectives on this question. We have three speakers.

I'm going to start with Deborah Locke from Turtle Mountain. She is a former editorial board member for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and a former reporter for the Milwaukee Journal. She also edited and wrote for the newspaper of the Fond du Lac Reservation, worked for almost three years on a legacy amendment funded project on the 1862 U.S.-Dakota War at the Minnesota Historical Society and she is currently a freelance writer for the Mille Lacs Band.

Shawn Frank from the Jacobson Law Group is a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians, joined Jacobson Law Group in 2002, has substantial experience representing Indian tribes, tribal organizations and entities that do business with tribes. He became a shareholder in 2003. Mr. Frank does speak regularly at lawyer's seminars on the subjects of tribal sovereignty, doing business in Indian Country, the Freedom of Information Act and the administrative appeals through the Department of Interior.

And finally Sharon Day, Executive Director of the Indigenous Peoples Task Force from Bois Forte Band [of Chippewa]. Ms. Day is one of the founders of the Indigenous Peoples Task Force, formerly known as the Minnesota American Indian AIDS Task Force. It began as a volunteer organization with all of the work performed by the board of directors. They hired their first staff, Ms. Day, in 1988 and she has served in this capacity since that time. Ms. Day has received numerous awards including the Resourceful Woman Award, BIHA's Woman of Color Award, the National Native American AIDS Prevention Resource Center's Red Ribbon Award, and most recently the Alston Bannerman Sabbatical Award. She also is an editor of an anthology and a lead walker who carries the water from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Superior with the Mother Earth Water Walk. I'm looking forward to all their presentations, so please join me in welcoming our panel."

[Applause]

Deborah Locke:

"Hi, I'm Deborah. It's nice to be here today. I hope you can hear me. I received this letter dated January 6th from the Fond du Lac [Band of Lake Superior Chippewa] Reservation Business Committee:

Ms. Locke,

It's come to the attention of the Fond du Lac Reservation Business Committee that you are not the biological daughter of Frederick and Anna Marie Locke and that you were in fact adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Locke. Under Article 2, Section 1c of the Minnesota [Chippewa] Tribe Constitution, only the biological children of members of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe are eligible for membership in the tribe and if born after July 3rd, 1961, must also possess one-fourth degree MCT blood quantum.

There's a lot of lawyers in this room. I think most of you know that by heart.

The Reservation Business Committee has accordingly directed that disenrollment proceedings be initiated against you in accordance with MCT Ordinance #9. You have 30 days from the date of this letter to request a hearing before the Fond du Lac Tribal Court to provide evidence and argument as to why you should not be disenrolled.

Think about that.

In addition, per capita payments from the Band are being immediately suspended pending the final outcome of this matter.

Sincerely,
Linda J. Nelson
Enrollment Officer

I was standing outside the Rosedale Target when I read that letter one cold day and I cannot even explain to you how weird I felt. I felt damn weird. The day before I was identifying with Pocahontas, today I'm a white girl. The day before I was a Band member. I had family at Fond du Lac. Today I'm cut free. I'm a white girl. I tell you, that felt a little bit weird and it also felt embarrassing. More than anything else it felt embarrassing. I thought, ‘What did I do to bring this on? I was born and I was adopted. That's all that I ever did. What...they've got Band members that shoot each other, that use drugs, that steal, that...the list goes on and on and they're getting rid of me?' I tell you, I was totally perplexed. I called my mother from my cell phone in the parking lot and told her what I'd received. She was absolutely incensed. She was very, very upset and bewildered and she started calling relatives after we hung up. So let me tell you a little bit more about my mother and my dad.

They adopted four American Indian kids in the 1950s and they had always...they wanted children. They went to Catholic Charities in Duluth. A social worker asked them if it was okay if the children were Indian. My mother is a Band member at Fond du Lac and she said, ‘Are you serious? We don't care what color they are.' Dad said the same thing and so four children came fairly quickly after that. I was the first and when I was a little girl my parents had a book that they read to all of us starting with me that was called The Chosen Baby and it was about two kids named Peter and Mary. And Peter and Mary were adopted, and what I took from that book starting when I was three years old is that being adopted is really special. Being adopted means that you are a gift to someone and being adopted means that you were chosen for a very special reason. And so I lived with that magic for a long time and most of my life believing that adoption is a good thing.

So that's my family background a little bit, and I'll tell you that the Fond du Lac Band was also interested in that family background starting with this letter dated July 22, 2009. The Band had sent a letter to the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe asking for assistance in getting my adoption records from the state. So a letter went to the Minnesota Department of Human Services and I'm going to read a little bit about this. ‘The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe branch of Tribal Operations is inquiring of the circumstances of the adoption of...' and then it lists the four Locke children and it's signed by Brian Brunelle, Director of Administration for the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. And that was followed by an affidavit dated December 23, 2009 from a Jamie Lee with the Department of Human Services at the state and she's responsible for maintaining the adoption records and in this document, in this affidavit she ensured everybody that I was indeed adopted. Here's the date I was adopted, when it was finalized, here's the case number and my name was changed from whatever to Deborah Locke on this date.

Also within these papers that the tribe had was a resolution from the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe dated 1978 wherein I and my brothers and sisters were enrolled with the Band. We were enrolled with the Band because my uncle, Peter DeFoe, Sr., had gone to my mother one day and said, ‘You should have the children enrolled. They're all Indian. They're my nieces and my nephews. I recognize them as such and they should be enrolled.' And mom said, ‘All right.' So she went through with it and apparently that went without a hitch. All I know is that one day in my 20s I was told that I was enrolled. Well, I thought that was pretty cool, but I didn't really fully understand it quite honestly.

You might wonder, where did this all start at Fond du Lac? And from what I can tell it began maybe at least five years earlier, maybe longer, with a family that had adopted two non-Indian children. The woman, Roberta Smith Poloski was a Band member. Her husband was not. He's not American Indian. And they adopted these two girls and had them enrolled in 1982 and there were Band members who very much resented that. The little girls grew up with their Indian relatives, identified with American Indian culture, and were pretty much accepted as far as I knew. We were good friends with them; they lived just down the street.

So the Poloski girls were later identified as non-Indians with Band benefits and there were complaints about that that were registered with the RBC [Reservation Business Committee] starting again minimally five years before this and it might have even been 10 years. I can...I'll read this to you, this is the RBC open meeting minutes from the Brookston Community Center dated November 19, 2009.

Geraldine Savage asked, ‘What is going on with the disenrollment issue?'

Chairman Karen Diver said, ‘There has been a hearing and we're just waiting to hear on the judge's decision.'

Ms. Savage asked, ‘Why is the RBC waiting for the judge to decide?'

Mr. Ferdinand Martineau said, ‘We are following the ordinance that was done in 1988.'

Ms. Savage said, ‘It should be the RBC making the decision.'

Mr. Martineau said, ‘This is the way the ordinance is set up.'

Ms. Joyce LaPorte asked if this is going to cause a backlash.

Mr. Ferdinand Martineau said, ‘It may.'

Mr. Martineau said, ‘The individuals were enrolled under a different council.'

Ms. Geraldine Savage asked, ‘How long will it take for a decision?'

Mr. Martineau said, ‘The enrollment issue should have been easy to decide.'

Mr. Martineau said, ‘Conflict would come if the tribal court said to leave them enrolled.'

