ethics

Improving Ethical Practice in Transdisciplinary Research Projects Webinar

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Transdisciplinary research, or research conducted by people from different disciplines and organizations working together to solve a common problem, holds promise for communities and scientists seeking to address complex socio-ecological problems like climate change. However, this collaborative research approach requires thoughtful consideration of ethical concepts to better account for working with individuals, communities and organizations as partners in, rather than subjects of, transdisciplinary research. This webinar will explore principles for improving ethical practice in transdisciplinary research in socio-ecological settings, such as appropriate representation, deference, self-determination and reciprocity. We will discuss opportunities to deepen ethical skills for researchers in all career stages to improve our transdisciplinary research in response to new challenges, contexts and societal needs.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

Wilmer, H., Meadow, A. M., Ferguson, D. B. (2020) Improving Ethical Practice in Transdisciplinary Research Projects Webinar. Northwest Adaptation Science Center. Webinar. https://vimeo.com/user83638479

Expanded Ethical Principles for Research Partnership and Transdisciplinary Natural Resource Management Science

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Natural resource researchers have long recognized the value of working closely with the managers and communities who depend on, steward, and impact ecosystems. These partnerships take various forms, including co-production and transdisciplinary research approaches, which integrate multiple knowledges in the design and implementation of research objectives, questions, methods, and desired outputs or outcomes.

These collaborations raise important methodological and ethical challenges, because partnering with non-scientists can have real-world risks for people and ecosystems. The social sciences and biomedical research studies offer a suite of conceptual tools that enhance the quality, ethical outcomes, and effectiveness of research partnerships. For example, the ethical guidelines and regulations for human subjects research, following the Belmont Principles, help prevent harm and promote respectful treatment of research participants.

However, science–management partnerships require an expanded set of ethical concepts to better capture the challenges of working with individuals, communities, organizations, and their associated ecosystems, as partners, rather than research subjects. We draw from our experiences in collaborative teams, and build upon the existing work of natural resources, environmental health, conservation and ecology, social science, and humanities scholars, to develop an expanded framework for ethical research partnership.

This includes four principles: (1) appropriate representation, (2) self-determination, (3) reciprocity, and (4) deference, and two cross-cutting themes: (1) applications to humans and non-human actors, and (2) acquiring appropriate research skills. This framework is meant to stimulate important conversations about expanding ethics training and skills for researchers in all career-stages to improve partnerships and transdisciplinary natural resources research.

Resource Type
Citation

Wilmer, H., Meadow, A. M., Brymer, A. B., Carroll, S. R., Ferguson, D. B., Garba, I., Greene, C., Owen, G., & Peck, D. E. (2021). Expanded Ethical Principles for Research Partnership and Transdisciplinary Natural Resource Management Science. Environmental Management. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-021-01508-4

Indigenous Data Sovereignty: The CARE Principles and the Biocultural Labels Initiative

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The NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology Alliance is a dynamic and multidisciplinary group of NYU faculty who are experts on the responsible and ethical creation, use and governance of technology in society. The Alliance is a provostial initiative that connects numerous NYU hubs and initiatives to create productive synergies across areas and interests related to public interest technology (PIT) and the University’s research, teaching, and commitment to civic engagement. The Alliance leverages these connections to support PIT students and graduates, to assess and evaluate their training and career trajectories, support new interdisciplinary PIT research, develop pipelines for diverse students doing PIT work, recognize faculty for PIT work, build new national collaborations with academic and non-academic institutions, and develop an international network of partner institutions.

This presentation by Jane Anderson, Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts and Science, and Stephanie Russo Carroll, Assistant Professor, Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy; Associate Director, Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona, was a part of the Launch of the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology event on February 6, 2020 at NYU.

Genomic Research Through an Indigenous Lens: Understanding the Expectations

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Indigenous scholars are leading initiatives to improve access to genetic and genomic research and health care based on their unique cultural contexts and within sovereign-based governance models created and accepted by their peoples. In the past, Indigenous peoples’ engagement with genomic research was hampered by a lack of standardized guidelines and institutional partnerships, resulting in group harms. This article provides a comparative analysis of research guidelines from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States that pertain to Indigenous peoples. The goals of the analysis are to identify areas that need attention, support Indigenous-led governance, and promote the development of a model research policy framework for genomic research and health care that has international relevance for Indigenous peoples.

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Citation
Garrison, N. A., Hudson, M., Ballantyne, L. L., Garba, I., Martinez, A., Taualii, M., . . . Rainie, S. C. (2019). Genomic Research Through an Indigenous Lens: Understanding the Expectations. Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, 20(1). doi:10.1146/annurev-genom-083118-015434

LeRoy Staples Fairbanks III: What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Leroy Staples Fairbanks III, who serves on the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe Council, discusses some of the hard stances he had to take in order to do his job well and also shares an overview of some of the major steps thatthe leech Lake Band has taken in order to govern more effectively and use its resources more wisely and efficiently.  

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Fairbanks III, LeRoy Staples. "What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. November 6, 2013. Presentation.

"Good morning. I introduced myself this morning. Like I said, I'm Leroy Staples Fairbanks III and I'm the District 3 Representative from Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, which is in north central Minnesota. Normally how...I've seen others introduce themselves in their language and so kind of how we would say it is I would say Boozhoo, which means hello, [Ojibwe language] is I'm Fox and I'm from the Bear Clan. Our tribe is located in like I said north central Minnesota. We have roughly 9,200 band members or band citizens. This is my first term and I was elected last year in July of 2012 and I wasn't going to say my age, but I'm actually older than this young fellow here. I was elected before I was 30 so I'll just say that, I won't say my age. We have a five-person council with four-year staggered terms. I would just like to say, I would like to thank the NNI staff for inviting me to be here today to share my experiences. I don't consider this much of teaching you guys but just sharing my experiences here with you and I would also like to say Miigwetch to the tribal leaders from this reservation here for welcoming us here to this reservation, this beautiful casino and hotel.

