Honoring Nations

Honoring Nations: Stephen Cornell: The Growth of Honoring Nations

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development Co-Director Stephen Cornell emphasizes the growth and impact of the Honoring Nations program throughout not only the United States, but the entire world.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

Cornell, Stephen. "The Growth of Honoring Nations." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 17, 2009. Presentation.

"Thanks, Megan [Hill]. It really is a pleasure to be here with all of you and thank you for doing us the honor of coming and participating in this. And on behalf of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and our partner organization the Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona, I want to welcome you to this fourth symposium on Honoring Nations. It's a chance to think about and learn from each other, from the remarkable work that you all are doing, as Indian nations reclaim control over their own futures.

As Chief [Oren] Lyons said, this program is now 11 years old. That's seven cycles of awards honoring and celebrating governance in Indian Country. We've made awards to just over 100 programs. This is the fourth symposium to take stock and kind of think about what we're learning and what we're doing. And I have to tell you, I don't think any of us knew, when we started this 11 years ago, what we were getting into. I don't think we knew what a focus of pride and accomplishment this program would become. We weren't even sure what to call it. And I have to tell you a quick story. I remember -- I think it was 1998 -- a meeting in the offices of the Ford Foundation in New York -- the first meeting of what would become the Board of Governors of Honoring Nations -- and at the time this program was called Best Practices in American Indian Tribal Governance. And some of you, many of you I think, know Pete Zah, former President of the Navajo Nation and a member of the Board of Governors who unfortunately couldn't be here today. But Pete sat in this meeting and he said, 'I think we've got to do something about the name.' And we all said, 'Yeah? what have you got in mind.' And he says, 'You know, where I come from in Indian Country, when you say best practices what you think about is basketball. It's sort of like, you know, last night we had one of the best practices we've ever had.' 'Oh.' So he said, 'Can we do something about the name?' So we talked about it and over the next half hour or so came up with Honoring Contributions in the Governance of American Indian Nations, Honoring Nations for short. And in a way I think at that moment some of us -- certainly this is true for me -- realized for the first time maybe what we actually were doing. We were honoring, we were paying homage in a sense, to those nations, those of you in this room, who were reclaiming and kind of re-igniting an Indigenous tradition of governance, because that's what Honoring Nations is about. It's about an Indigenous tradition of self-rule, of governance, that is being reclaimed and reframed for the issues that your nations face today, and that's what we're really about.

I want to make three other quick points here. I mentioned that Honoring Nations had made just over 100 awards. I think there's another number which is worth noting. In those seven cycles, we've received almost 600 applications from Indigenous programs, organizations and initiatives all across Indian Country from 229 nations. That's a window on what's happening in Indian Country today. On a wave of innovation and critical work that is moving across Indian Country as nations take up the tough tasks of governance. And I think it's also an affirmation of self-determination. It basically says, if you put genuine decision-making power in the hands of communities and nations, and if they are accountable to themselves and each other for the decisions they make, and if you allow them to talk with each other and learn from each others' experience, they will tackle problems -- that other policy makers have failed to solve for years -- and they'll solve them. And that's what's happening out there.

And the second point is that the world is watching. And I'm serious about that. This past fall in Australia, there was the third cycle of the Indigenous Community Governance Awards, a program inspired by Honoring Nations. About five years ago, we brought some aboriginal Australians to an Honoring Nations ceremony and awards program at NCAI [National Congress of American Indians] and they listened to what you were doing. And they listened to this celebration of Indigenous governance and they went back and they started a program of their own. We've got here Sheldon Tetreault and Michele Guerin from the National Center for First Nations Governance in Canada. Two months ago, Megan Hill and Miriam Jorgensen and I were having breakfast with them, talking about what would it take to start a program like this in Canada to recognize a similar wave moving through First Nations there -- who again are reclaiming that Indigenous tradition of self-rule of governance. At the last Honoring Nations awards ceremony this past fall, more than a dozen nations, Indigenous representatives, appeared to listen to what was happening here. So across the world Indigenous peoples are also taking on that governance task and they want to know what you're doing. So the world is watching.

And finally, the lessons that you have to teach are not just Indian Country lessons. The problems that you're dealing with aren't Indian problems, they aren't reservation problems; they're the problems that human societies face everywhere. How do you govern well? How do you provide justice and well being to your people? How do you balance culture, economy, past, present, future and put all that together? How do you protect the things that your people cherish while at the same time you try to change the things that need to be changed? How do you create a viable future for your children and their children? That's stuff all of us deal with and all of us need to be paying attention to what you're doing and what you're saying. So thanks to all of you for being here. On behalf of us who work in this program, welcome." 

Honoring Nations: Oren Lyons: Rebuilding Healthy Nations

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Onondaga Chief and Faithkeeper Oren Lyons urges Native nations to continue sharing their stories of success, learning from each other, and working towards creating a better future for the next seven generations.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Lyons, Oren. "Rebuilding Healthy Nations." 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.

Amy Besaw Medford:

"Welcome! My name is Amy Besaw Medford and I'm the Director of the Honoring Nations program. I'm Brothertown Indian from Wisconsin and Korean. I come from two wonderful, beautiful cultures and I'm very happy to serve in the function as director here. I work under Professor Joe Kalt, who's the Director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. That's the home for the Honoring Nations program. All of you, the honorees, create the raw material with which the Harvard Project produces research. You also impact the lives of the students here at the [John F.] Kennedy School of Government and the greater Harvard community, as being opportunities for them to hear on-the-ground examples of good governance practices, particularly in the fields of health and education and justice. So you've reached a broader audience than you possibly could imagine, and we thank you from the Harvard community.

Before we begin the day, we'll have a series of folks to start the general conversations about tribal governance. We don't say 'tribal government' in just the hard sense because a lot of the things that happen here are about governance, about community-driven models, about things that come from citizens' involvement. But then the key piece of it is is that it's coming through government function, that you're building stable institutions of good governance practices, that you're serving the needs of your citizens. And so tonight we celebrate, or today we celebrate governance. I hope you all will join me in welcoming our fearless, fearless leader, Chief Oren Lyons, who -- what do you say about a man who is known throughout the world for his Indigenous leadership, for his thinking, for his advocacy work, and for his lacrosse playing? Rumor has it he's also wearing the new Nike© shoes. So without further adieu, Chief Oren Lyons."

Oren Lyons:

"Thank you, Amy. Indeed, I have the new Nike© shoe on, and we'll talk about that. This is the important gathering where we celebrate the accomplishments of the Native people of North America, your accomplishments. It's all positive. It's a recognition of the abilities of our people to meet the problems of the day, these contemporary times. And it's important when we come to a new land -- the Wampanoags are the leaders here. They had to deal with the English the first time, the great leader Massasoit, [King] Philip (Metacom). There's a great history here that a lot of people don't know. You hear about Thanksgiving. There was, there was a great meeting once, and then it seemed to disappear. And then Colonel Bradford, sometime later after the Wampanoag Wars and after they had killed Metacom in a swamp with 16 men fighting to the end, he declared that day a Day of Thanksgiving. So the history here is the first in the old, in the westward movement of our Brothers from across the water, engulfed all of us sooner or later, from here to the West Coast. And our Brother kept going. He went on to the Philippines and he was stopped there. Later on, he went on to Vietnam and he was stopped there. Now he's gone east, having quite a bit of trouble.