Ms. Savage said, ‘This would be a conflict then.'

Mr. Martino said, ‘But we have brothers and sisters and some of them are enrolled and some of them are not enrolled.'

Ms. Nancy Sepala asked if we are going to lose Band members because of the blood quantums.

That last question was never addressed. They went on to talk about elderly housing. I think that last question is really a key one, and that was a question that a lot more people than Ms. Nancy Sepala was wondering at that time. What would be the ultimate outcome of these disenrollments that we're starting?

So anyway, the Poloski girls had their day in court and the tribal judge ruled against them. They decided to come down to St. Paul and present their arguments to the Court of Appeals, the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe Court of Appeals, and that court gave them a decision dated March 30, 2010 that said, ‘We affirm the Fond du Lac Tribal Court decision and their justification was that all children of at least one-quarter degree Minnesota Chippewa Indian blood born after July 3, 1961 to a member...' and then there's that language. So apparently the girls didn't fill that criteria. And then there's reference to the fact that ‘the constitution is unambiguous and that the children must possess a direct biological link to members of the tribe and that at least one-quarter of the applicant's biological lineage must trace to Minnesota Chippewa Indians. Applying this clear requirement to the facts at issue in the appeal is a straightforward task, but it's a task that we do with sadness.'

So Renee and Robin were disenrolled and they complained to the RBC that there were other people who were still enrolled who were also adopted including those Locke kids who were just down the street. And so the RBC took that charge pretty seriously and started its investigation, and I've just read to you some of the documentation that they were working with. What happened to me? Well, after that very fateful day when I received the letter, I was working as their editor and I went to work and made a couple of calls and discovered that not everybody agreed that that disenrollment action was a good idea and that made me feel pretty good. In fact, there were a few people who were rather upset at the Fond du Lac Band when the news of this got out. I don't think it was a groundswell. I don't think that...nothing like that happened, but there were a few key people who mean something to me who didn't like what happened and they had some good advice, including names of attorneys throughout the state who I should contact to get some advice from and so I did. I made phone calls and discovered that I should request a petition date. I'm sorry I'm not a lawyer, I can't get into too many of the legalities, but I do know that it wasn't long after that before we did set...we sent documentation and asked for a hearing. And then I had to wait quite awhile before that hearing date actually came up.

But in the meantime, again I was in this odd rather limbo-like state. I knew some details of my adoption. I knew that my biological mother was from Turtle Mountain. I had seen documentation from the county, St. Louis County, which said that my...the name of my father had never been released. There was no reason for us to presume he was not Fund du Lac. The only description and information I ever learned about my father was that he was tall and he liked to hunt and fish. Well, now that covers about 98 percent of the men at Fond du Lac, although not all of them are that tall, but there could be a tall one out there somewhere. So they all like to hunt and fish and he was athletic, so that was all very interesting, but it didn't tell me a whole lot. It didn't tell me whether or not he was in fact a Band member.

What happened from there is this. I was urged to find an attorney, I couldn't. I called everywhere I could think of to get someone to take the case. Finally, Tim Aldridge did and he was an attorney at Bemidji all the time, had done some work for a couple of bands and Tim agreed to take on the case. The reason these lawyers said 'no' was because there was no precedent. They didn't know what they were getting into and they weren't quite sure how to win it. I'm sure the list goes on and on and on. But my mother went into her savings to pay for the retainer, which absolutely broke my heart, but I didn't have many choices at the time and I think this is true of a lot of people who are included with me. What I heard is from 20 to 40 people at Fond du Lac got that letter and I was the first one to go through with a trial or a court hearing, which says that I was the only one who paid the money that it required. That's an advantage tribal courts have. They know that the people who they represent often don't have the money to pay for an attorney. I think that's one of the worst tragedies of this story.

Anyway, I went ahead, I had this great lawyer and when we got the hearing date, he and a couple of other...quite a few people were sort of involved with this and giving me various kinds of advice. They put together a summons and complaint and I filed it and things were quiet for awhile and then we had our...and I hired the attorney and we had our initial hearing. That went okay. I'm not even quite sure...that was just to see what information...discovery, that was discovery. And then we set the date or the hearing date in the tribal court offices or the tribal courtroom, whatever that's called. And I argued that or my attorney argued with me a number of things and here's what I can tell you from the complaint.

He cited the Indian Civil Rights Act and he said that that states that, ‘No Indian tribe in exercising powers of self-government shall deny to any person within this jurisdiction the equal protection of its laws or deprive any person of liberty or property without due process of law.' Again you're wondering, property, yeah, that little $400 a month payment that I was getting was very useful. That was cut off with absolutely no notice whatsoever. That's just the beginning of what was cut off. I was informed of a -- this goes on -- now this is my voice. ‘I was informed of a pre-hearing conference set for May 18, 2010, but have not received the documents that will be used against me. I request...' and here's B, ‘I request the honorable court to scrutinize the purpose of the disenrollment attempt as to procedural and substantive due process. The January 6th letter sets forth vague information that an adoption is used as the basis for the disenrollment. I may be entitled to enrollment apart from the adoption allegation moreover admitting tribes have the right to determine membership.' Those were the two strongest arguments I think from this document. It also says, ‘My specific allegations alleging lack of due process justifying injunctive relief are as follows...' I was told and I remember this phone call, I was told in a telephone call by a court employee that I would only be allowed to look at the evidence against me at the time of the hearing without prior notice of what may be used against me and B, the pre-trial hearing was set prematurely without a scheduling hearing, a discovery period and without adequate time to be allowed for me to prepare a meaningful case based on the merits. Defendants failed to give a fair warning of the nature of the case. This goes on for maybe another couple of pages. It's signed and dated May 17, 2010.

So, we waited again and it wasn't until I'm thinking, yeah, by late December I was really wondering when are we going to be getting some sort of a decision from the judge and an order arrived or was sent to my attorney on January 22, 2011 and it said this, it said, ‘The issue was whether the petitioner met the tribe's membership requirements when the decision to enroll was first made.' In other words, did that initial RBC and did the officials with MCT just make a simple mistake back in 1978 when they permitted this to go through. And the judge's order also said this, ‘Petitioner's request for hearing did not set out the reason she believed she should not be disenrolled, but stated that she understood the fact that she was adopted was the reason for her disenrollment. She requested documents leading to the decision to proceed with the disenrollment.' The order also said that I provided a document from my biological mother that showed I had enough Indian blood to be enrolled and it also said the Band argued that an enrolled adoptee must be born to a member of the MCT. The judge also referred to the letter from the St. Louis County Adoptive Services that stated my biological parents were each American Indian and although the judge did say the document named my father, it didn't. His name...that name has never surfaced. The order says that, ‘Though I am perhaps of Chippewa descent...' That's the word she used -- 'perhaps.' ‘Perhaps she's of Chippewa descent, it's not enough information to conclude that I met the requirement of MCT membership.' And consequently the disenrollment was approved.