What I'm going to start with is campaign promises. I'm going to take a little bit of a different approach to the previous presentation, which was...it was an awesome presentation, very informative, and something I wish I could have sat through before I was elected into office. But I'll start off with campaign promises. When I ran my campaign to getting into office, it was based on honesty, ethical decision making, transparency, and you have a lot of people that support that, they support you. They say, "˜Yeah, this is what we want you to do. This is who we want you to be in office.' And you get in office and things just kind of switch. Those same people are asking, "˜Well, I did help you. Can I get a job? Can I get a raise? Can I get a house? Can I get a transfer? Can you appoint me to a certain position?' And it's difficult that the people that did help you, but you just kind of return the message back to them and you ask them, "˜Why would you put me in a situation like that when all that we talked about was maintaining integrity in a position?' So during my time in office I've had to have that conversation many, many, many times of telling people, "˜You wanted us to change the way that we do the hiring and the firing and the personnel matters with the tribe. We have an HR department, we have policies and procedures that outline how all the decisions are being made and how the hiring is...how it happens and employees rights as far as being a part of the organization,' but yet they want to jump straight to the council. And so we started to change those methods on how we handled it, but still the employees will say, "˜Well...' They'll try to get you back in your office and say, "˜Well, I gave you this many votes or I helped you in this way and you're obligated to help me,' and the easy answer is, no, you're not. I won by 30 votes. I had 919 votes and the other guy had about 890 and so everybody wanted to be a part of that 29 or 30 votes that actually got me into office. The easy answer for me is that 920 people voted me into office, but I still represent the rest of the band membership and that's the decisions that I have to make. I have to make it for the band membership and I don't make it to who voted me into office. That's just a process on how you get to that position.

And I would say that I didn't dream of running for office or I didn't dream of being a council member growing up. I had a little bit of a different type of experiences growing up. And so I've had quite a few experiences, but in my experiences of understanding what tribal politics and tribal government was on Leech Lake, I kind of had a sour taste in my mouth about it. I didn't have a good outlook on it. So I didn't really envision myself as this prestigious position and, "˜That's what I want to do, I want to get into tribal office so I can help my people.' It was more or less you see some of the negative outlooks and the negative aspects of what the office was looked at as, and so that wasn't my dream. My background is in human service. I'm a drug and alcohol counselor, and so in that field you aren't really involved as much in governmental operations. A lot of the things that he was talking about, you're not privvy to that information. You focus on helping the people that you help, your client list and that's your focus and so you put so much energy towards that, but it kind of becomes burnt out. And so when you carry yourself in a certain way in the community, people say those individuals that do carry themselves in a respectful manner, they kind of gravitate and people see those traits, they see the character, they see the behaviors and they kind of look to those people. And so I would just say that I think I was blessed that people seen some traits in me that they wanted me to start moving into leadership positions.

And so I managed a halfway house for a while and the tribal council asked me to come be a part of the administrative team as a deputy director, chief administrator basically, and I did that for a few years and that was my eye opener to what was going on with our reservation. There was a lot of things that I wasn't aware of on so many different levels because tribal government encompasses everything from top to bottom, it really does. I'm not so much hands on with all the little things like this gentleman has because we have...we employ 2,500 people. We have three casinos and we have departments that kind of handle a lot of that stuff and so we aren't so hands on with everything, but there's a great understanding and a learning curve that happened as a part of that position. But it's about training and helping people job shadowing and trying to train future leaders to take over those positions. My understanding of getting in this position was I wasn't going to be here forever. It's a four-year term. I'm hoping that there's enough movement in four years that if I choose not to re-run in four years that I've done enough to try to mobilize and prepare future leaders to take over these positions, because there's some bold things happening at home and we want that to continue.

I'll say one thing though is that I went through the [Native Nation] Rebuilders program. NNI partners with Bush Foundation out of St. Paul, Minnesota and there's a Rebuilders program that focuses on tribes in a three-state area: Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. And I was a part of the first cohort and I would say that I would attribute me running for office as being a part of that program because if I didn't go through that program, it probably wouldn't have motivated me enough to see some of the success stories outside of Leech Lake that gave me a big enough push to tell me that things can work, this is how tribes are working, because when you're in the middle of the mess sometimes it's hard to see out, and so you have to kind of step back and you have to take a look at how are other tribes doing it, what are other tribes doing, can we apply that here, how can we apply it here? And that's the most of what I got out of that program is seeing...they talked about some of the reservations and economic development up here this morning and those are the things that inspired me to, 'Yeah, there is opportunity and I'm going to bring that to my reservation,' and so that's kind of what got me to wanting to run for office.

I don't have a four-year degree and a lot of elders in the community, they told me, "˜Maybe you should just wait to run for office until you have that degree on your wall because that's going to validate your work in office and people can't question that,' but there were too many signs that were coming before me. There were signs that things just were happening the way they were supposed to be happening and I even told myself when I was working for the council, "˜I don't want to be in one of those positions.' I seen the mentality and I seen the behavior and I was kind of taken aback. I was like, "˜Ah, I don't want to be in that position. I can't do some of the things that they're doing because it's not right.' And so I told myself I wasn't going to do it. I went through the program, frustrations were building because of how things were going, and I said, "˜You know what, if I'm not going to do it, I don't know who's going to.' So I decided to take that step and it was a very big step. Tribal politics on Leech Lake is...can grow...I don't know how to put it kindly, but it can get kind of messy. And so it has been kind of messy. And I would say in the last year and a half things have stabilized, things are...they're progressing. I'll touch on how important nation building is to me.

I used to fly quite a bit when I was a little bit younger in airplanes and it didn't really bother me and for some reason that flying in airplanes bothers me now. I don't know if it's because I have a Twitter account and every...twice a day you hear about plane crashes or terminals being attacked, but I have a fear of flying. The last time I flew, I flew with the Bush Foundation up to go visit Salish Kootenai last year -- it's the last time I've flown out of state, otherwise I try to drive and it's just something that I have to overcome. Bush offered me an opportunity to speak down here in March on...I don't remember exactly what the title was about...I was going to be speaking about, but I ended up skyping in the presentation and we had a little bit of connectivity issues and I felt kind of bad about that and so this is...nation building and nation rebuilding is...it's the basis of everything that I'm trying to do back home and it's that important to me that I wanted to get on a plane. And it wasn't just a direct flight, I had a layover in Phoenix, and so that's two takeoffs and two landings. I get nervous about speaking sometimes too, but my hands aren't nearly as clammy today as they were when I was on the plane. It was tough.