Meanwhile, here we are. We're still here, we still have our nations, we still have our leaders and certainly, we accomplish things. Our young people are struggling in these times, as all the young people are in this world. It's not an easy time for anybody. And in Indian Country we can name the problems, but today we're going to celebrate the positives and what we can do and what we accomplished and what you have done for your nations, for you have represented them very well. Honoring Nations is a very difficult program to choose winners. I always feel bad because of the many programs that come forward and we wind up with 14. But it was so difficult for all of us to come to these 14 because they're almost all equal. And it's a tribute to our people, to our resiliency and to our ability to adapt and at the same time keep our traditions, keep our cultures, which is our identity. That is our identity -- cultures, the language. That's your best issue of sovereignty. You keep your cultures and your language, remain who you are, they can't beat you, no matter what. You remain to be who you are. In these times, we have land rights, land claims. We have battles going on on a daily basis. From every nation that we come from, you know what the problems are as leaders. When that phone rings, you just never know who's going to be on the other end of it. Nevertheless we prosper and we're -- you, I would say, are the living proof of the abilities of Indian nations in this country today. They're turning back to us now. International leaders are now reaching for the philosophies of the Native people. And why? Because we have a long-term perspective, as we have on this Nike© shoe, N7©. That's the seventh generation. That's a very direct relationship with one of the largest corporations in the world, and they have now espoused the philosophy of all of our nations, seven generations. From our directions and from the instructions given to the leaders of the Haudenosaunee when they say -- among many other instructions -- we are reminded and the words are direct, 'When you sit and you counsel for the welfare of your people, think not of your children, think not of yourself, think not of your family, not even your generation. Make your decisions on behalf of seven generations coming.' Now that's an instruction on responsibility, a very serious instruction on responsibility. Peacemaker said that, I don't know, a thousand, maybe two thousand years ago. It resonates today. Today it resonates. Be concerned about the seven generations and how we are going to survive and we survive by doing on a daily basis. So that's what your accomplishments are. You have proved to everybody that you can do and you will do, and serve as an example to the rest of the Indian nations and share. Probably one of the most important instructions that we have is to share. They've tried and tried and tried to beat the Indian out of us, which is to share, but we still continue to do it, because that's our fundamental survival basis. And now it's starting to resonate around the world. It's no longer business as usual. That's over because of global warming. We are now facing very, very serious times and we're dealing with a timeframe which is quite short, a lot shorter than people are talking about. We have to be ready. So programs like yourself and what you've produced are how we prepare ourselves and instruct ourselves. And remember the instructions of all of our leaders. Every one of our leaders always looked out for everybody. That was the quality of the leadership that we had. Every single one of them stood for the people.

And so here we are today in a great program, the Harvard program Honoring Nations, and I'm honored to be serving with an amazing board who gives of their time. There's no remuneration here for this board. The only thing that we receive, I think, is to see the accomplishments and to promote that. And we're going to have to step up, too, as we move along. We're going to have to take charge ourselves. Our nations are going to have to own this business. It's up to us. It's an amazing thing. And I just take my hat off to the leadership here, Joe [Kalt] and our staff, tireless staff, and then our board of governors, a tremendous group to work with. So it's a privilege for me actually to be here. I don't know -- you can be pretty fearless when you've got help like that I think. So I think today this is celebration time, presentation time. Tell the world what you've done, explain to the world what you've accomplished and say, 'We're here to share.' That's what I have to say. Thank you."

Honoring Nations: Joseph P. Kalt: Rebuilding Healthy Nations

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Harvard Project Co-Director Joseph P. Kalt provides a general overview of the Honoring Nations program and illustrates how people all over the world are learning from the nation-building examples set and the lessons offered by Native nations in the United States.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Kalt, Joseph P. "Rebuilding Healthy Nations." 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.

Amy Besaw Medford:

"It's my pleasure to introduce to you all Professor Joseph P. Kalt, who is the co-director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. Over the past 20 years, he's been dedicating his life to serving Indian Country and telling stories and fleshing out nation-building themes, and I'm grateful to be able to work underneath him and to learn from him and to have him influence my thinking and my life. Thank you. Joe Kalt."

Joe Kalt:

"Amy always talks about working for me -- I'm her ‘boss.' I want you all to watch over the next couple days how the staff treats me. ‘Joe, go here. Joe, go there. Joe, sit down. Joe, stand up.' Who's the boss? Today's session is all about, as Oren [Lyons] said, sharing, learning from each other. And as Oren says and as Amy says, the impact that your programs are having, as other tribes learn from what you're doing, is absolutely phenomenal. These two books that we're pumping -- which we don't make any money on, we're just trying to get the information out there -- are just full of your stories, so that other tribes can learn from you. But rather than focusing on that, I thought I'd talk about another theme, that Oren just put on the table, in the international arena and the impact that you all are having. Sometimes you sit at your desks, right, and you're working real hard and you feel like no one's noticing and you're too tired at night and you've got to go to sleep. Well, people are noticing. Let me give you some examples. Every one of these is absolutely true. I started making a list of these kinds of examples, and I'd be up here for five hours if I did it all.

A couple months ago, I had a very interesting experience. I have a former student of mine who is a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army and teaches at the Marine Corps University. The phone rings and he calls me. I haven't heard from him for 20 years. He says, ‘Joe, how you doing?' He says, ‘I'm part of the kitchen cabinet for the on-the-ground military leader in Afghanistan.' And apparently, he's now been replaced, but apparently the on-the-ground military leader has a kitchen cabinet, and at night he emails and they all have an email conversation about the current problems of the day. And he sends an email out to these colonels and teachers around the Marines and Army and so forth. And essentially the email says, ‘Help! They're telling me I need to build a nation, but all they ever taught me to do was shoot guns.' They Google on the phrase ‘nation building' and they come up with Honoring Nations. ‘We've got to talk to those people!' [Because] as Oren says, the whole world is paying attention now.

What do they want to know? Well, in Afghanistan, why did they want to talk to the Honoring Nations program? Because they want to know, for example, how did the San Carlos Apache Elders Council help stabilize a nation that was rocky? They want to know, how did the Hopi Two Plus Two Plus Two High School program get its act together and rebuild education at Hopi? They want to know, how did the Lummi Nation build the best sewer system -- not the best Indian sewer system, the best sewer system in North America? Because they're doing all of those things in Afghanistan.

I've got a former student who -- we teach a course here at Harvard called 'Nation Building, Native America at the New Millennium.' I see some former students here, a number of them here. A former student calls me the other day. He's in Washington, DC on business. He'd been a student five or six years ago. He's a Masai warrior from Kenya. He's now a member of the Kenyan Parliament. What does he want to know? He wants to know -- Think of Kenya in Africa. ‘Joe, could you remind me of that information about how Jicarilla and White Mountain Apache managed their wildlife. I read about that in that Honoring Nations program. Could you tell me how Fond du Lac set up that foster care program? We've got a lot of foster kids, essentially, in Kenya.' And on and on.

Poland in Central Europe. They were recently decolonized, too. The Soviet Union went away. What did they do? They did the same thing many Indian tribes did. They pulled the constitution off the shelf. It wasn't called the IRA [Indian Reorganization Act] constitution. It was some British parliamentary system. It didn't fit them. They wanted to know about Navajo and Choctaw courts. We have people here today from the State of New Hampshire. Who's here from New Hampshire? Rural economic development -- I've been doing work in Wyoming, Arizona. People from New Hampshire here today, what do they want to know about? They want to know about Kayenta Township. How did that place take off? They want to know [about] Citizen Potawatomi Community Development Fund. How'd you get all those small businesses going? They want to know about ONABEN and the business development efforts there.

Another story -- this goes on and on. I was supposed to go to North Korea this summer. It got cancelled at the last minute, delayed actually, we'll eventually go, because North Korea fired a couple of test missiles toward Tokyo, splashed in the water without nuclear warheads on them. Sort of put a damper on our trip. Why did the Russians, the U.S., South Korea and Japan -- who are trying to calm down a rather crazy individual with missiles in North Korea -- why did they want to talk to us? Because they want to understand how in the world you take a country where people are dying daily of starvation, absolute starvation, and turn it around. They want to know, how did Oneida Farms do what it did, Honoring Nations award-winner. They want to know, how did Ho Chunk, Inc. take unemployment from 70 percent to 7 percent in about five years.

The Maori of New Zealand visited us this summer. They want to copy the Honoring Nations program. The Maori, a fishing people, they want to know about Red Lake Walleye Recovery and they want to know about Lac Courte Oreilles and the Chippewa Flowage Management Plan. The Aboriginal people of Australia have already copied Honoring Nations. Did you know that, by the way? You are being duplicated, almost everything about it. Even some of the signs and so forth has this feel, although it's very Australian flavor. Why are the Aboriginal people working on this? They don't have even rights of self-determination in the smallest form, but they're trying to run their communities. They want to know how Flandreau Santee Sioux set up that police department. They want to know how Miccosukee and Swinomish and Umatilla were able to solve so many land-use problems.

We're talking to Canada, trying to duplicate the Honoring Nations program. The World Bank now chasing this information from you, what you're doing. They want to know about the Winnebago Community Development Fund. They want to know about the Sisseton-Wahpeton Professional Empowerment Program, because all around the world the World Bank runs into this problem of, how do you take people who've never had work experience and break [them] into the job market?