So I received that information, my attorney and I talked a little bit about it. I talked with these other attorneys who had been involved and they all said that, ‘You cannot give up at this point. You have to appeal this. You've got to go to St. Paul to Bandana Square and talk to these judges,' and that means of course I need to hire another attorney because by this time Tim Aldridge had left his practice in Bemidji. I thought, ‘What's this going to take? I have to go to my mother again and borrow from her savings for what may be another losing case and I have to try and find an attorney, most of whom don't even want to come anywhere near me. And what else do I have to...I have to get up in the morning for how many months ahead, each morning, and deal with this thing.' I cannot even begin to describe how this weighs on a person. I can't even tell you how it just turns you upside down, not only me, my siblings, my mom who was elderly to begin with, my extended family and friends. And I didn't realize how much it had affected them until I had heard a rumor through my brother that we were suddenly all to be reinstated. And I told one of my friends whose husband is a Band member and she started crying and so I realized that this is something that is really touching a lot of people in a lot of different ways.

What I heard from one of the attorneys is this, he said, ‘Membership is a right. If you are born to an MCT parent...' and no one proved that Deb was not born to an MCT parent... ‘Fond du Lac and MCT shifted the burden of proof to me after more than 30 years following an open enrollment process.' Those were the words I heard from one of the attorneys. In the meantime, personally what was going on, my youngest brother David has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. He is living in Tucson right now. He has been for quite a few years. The $400...he cannot work. He can't. He has a...he's got a disability that will not permit him to function very well. He's about 12 or 13 years old emotionally and in every other way. So he's in Tucson and he gets the same letter that I did. He goes to my mother and he's crying on the phone. He's already torn up his ID and all of his papers and anything that ever had anything to do with Fond du Lac. He's very distressed about this thing and my mom of course is very distressed about it and what are we going to do about David now -- because that piece...that puny little $400 a month was basically all he had and some food stamps. So my mom and I started paying his bills that year and he's...my heart goes out to him because he lives in like this world of confusion. There's so much he doesn't understand and it is not his fault that he doesn't understand it. Anyway, in December of 2010, David got a letter that he would receive a check for $4,800, which is a year of casino dividend payments. The letter said he was getting a lump sum because he filled the annual dividend form incorrectly in January. He never got one. What he got in January was the same letter that I got. I reminded my brother that I got the same letter he did in January a year earlier about disenrollment proceedings.

So where does this leave us and where does it leave me? It leaves me with a lot of confusion about what I call 'cultural competency,' because in the course of that year and a half of trauma, one of the first things I was told was that in Ojibwe history and culture adoptees have the same status as biological children, that it had been that way for hundreds of years and that you truly were a chosen baby. I was also told that the tradition of adoption...that adoption meant that children were called to the Band for a very special role and that included the Poloski girls, excuse me, but it did. The Poloski girls as well as me and my three siblings all fell under that blanket. For some special reason, the Creator placed us with this Band. We were babies, we didn't have much say about it, but that's what happened and what I learned from these attorneys, who actually were culturally competent and kindhearted and everything else you would look for in an attorney, and I'd never met people like this in my life, but wow they were good. Anyway, a sidebar.

What I had hoped for through this proceeding and somewhere buried in the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe constitution was something that said that traditions matter and that the fate of children matters and that when you get to be in your 50s and 60s, people don't pull the rug out from under you the way they pulled the rug out from under me and my family. My mother had a good solution early on. She said, ‘If the Band wanted to change something, they could have grandfathered all of you in and said, 'From this point forward this is the way it's going to be.'' And I think that would have been a good solution, but of course they didn't think of that. It was just too easy to say, ‘Well, maybe Renee or Robin are making a point.' I don't even...I can't even speculate where they were coming from on that. I don't... was it a cost savings? I don't think it was that great a cost savings, 20 to 40 people. I still see myself as a 'chosen child' and I really wish the Fond du Lac Band was Ojibwe enough to understand what that means. Thank you."

Jill Doerfler and Matthew Fletcher: Defining Citizenship: Blood Quantum vs. Descendancy (Q&A)

Producer
William Mitchell College of Law
Year

Panelists Jill Doerfler and Matthew Fletcher fields questions from the audience, and several participants offer their heartfelt perspectives on the complicated cultural and social dynamics surrounding citizenship and identity in their respective Native nations and communities. 

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

Resource Type
Citation

Doerfler, Jill. "Defining Citizenship: Blood Quantum vs. Descendancy (Q&A)." Tribal Citizenship Conference, Indian Law Program, William Mitchell College of Law, in conjunction with the Bush Foundation. St. Paul, Minnesota. November 13, 2013. Presentation.

Fletcher, Matthew. "Defining Citizenship: Blood Quantum vs. Descendancy (Q&A)." Tribal Citizenship Conference, Indian Law Program, William Mitchell College of Law, in conjunction with the Bush Foundation. St. Paul, Minnesota. November 13, 2013. Presentation.

Sarah Deer:

"At this time again we'd like to open it up to questions and comments. We have a few minutes before lunch and we'd like to have some dialogue based on what the speakers had to say.

Audience member:

"Has there been any talks with the state level officials or any federal officials on how they view what an Indian is and at what point...or what do they expect of Indian tribes? We've been talking about funding, we're talking about land being taken back. Okay. I know in Wisconsin we had a meeting with a state representative and he didn't even know we had 11 tribes in the state of Wisconsin. He knew that all the tribes in Wisconsin were per cap Indians. That was his perception and he was from the southern part of the state. And so a lot of times when we...we struggle with this blood quantum issue is the end game that what does the federal government and Chairman Bugonaghezhisk hit it right on the head though. At some point they don't want to pay no more. And of course I speak for myself that they can never pay us enough for what they've taken from us. And I notice that when I look in the appropriations inside the Department of the Interior. Parks and Services get more money than the tribes do and why is that? And so these are some of the questions on the other side of the line is what does the government...what is their end game? The gentleman here talked about...Mr. Fletcher was talking about that at some point all they want to do is wipe the slate clean and mainstream us into society with no debt to the Anishinaabe people."

Dana Logan:

"Hi. My name is Dana Logan from Grand Portage. My question regarding the lineal descent is if the government has wanted to, like you said, wipe the slate clean, get rid of Indians? So if you are going to go to...are thinking of going to lineal descent and I'm going to use the Cherokee Nation, going to lineal descent and I've seen their blood quantum as being at one-3000th. So at what point if tribes go to lineal descent are we no longer going to be identified as Indian tribes and we're going to be so what the government might say is diluted, there aren't no real Indian left? And so that I worry about a little bit in identity and what the government thinks of us. Myself, I'm enrolled in the Chippewa tribe. I have children who are Northeastern Oklahoma Indians enrolled there at a ome-eighth requirements. They're half, my husband is a full blood Indian. Now, look at their CDIB, they're Grand Portage, they're Canadian on my family's side, they're Cherokee and they're also part Shawnee and Eastern Band, and then in the Cherokees, split you up on what kind of Cherokee you are. So you have all of these things that we do to ourselves but yet we have to protect ourselves as a group of people...I don't like to say a racial group either, but we do need to keep our identity so that the American government doesn't say, "˜You people aren't here anymore and you don't matter.' Thank you."