I had some conversations with people on the airplane about...they were asking about, "˜What is your take on the Redskins issue?' And I said, "˜I don't know. It's not something that I necessarily think about day to day.' And she's like, "˜Well, what do you think the inception of the name was? It wasn't intended to be disrespectful, do you think?' And I was like, "˜Well, I don't really know the history behind the name. I would say that it's not one of the biggest things that bothers me, but I can understand how it gets under people's skin. I understand why there's a movement to change the name because it's not necessarily the owner of the Redskins is out depicting Native Americans in a certain way, it's how the fans, how the people...you get the people doing the...with the headdress and the tomahawk chops in the arenas and that's not very respectful and there's a lot of things down that line that I don't agree with.' It's just...it's something I didn't...I was kind of taken aback by and she's like, "˜Well, I live in San Francisco and there's not a lot of Natives so I don't really get to talk to a lot of Natives and ask them this question so I just wanted to know.' That was on one flight.

On another flight, they're asking about how gaming came to be. "˜Did the Indians want it or did the federal government want to give it to the Indians? Who regulates it?' I said, "˜Well, there's a commission.' "˜Okay. Well, are you guys represented nationally?' I'm like, "˜Yeah, there's national organizations that represent gaming.' There was another lady who was kind of sitting by me and she was like, "˜I feel so bad about Indians and their addiction.' I'm like, "˜Well, what do you mean?' These are just some of those things and she asked me, "˜Well, how much money do you guys get in per capita payments at your tribe?' And I'm like, "˜We don't get anything in per capita payments because we have 9,200 band members, we live in a very remote area, and we don't generate enough to do per capita payments and I'm not even in favor really of per capita payments because it kind of promotes...it promotes dependency and there's a few tribes in Minnesota that have big per capita payments like Shakopee Mdewakanton [Sioux Community]. They have less...around 500 band members. They're located very closely to Minneapolis, the Twin Cities area and they have a lot of money and they do give money back out to other communities, which is...it's very good on their part.

I would say that in getting into office you're challenged. You're challenged by naysayers; you're challenged by people who don't agree with your viewpoints. I was challenged on my knowledge of history of Leech Lake and my knowledge of history of the Ojibwe people and Native history in general and I would say...I kind of revert that back to...because these are supposed to be the experts in the community and they say, "˜Well, what do you know about this, what do you know about this?' And I say, "˜Well, I'm still learning. I probably don't know as much as I should yet. I will though.' But I revert that back to those experts and I just wrote a column in our newspaper last month and that's basically kind of what I said to them. I said, "˜I challenge all of you history experts in the community to ask yourself what are you doing to ensure that the younger generation in our communities are learning this stuff instead of being hoarders of information.' And that's what we have. We have a lot of hoarders, because people are scared because information is power and so you have to kind of go and find all the cracks and crevices of information to empower yourself and that's basically what I've done. I'm a quarter way through the room, through the house. There's plenty and many more things that I have to learn, but I'm not going to stop. But that's what I challenged all the experts on. I challenged them to ask themselves what are they doing. And there was this one guy who one time told me, "˜Well, I went and spoke to this one class and they liked it.' I said, "˜One class, one time. We have many more band members in this area that need learning. There needs to be system changes, there needs to be systems set up so we are preparing our kids and our next generation to understand who we are, how we've become to where we're at today and how we're going to be moving forward.'

I'll talk a little bit about my first days in office. I worked with the council for two years and I thought I had an understanding of what it was going to be like on council and I guess I didn't know because my first days in office there was probably 45 people to see me...45 to 50 people to see me every single day the first couple of weeks in office and I was like, "˜Whoa!' And the basis of what they wanted to come and see me for was assistance and sometimes I feel...I'm not embarrassed to say it, but I feel bad that the state of my tribe was so dependent on...and basically it's kind of exploiting the band members about assistance, that it's their money, that I need to give you this money. That's not the case. It's not equitable distribution of resources if 10 percent of the membership are getting 90 percent of the resources. There's other percentage of band members who deserve equal access to those and so I was very taken aback. I thought it was going to be like, "˜Oh, okay, I'm going to get in there, we're going to start addressing some of the deficiencies programmatically,' that we were going to get into office, we were going to start tackling a lot of that stuff and it took time. It took a whole year to make some drastic changes as far as assistance methods go and I would tip my hat to the Salish Kootenai Tribe on their human [resource] development program, because when I flew up there last year I got to see a small snapshot of what that program is about and that is kind of something that I tried to apply back home is consolidation of assistance programs, that it's more easily accessed, for band members to be able to access services and it's not scattered all about and people are luckily enough if they catch a program who might be able to help them.

I guess...I wrote down in my notes that it might seem far-fetched to some tribes about the mentality of assistance, but we all know the power of the dollar and so it's, 'What can you do for me?' is very powerful sometimes and it's very powerful during those elections. And we have an election coming up next year and I keep talking to our council and talking to the membership that just because there's an election doesn't necessarily mean that there's an overhaul. We need to conduct business in a different way. The train doesn't necessarily need to stop and turn back and go the opposite direction because there's new council or new council members who are elected. Take what the successes are and how can you build upon those? But the communities are so split that sometimes it is drastic measures that they want to see done all the way from left to the right and right to the left and that's how progress fails. If you aren't able to capitalize on movement, you're not going to progress and that's why I would say that we are a little bit behind in development at Leech Lake. But like Ian [Record] talked about this morning, it's...you have four years and it might seem like a long time. It's not a long time. I've been in office a year and a half and it seems like a couple of months and so you want to make drastic change and people want to hit those home runs, but it's about institutions, it's about the system changes and starting with your foundation and that's a lot of what the first year, year and a half has been and I didn't think it would take that long. And so that's something that I came to terms with in being in office that government is slow; it's very, very slow. I guess in the size of government it makes the difference.