The little country of Suriname in South America writes us a touching email. They're looking at the Honoring Nations program, they go on the website, and this email basically says, ‘Thank you for showing us you can turn a place around through your own efforts, Indigenous efforts coming right out of the community.' And the phrase was, ‘You have revitalized us, you have given us hope.'

Well, just two more. We teach this course, as I mentioned, here at Harvard called 'Nation Building.' About half the students in the course are from non-U.S., non-Canada [nations/countries]. I always get a slug of students from Israel, for example. Why Israel? Because they have a sizeable population of Palestinian Israelis -- mostly Christian -- living in a Jewish country, and they're trying to figure out how not to do to them what was done to Native Americans.

I also have a slug of students from China, from China. Why China? Because they're trying not to have happen to them what happened to the Soviet Union. They've got a billion people out there, communities spread across thousands and thousands of miles. They want to know about the Northwest Intertribal Court System, 'cause they've got to try to set up a system of a rule of raw, not a rule of the Communist Party. They want to know about the Siyeh Corporation of Blackfeet. How could we get some small [corporations] -- everyone's reading, in China, about the big corporations -- all these little towns need some help.

So all around the world, what you're doing is more and more being noticed, more and more being the source of information for change, information for rebuilding communities. So when you're sitting in your office and you're frustrated, just think of it, the whole world is riding on your shoulders.

Why this attention right now? Let me just say a few words about this. Well, the times are changing. That book right there, there's a section in there, basically it's entitled, 'Still Here.' The winds of oppression have blown over Native peoples in North America as fiercely as anywhere in the world, yet [you are] still here, still running things, still trying to take control of the communities and doing it. Economically, the data say Indian Country, gaming tribes, are growing three times more rapidly than the U.S. economy. The same data tell us that non-gaming tribes are growing three times more rapidly than the U.S. economy. There's a revolution going on out there, and it's not just the economics of course. It's what you do with those economics. It's Citizen Pottawatomi saying, ‘Yeah, we pay per caps [per capita distributions]. That ballpark, it's your per cap. That dental clinic, that's your per cap. That new house, that's your per cap. You get to use them as a person, you're a per cap. We're rebuilding these communities.' Why? What is the secret or what seems to stand out? What's working out there? You guys live these things every day. Well, in a short talk you're not going to explain everything about how a nation turns itself around and rebuilds itself, but there is a pattern out there and that pattern's pretty common.

First, what we see in programs that work, and communities that work, and nations that work, is an attitude and a practice of sovereignty. Oren has on the Nike© shoes. We sometimes call this the Nike© strategy. What's the Nike© motto? ‘Just Do It.' Well, every one of you here just does it, in a sense. Lots of times, the laws around you, the federal law may not exactly say you can do [it]. You just do it, and that attitude of -- an attitude of sovereignty and self-determination, and then putting it into action, marks those communities, those programs, those Indian nations that are turning themselves around.

The second thing that we find, in addition to that Nike© strategy, that Nike© attitude of ‘Just Do It,' is that you back up the attitude with the ability to do it, and by that I mean, you build good systems. You use the tools of -- some of it's boring. It's this public administration we teach in this school right here. It's boring. 'You set up a good personnel grievance system.' 'We have a good accountant and good computers.' But also, it's more fundamental than that. It's finding the cultural roots of your own government. Every government in the world, every government in the world ultimately only stands on its culture.

I tell this story: some of you have probably heard me give speeches about this in various places. I come from the White Yuppie tribe. I like the 'Y' in yuppie, okay. I'm hanging onto that. This elder thing isn't too comfortable for me. In my tribe a couple years ago, we had two guys who both claimed to be duly elected tribal chairs. This guy named Bush and this guy named Gore -- you remember those two guys? If you look at world history, of what usually happens in that situation -- and I'm trained as an econometrician, a statistician -- what would you predict would happen? What you would predict would happen is that Al Gore would lose at the Supreme Court and then go get some tanks and Army generals and come up Pennsylvania Avenue and give it a shot, see if he can take over. That's what happens in the world. Now I'll ask you a question. Why didn't it happen? Why didn't it happen? And I can guarantee you two thoughts just ran through your mind. One thought was the institutions. You've got the constitution, the courts, and all that stuff. Another thought that ran through your mind was a feeling. It's like, 'Well, we just don't do it that way. Al, don't do that. We just don't do it that way.' And only the second answer is accurate. It's only the culture that glues us together.

The night that guy who wanted to be tribal chair stepped down very graciously on national television -- the United States constitution was sitting in a little box at the National Archives. [It] couldn't have gotten out of its box and run over on its little legs and stopped a tank or anything. It's only culture that holds all of us together in our societies, but that's our own cultures. This is why the world is watching what's happening in Indian Country is because what you're doing, the programs you run, the systems you run under, are increasingly of your own making. Indeed, if you think about what you're doing, think about the old days when everything was a federal program. Do you think you'd be seeing this success? Do you really think you'd see hundreds and hundreds of homes being built around Indian Country, for example? Honoring Nations award-winners? The Chickasaw, and so forth? Does anyone think it would happen that way? No. It's really founding everything for each of us in our respective cultures -- even the White Yuppie guys -- on the culture, because it's ultimately only us human beings, and the institutions aren't really there. They're just ways we use to talk to each other, and you've got to find your own ways. And that's what the successful tribes are doing and it's the third key. We call it cultural match: finding systems, the big governmental structures, the small program structures, the linkages to the community, to the elders, to the civic leaders, to the religious leaders. Finding things that are legitimate and work within your own culture. So this sovereignty attitude, the Nike© strategy, backed up by the ability to run things and founding that ability on your own values, your own core values, your own community values. Those are the keys.

There's one more thing, and it's leadership. When we say that, we don't mean necessarily leadership as decision-maker, we mean leader as educator. Someone carries into any community the ideas, the ways of doing things, the new ways of doing things, the old ways of doing things. And it's leaders that do that. Not just elected and appointed officials, but all the dimensions of leadership. And the challenge that you face -- you all are leaders. You got out of bed this morning, or yesterday you flew here. You're not here because you're crawling under a rock and hiding. You're here [because] you're leaders, and the challenge is to carry these messages of effective nation building into communities. And the more you do that, what we find, the more successful the leadership of a community is in getting on the same page and talking about the fundamental nature of these needs for running things ourselves, founding them on our own institutions that are culturally legitimate. Then suddenly, the community starts to stand behind you and then you get stability and then you build a community and then the kids stay home instead of moving away and you've rebuilt a nation.

So we thank you because -- and the whole world is starting to thank you, sincerely -- because these lessons are critical for all of mankind. Thank you."

Native Nation Building TV: "Tribal Service Delivery: Meeting Citizens' Needs"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Guests Eddie Brown and Karen Diver discuss tribal program and service delivery across Indian Country. They examine the unproductive ways services and programs have been administered in many Native communities in the past, and the innovative mechanisms and approaches some Native nations are developing to maximize limited financial and human resources and improve the delivery of programs and services to their citizens.

Citation

Native Nations Institute. "Tribal Service Delivery: Meeting Citizens' Needs" (Episode 7). Native Nation Building television/radio series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy and the UA Channel, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. 2006. Television program. 

Mary Kim Titla: "Welcome to Native Nation Building. I'm your host Mary Kim Titla. Contemporary Native nations face many daunting challenges including building effective governments, developing strong economies, solving difficult social problems and balancing cultural integrity and change. Native Nation Building explores these complex challenges and the ways Native nations are working to overcome them as they seek to make community and economic development a reality. Don't miss Native Nation Building next."

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[music]

Mary Kim Titla: "Like so many aspects of Native life and policy, service delivery in Indian country is in a state of transformation. The era of self-determination, now moving into its fourth decade, has seen an increasing number of Native Natons taking control of programs and services once administered by federal agencies. Today's show looks at the changing state of service delivery in Native communities and the complex challenges Native Nations encounter as they work to ensure that the needs of their citizens are met. Here today to discuss the issue of service delivery in Indian Country are Karen Diver and Dr. Eddie Brown. Karen Diver, an enrolled citizen of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, is Director of Special Projects at Fond du Lac. She also was a founding member of the American Indian Community Housing Organization. Dr. Eddie Brown is an enrolled citizen of the Pasqua Yaqui Tribe and is affiliated with the Tohono O'odham Nation. He is the Director of American Indian Studies at Arizona State University. He previously served as Executive Director of the Tohono O'odham Nation's Department of Human Services and also worked in the U.S. Department of the Interior administering federal programs to Native communities. Thanks for being with us today. A primary role of Native Nations' governments is to deliver social services to their citizens. How has this role changed?"