Matthew Fletcher:

"I'd like to just toss out something. I think the way that the self-determination policy has worked in the last couple decades along with the Supreme Court has looked at Indian identity is to really rail and recognize a tribe's decision as to who is a member, who is not. So if you look at a lot of statutes that Congress and state legislatures have passed prior to the "˜80s really, they all talk about blood quantum, they talk about half blood, quarter blood, who's an Indian, who's mixed blood. The U.S. and most state legislatures even have moved away from that. And so for example a year or so ago the Department of Justice, Fish and Wildlife Service in the U.S. government said, "˜Well, we're going to recognize anybody who's a member of a federally recognized tribe. Blood quantum is irrelevant. Whatever they decide, they are able to with their citizenship card they can carry an eagle feather. We're not going to give them any crap for that.' So that was the policy floating around. What it means is, they talk about tribal membership. Whatever blood quantum is, it's up to the tribes and I think that's a really good development. But that's the politics right now. 50 years down the road, maybe John Roberts type people, and he's the one who asked the question in the Baby Veronica case, "˜Hey, the last time that this kid and dad had a full blood Indian was during the time of the American Revolution in their ancestry.' It was important to him and so maybe that will change over time. But right now, now is where the federal government is deferring to tribal prerogatives on tribal membership, whatever that might be, and I think it's a good time to take advantage of that."

Jill Doerfler:

"Yeah, and there's lots of prevailing arguments as well that blood quantum and this racialization was meant to destabilize politics. The U.S. and native nations have a nation-to-nation relationship. It's not a relationship between a nation and a race and so there's also lots of arguments there that treaties that form a big part of that government-to-government relationship there primarily are not racially based. They're governments making agreements with other governments. The U.S. government racial...the race of Americans is changing over time. We're going to start to see the white race decline and we're going to start to see white people becoming a 'minority' in the U.S. Does that mean if the race of America changes, does that mean that those political agreements are null and void? Most people would argue no because it's still the same political system that's in place. The makeup of the people might be changing, but you still have that government structure."

Audience member:

"So I guess to touch on another one of those stories that we carry with us from our relatives, one of the things that I was taught was if you wonder about who you are, think about yourself when you're done with this world and who is it the ones that's going to take care of you to help you on your journey to the next place. And sometimes that is the defining characteristic, because when you're left by yourself and you're completely dependent upon the people who are supposed to take care of you, sometimes that defines who your identity is. What we have based on these discussions is a converging of social, cultural, political type of discourse -- I guess for lack of...for a more intelligent English word -- but...and how that convergence comes into play. I mention these things and the things that come from me that I work with when I work with my people in my tribe is we never lose that connection we have to our relatives. And that's difficult sometimes, especially when they're adopted away and they're taught these different types of...different ways of doing things.

And so when I was in school there was people who were sympathetic, these non-tribal people who were sympathetic, but they wanted this and they always said, "˜Well, how do you...' -- I used to joke with them and tease them because there's some things you don't share with people you don't know -- I said, "˜Well, if you want to know who's Indian, go ask them what happened to their grandparents,' because almost always you can find a story about the boarding schools. My tribe and my relatives all have the same stories about where our grandmothers went and grandfathers and how we can't stop in...when we travel back and forth and Janesville with my grandma.

And so one of the things that I'm proud of as Ojibwe and as Anishinaabe is the treaties that we have going back to American or Federal Indian Law 101 is the four purposes of why treaties are made. Well, there's a fifth treaty, too, that helps define the contents or your...you reserve the rights of your own identity. And for us, for the Ojibwes and among the Lake Superior Band, our 1847 treaty -- one of them gets overshadowed because that was Bugonaghezhisk's allotment that he got over by Wadena -- but the other part of that 1847 treaty is a separate one, which was the recognition...forcing the United States to recognize that Ojibwes did not recognize mixed blood or half breeds or whatever they called us back then and that all of the people who were among our communities from wherever they came from were considered part of our family. And that's a teaching that we have that...we have these cultural bonds that go across there and so a lot of my [Anishinaabe language] are non-tribal. And for those who don't know what [Anishinaabe language] are, it kind of translates to like 'godmother' or 'godfather' or 'god-relative' that is supposed to help you take the place or help assist your parents in raising you or your family in raising you. And then as we include them as our [Anishinaabe language], we also name them so that the Creator can understand them in the Ojibwe that is the predominate method on how we're conducting ourselves. And so even though we use this more dominant language or English to kind of define our interactions and to articulate these views, I still from the time I was born until the time I pass and I sit there with my grandmothers again and my grandfathers and tell the story of my life as part of our teaching. Ojibwe is the means that identifies us because it doesn't set parameters, it gives you the method to teach you how to come back home. And so that is...the prevalent thing that comes through this is the language. We call that...that's the gift from the Creator. Our work is the land that was given to us or the responsibilities that attach us to the land.

But there's still, I guess, and I'll finish this real quick I guess, but the other part that kind of makes our blood boil and all of that is when we have the people who create these manufactured senses of identity of what it is to be Indian and then they come back and they bring these different concepts. Even though I'm a lawyer and trained just as Professor Fletcher is in speaking English in terms of interpreting our laws, the constitution that we have is probably one of the most detrimental and damaging things that we've done as a tribe because it tries to codify what the idea of a good government is or how to run your people...how to organize your people to do certain things and that gives a tool then for those who disagree with our ways of life. Our grandmothers have prominent places in our society, but it's not recognized in the constitution or when people identify their laws and say, "˜Well, you're not a member because the constitution doesn't say that,' even though my [Anishinaabe language] grew up on the reservation and has done as much for me as anybody else, she's not from Lac Courte Oreilles.

It's a dangerous double[-edged] sword that I think that -- and I'm going to get slapped by Robert here if I'm not careful how I say this -- there's people who take this idea of spreading democracy as President [George W.] Bush had said when he was justifying these incursions and sending among others some of our Native youth into Iran and...or I mean Iraq -- whew, there's a Freudian slip -- in Afghanistan and to these different countries is they're trying to spread democracy back to the tribes in that they want to change their constitutions so that they have these things that are not...don't necessarily arise from us, but they come from this idea that we're going to have participation, that we want representation from different areas and the model that they use is the United States, but yet how can that be a positive model when we have something like the Tea Party that's disrupting the government or we have the idea of democracy and we've got the idea that corporate citizens are now or corporations are now people. And so that just...it makes me nervous and I think it's the responsibility of those who really want to be part of that community to be diligent, to hold true to what your ideas are and to not...if you're going to bring something else in there, bring in also with the open mind of coming into the community and listening to what that is.

I know that there's criticisms split between on reservation and off reservation and it shouldn't be that way because the reservations were something that was given...that was forced on us by the American government because we're actually in the area -- and this is going to get me probably slapped by the Dakota in the room -- this used to be Ojibwe country and there was an 1825 treaty that kind of demarcated this line. It wasn't ours like in exclusion of other people. It was our shared responsibility to take care of this land and take care of these resources. And so this idea of possession is something that got forced into us so that the dominant society could figure out a way to kind of [figure out] who to talk to instead of having to talk to everybody, they picked who they wanted to speak with. And so when they come back with these people with these ideas of changing the constitution so that it incorporates more people, I think that's such a dangerous topic because you're incorporating it under the wrong premise. There's other ways that could be done and that needs to be incorporated into that. If we're really going to have binding, logical extensions of ourselves codified in the constitution, it should be in the language, it should be in the way that those words were intended and it should be representative of the practices of who we are.

My grandma told me -- and my grandma told me a lot so I could go all day -- she told me, she says, "˜When you pass, one quarter of you doesn't go somewhere else, one quarter doesn't go to this other spot. It goes to where you think your family is because that's the teaching that the Creator gave to you. And so when you go up and you say your name, your name is like one slice of your life over the time that you've been given this time on this earth. And so when you hear that and they ask for you, you know where to go to.' And I don't mean to disparage people with different beliefs because I've seen people who are strong in their beliefs and I believe them. The major tenet of me and my lodge is you respect all ways and it just...sometimes though when we respect all ways the first way that seems to get diminished or get erased is the Anishinaabe way and we just...I can't allow that. [Anishinaabe language]."