We had NNI and Bush facilitate a GANN process. They do a GANN, it's a Governance Analysis of Native Nations that we brought to Leech Lake and we focused on three things. We focused on changing our assistance methods and that's what it took -- a whole year. We changed those on July 1st so the tribal council doesn't have direct assistance. We had...prior to getting in office we had a budget, I won't necessarily say how much, but we had a budget. Each council member had their own line-item budget for assistance that was never adhered to. And so we have an emergency assistance program that basically was doing some of the same things that the council were doing, but it's very convenient if you have that money at your fingertips to try to help people. And you want to help people, but is it really helping people by giving direct assistance? Are we spending our time effectively by handing our assistance? Yeah, we're speaking with our band members, we're getting in touch with what the issues are, but we sure aren't putting enough energy towards a real solution and just providing assistance. And so that's something, that it took a little bit of change and it was very tough because there's a high percentage of band members in the communities who had that expectation of that's what tribal council does. And it's trying to change that mentality, it's been very difficult, but it's a work in progress and it's moving forward.

The second thing that we had was bylaw revision and I'm not sure of the political makeup of a lot of tribes, but in Minnesota there's seven Ojibwe tribes and one of them is Red Lake and they're kind of separate and they have their own constitution and whatnot, but the other six Ojibwe tribes in Minnesota are part of a Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. It's kind of an organization that has oversight of all the tribes constitutionally, and that's something that I would say I'm not in favor of because it's not self-determination if you have a tribal council member who is representing 1,000 people in one of the tribes and you have another tribal council member who is representing 20,000 members on the other end of the spectrum and they both have equal access and authority in the decision making of this tribal executive committee. And so it's not fair representation. And so that was the basis of what I was trying to do is revise and reform. And there is movement and through that GANN process that was one of the things that we identified is reform, but we can't reform what we can't change so there's systems that we have to make changes to first.

The other thing was you see economic development talked about this morning. And so my point on economic development in government is that they don't necessarily mix together -- he talked about it -- but there has to be a separation because at Leech Lake the tribal council is supposed, the government is supposed to be providing service and how are you supposed to be providing service or how are you supposed to be building a business and letting it invest in itself and grow the business and start more business development if your services are depleting your economic resources. And so there is a separation that needs to be made and I think you guys will talk a little bit about that here today and tomorrow, but that's another, that's the three steps that we moved on.

I will talk a little bit about accomplishments that have been there that necessarily might not have been there before getting in office: community center, a bike path. There's a bike path on a road where there's been about three deaths in the last couple of years and there's been other kids who are hit because it's kind of on a road by our casino and there's a lot of traffic that's on the road. And so we had a bike path that was put into place to try to alleviate the traffic actually being on the road and we partnered up with the county to get that going. We broke ground with an assisted living facility this fall for our elders, we secured funding for a treatment center on our reservation because a lot of the band members felt that a barrier to their success was going off the reservation for their treatment and they wanted to try to get their treatment or they wanted to heal at home. We broke ground with a $3 million library and archive center at our tribal college. We started an athletics program. This is the first year for our basketball teams at our tribal college. We broke ground with a government center last fall, a $4 million government center.

I'll say a little bit about transparency because that was basically what I was about in getting in office. With the assistance, the council had so many different ways of giving assistance, it's kind of crazy, but when I got into office I started to publish all expenses that I had authority to give, is I published those in our newspaper for them to see. It was how many...it was basically how much was being...how much was going out in resources, but it was also how many people were accessing those resources. So it could kind of give people a picture of who is really getting the assistance or who is this really benefiting and it's a small percentage of the actual membership that was accessing it though, so it kind of gives them a picture about that. I had open forums monthly. And the full council, they didn't want to do it monthly. We have quarterly meetings that we have to put on in the communities every quarter and there's a small open forum session for that and in those open forum sessions the band members kind of get riled up, they kind of...they like to build the fire prior to the open forum session so they can kind of vent and release during that time. And so I thought, "˜Well, if we do them every single month, maybe that'll kind of keep the fire from building so big and it'll allow people to say what they've got to say, it'll allow them to be heard, it'll allow them to ask the questions they really want to ask,' to alleviate from like rumors and whatnot that are building in the community that...they spread like wildfire too. So it gives them that opportunity to voice their concerns and then be heard. And so I did that as well.

The other thing that I'll say that I didn't know I was -- well, I didn't know the outcome of it -- but prior to getting into office I talked about giving back. And so that's kind of one of the things I was supposed to talk about in March when I was supposed to be down here is an endowment that I set up at our tribal college. People thought it was a political ploy and it necessarily wasn't because it came to fruition, but I basically said I was going to give 12-and-a-half percent of my gross salary to an endowment for scholarships and education at our tribal college. I got into office, I did the first installment in December, I got another installment going in December and I have people that ask me, "˜What was the intent?' I said, "˜Well, it was to challenge the other council members to see...to ask themselves what were they doing to give back in the communities.' They asked if I felt like...do I feel bad about doing it now because none of the other council members gave back. I'm like, "˜No, I don't feel bad at all.' When I first gave the first installment of the...for the endowment, there was...the act of giving I guess, it kind of...it'll multiply. And so after that, there was other community members in the community that donated either to my endowment or to other scholarship programs at our tribal college and so there was a lot that came out of it, but I think long term the success of what the act will do is...it's not necessarily to show our tribal council members to one-up them, but it's basically to show our kids and our younger generation in the community that in order to grow, everybody needs to be invested and everybody needs to give back and that was a good way of me showing that I wanted to give back because I believe education is empowering and it allows a person to not be so dependent on somebody else. Dependency doesn't breed productivity.

I got the stop sign. I could keep going, but I'll stop there because I think we're opening up for questions and answers. Thank you for allowing me to present to you guys. [Ojibwe language]."

Patricia Zell: Addressing Tough Governance Issues

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Former U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Democratic Staff Director and Chief Counsel Patricia Zell share some effective strategies for educating and lobbying members of the U.S. Congress, based on her many years of experience working for the U.S. Senate on Committee on Indian Affairs.

People
Resource Type
Citation

Zell, Patricia. "Addressing Tough Governance Issues." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 26, 2009. Presentation.