Eddie Brown: "Mary Kim, over the last 30 years, I think you've seen a tremendous growth of tribal governments providing their services. Under the Indian Self-Determination Act, it allowed for the first time tribes to contract out the operation and administration of programs, and since that time you've seen everything from law enforcement to education, social services -- all of the basic kinds of services that the Bureau of Indian Affairs provides an opportunity then for tribes to take over and administer those. That has also occurred within the Indian Health Service as well. So you've seen programs like the CHR program, psychological services, alcohol and substance abuse, all of these now being offered by tribes where before they were all being administered and operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service."

Mary Kim Titla: "Karen, would you like to add to that? What have you seen?"

Karen Diver: "I've seen governments really focusing on the breadth of services that they have to provide as governments. First, of course, really looking at how do we meet the human day-to-day needs and provide a safety net for our members and over time really blossoming and growing into looking at a full range of government services, everything from resource management to zoning and land use, community development, workforce development efforts in really a broader spectrum of providing a continuum of care and good governmental services at all levels, much like county and local governments did before for their citizens."

Mary Kim Titla: "Now, really traditionally these services have been designed and administered by the federal government, many of them of course still are. How has this affected the quality and quantity of services in reservation communities?"

Dr. Eddie Brown: "I think from the data that we have thus far, it has shown that not only are tribes able to administer but they're able to develop programs that are more in tune with the individual tribal needs so that the tribe has developed its management information systems and its administration systems, but it also has put in place programs that directly respond to that community's needs and has tied in then the cultural element as well of how to provide services in the most appropriate cultural way."

Mary Kim Titla: "As we know, all of the tribes and Native communities are very unique. So one blanket program just doesn't work for everybody, and I think everyone's discovered that over the years. Karen, why don't you talk about what's happening in your community."

Karen Diver: "We are located about 20 miles from the closest urban area, which distinguishes us a little bit from other Anishnaabe tribes in Minnesota who are very, very rural. We have an urban population as well as a rural population, so our challenge is how do we meet a broad geographic area, but with needs that are much different? For example, housing issues are much more scarce, a scarcity of resources on reservation, we have access to more ancillary services and complimentary services in the surrounding metropolitan community, so to speak. So we've really seen our tribe looking at inter-agency agreements with local government entities, non-profit organizations to help complement what we do, and then on reservation, really looking at what is the infrastructure we need in service delivery and continuum of care that we need to develop to meet our citizens that are reservation residents."

Mary Kim Titla: "And you touched on something that really leads into my next question, and that is some of the challenges that Native communities experience trying to make these federal programs fit their community needs. Can you expand on that a little bit more, Eddie?"

Eddie Brown: "Yes, I think it's very difficult when you're trying to work with a policy -- that one policy fits all tribes -- knowing the diversity, and so tribes have had to struggle and be very creative of how they've been able to take the funding and assure that that funding is meeting the basic community needs, but at the same time are fulfilling the federal obligation and responsibility that is set out in the rules and regulations. So again, a real challenge, but one in which the tribes have proven themselves to be up to."

Mary Kim Titla: "Can you give an example of that?"

Eddie Brown: "Well, one of [them] has to do with social services, looking at not only federal but state social services as well. How do you coordinate those programs and make them work together? Under the TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] situation, where tribes for the first time in history were responsible for or capable of administering their own TANF services, where before they were administered by the state. The tribes have taken those and developed those in a way that really met the need of the federal government but also tied in and allowed them the kind of flexibility that they needed to provide the service. So here is a situation where a federal program was given to the tribe but also with the flexibility to allow the tribe to develop and have perhaps even a little more flexibility than the states do in determining the eligibility as well as service delivery."

Mary Kim Titla: "Okay. Karen, how are you handling that? It sounds like you've done some really unique things in your community to really make these federal programs work."

Karen Diver: "Part of what's been successful at Fond du Lac is -- just as Eddie was saying -- really using our own people and other Native people who have been educated in those fields to deliver those services in a culturally competent manner. Social capital on Native communities is obviously a challenge and trying to get our kids graduated from high school through college so that we have access to those resources within our own community. Integrating outsiders into that in a way that is healthy for both sides makes non-Indian service deliverers feel a part of our community and welcome, building their cultural competency and welcoming them, and at the same time really providing opportunities for mentoring and growth opportunities for our own Band members. That being said, what we see happening in service delivery for us has been well regarded in surrounding governmental units. We have Treatment as a State designation for air and water quality -- the first tribe in the nation to get that designation -- and that required not only working with local law enforcement agencies, but the Department of Natural Resources, the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], for them to recognize that we had capacity within our tribe to have a regulatory function. We had to have everything from laboratory services and monitoring to permitting processes and the ability to comment in a really technical way on air- and water-quality issues. So building our infrastructure in that way not only through the systems of government, but also through the social capital, has taken my tribe 25 years and it's something that we're still striving for today to improve our own delivery and our own capability, but then also using resources wisely both in terms of employment and education."

Mary Kim Titla: "So you've touched on some of the challenges. What are some disadvantages or costs for tribal communities, Native communities when they rely heavily on these federally funded programs?"

Eddie Brown: "Well, I think as we mentioned before, when you've got federal regulations that you've got to respond to and they're saying, 'You can have these dollars, but here's what you've got to do and here's the limitations on how you use those dollars,' have always limited the tribes in their creativity and the ability to put the dollars where they need to be. I think that has been the major limitation so that when the Indian Self-Determination Act was passed and allowed tribes to take over that, even though that there were still some strong regulations, tribes had more flexibility than they have ever had before. Now over the last 30 years now the Indian Self Determination Act has been amended that allow tribes even greater flexibility. You have then your Indian Self-Governance that allows for block grants, types of funding to tribes that allows them even greater flexibility to match the kind of need with the kind of service. So again, very exciting and it's been a very exciting time, but as mentioned by Karen, it has taken a long time because we've had to start almost from ground zero and establish those systems in place in which states and counties have had at least a hundred years to do."

Mary Kim Titla: "The infrastructure and really building that infrastructure. Can you talk about more what's happening in your community? It sounds really interesting."

Karen Diver: "Actually, not just in my community. Some of the challenges I see for some of the northern tribes that are very rural is that they're really funding themselves and focusing areas of growth on those programs and service delivery options that are fundable, and so you see growth in those areas without some long-term stability, because it is chasing those dollars a little bit. One of the things that is trying to be highly promoted in some of these communities is, what is the strategic vision for this tribe? Where do they want to be in five, 10, 20 years? And letting that guide their funding option because they're funding a whole vision rather than just a program. And that's a challenge for my tribe as well as many others of saying, 'We're a baby government, what do we want to be when we're a grown-up government?' And how do we not rely on indirect cost allocations from grants to fund basic infrastructure, but how do we be real targeted and real thoughtful in where we want to go and sell that overall vision rather than just a program idea."

Mary Kim Titla: "You talked about vision and it appears to be that there's this movement really among Native communities to gain control of how they administer these programs and what do you think has fueled that movement?"

Eddie Brown: "Well, clearly the Indian Self-Determination Act, the idea that tribes are sovereign nations and that they do have the right to establish and run and determine their own destiny, and part of that destiny is to develop your own vision, as Karen mentioned. So you see that many of us, many of the tribes are moving from an idea of, 'Well, let's see what the government has to offer,' to the idea of, 'Let's determine what our vision should be.' The Yavapai Apache Nation, for instance, here in Arizona is clearly an example of a tribal community that has developed a 25-year vision, that has put together a strategic plan and that has a clear vision of where they want to go because of the strong leadership there within the council and I think are really reflective of many tribes today that have said, 'We are no longer just going to look at our problems, we're going to look at what we want to be. Then from that, we will determine how we need to get there.'"

Mary Kim Titla: "Karen, do you see significant innovations in service delivery out there? What are tribes doing that's different?"

Karen Diver: "I know for the Fond du Lac tribe, we've seen great success with our foster care-licensing system and a lot of our child welfare programs, where the tribe has become the primary driver of Indian child welfare cases and developed the infrastructure where local county social service agencies and child protection units really defer to our tribes to handle child welfare cases involving Native children. And with our foster care-licensing system as an additional part of that, we can assure a steady stream of families, Native families, culturally competent families, so that we're accomplishing both goals of maintaining identity and culture as well as child protection and the safety of the children. And that was one of our biggest innovations in our human services is really getting surrounding governmental units to say, 'They know better than we do on this issue and by working with them we'll provide a better service to their band members,' and it's been well-regarded in Indian Country and often duplicated."