Robert Durant:

"I won't hit you. I want to shake your hand. Again, my name is Robert and I just want to talk a little bit...no disrespect to all the efforts that White Earth is going through and I'm on the council in White Earth. I too, I have always been afraid of this. The new constitution that's been written, I feel there's so many things that take away from the future and also removing the past on where we're at and what was done and closing the door on so many other issues. And then when there's issues that are talked about, how are we going to deal with this here with programs -- whether it be housing, whatever -- and all the other issues that comes along with that and maybe being censored from working one way or working another way if this thing passes? Then it's said that, "˜Well, we'll tweak it out.' Well, tell you what, that's not what people are kind of voting for. I'm not going to say 'yes' to where you're going to change it anyway so what good is it? Things like that, it really gets to my heart. And then when we talk about to opening these doors to rewrite a constitution that's taken decades of interpretations and decisions and ordinances and then to me it's really sad, because to me it's like the modern day of being fleeced by using enrollment. I get afraid of that. I'm afraid of that. Remember the stories of our tribal nations being fleeced? And then sometimes when we talk about the enrollment laws...I remember listening to some old men talking about [Anishinaabe name] or 'Hole in the Day.' He only would...during the removals come to White Earth, he talked about only the half breeds could come with him. We all know he was killed, but there's a lot of other histories, I read about other leaders they wanted, for reasons, whatever that was. And that's what I think about, but they disappeared in life and who was always behind it, it was always the government. So it's really difficult for me...when I think about this, I'm doing it right now, I'm shedding a tear because what are we doing to ourselves and what are we allowing to happen to us? It's not easy, but everybody is not being taught.

We sent out as a lesson for everybody, White Earth sent out...there's 18,700-and-some members under the last roll that we took. That list was used to mail out a constitution. I asked, "˜Well, if you're going to mail that out, at least have some fairness and mail out the one that we've been dealing with that was revised in the "˜60s.' Well, no it wasn't done because I was intercepted and it wasn't done, so it wasn't fair because people on both sides ain't getting a chance. So when you go for this here in other nations, realize that because we're stepping into something that we do not know and it's scary. I can say that because my children, they're tribal. But I can understand they may make a choice not to be with another tribal or their children, but the thing is I need to have that responsibility to show them who they are too. But I made that choice. Why am I tribal? There's a lot of teachings.

I want to tell you a little story, too, before I quit here because it really gives me an insight. I got a gift, again, there's a lot of gifts. I received a packet of writings done by tribal members; I'm going to share that with you Jim. They wrote manuscripts of...100 years ago they wrote this. I had my administrative assistants type it all out because the paper was frail and it was written beautifully. And they told the stories of what it was. They told stories. Imagine 120 years ago someone 84 years old saying...writing the story of the modern Indian. It makes me angry when I read that, but it was the truth. This topic is really tough and I'm not the only one that feels that way. These are lessons we listen, lessons from our elders, real lessons. Not just a story, but this time as being told...these were handwritten. [Anishinaabe language]."

Sarah Deer:

"I think we have time if you want to respond unless someone else in the audience wants to make sure we get you on record. There we go."

Sam Strong:

"It's not really a response. [Anishinaabe language]. I think for me it wasn't actually in any response to Terry's comments there, but basically when I think about being Anishinaabe, when I think about being Ojibwe, when I think about being from Red Lake, what does that mean to me? It means a way of life. It means living that [Anishinaabe language]. It means being a part of a community that has been centuries in the making so it's understanding that you're a part of that history. That's something for me that I'm very proud of. I'm an enrolled member. I'm very proud of that. I'm very proud of my heritage. I'm also proud of...I'm mixed. I'm proud of everything that made me and that's part of being Anishinaabe, that's part of being Ojibwe is understanding who you are and being comfortable with that and then living that lifestyle in all facets of your life.

I think about the past, I think about Red Lake and one of our first leaders, once we started with treat making and all that, his name was Peter Graves and he actually wasn't a Red Lake member. Our first real leader wasn't even a member. He was an Ojibwe person that had moved there. He was mixed, he was half, and you think about the contributions that he made to Red Lake. We consider ourselves unique. I'm sure all tribes consider themselves unique. But we're a closed reservation. We're the only tribe that never ceded control of their land. We're proud of those aspects of who we are, but at the same time you look at today what people are...how they're living and what's going on in the communities and we're disconnected from who we are. So I think it's important to identify that in looking at citizenship. Your community is going to look at where you're at today. What does it mean to be a Red Laker today?

Our chairman always tells this story as kind of a fearful indication of where the community is at. He was at a meeting and one of the guys...it was a forum for an election or something like that and one of the kids stood up and he took his card out. He said, "˜This ID card, what does it mean for me?' And everyone's like, "˜Well, what do you mean?' And he said, "˜Where's my check? Where's our per capita? We have all these casinos. Where's my money? What does this card mean for me?' I don't think that's the prevailing thinking that most of the community members have, but it's out there. That's kind of how the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] would want it. They would want to see us as dependents. They would want to see us as people that our identity is putting our hand out, but that's not who we are and I think understanding that there is...there's that divide. What we have created and who we are are so different from one another.

You think about the teachings and the people that I listen to and that I learn about myself and my culture and some of these people, if you met them on the street, you might think they were Caucasian, but the reality is these people are carrying on the culture and the language. They're not all enrolled members, but these people have dedicated their life to understanding our culture, our language, our traditions and they're carrying that on for our tribal members. And you think about all these people that have helped us get to where we're at today and all these community members that have contributed and it has nothing to do with the percentage of blood that you had. It never has and it never will, but the reality is our communities have become dependent upon the resources from the BIA, from the federal government, so on and so forth and people have started to look at membership as what's going to be put in my hand for free?

And I think the only way to change that -- we're looking at constitutional reform right now -- and you pose this question to Red Lakers, you're going to get a lot of angry people. We're a closed reservation. We've maintained control of our land, so what happens when we open up to lineal descendancy and we have people that are totally disconnected from our land base? Would they potentially put us in a position where we would lose ownership of the land, where the tribe would make a decision to sell it? I don't think so, but at the end of the day, these are the fears that the tribal members bring up when we talk about changing our enrollment criteria. How do we address those?

And to me, it's one of those things...it's obviously mathematical genocide. I think all of us can agree that the current system doesn't work, but how do we move forward in a responsible way, in a way that allows for the people to also grow and the only way to really do that is through teaching your people about your culture, your language, doing all the things that we're talking about here, but it's not a one-day change. Even if you were to make the change from lineal...to lineal descent or whatever it may be, that's not the important piece. It doesn't matter what the criteria are if your community isn't carrying on the values and the traditions of who you are. That's the way it was always taught to me is that the way you live is who you are.