"Your values, your traditions and your culture are the most important thing that you bring to your relationships throughout your lifetime. And those include the relationships that you will necessarily need to develop with people who influence your lives on a daily basis or on a weekly or yearly basis. Because we know that in the United States, there are really two groups of people who are more affected by what happens in Washington, D.C. and the decisions that are made at the federal level than anyone else. The first group would be those who serve in the Armed Forces of the United States and the second, and no less important group, are the Native people of America. Our lives as Native people are influenced and always have been -- so much more than our non-Indian neighbors -- by everything that happens in Washington and obviously, because of the long history of the Federal/Indian relationship. That what happens in the Congress, what happens in the executive branch -- whether it's the Bureau of Indian Affairs or the Indian Health Service or the numerous federal agencies that now have some role to play in Indian Country -- what they do impacts us, has impacted our parents and grandparents and indeed it will affect our children and grandchildren. And so we are more focused and need to be more focused on what people are doing in Washington and how well educated they are about who we are. And the only people, the best people that can provide them with that kind of education are those of you in this room, those of you who are tribal leaders in tribal government, and those of you who will follow in those footsteps as young people now and are here today learning. So important that you are learning now what you will need to know when you step into the shoes of those who've gone before you.

And one of the reasons that who you are as a person -- as President [Peterson] Zah has so beautifully articulated -- is important is that people will measure not only who you are as the leader or council member of your government representing a sovereign nation but -- fair or not -- they will be looking at you and everything that you do and particularly your mistakes -- if you make mistakes -- as reflective on everybody else in Indian Country, on every other tribal leader. The gentleman who preceded President Zah as leader of the Navajo Nation was a great hero in terms of his war record, in terms of how he was perceived, until he made a series of mistakes. And he became a nationwide emblem for a while of how people perceived tribal leadership in Indian Country. And just as Jack Abramoff in recent years, the lobbyist who took so much terrible advantage of the tribes with whom he worked and represented, not only in terms of their money, but talk about conflict of interest. He was working for tribes who were working against one another and who hired him to work against one another, not knowing that he represented both sides. And we've seen how the nation has reacted and particularly this new administration has reacted to that one man. Now the government, the new administration is taking steps very, very heavy steps to make sure that if there are any other rotten apples in this barrel, they won't have access and opportunity to do what he did. And you can see from that example, and from the earlier example of the former chairman of the Navajo Nation, that one person can – again, fair or not -- label all of us. And so it's very important that we each bring to our experiences our values and traditions and distinguish ourselves as honest people, as people who are led by and inspired by and adhere to a sense of ethics and values.

In my years in Washington, one of the questions that tribes most often asked of me as a government person was whether or not they needed to have lawyers, lobbyists, representation in Washington, D.C. Given the fact that obviously, tribal leaders, if they're going to be effective tribal leaders, have to spend an awful lot of time at home addressing problems at home, dealing with the needs of their citizens, particularly the young people, particularly the elderly. Today that question could be answered a little bit differently than I did then, but I would say that as a general proposition, you do not have to have representation on a daily basis in Washington. There are, with the advent of technology, so many ways that you can have direct access on a daily basis, on an hourly basis to what's going on that may affect your tribe, your reservation, your region or all of Indian Country for that matter. And you can do it through the internet, you can do it in so many ways that technology has so advanced the way in which Indian Country used to interact with members of Congress, for instance. Now you can go to websites -- whether it be the National Congress of American Indians, your regional organizations, other national Indian organizations -- and find out what's happening with education or health care, how the Congress is going to respond to the most recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Carcieri case that involved the Narragansett Tribe; how you can take advantage of the hundreds of millions and indeed billions of dollars that have been recently authorized to be appropriated under the economic stimulus initiative, the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. There are enormous opportunities out there in that one act for tribes, be they for grants and loans through various federal agencies or be they authorities that now enable tribal governments to issue bonds for economic development and renewable resources and clean energy and roads, maintenance of roads, and a whole array of activities that tribal governments are already engaged in but could be so much more effective with that many more resources. And most of that information is available online either through National Congress of American Indians or the agencies themselves. So there are many people in Washington right now who are working at the behest of tribes to make sure that that information gets out to Indian Country. And whether you have someone in Washington that does that for you or you learn about it and interact directly with the federal agencies there is not necessarily nor always a need to have representation in Washington.

On the other hand, there will be times when your tribe is particularly affected by something the Congress is doing, or something that the Interior Department is doing, or maybe it's the tribes in your region, and you will need representation in Washington. You can't be there every day. You cannot stay on top of things in a timely manner when things are moving very quickly in the Congress. And you have to kind of weigh how important these issues might be. Say for instance you're trying to secure the secretary's approval to take land into trust. That has become, at least under the last administration, a very cumbersome process. And if you have land that is not contiguous to your reservation and certainly not within reservation boundaries, then you've got a long, uphill battle. Hopefully that will change, but that kind of thing sometimes you cannot affect on your own without having people in Washington who are working all of the angles, meeting with all the members of Congress that are necessary to make that decision, meeting with people in the Interior Department who are necessary to sign off on that activity. So you have to weigh those things.

But I would echo what President Zah has said and yet put it in this arena, which is that those people that you want to retain -- because they have the expertise either in the subject matter or in the legislative process or in the administrative process -- you, I would respectfully suggest, would be wise to bring to bear your values, your traditions, your judgment about whether or not those people reflect your values. Because for all those times that you can't be in Washington or you elect not to be, they will be the face on your nation and you want to make sure that that person or group of people has the kind of integrity and respect that you would want to have conferred and have members of Congress feel about you. And so you don't, if you've built up a strong relationship with the members of your delegation, you don't want somebody to come in and be a big, bragging around or throwing their weight around, and doing something that's not consistent with the way in which you've been brought up and the image that you want to project. So I would say that even though people often are hired in Washington to do something discrete because they have expertise. There are a lot of people with expertise in Washington. And so it's important to go through say a filtering process and make sure that you pick the person not only that has expertise, but the one that you will feel good about representing you.