Mary Kim Titla: "Any other examples that you can think of, Eddie?"

Eddie Brown: "Well, I think on the broader scale, tribes have been forced to re-look at the way they're structured and organized. Before, with all the different federal funding, you had many different small programs all running and operating independently. So you see tribes across the nation now re-examining the way they're structured, reorganizing it to fit the needs of their community. So it starts way up at the top of the administration, even re-evaluating their constitutions as to how they're organized and structured governmentally. So you see that works all the way down to the direct service delivery of services for children and working with families. So you see the impact has been from the very top to the very bottom within tribal communities."

Mary Kim Titla: "And what about this cultural aspect and tribes really going back to their very beginnings and integrating some of that into these delivery services?"

Karen Diver: "We see that very much so in northern Minnesota, language preservation being real key, total integration into birth-to-five-[year-old] services through Head Start and continuing through K-12 education and ending up with our tribal and community college, where we have a teacher cohort agreement with the University of Minnesota to graduate fluent Native speakers who also have teaching credentials. So that lifelong learning aspect in access to language to culture services for not only the children and the students but for their families really is a model that wouldn't have been found through federal government delivery [of] services, and it makes for families a much more comfortable environment for those families who are getting over boarding-school experiences. They now own their educational delivery system and it feels safe for them and their children and strengthens that bond of community."

Mary Kim Titla: "We're going to stick with what Fond du Lac is doing in terms of really overseeing virtually all of these services offered in your community. What led to this and how is it working?"

Karen Diver: "We were one of the first tribes to follow Public Law 638, where we can control our own programs -- started in the late 70s and early 80s. I believe that the cultural competency in programming drove it, that federal programs weren't always successful in meeting our needs. I believe job creation was also a part of it, that we wanted to be able to have services provided by our own Band members and not by outsiders. It's been enormously successful. Since then our capacity to deliver programs by developing effective systems of government, administration has allowed us to take on more opportunities, so I think that once tribes are able to move into that arena they quickly gain the experience, the social capital, the staff they need to take those programs to the next level and really round them out to meet a variety of needs."

Mary Kim Titla: "Now, Eddie, you've spent a long time wrestling with social service delivery issues at both the tribal and federal levels. In your experience, what are the major challenges tribes face in this area?"

Eddie Brown: "Well, one is just figuring out how to work with the federal government and state government, and so I think that's one that has moved forward a great deal as tribes have become more experienced in handling working with the federal government and most recently now beginning to develop inter-governmental agreements with the state that recognizes the sovereign jurisdictional issues of both parties. That has been tremendous. Perhaps now when you look at [it], it's building a good solid foundation of making sure that you have your regulations in place. When we talk about foster care programs or child welfare programs, they have a lot of rules and regulations and standards to ensure the protection of the child as well as the parents. Those kind of things, having good regulations in place, hiring competent staff, providing training for those staff, pulling together management information systems that allow them to track and to evaluate the kind of program or the impact of the programs that they're having. I think all of this, it's a tremendous challenge for an administrator today at a tribal level, because there are so many things that need to be done with limited dollars and a growing expectation of tribal members toward the tribal council to begin to act in a full essence of what a government is and that is a government's role is to care for the wellbeing of its citizens."

Mary Kim Titla: "And with leadership changes, I'm sure that that's also a challenge. Every three or four years your leadership changes and sometimes that has an impact on maybe where you proceed."

Karen Diver: "Very much so, and it's often said that politics is personal and no more so than in Indian Country, because those are your families, your clans, your nieces and nephews, and when they have needs that they view as critical and they're standing in front of you, it's sometimes very difficult for tribal leaders to think big picture and to say, 'Is my decision for the good of the all and do I sacrifice the good of the one, or vice versa?' And I think that's a constant struggle for tribal councils, it's a constant struggle for our government in terms of social capital, to make sure that our tribal leaders are really focused on what is good governmental function, and how do we make sure we have the service delivery systems to meet those basic needs and the individual needs in a competent way? Turnover in tribal government has affected a lot of the northern tribes recently, and I think that with programs like the Udall Center and Honoring Nations through Harvard, that it really shows best practices in governance and really holds up models for tribal governments to learn from."

Mary Kim Titla: "Why don't we get back to Public Law 638? I'm not familiar with that. Could you explain that a little bit more and how Native Nations have used this to assume control?"

Eddie Brown: "The impact, of course, is if someone comes to you and offers you an opportunity to not only bring a tremendous amount of federal funding to your community but also allowing you the flexibility to run and make your own decisions. I think tribes over the past 30 years are saying, 'We can do it better and we can show you how to do it better,' and [in] many situations have been very, very successful at that, to the point that now other departments within the federal government are understanding that they need to also loosen the regulation to understand that the tribes can run and operate programs. So it's really provided, I think, a celebration. At this recent NCAI [National Congress of American Indians] conference, basically it was the celebration of 30 years of Indian Self-Determination, because that piece of legislation has probably had more impact in the strengthening of tribal government in the last 100 years than any other previous legislation."

Karen Diver: "I think it's also providing ongoing challenges. Definitely celebration. What I see on a regular basis is tribes can set their big vision through their 638 contracting, but then through program delivery through the federal government, for example through Head Start for example, comes with its own set of regulations that is often in conflict with the direction set from 638 plans that are submitted to the federal government. So trying to merge big picture with service delivery that comes with a separate set of guidelines aside from its governmental functions I think can be a day-to-day challenge for tribes, but it is one that they are being creative about solving."

Mary Kim Titla: "And that was going to be my next question about limitations and how 638 in many ways being a trial-and-error process. Is that true?"

Eddie Brown: "Well, I don't know if it was so much as a trial and error as the idea of, 'Let's see if the tribes can handle it and if they can handle it, then we can see about making some more amendments to loosening and so forth.' So it has been very important therefore when tribes took over programs that they made sure that they could operate them and not retrocede or return them back to the federal government, because if in fact tribes failed, it would in fact maybe prove to what many people thought is tribes are not capable of operating as governments and running their own services. If anything has been proven in the last 30 years, it's that tribes are very much capable, they can do a better job as we've indicated. So while it is a challenge -- and today I look at perhaps administrators working within tribes have the greatest challenge than administrators in other forms of government. Having been involved in state government and federal government and comparing the challenge at a tribal level, I consider the challenge there at the tribal level much greater than what's experienced at states and federal governments because they are breaking new ground. They are having to develop from the ground up, they're having to look at the cultural as well as the more technical management information, etc., which makes it all the more exciting when we see tribes succeed particularly at the level that they're succeeding."

Mary Kim Titla: "What about need versus jobs and going after federal programs based on a need for jobs and not based on whether there's really a need for the service in the community?"

Karen Diver: "I would actually put it a little different way. We see a need for a service and we'll look for funding to fill it, and then it's who to fill those positions with, and we have Band-member preference in hiring, as do many tribes and really looking at what are the qualifications we need and how do we balance the need of our members to have jobs, because we do have high unemployment with the needs of the clients that need to receive the service, and which one should be more important. And I think it's a constant struggle for tribes to say, 'What are the minimum standards for this position and what are we willing to say to our Band members to get them?' And it's a constant educational process of saying, 'We value you, we need your input here at the tribe. There's other ways for you to be involved. We have training available, so that you can reach that level.' And workforce development systems on tribes of looking at coaching, mentoring, additional education so that over time our Band members are qualified to fill those positions is, I think, one of the highest priorities in Indian Country right now."

Mary Kim Titla: "Eddie, are you seeing anything different?"

Eddie Brown: "No, I completely agree. Making sure you have good training. If the goal is to hire tribal employees or tribal members to be employees, the idea is that they've got to do more than just meet minimum qualifications, which is [a] requirement under the Indian preference law, so that we want people that not only meet the minimum qualifications but we want to make sure that we provide training so that the employees can grow as the program grows as well."

Mary Kim Titla: "Now what about the various programs that exist and how important is it for each department head or for these programs really, the people that work in them, to communicate with each other?"