Another teaching that I always was told is, coming into today's world you see the troubles of today with the environmental degradation and all the social ills of the communities and our elders say that our ways are the ways that are going to bring this world back into a better place. That's been our teachings. And how can we do that if we can't even include people that are living in our communities in our traditional ways? You have to think that...what's the long term? The long term is obviously that we need to be inclusive and teach our ways and share those values, but in the short term we have to focus on ourselves. We have to get to a point where our own people understand who they are and their lifestyles. Without that, it doesn't matter how you identify yourself. In 100 years what will our communities be? So to me it's...without the identity the rest is...it's almost impossible to even solve that so it's not to make the...and we're going through the same process so I ask this of all the members of our community when we go out. We have a constitutional reform committee and so they're asking these same questions as well. But the reality is, I don't think it's a one-year thing, I don't think it's just change the criteria, it's what are we doing as a nation to hold onto our identity, to create a better quality of life in our communities and to create for...something that everyone can buy into, not only our people but all Ojibwe people.

I always brag about Ojibwe people because I consider us to be the largest tribal nation. I think from a land base perspective you could make that case pretty easily. But today you see tribal nations that are 100 miles away from one another that are fighting with each other. You have racist communities in between that we just ignore and then we have what you would think would be supportive nations down the road and we're not even on the same page. So who are we as a nation even? Have we forgot who we are as Ojibwe people? Have we forgot who we are as Anishinaabe? When I say 'Anishinaabe,' I mean all Native people. I was hearing some of the speakers earlier and they were talking about what that word meant and for us in Red Lake it means free people, people that live in a good way and I think when you think about what we all...all of our ideals as Native people, it's very similar. So why haven't we come together? Why haven't we come together as a people, as a nation and even as Red Lake Nation? So you've got to start somewhere, but at the end of the day...I think sometimes we focus on all these issues and we forget about where the people are at today. For me, living in Red Lake and seeing it and seeing the suicide, the drug use, the...all the social ills of my community, you would just hope that we would focus on the things that would start to change that and create that pride in who we are and all the other stuff will fall into place. But without that, all the rest is for naught, in my eyes at least. [Anishinaabe language]."

Sarah Deer:

"Thank you. Thank you very much. This has been an incredibly rich and deep conversation, and I'm very grateful for all of the participants." 

Jill Doerfler: Defining Citizenship: Blood Quantum vs. Descendancy

Producer
William Mitchell College of Law
Year

Scholar Jill Doerfler (Anishinaabe) talks about the colonial origins of blood quantum as a criterion for determining "Indian" and tribal identity, and explains how the federal government imposed that criterion upon the White Earth people in order to divest them of their land. She also stresses the need for a return to citizenship criteria that protect, enact and strengthen Indigenous cultural core values, and details White Earth's recent effort to abandon blood quantum in favor of lineal descent as the primary criterion for determing citizenship.

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

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Doerfler, Jill. "Defining Citizenship: Blood Quantum vs. Descendancy." Tribal Citizenship Conference, Indian Law Program, William Mitchell College of Law, in conjunction with the Bush Foundation. St. Paul, Minnesota. November 13, 2013. Presentation.

"[Anishinaabe language]. Thank you so much to the Bush Foundation and also to Sarah and Collette for helping with the organizing today. I'm really honored to be part of the program. As Sarah mentioned, I did grow up at White Earth, that's where I'm from. I'll just make a note that I'm not a White Earth citizen. I'm what we call a first-degree descendant, which is that my mother is enrolled at White Earth and I am not enrolled due to the current blood quantum system. So that's part of my legal political identity, my personal identity as Anishinaabe transcends political boundaries I think in many ways.

We've heard some wonderful presentations so far today and today what I'm going to do is talk a little bit more about blood quantum, a little bit about the history of blood quantum and what's been kind of happening at White Earth the past few years. My research is on citizenship and identity and I've been working on it for a number of years. Ultimately what we know and I think what we'll come to talk about in our discussions is that there's no perfect system. All of these systems have pros and cons and we have to think about what can we work with that works best for each individual tribal nation and that is your decision to make so we're just here to share some information.

I always like to start out with, what is blood quantum because even though it's something that we're all familiar with and probably everybody here could sort of go around the room and tell us your blood quantum, what it is officially and then maybe what you think it is correctly, what the Bureau's [of Indian Affairs] gotten wrong. Ultimately, blood quantum is this western concept. Initially it was a literal concept at the turn of the 20th century where scientists thought that they could literally measure blood. Today we're sort of slipping into maybe a little bit more metaphoric understanding of blood quantum. We understand that blood can't literally be measured in that ancestral sense, but that it's a metaphor for affiliations that our ancestors had historically that then parcel themselves out through time and genealogy. So it's literal, it's metaphoric, it's a measure of race, maybe politics, maybe nation, maybe Anishinaabe blood, maybe White Earth blood, maybe...so there's that slippery concept as well between Indian blood, Anishinaabe blood, or White Earth blood. How is all of that measured out? How does culture fit in there historically? It was thought that that was part of the measurement that those kind of cultural affiliations and loyalties were literally in the blood. Today we don't believe that so much, but it's part of the history of blood quantum.

So originally, it's a scientific calculation of degree of percentage of an individual's either racial and/or national ancestry. It assumes that cultural beliefs, language, intelligence, political loyalties, all types of certain behaviors, all of that was thought to be transmitted biologically and to be held in blood quantum, and so blood quantum assumes that those things are transmitted literally or metaphorically in the blood. And as we've talked a little bit about, it's an attempt to racialize American Indian identity. It's an attempt to kind of undermine political status and turn the tables and say, ‘Oh, you're really a racial group. This is really about race versus about political identity.' So how is and how was blood quantum calculated, how have we seen this change over time to some extent? I'm going to share here a little bit of the history of White Earth and I would encourage each tribe to think about their own history of blood quantum, how they got their initial blood rolls and to look at how that happened.

This is a photograph of Ransom Powell, who was an attorney and hired as a special investigator by the United States government to look at blood quantum at White Earth and figure out the genealogy and the blood quantum of 200 families, about 5,000 people at White Earth at the turn of the century in the 1910s. And so here he is posing with three ladies at White Earth. And he came to do this investigation, to figure out White Earth blood quantums because at that time it was tied to land and so that's what it was about: figuring out who was a 'mixed blood' and who was a 'full blood.' The legal definition at the time was a mixed blood meant any drop...one drop of white blood meant mixed blood and so that's the definition that Powell was working with and he's sent to do this investigation and figure out who's a mixed blood and who's not. And so what he does is he starts by asking a variety of questions to people at White Earth, asking them about their blood quantum or the blood quantum of people that they know. Was Person X a full blood? Was so-and-so a mixed blood? And the answers that people gave at White Earth I always say are better than any answers I could ever even make up. So the historical record on this is very rich. So Powell asked these questions, he and his little team of investigators, and what people would do at White Earth is basically avoid his questions or refute them time and time again. So I'm just going to share a few quotes from the investigation.

One person said -- in response to these questions about blood quantum -- she said, ‘There was never no question about blood in them days, no sir.' Not just within recent years talking about blood, so here the lady who is on the stand is saying, ‘This is something totally new, we haven't really talked about that before. It's only come up within recent years, only within allotment years when blood quantum is coming to matter for land sale.'

Here's a nice quote where we see the investigator being quite accusatory saying, ‘Many of those...isn't it true that many of those who are known to have White fathers were living as Indians and considered in the tribe as Indians just as though they had no White father?' So you see here the investigator trying to get somebody to admit that there are people at White Earth who have White fathers and they're just like other Indians at White Earth and one person says, ‘Yes, sir.' And we see this time and again in the record. In fact, there are many people in 1910s at White Earth who had white fathers who were living in the tribe as Indians and they weren't excluded for that fact.