Another thing that I wanted to share in my experience is how important it is that you as tribal leaders and members of tribal councils, when you do come to Washington and when you do meet with members of Congress, with their staffs...and the staffs are very important, the staffs are the people that gets things done. Members of Congress meet with hundreds of people every week. They can't possibly do everything that everyone asks of them on their own. That's why there are staff people in place with expertise of their own that they've been retained to be part of a Senator or member of Congress's staff. And so never think that you're being shunted off to someone less important if you meet with staff because in fact, they are the ones who have a Senator's or member of Congress's ear and they're the ones that can take your issue forward. If you are seeking a meeting with a member of Congress, it's very important that you take into account the fact that they do have hundreds of requests for meetings every week. And so their schedules are built a month in advance. In other words, you cannot show up in Washington, call up Senator [John] McCain and expect to get a meeting the day you land or the next day or the day after that. His schedule's been in place -- and I'm only using him as an example -- has been scheduled for weeks in advance. So if you are seeking meetings in Washington, it's very important that you start as long as a month or three weeks ahead of time to seek a meeting to secure time on a member's schedule. The executive departments are a little less time constrained in that regard, so you may not require as much advance notice.

Now if you have a lobbyist or a lawyer or a group of people that represent you in Washington, when you do meet with a member of Congress, it's very important that you not have that person, that lawyer, that lobbyist, that group of people doing the talking. It's very important that you understand how important your role is as chairperson or president or council member of your tribe, because you are the people that are voting for the member of Congress, not the lobbyists that live in Washington. And a member of Congress cares about his or her constituents, first and foremost. He's going to be responsive to you. And he may think a little less of you if you ask for a meeting and then you all sit down and then you call upon your lawyer, your lobbyist and that person does all the talking. That sort of undercuts your position of who you are as the representative of the sovereign nation. There is nothing wrong with calling upon -- let's assume Steve [Cornell] was the lawyer -- to call upon Steve at the appointed time and say, "˜Could you explain to Senator McCain what the details, how the law works in terms of how it affects our tribe.' There's nothing wrong with that at all, but you have to be the one that is the principle presence and the one that tells Steve when he can speak and tells Steve, "˜Thank you very much. And now Senator McCain, it's time that we return to how this impacts our nation.'

For instance, the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Carcieri case, which the Supreme Court -- as you probably all know by now -- held that if you were not a tribe under federal jurisdiction on June 18, 1934, the day when the Indian Reorganization Act was passed, the government was without authority to take land into trust for you then, and ever since then, for the last 75 years. This ruling will impact some tribes in a very, very serious way and the Interior Department and the Justice Department are in the process of trying to assess how wide the impact is, how serious it is so that they can come before the Congress and seek, on behalf of Indian Country, legislation to address the Supreme Court's ruling and effectively overturn it or nullify it. Because as we know, the Indian Reorganization Act signaled a shift in federal policy that was intended to put the past behind and to usher in a new day. It was an invitation to tribal governments to reorganize under that act. There was no process on the day of the enactment of that act for tribes to take advantage of that reorganization. That process was yet to be put in place. So the notion that on the very day the law was enacted tribes were either under federal jurisdiction or not and that's the bright line. It flies in the face of the history of federal Indian relations and the manner in which laws that Congress enact take effect. They're meant to be prospective, they're meant to start a new day and the Supreme Court's ruling was very much looking at some other source of history and coming up with a very odd result.

The last things I want to say is that there are very many little nuts and bolts of relationships and things that take place in Washington and how you can impact decision-makers and make sure that they understand what they're doing and how it affects Indian Country and more specifically how it affects your tribe. It takes a lot of education. It takes educating. Every time a new member is elected to Congress that represents your state, fortunately or unfortunately, most of the time unfortunately, you have to start all over again to educate them. Ignorance of conditions in Indian Country is in my view the biggest enemy that tribes have to face. A broad brush has been painted by people who feel more comfortable saying, "˜Well, everybody in Indian Country is thriving, they all have gaming, they're prospering. We as a federal government can stand back, we can step back, we can pull our funding back because Indian Country is doing just fine.' And we know that that's not the reality. That while gaming has proven to be a boon to some tribes, it certainly is not a panacea, it has not brought prosperity and wealth and all of those benefits that some tribes have experienced to every tribe, not by any measure. And that's just one message that members of Congress and federal decision-makers need to understand.

And most importantly, they need to understand that this is not the old days. This time is a time when Native people and Native Nations are empowered. Not empowered because the federal government gave them that power, but because they've seized the reigns of control and opportunity. And more often than not, tribal leaders know better how to do things, how to get things done than anybody at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. With all due respect to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, I think that the wisdom, the power and the ability of Indian Country far surpasses that which is contained in the federal agencies. So never forget that. You have enormous power. It's just there for you to exercise. And there are members of Congress, it's true, that need to be educated. But once you educate them, you have a means by which to create a partnership to accomplish anything that you need or want to do for your citizens, for your children and your grandchildren, and you have an opportunity to shape the future. Don't underestimate who you are and how much you bring to the table. And people, I'm quite sure you will see the reflection in their face and in their eyes of how much they respect you. Thank you." 

Peterson Zah: Addressing Tough Governance Issues

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Former Navajo Nation President Peterson Zah shares the personal ethics he practiced while leading his nation, and discusses how he learned those ethics from his family and other influential figures in his life.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Zah, Peterson. "Addressing Tough Governance Issues." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 26, 2009. Presentation.

"Good morning. (I don't want to swallow this. It's so small.) I wanted to thank Steve [Cornell] for the introduction. I also wanted to give you two views about ethics. One of them is the written laws that your tribe may have, certainly with ours we do have that. And those are rules and regulations that governs the conduct of people who are elected to be responsible for your tribal government. The way I look at that is that that's a white man's law. It's in black and white and it has to deal with drugs, alcohol, conflict of interest, nepotism and those kinds of things. I always look at that law as, it's law written for the people that don't really have ethics of their own that's in their heart and it's in their mind that was given to them by their traditional people. They never really had that upbringing that they had, for example, with my coming from a highly traditional Navajo family and that's built into the tradition. So that is something that the Navajo Nation has. And then the second portion of the small presentation here is going to deal with the tradition, your own personal ethics. We each have that and you're the only one that knows that. To talk about it and how important that is in governance, in governing your people and governing a lot of the activities that go on in your nation. And so that will be my second presentation. However, I'd like to tell you a little story before I start.