Karen Diver: "Very much so. We had a recent example on our reservation where we're trying to develop supportive housing and rather than just give people a house, it doesn't necessarily take care of all of their other needs that resulted in their initial homelessness -- whether it be chemical dependency, mental health issues, lack of jobs and training where they weren't marketable for suitable living wage employment. So we can't look at a band-aid approach of, 'You're homeless, we're going to give you a house.' We really have to look at a continuum of care to meet the multiple needs of people who really looked at several generations, multiple generations of oppression, and for those gaming nations, gaming jobs don't necessarily fix all of the hurt that came with it and the social ills that resulted in the form of chemical dependency and mental health issues. So developing continuums of care to really allow our Band members and tribal nation members to be self-sufficient means working across those borders of program lines."

Eddie Brown: "Clearly. And you've seen tribes like the Tohono O'odham Nation, Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community that have re-looked at how services are being offered and then restructured, realizing that many of the same people were working with the same families and in some ways providing some duplication of services, where if they just restructured their organizations and maybe integrated the services more, that the services provided will not only be more effective but can be done at a much lower cost as well, so that you've seen tribes lower the cost as well as improve the effectiveness of their service."

Mary Kim Titla: "Thank you both so much for being with us. You've both provided some great input and hopefully some food for thought for Nations that are out there and can improve what they're doing now. Thank you so much for being with us today."

Dr. Eddie Brown: "Thank you."

Karen Diver: "Thank you."

Mary Kim Titla: "Native Nation Building is a program of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the University of Arizona. To learn more about Native Nation Building and the issues discussed on today's program, please visit the Native Nations Institute's website at www.nni.arizona.edu/nativetv. Thank you for joining us and please tune in to the next edition of Native Nation Building."

Wilma Mankiller: Governance, Leadership and the Cherokee Nation

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

As part of its ongoing interview series "Leading Native Nations," the Native Nations Institute (NNI) interviewed Wilma Mankiller, the late and former Chief of the Cherokee Nation, in September 2008. In the interview, she discussed her compelling personal story as well as the challenges the Cherokee Nation have overcome, the lessons that can be learned from this experience, and her thoughts on nation building, governance, and leadership.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Mankiller, Wilma. "Governance, Leadership, and the Cherokee Nation." Leading Native Nations interview series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. September 29, 2008. Interview.

Ian Record:  "Welcome to Leading Native Nations, a program of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the University of Arizona. I am your host, Ian Record. Today I am honored to welcome to the program the world-renowned Indigenous leader, Wilma Mankiller. As many of you know, Wilma was the first ever female chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, serving as her nation’s highest leader from 1985 to 1995. She also is author of the national best-seller Mankiller: A Chief and Her People. Perhaps the most notable of her many accolades came in 1998 when then-President Bill Clinton awarded Wilma the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Currently, she serves on numerous organization boards and works with several non-profits to promote community development efforts throughout Indigenous country. Welcome Wilma and thank you for joining us today."

Wilma Mankiller: "You’re welcome. Thank you, I’m happy to be here."

Question: "I’d like to start with a question I ask all of the guests on this program and that is how do you define sovereignty? What does it really mean for Native Nations?"

Mankiller: "I think that the sovereign rights of tribes are inherent. And I think that when thinking about that sovereign it’s important to remind everyday Americans that tribal governments existed before there was a United States government and that many tribes, including the Cherokee Nation, had treaties with other governments before they had a treaty with the first U.S. colony. So the definition of sovereignty is to have control over your own lands and resources and assets, and to have control over your own vision for the future, and to be able to have absolute, to absolutely determine your own destiny."

Q: "As a follow up, in that realm of sovereignty, how to you define a healthy Native community, what does it look like to you?"

Mankiller:  "For me, a healthy community would mean that people would have access to good health care, to education, to all the amenities that are available to a lot of Americans that are not now available to all Native people. But first and foremost I think that in a whole, healthy Native community is a community that still has a sense of interdependence, a community where people trust their own thinking, where people believe in themselves, when people are able to define for themselves what they want for their community, and then have within the community the skills and the ability to make that a reality."

Q: "The Cherokee Nation is the second-largest Native Nation in the United States as you well know, with at last count more than 240,000 citizens, probably more than that now. What challenges does the sheer size of that nation, of your nation, pose to its nation-building efforts, and how does the nation meet those challenges?"

Mankiller:  "I think that probably the biggest challenge is just the increasing cultural, social and economic stratification of the population. And so that in a population that size, for example, just culturally, we have in our communities people that are full Cherokee, that speak Cherokee, that have remained close to their culture. On the other end of the spectrum, we have some Cherokee-enrolled tribal members that have never even been to the Cherokee Nation and don’t have the same connection to the land and to the community, but are enrolled members and certainly have a right to membership, but are different in the way they think. Economically, we have tribal members that are struggling. I live in a very low-income community, in a county with a very low per capita income. So we have some tribal members that have a very low income and on the other end of the spectrum, we have some tribal members who are extremely wealthy. The fellow who owns the Tennessee Titans is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, for example, and there are many other examples of people like that. So I think the challenges is, one of the challenges with a population that size and that stratified – socially, economically, and culturally – is to try to make sure that you find some common ground for all the people who live very different lives, often."

Q:  "You once referred to the Cherokee Nation as a revitalized tribe, stating that, 'After every major upheaval, we have been able to gather together as a people and rebuild a community and a government. Individually and collectively, Cherokee people possess an extraordinary ability to face down adversity and continue moving forward.' Can you dwell on that statement, particularly with respect to the Cherokee Nation’s present and recent past?"

Mankiller:  "I can, and I believe very firmly that the Cherokee Nation is symbolic of other nations as well because I’ve seen the same sort of just heroic ability and to hold onto a sense of who we are as a people and rebuild our families and communities and governments again. What I meant by that is if you look back at Cherokee history, even before removal, and all the things that happened to the Cherokee people and the continuous shrinking of the land base and then the tragedy of the forced removal by the United States military from the southeast to Indian Territory. If you look at how our people reacted to that it’s pretty amazing. When Cherokee people arrived, the last contingent of Cherokee people arrived in 1838 in Indian Territory, what is now Oklahoma, there had been a bitter political division within the tribe over whether Cherokee people should fight to the death to remain in the southeast or participate in that removal. So there was a bitter political division within the tribe. About one-fourth of our entire tribe was dead, that either died on the removal or died while being held in stockades. People had left behind everything they’d ever known in the southeast – places where there were cultural practices, places where their people were buried, places where they had a strong connection with – and watched their homes being raffled off to non-Native settlers. So they arrive with all of that after the removal and yet it’s really remarkable to see what they did. What they did almost immediately is they began rebuilding their families, rebuilding their communities, and rebuilding a government in Indian Territory despite everything that had happened. And it’s amazing. They built some of the first government buildings anywhere in Indian Territory, which are now the oldest buildings in what is now Oklahoma. They built a Supreme Court building. They printed newspapers in Cherokee and English. They started a school system, one of the first school systems west of the Mississippi, Indian or non-Indian, and they built a school for the education of women which is pretty remarkable for that period of time in that part of the world. And so that spirit that allowed them to go through that kind of tragedy and pain and division and yet, keep their vision fixed firmly on the future I think is what I meant when I said that we’re a revitalized tribe. And then after the Civil War, the Cherokee Nation was attacked by the United States Government, and various laws – the Curtis Act, the Dawes Act, our land was allotted – and we again faced another major upheaval. And so, between the early 1900s and the early ‘70s, we were not electing our own tribal leaders. And what’s remarkable is that in my grandfather’s time – and my grandfather’s name was John Yone (sp?), 'Yone' means 'bear' (Mankiller) – in my grandfather’s time, nobody ever, no Cherokees ever gave up the dream of having their own tribal government again. In my grandfather’s era, they would ride horses to each other’s houses and the Cherokee people, they would collect money in a mason jar to send representatives to Washington to tell them that we had treaty rights and we had rights to our own self-governance. So that’s what I mean, I think, when I talk about the spirit of survival and the tenacity of Cherokee people and their just abiding commitment to maintaining a sense of community and a sense of tribal government."

Q: "Let’s turn now to your personal story. Reflecting on your experience, first of all living in an impoverished neighborhood in San Francisco in the 1960s, you once said and I quote, 'That poor people have more tenacity for solving their own problems than most people give them credit for.' Can you elaborate on that statement, particularly with respect to Native peoples efforts to rebuild their nations?"