Another person asserted that there was no mixed bloods, that there's no such thing. That wasn't a concept or category. Part of this is also translation that's going on here between people who may be speaking Anishinaabemowin and English speakers and translating. It may also be refuting the category, that that's a U.S. government kind of category and we're not willing to use that category here. There's no such thing. That's something the U.S. made up. So there are different possibilities for interpretation on those.

Other people talked about how Anishinaabe people created their identity, they made themselves who they were through their actions and so a woman was being asked about her husband in this case and she says, ‘He was a full blood. He made himself a full blood.' And the investigator goes on to ask, ‘Oh, you mean by living like an Indian.' And she says, ‘Yes,' and they go on and she explains that through his actions he creates his identity. It's not something that he's born with, that he's locked into, that he has no control over. He has the control to create who he is by what he does.

Then those questions aren't going that well for Powell, right? This is like not helping him create his blood roll so he's like, ‘Let's move on. Let's also think about phenotype. Let's start asking some questions about skin color, complexion, hair, that type of thing.' And he gets an equally array of colorful answers. Here's an example. The person was asked, ‘Is so-and-so light skinned?' The person from White Earth says, ‘Yes, she was light. Some Indians are light, but she was an Indian.' And so here again, not using a category of mixed blood or full blood, just using the term 'Indian' and just saying that skin color doesn't necessarily determine identity.

This one is similar, but the person does choose to use the term 'full-blooded.' So in this case the man says, ‘Yes, he was light but he was a full-blood Indian.' And then there are an array of answers where people say, ‘I never took particular notice,' ‘I can't remember,' ‘I can't recall,' ‘I can't say what they were,' ‘Who knows,' ‘They were a medium shade,' and so there's all kinds of evasive answers going on and Powell is not getting anywhere really with these questions either. And so ultimately what has to happen is we need some anthropologists, right? We need somebody to come in with some scientific knowledge and help.

So Powell brings in Dr. Ales Hrdlicka and Dr. Jenks and they come and they do physical examinations. They measure heads, they scratch skin, they do hair analysis. Hair analysis samples were sent down to the University of Minnesota to the College of Ag [Agriculture] and Animal Sciences to be analyzed and they start working on their blood roll using that because they're not going to get the answers they want from the Anishinaabe people at White Earth. So ultimately we get our base roll via that process and then once you have your base roll you are free to calculate your blood quantum...here's a handy chart created by the Bureau if anyone wants to utilize this, it's available to them. So you have your base blood quantum and then you take both of your parents and you calculate on down the line and that's how we've gotten our blood quantums. I know other tribes have similar stories. You got a base roll somehow and then you calculate from there.

So, what meaning does blood quantum have? That's a big question for tribes to think about. Is this a good system? What does it tell us? How can it...is it useful in citizenship? What meaning does it have? We can think about people with an array of different blood quantums, maybe they have Oneida blood, maybe they have English blood, Ojibwe blood. What does it tell us about that person or Person B who has a little more variety of ancestry here? What does it really tell us about Person B? Do we know where they live? Do we know what their belief system is? Do we know what language they speak? Do we know how they were raised? No, it gives us this ancestral kind of picture, which may be useful to some tribes, but it doesn't really give us a whole lot of information.

What does blood quantum do? How has it functioned? Practically, it's functioned in a variety of ways. It's ultimately designed to erase and eliminate American Indians. The feds used blood quantum to try to reduce the numbers of people that legally are native. A couple of quick quotes. Scholars have done lots of work on how blood quantum has functioned and what it's done. Eva Garut has said that the ‘ultimate and explicit federal intention was to use blood quantum standard as a means to liquidate tribal lands.' Definitely the case at White Earth. ‘And eliminate government trust responsibility to tribes.' Dr. David Wilkins and Dr. Heidi Stark have said that ‘blood quantum is a new form of federal termination of Indians who are eligible for federal aid and services.' We also heard some comments about that earlier today.

So, nations are faced with those questions about blood quantum. What is it, what does it do, how does it work? And in looking at citizenship requirements, we've been, as was mentioned, we've been going through a process at constitutional reform at White Earth. The current effort started in 2007 although there were other efforts in the late ‘90s and also previously in the ‘70s and ‘80s as well at constitutional reform. But the effort I was involved in got started in 2007 and when we talked about citizenship, we talked about the history, we talked about how the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe came and White Earth came to use blood quantum in the ‘60s, what happened before that, look at that history, think about our values. And we asked many, many questions and here's just a few things that we talked about in our discussions. And citizenship was something that we probably spent the most time on during our constitutional convention process. Delegates found this was an emotional issue, it's an issue that impacts everyone and it really sets the foundation for the nation: who are we, who do we want to be, that type of thing.

So we asked questions like, ‘What kind of citizenship requirement will put our beliefs, values and culture into motion?' ‘How can we enact those values?' The things that John was talking about today, those big picture things, love...we talked about love as one of our primary values. How can we put that into action? How might our values of love and family be expressed in citizenship regulations? Which citizenship requirement will strengthen our nation? At that time we had a variety of options in front of delegates to take a look at, but these are the types of questions that some of you are thinking about changing citizenship requirements, replace your values in there and think about what can we do, how can we best express these things. Ultimately, the constitutional delegates at White Earth felt that lineal descent was the best option, that it allowed people choice where people create their identity, they have the choice to apply for citizenship provided they can bring the documentation necessary, but it puts that back on families, it puts a focus back on relationships in families. Is it by any means perfect? No, but that was the route that was decided to go with.

Sometimes we get this question when it comes to lineal descent. Won't there be too many of us if we kind of go with lineal descent? And here's a round dance event with lots of Indians. ‘Isn't this too many Indians here?' That's something for tribes to think about. How do we think about citizens? Are they assets to the nation? In what ways can a larger population be a positive thing?

What about resources? This is the other thing that comes with lineal descent. What are we going to do? We can't...we don't have enough for everyone as it is now, we're not going to have enough for more people. Citizenship and resources, entitlements, programs have to be to some extent divorced and they are already in tribes now. All these programs and services generally have requirements, an income requirement, a residency requirement, why not do a nice reciprocal requirement where if you're going to get a scholarship you have to volunteer a number of hours at the tribal pre-school in the summer? Why not require learning the language? Why not require taking courses on history? So I would encourage tribes to think about how qualifications for programs can be a little bit different than citizenship and how those can be parceled out, because not everyone is entitled to something and the chairman shared earlier the entitlement issues and that came up at White Earth as well. ‘Well, how are we going to have enough houses for everyone?' Well, the tribe isn't responsible for providing everyone a house. As Anishinaabe people, we have the responsibility to take care of ourselves and we have the responsibility to care for our families and so you end up bringing back some of those traditional values as well about our own responsibilities that we have. How can we keep our culture alive is something that we also talked about. We have to do that, speaking of responsibilities and actions and making our identity. It's not passed down in blood, it's not literal in that sense. That's our responsibility with our families and our communities to do that sharing and that teaching.