Yesterday, as I understand, you were introduced to some of the Native American students that came from Arizona State University. And just indicate that the Navajo people love their children so much. And they are one of the groups of minority that I know of that really emphasize education, how important that is in life. And I guess because of that, we have today over 10,000 Navajo children that are going to colleges and university, supported by the Navajo Nation government through a scholarship service, supported by their own families, supported by many of the other entities that provide scholarship out there for Native American students and then many of them supporting themselves because of the traditional family instilling into them how important education is, what they can acquire during their lifetime. So that tradition lives on at ASU and we never really do things without our children. So I just wanted to congratulate Michelle [Hale] for continuing those traditions by bringing down some of these students that you met the other day. And you have to do things with your kids, with your children. You have to bring them on, bring them along, you have to educate them by example and by hearing a lot of these discussions that we have here today. And so I also just wanted to congratulate and welcome the students that we have here from Navajo and Apache.

The story is this: I got elected in 1983, and something like three or four days after the election I went back to my family in the center of the Navajo Nation called Low Mountain. We were in effect really celebrating among our own family members, my sisters and my brothers and my dad and my mom, aunts, uncles and grandmas and the grandpas were all there. And in the morning we had a lot of discussion, discussion around issues, politics, who all voted, how many people voted in that community of Low Mountain and all of that. And my dad at that time was about 85 years old. He could hardly walk, but he loved to herd sheep on horseback. So every morning, he would get his horse and he would saddle up his horse and then he let the herd out and then he came along on horseback to herd sheep. He says, "˜I'm doing this because I can't walk. I'm not as strong as I used to be and I can't run when the sheep tries to run off in the distance and so I have to have a horse.' But when he got on his horse, he wanted to pick up something that he had forgotten. The night before we were involved in local politics at Low Mountain, the discussion of how many people voted. And there was only one guy, one vote from my community that vote against me, that voted for the other party. And everybody was talking about who might that be. We were all discussing. In the morning my dad got on his horse and he also was talking about three or four days before there was a coyote that came into the herd and by god it killed one sheep and he was really ticked off about it. So brothers went over to the trading post, they got him some bullets and he had one of these 30/30 rifles that he always kept and it was always in his room. Well, he got on his horseback and he came to the front door and he says, "˜Gilbert, I forgot my rifle. Can you go get it and make sure that you also give me some bullets?' And my sister came out and she said, "˜Oh, you're going to finally kill that coyote that killed one of our sheep.' And my dad said, "˜No, I think I know who voted against us.'

A sense of humor is also very, very important as we discuss ethics, because when people violate certain ethical behavior expected of you or they violate the standard of conduct, it's a sad, sad thing. And my dad always had this sense of humor that was extraordinary about him. He was a member of the Navajo Nation Code Talkers, a trained code talker. And one day when I was just a young man way back in the early '40s, he told a story about how he was being taught to use the language. And he says, "˜When I go back and I'm having this furlough on a vacation in effect for the next two or three weeks and to spend the time with all of you. And then when I go back to San Diego, we're going on a ship and we're sailing to Japan. And we're going to be on the front line in combat using our language as Navajo Nation Code Talker.' So he, we had a ceremony and a sing and the medicine man painted him and all of that, did some prayers and he went back into the service. We said our goodbyes not knowing what the war may bring to [this] individual. But we were so surprised that a month later he was back. So I asked him and I said, "˜Dad, what happened, you're supposed to be in the war?' He says, "˜Oh, don't you know that Japan surrendered?' He says, "˜They knew I was coming.' A sense of humor in talking with groups of people in Navajo culture is very, very important, and it also has to do with ethics. So I wanted to just tell you that story.

Now, something about white man's law. Those laws are being enforced as we set it up in 1983-84. Because the courts were so overloaded with cases, we decided maybe the best thing to do is create a committee of the council that would get all of those ethics complaints that the Navajo Nation gets; that it would be the eight members that would act as a court, as a judge, as a forum where people can take their complaint to hold those hearings. And so basically the Navajo Nation has that system and people are encouraged to file these complaints with the ethics office. And when I checked last week about how those are going and how they're being handled and what are some of the most prevalent cases that we may bring to your attention -- and I do this because I want you to avoid them as much as possible -- on the Navajo Nation, the number one complaint is financial malfeasance or misfeasance, misuse of money. And that is happening because the Navajo Nation has decentralized its government.

We have on the Navajo Nation a government with over 300,000 people, 17 million acres of land and 110 chapters, local units of government. The Navajo is highly centralized and it has [an] 88-member council. So what the Navajo government did is they passed a law called the Local Governance Empowerment Act and that gave the chapters some authority, given to them by the Navajo Nation government, and they exercise those authorities at the local level to do what needs to be done. Along with that act, they also gave them some resources, some money to administer and that's where a lot of the misuse occurs. We also have 138 schools with 72 or 75,000 Navajo children going to school. So you have school board members, superintendents and principals that have all those duties to run those schools out there. There's a lot of misuse, misappropriation of funds. So it's the ethics office that handles those for the Navajo Nation. So number one is the financial malfeasance.

Number two is the conflict of interest. You all are familiar with that conflict of interest, where you have to avoid the conflict, where you have to not only avoid the conflict itself but every appearance of conflict you have to avoid because people interpret that a little different. And there's also a hazy area: what is meant by conflict of interest? I served on Window Rock High School Board for about, oh, maybe 12 years in my younger days. And every time a relative's contract would come before the board I always left the school board meeting either completely -- not participate in the discussion, particularly the voting -- or I went outside and took a smoke with some other guys in the community as it was being discussed; then coming back. That is a responsibility of the elected official to tell your colleagues that, "˜There may be a conflict here for me. So I'm going to try to avoid it by being outside. And you can always call me back in when you guys are finished with it.' The best way to avoid those is you yourself have to do that. So conflict of interest is high on the list for cases that are being handled by the Navajo Nation, the Ethics and Rules Committee.