Mankiller:  "Sure, let me preface my remarks by saying that my family participated in the Bureau of Indian Affairs relocation program, which was really a poorly disguised attempt to remove Native people from their homelands and that’s how we ended up in San Francisco for twenty years. And the better life the Bureau of Indian Affairs promised us was actually a very rough housing project. What I learned living in a housing project in San Francisco which was predominantly African American is that people took care of each other in that community which was very isolated, and is still isolated, the housing project is called Hunter’s Point, the people helped one another and that’s how they got by in life. And what I saw in my own community before we left home, I was ten when we left Oklahoma and went to San Francisco, and what I’ve seen since I’ve returned home is a strong sense of interdependence in our community, and then in other communities that I’ve become aware of as well. People from Mexico, Central and South America, people that live in many of those communities have that same sense of responsibility for one another and interdependence. In our communities, there are always people who have formal leadership positions and titles and then there are the go-to people that folks gravitate toward when there is a crisis. And there are many people in our communities and in all low income communities that have great capacity for leadership, and I believe that community revitalization efforts can never be successful unless they begin at the grassroots level with families who know their community better than anything, outsiders who want to help a community with whatever project – whether its getting a water system or housing or health care or whatever, may have ideas about how to do that, but its never going to be successful if its conceptualized in a vacuum outside the community. For projects to be successful, they have to come from the people and because, you know you can be an expert in anything, there are a lot of smart people at this University, but people who live in low income communities are experts in their community. So the idea is to get a partnership between people who may have external resources and people in the community and then with that partnership they can move forward."

Q:  "Really what you’re talking about is solutions from within, solutions from the ground up, solutions from not just -- as you said, people in elected positions -- but local community leadership. How important is that? When you look across Indian Country and you work in Indian Country and you see some Indian communities very much dependent on the federal government to change things or they expect their tribal governments to do it all. And you’re essentially saying that the spirit of interdependence, the spirit of local solutions in the community, is really what change needs to happen."

Mankiller: "I think that all of that is part of a process of trusting your own thinking. I think if you trust your own thinking and you truly believe that within the cultural context of your tribal community that you can rebuild your nation then you can. Part of what’s happened over centuries of oppression is that our people came to rely on the federal government or the Bureau of Indian Affairs or well-meaning social workers to try to tell us how we should be and to provide things for us. And what’s happened I think in the last few decades is that people are saying, 'No! We can articulate our own needs and we actually have the skills to be able to make, to solve those problems, and make our dreams a reality.' So at the very outset of trying to do something – and I think you have to have a sense of self-efficacy – all these people are always going around to tribal communities with these hot shot business ideas and these other kinds of things, well you know what, you’re not going to get there until you do the basic work first. And the basic work first I think is working with people and making sure that people trust their own thinking first and have a strong sense of self-efficacy and believe in themselves. And once they believe in themselves and have that strong sense then they can do anything; they can move forward with that. It’s pretty easy to do that. People often ask my husband and I how we got people in rural communities to volunteer to build their own houses and water systems and that sort of thing. All we did was trust people; it’s that simple. I mean, not trust idly; it was an absolute trust. Can’t read and write, it doesn’t matter. If you have other skills; maybe the guy who can’t read and write in the community is the best repairman of heavy equipment and can keep the waterline going. There’s a role for everybody. Maybe someone in the community is a good writer, who can help write grants. There’s a role for everybody. So trust in your own thinking I think is key to that."

Q: "Really what you’re getting at is that rebuilding Native Nations, moving those nations forward, forging a common vision is really dependent on broad ownership in that process, it cant just be a top-down solution."

Mankiller: "Absolutely. Before I returned home, I did some work to prepare people for the 1977 treaty conference in Geneva, we were sending lots of Native people to Geneva. And it was interesting, but for me working on sovereignty in an international legal concept is one piece of work that’s important. But, for me, if you’re going to talk about sovereignty, you have to bring the people with you; you can’t be just tribal leaders talking to each other, and academics talking to each other about sovereignty. It has to be with families too, it has to begin with families. And so what we’re describing here is a part of that process."

Q: "Getting back to your personal story, I’m going to move now to 1969. It’s well known that you took part in the Indians of All Tribes takeover of Alcatraz Island. And you credited that experience with giving you more self-respect and a sense of pride. How did that change your life, that experience?"

Mankiller: "Well, it profoundly changed my life. I was a young house wife married to an Ecuadorian kind of living a middle class life in San Francisco. And when I took the boat over to Alcatraz – my brothers and sisters had gone over to join the occupation – and when I took the boat over to Alcatraz it was like an act of revolution almost to do that, to say, 'You know, I’m an adult.' And when I got there and I met leaders like Richard Oakes and John Trudell and many other people there and they articulated things that I had felt, but didn’t know how to express. And they talked about the fundamental rights of tribal governments and the conditions in tribal communities around the country, in a way that was very strong. It was the first time I had ever seen Native people stand up and stare down the United States government. Of course that had a profound impact on me. And because I had all these feelings running around, but didn’t know quite how to express them, so they expressed for me a lot of the things that I felt. And of course at the San Francisco Indian Center I had heard people talking about the relocation program and a lot of other issues, but not in the way these young people spoke about them. Richard Oakes who was Mohawk, and the first leader, was very articulate and very clear about the fundamental rights of tribal government."

Q: "Delving more deeply into this issue of community ownership and rebuilding communities, in the 1970s you returned to Oklahoma and the Cherokee Nation. Can you tell us about your early work with the Cherokee community of Bell and specifically the lessons that community can teach other Native Nations about the importance of tribal citizens taking ownership in rebuilding their communities?"

Mankiller:  "Okay, the Bell community in the early ‘70s and late ‘70s was a predominantly Cherokee community, a bilingual community. About 95 percent of the population was Cherokee, there were a few non-Native families there. About 25 percent had no indoor plumbing. Very dilapidated housing. There was a local school there that was getting ready to close because young families were all moving out. And it’s one of dozens of small Cherokee communities within the Cherokee Nation that are more traditional communities. And they had been trying to get housing and they couldn’t get housing without a decent water system. So we decided that we could do a self-help project there. The idea was conceptualized not by me, it was conceptualized by Ross Swimmer. And I was a staff person at that time, the idea of a self-help project. So because I had this idea about community people being able to lead and had been very vocal about that and about the tribe putting more resources into ideas like that, I was tapped to lead the project. So what we basically said to the community is, 'If you want this to happen, this is your community, this is your houses, this is your kids. And if you want this to happen, you’re going to have to work on it.' And so we will, myself and my husband – my husband was my partner on this project, Charlie Soap – what we said to the people in the Bell community is that, 'We’ll provide the technical assistance and the resources if you will physically build a waterline, I mean put the pipe in the ground, cover it up, build it. And we will get the materials for some new homes and solar panels and we’ll rehab some homes in this community, get the resources to do that if you’ll do the work.' And this was a radical idea at that time, so they were saying: 'Why do we have to do that? The people down the road, the Indian Health Service builds their waterline and the Housing Authority builds their houses. Why should we do that?' And so we went through a process for about a year of meetings and talking and working with people to see that, so that they saw, not just us, but that they saw that it was in their best interest to do that. And that by rebuilding, physically rebuilding their community they would also rebuild a sense of control over their lives. The sense that we had when we went to the first meeting in Bell where almost nobody showed up by the way, the sense we had was that people thought: 'Aw things have always been like this, they’re always going to be like that. A lot of people have promised to help us. It’s not going to happen.' So we had to go from that point to a point where people believed that they actually could learn how to build their own waterline, they could rebuild their community, that things could be better, that the future could be better. So over a period of meetings, it was a long process of meetings, and that tapped into the values of the community. We got people to the point where they believed they could build the water system. Outsiders often focus on what the problems the community had when we started there, but we saw assets too. When we went into the community, the people who fished would share their fish with people in the community, people who hunted would share what they got with people who needed it, and during winter, if older people needed wood for their stoves, people would still get it for them. And so what we did was pretty simple. We just tapped into what we saw already existing there. Outside people said to us at that time, 'Well a lot of people in that community are on welfare. They won’t even work for a living. How do you expect them to volunteer to do these things?' Well, there’s no place to work. If there was a place to work, I’m sure they would, but there’s no place to work there. And so, we felt confident that people would rise to the occasion and build their own water systems and rehab and build their own houses because of what we saw in the community there, despite the problem. And so for me, the first day when we started building the water line, we had organized for a year and divided the water line project into sections so that each family had responsibility for a certain section. Driving down into the Bell community the first day, it was a pretty big deal because for me, it affirmed everything I believed about poor people. I always believed that poor people would rise to the occasion if you partnered with them. And so when I turned the corner and I saw all the people standing there getting ready to start the waterline, it affirmed for me my fundamental belief that we can rebuild our communities and we can rebuild our nations. To me Bell, a little tiny community within the Cherokee Nation, is symbolic of our nations, our people themselves stood on a porch and decided that they could rebuild their community themselves and they did it. And I believe that our leaders can get together and decide that they can rebuild their nations and they can do it."