A few bits of information: how to move forward with your decision. Ultimately, I think what helped us was an inclusive and open process. All of our meetings were open; people could say and share anything they wanted. We looked at the history of citizenship in quite a bit of detail and then we looked carefully at how we could practice values within governance. And then ultimately patience and perseverance, right? This isn't an easy decision; you're not going to figure it out in one day. We worked on the initial constitution for two years, even though we had drafts from efforts previous to that and then of course now the decision is in the hands of White Earth citizens who are voting as we speak. It's a by-mail voting process that's going on right now and we'll be counting our votes next Tuesday to find out if we will move forward with a new constitution or if we will continue under our current structure. [Anishinaabe language]."

Honoring Nations: JoAnn Chase: Cultural Affairs

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

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

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

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

JoAnn Chase:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Honoring Nations: Roger Boyd: Economic and Community Development

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Economic development specialist Roger Boyd (Navajo) reports back to his fellow Honoring Nations symposium participants the consensus from his group regarding some strategies that Native nations should think about and pursue in order to build a sustainable framework for economic development.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Boyd, Roger. "Economic and Community Development." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Sante Fe, New Mexico. February 8, 2002. Presentation.

Roger Boyd:

"My name's Roger Boyd. I'm a member of the Navajo Nation and currently I work for the CDFI [Community Development Financial Institution] Fund, which is a part of the Department of the Treasury in Washington, D.C. And I want to thank Andrew for inviting me to participate these past couple of days. It's really been good. I think it's always good to get out of Washington, D.C. and come down to where the real action is and I really appreciate all the different activities and conversations I've had. Also, by way of introduction, I'd like all the individuals who participated in the Economic and Community Development breakout session to please stand. I think there's some folks up here. Would you please stand, please, that participated in the economic development sessions? Now, one of the reasons I wanted these folks to be recognized is that early on in the discussion of our breakout session we talked about the difference between those that have authority and those that are leaders. So the distinction is, is that if you're elected or appointed to do something you have the authority, but the real leadership is from the folks who appointed you or elected you to do that. So I wanted you to know that those are the leaders, I'm the authority having to address you this afternoon.

The breakout session was to discuss economic development, and for those of you that really work in the field of economic development, it's like herding cats. Everybody has a definition and an opinion on economic development and the interesting thing about it that I have found over the past several years is that everybody is just about right when it comes to their definition of economic development, because it could involve education, it could involve business development, it can involve tribal court systems, it can involve good legislation to create a good environment within the community to do good economic and community development. And our discussion pretty much covered the gamut this morning. I'll hit some of the high points and where we sort of ended up in the discussion and I'm sure a lot of you, I felt like the discussion was just getting heated up and we were really getting to know each other and beginning to really define some of the crucial elements of community and economic development and then we had to take a break. But I'm sure the discussion will continue for many days and years to come I hope.

We started talking about power, which was sort of an interesting concept and our leader admitted that it was a very harsh and probably the worst word to start out with, but we all let him take his time and explain to us what he thought it was all about and he did a good job until we really got into the discussion. The discussion then began to take on another element, which I thought was very, very important because we started talking about leadership, identifying who you are, where you're going. In other words, it really takes a very clear vision of leadership and not only a clear vision of that leadership, but the willingness of taking on the responsibility to move forward on strategies and action in which to carry out that vision.

There was a lot of discussion about the differences and the level of sophistication and knowledge in economic development. I thought this was very, very important in our discussion because we were talking about, I think, the importance of having really well educated and people who have really good experience working with folks at the grassroots level, and it was very I think well pointed out to us the difference between education and having knowledge. I think one lady in the audience said, 'Well...' She'd met some very educated people who really didn't have very much knowledge and vice versa. Those who do not have formal education that are there on the forefront working day in and day out on these issues really, really were the people with the knowledge to make some of these things happen.

We also then began to talk about the importance of moving forward with economic development and how do you take the knowledge, the experience you have within your community, and try to work with other communities whether they be within your tribe, within your reservation but also regionally and nationally. There was a lot of discussion about that and I think that one of the points that I think was very well made was that we are not all on the same level. There's a lot of differences within our own communities with regard to this knowledge and the sophistication of doing economic development and that's not to say that we shouldn't respect that, we have to work with that. I think that we talked about the importance of working at the grassroots level and defining that level of the economy compared to the level that I think many tribes are being exposed to today through the profits of gaming and the development of natural resources. That's a different level but it's all within the continuum, it's all within that part of the economy and there's a lot of integration that goes on. A lot of times, and what we talked about was the emphasis sometimes is just placed on the vertical aspect of development and community development and capacity building, but I think we had a really good consensus that equally important, if not more important in a lot of situations, is the horizontal transfer of this knowledge and of this experience of trying to help each other out, not only within our tribes but from tribe to tribe, from region to region throughout the country.

We talked a little bit about timing, how important timing was. We talked a little bit also about the common denominators that exist throughout Indian Country. And probably I think one of the strongest common denominators is just our cultural values. I think that we share very much, and it doesn't matter whether you're a tribe from the northeast or Alaska or the southwest, one of the things that really is common among all of us is our traditions and our culture. And I think that that's the binding aspect that keeps us moving forward within our communities and throughout our relationships throughout the United States.

The question that was posed to us is how do we take all of this knowledge and all of the experience that you folks have demonstrated over the last couple of days and how do we reach out? How does the Harvard Project reach out to other tribal communities throughout the United States and to try to work with them? One of the points that was made was that we really should reach out and look at other regional tribal organizations. I think what has happened here today and the experience that has been demonstrated and has been shared, there is a real, there's a gap I believe, and we discussed a little bit in our breakout session is the communication. How do we reach out and start working with other tribal organizations throughout the United States? And I think that that's the next step. And all of us I think in one form or another belong to some of those regional organizations, whether it be ATNI [Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians] up in the northwest or USET [United South & Eastern Tribes, Inc.] or the Intertribal Council of Arizona and Nevada. These are all good organizations and actually one of the studies that we conducted, we rely heavily on those regional organizations because that is the continuum of the communication between us and the regional organizations and hence with the tribal organizations.

But I also think that another very, very important point that was made was not only of the similarities, but the differences and that what one tribe is able to do for themselves today does not necessarily automatically transfer to another tribe because there are differences. Just like Europe, I think somebody pointed out in one of our discussions and I think this is really true, a lot of people, you know, 'When you see one Indian, you've seen them all'. What was pointed out was, 'Well, it's like Europe. If you see a Frenchman, he's not a German.' And I think that that happens so often in this country and that when people look at us and they meet us, then they think they've met all of us when in fact they have just...this is a compliment to our friends from Alaska -- they've only seen the tip of the iceberg. But at any rate, I think that was a very important aspect of it and that pretty much concludes our presentation. It was a good team. Thank you very much."

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."

Speaking a culture: How efforts to revitalize a language can have a ripple effect

Author
Producer
News-Review
Year

Carla Osawamick stands in front of a class of students with a wide range of life experiences, from one still in high school to a great-grandmother.

The students all have one thing in common: they are dedicated to learning and speaking Anishinaabemowin, the language spoken by many Native Americans in the Great Lakes region, including the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians.

Osawamick is teaching an intermediate language class at North Central Michigan College in Petoskey, where two sections of beginning and two sections of intermediate courses in the language are offered.

Resource Type
Citation

Coe, Aebra. "Speaking a culture: How efforts to revitalize a language can have a ripple effect." Petoskey News. June 12, 2013. Article. (https://www.petoskeynews.com/speaking-a-culture-how-efforts-to-revitalize-a-language, accessed November 30, 2023)