The next one for Navajo is also very high, nepotism. You all heard about that, right? Nepotism, because we all say we're related to each other by clan. So the law has to be very, very careful in terms of how it states it and then how they enforce it because on the Navajo everybody is related to you. Everybody is related to you, especially when you get elected. They all come to you and they say, "˜I am your cousin or I am this,' and all of that. And so nepotism is one of those, like a conflict of interest case that's sometimes very hard to handle. Sometimes the courts can't deal with all of it. If we were able to put all of these things in court, our courts would be just loaded up with these kinds of issues. And so we try to have the local Navajo Nation government committee handle all of that.

And the last one that we have to deal with very carefully -- and there's a lot of that -- is courtesy to the employees. The elected officials misusing their power by the fact that they're members of the council and members of this committee using that authority and power and forcing an employee to do something that they shouldn't be doing. That's also high on the list of those cases being heard by the committee. And so we should as tribal leaders avoid all of this as much as possible.

I took office on the Navajo Nation in 1983 and we were in a terrible, terrible situation where the people or the person that I was running against was tried in federal court twice over misappropriation of money. And when your leader, the top guy, does that, then all of your other officials, their fuses go haywire; they want a part of the action. So when that happens, you have a complete breakdown of tribal government organization and function, especially when it comes to ethics; terrible, terrible problem. And that's what we faced when we went into that office. I even had people came to me when I first went to the Navajo Nation as chairman, some of the first few days where people were lined up outside -- Peabody Coal Company and all these other businesses that do business with the Navajo Nation. They wanted and they were expecting the same kind of favoritism that was given to them by the other tribal leaders.

I even had a guy come to me and he says, "˜Can you take a minute or two? I'd like to measure you, your arm, your chest, how tall you are.' And I said, "˜Why? We're here to talk business. Why do you want to measure me?' And the guy says, "˜Well, I think you'd look really, really sharp if you had a good suit on. If you had a blue striped suit with a nice necktie you'd look real sharp.' And I said, "˜Oh, my god.' I said, "˜You know, I like this and I like the way I dress. There's nothing wrong with it. It has nothing to do with my mind.' And he said, "˜Well, maybe the next time you're in Denver you can stop by and see us because we want to make you look nice.' [It was] very tempting because I didn't really have any decent clothes to wear, but my traditional family always said, "˜Be who you are. You're a traditional person by nature.' And that always come to mind when there were people who wanted to bribe you because that was the normal way of doing business in Window Rock. And so I wanted to just tell you and that's the standard of conduct that was issued by the Navajo Nation.

The next one is your own personal ethics. We each have our own personal ethics that was given to you by your tradition, by your families, by your grandmas and your grandpas. And you have to live by those; you have to live by those. Not only that you should know about it, and a constant reminder that that's what your traditional people taught you, but you have to live it, you have to be committed to it and you have to really practice that, because the only thing you have after leaving that office is your reputation. Yes, it was nice when I was in office because I had all these resources to help people with. But, when you leave office you don't have all of those resources. You have just you. You have just you. I am probably enjoying the best part of my life right now because I didn't commit anything and people know about it. You'll be surprised how many people follow your careers. They know about every little goof that you made, but they have a lot of respect for you if they never read bad things about you or never heard anything that's terrible about you. I'm really enjoying that right now because everywhere I go people respect the way you live. On the Navajo Nation with all of that money, I always tell people, I said, "˜See these five fingers, ten fingers. Millions and millions of dollars went between those fingers and not once did I put a dollar in my pocket. That belongs to the Navajo people. That belongs to your constituents.' I tell my friends, even in my own house. Yesterday I was driving this way to come to this conference, in my garage I saw a quarter and my wife says, "˜Hey, there's a quarter here.' And I said, "˜I'm not going to pick it up. That's not mine. That's not my quarter. It may be my grandson's, but whatever it is, it's not mine.' So I left it laying there. It's somebody else's quarter in my family. So you have to really, really practice those traditions when you go into govern your people and I think that's a very, very valuable thing to keep in mind.

I probably had the best teacher when I went into become a tribal chairman. There was a lady named Dr. Annie Wauneka. You probably heard some about her, probably read books about her. And she did some wonderful things in her life for the Navajo people. She was probably the best teacher. She always taught me these values. When I first decided to run, she said, "˜I'll support you. I'll go wherever you go.' So I would go to my first campaign rally at the chapter house. Boy, I would talk about my degrees. "˜I'm an educator, I got my degree from the university, I had these experiences, I was a legal service director,' and all of that. On the way back home after that rally she says, "˜My god, don't talk about that.' She says, "˜Don't talk about that. We, the Navajo people, don't value all of those things as much as maybe you do.' I said, "˜What do you want me to talk about?' She said, "˜Talk about your clan. Talk about your grandma, your grandpa. Talk about the fact that you were raised in the hogan. Talk about your corral where you keep your sheep. Talk about your dry farm and your field where you plant your corn and your beans and the squash -- all of those things that your family plants.' She says, "˜That's self-sufficiency; you don't rely on anybody else except yourself to live a decent live, a good life. Talk about your values, Navajo values. Not your master's degree, no.' That was Annie Wauneka trying to teach somebody who [she] thought was electable, but he just needed to say things a little more differently. So I probably do a lot of those things that my mother, my grandma, grandpa and what Annie Wauneka stood for. And those all had to do with ethics. One of the other things that Annie Wauneka said was, "˜Don't take things that don't belong to you. Don't ever think that it's nighttime. Nobody will see me. There's no one around. It's nighttime.' She says, "˜The night is your cheii'. The darkness is your grandfather. The people who are no longer with us, they turn into these great spirits and so your grandfather may be the night. You'll be taking things in front of your cheii', your grandfather. So don't you ever think it's dark time. Nobody's seeing it and so you're doing these crazy things.' Good lesson from a traditional person.

So my contribution to you today as young leaders, emerging leaders, is to live by those principles that have always been taught to you at a young age. And you'll be surprised at the end of your life, towards the end of your life how important those values are. Live by it, practice it. [Navajo language] Thank you."