Q: "In 1985, you became the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation after your predecessor Ross Swimmer stepped down to become the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. You subsequently won two elections for principal chief, the second with 82 percent of the vote before leaving office in 1985. Among other accomplishments during your tenure, you oversaw the Cherokee Nation’s historic Self-Determination Agreement with the federal government whereby the Cherokee Nation took over control of Nation programs and services from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. How important was that step in advancing the Cherokee Nation’s efforts to rebuild their Nation and achieve self-sufficiency?"

Mankiller: "Let me start by talking about my election. I was actually elected in 1983 to Deputy Chief position; Ross Swimmer didn’t appoint me. I don’t think he would have appointed me, given that his entire tribal council opposed me. And so I ran for Deputy Chief in 1983 and was elected to that position so when he left in 1985, I automatically assumed his position. But, with regard to self-determination, it was critical. I began my first work in tribal government as a volunteer for the Pit River Tribe in northern California which didn’t take any federal funding. So I was a strong believer that tribe’s should be able to allocate their own resources and make their own decisions about the needs of their people. So during the self-determination era, we took advantage of that every step of the way. And I was in the planning department when we first started contracting tribal programs. So there was a sea change from the time I began working for the tribal government in 1977 to the time that we signed our first self-governance agreement. And I had had a kidney transplant and I was in a hospital in Boston when our first self-governance agreement needed to be signed, and I insisted that they Fedex it to me; I got out of my bed and set out and signed that self-governance agreement because I considered it so critical and so important for our people."

Q: "Following up on that, how did accountability change when you took over your own programs? Often in Indian Country, you see when the outsiders are calling the shots, when they screw up their not around to pay the consequences, it’s the local people. How did the feeling of accountability change when the Cherokee Nation took over?"

Mankiller: "For us, I don’t think it changed that much. We always felt very accountable and we always just dealt with whatever we had to deal with. We were very accustomed to having federal audits and that sort of thing. And so I don’t think that it fundamentally changed the way we did business. We understood that we couldn’t make the Bureau of Indian Affairs a scapegoat anymore. So I’m not sure that it changed that much; I found that most tribal governments are very accountable and set up their own systems for making sure that the funds get appropriated and allocated for the things that they were destined to be appropriated for. And so I’m not sure that made a fundamental change."

Q: "Okay. In 1976, the Cherokee Nation’s Constitution was ratified and just two decades later however, the Nation initiated a major overhaul of that constitution which culminated in the ratification of significant reforms just a few years ago. What compelled the Cherokee Nation to undertake constitutional reform and what were the major outcomes?"

Mankiller: "I think there was a period of time after I left office, and I didn’t run for office again, there was a four-year period when there was a great deal of debate and controversy within the Cherokee Nation. And I think the idea of reforming the constitution came out of that whole controversial era. I’m not sure that our model is the best model for anyone to follow; there’s some lessons people can learn from what we did. My feeling is that the constitution reform efforts, recent constitutional reform efforts, did not come from the people, they came from outside the communities. And my sense – I live in a Cherokee community and my husband works in Cherokee communities – and so we’re in that part of the Cherokee Nation, I’m not sure all the constitutional amendments were properly vetted or necessarily understood and completely supported by people. If you look at the hearings that they conducted around the Cherokee Nation, there wasn’t wide attendance at those hearings. So I guess if there’s a lesson for other tribal governments, if you’re going to do constitutional change, and make sure that the people that will be directly affected by the constitutional changes fully and completely…Take your time. Take your time. Changing a constitution is a major thing. Don’t rush into it. And look at each amendment separately and make sure that people completely and thoroughly understand it before putting it out there."

Q:  "And part of the constitutional reform process that the Cherokee Nation employed involved the Cherokee Constitutional Convention. And that’s essentially a permanent body that periodically reviews the Constitution. How important is that, I mean you talked about 'take your time,' and is that part of that focus on taking your time?"

Mankiller: "It is, but I think again it depends on whose involved in the Constitutional Convention. If you’re going to have a constitutional convention of opinion leaders and political leaders and that sort of thing, that’s one thing. But, if you want a broad citizen participation, then you need a different kind of convention. So, in a tribe as large as ours, a single constitutional convention is not going to get it. There would have to be constitutional conventions in lots of different places with lots of different populations. So again, the lesson I think from our experiences is to have broad participation and take it very slowly and have a great deal of discussion before putting it up for a vote."

Q:  "Because essentially what you need to do by taking it slowly is get that community behind it, which doesn’t happen overnight. [Mankiller: 'Absolutely, absolutely.'] Since you became principal chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1985, Indigenous Country has witnessed a surge in the number of females assuming elected leadership positions in their nations. What, from your perspective, do you feel is driving that trend?"

Mankiller: "I think that there are more pipeline opportunities for women. As tribal governments grow and expand and contract their own hospitals and run their own school systems and run their own businesses, that there are more opportunities for women to administer programs. And they’re in highly visible places. They get to work within tribal government and know tribal government and become known in the community. And so, there are more opportunities for women to lead within the tribe and then some go from an administrative position to running for council and then running for top leadership positions. And I think that education is a factor; I think that more Native women are getting an education, and more Native women are taking advantage of administrative and leadership opportunities within tribal government."

Q: "We’ve already talked about this issue, but I want to ask you a question directly on point. You once said that, 'I want to be remembered as the person who helped us restore faith in ourselves.' Why is this restoration of faith and self so important to securing a vibrant self-determining future for the Cherokee Nation?"

Mankiller: "Well, when I hear that quote I cringe because it sounds very self-important, so I actually hate that quote. But I do believe that an essential part of leadership is, besides all the things like making sure you’re working on legislative issues and legal issues and health and education and jobs and all that sort of thing, is to try to help people understand their own history and understand where we are within the context of that history and to believe in ourselves; to look at our past and see what we’ve done as a people and to remind people that if they want to see our future they just simply need to look at our past to believe in ourselves, to believe in our intellectual ability, to believe in our skills, to believe in our ability to think up solutions to our own problems. I think that is critical to our survival."

Q:  "Following up on that, what you’re really talking about is leaders not just as decision-makers, leaders engaging their citizens, teaching their citizens about what’s possible as you talked about, but also learning from citizens and really engaging them in this rebuilding process."

Mankiller: "Well, I think good leaders make decisions based on information they’ve received from their people. And leadership should be about listening to people, especially listening to people who differ from you and have very different ideas than you do, and then taking the ideas of the people and synthesizing them and then figuring out how to move forward. Leaders who make unilateral decisions and charge ahead I don’t think are good leadership. Good leadership is consultative and good leadership simply means listening to people. And what I tried to do very diligently when I was in office is to set up regular community meetings and I learned a lot more about what was going on in our tribal government in those community meetings then I did by listening to the staff. And so I think that for me the idea of listening is key to good leadership."

Q:  "Moving on, the Cherokee Nation has received multiple awards from the Honoring Nations Program of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development including one for its Cherokee Nation history course, which is mandatory for all new Nation employees, and one for its Cherokee language revitalization project, which seeks to revitalize the Cherokee language by focusing on Cherokee youth. Why did the Cherokee Nation develop these two programs and what role do they play in the Nation’s rebuilding efforts?"

Mankiller: "Well, I think that the history course is just critical. And again I think that for all of us we live busy lives and everyone goes to school and receives a good education, but not that many people have the opportunity to learn about the legal and the political and the cultural history of their own people. And so, the history course provides a historical and cultural context for the current work of staff and members of the Cherokee Nation. It’s a very popular course. I think it’s important to understand our context and where we’ve been in order to figure out how to move forward. And then with the language revitalization program that was started because less than ten thousand people of our tribal membership is still fluent in the Cherokee language. And I think that our current chief felt that there needed to be some radical intervention at all levels and so they’re teaching Cherokee language in the preschool programs, in the public schools, there’s a Cherokee language course at the local university, and encouraging community leaders to speak Cherokee as well. So I think they’re both critical to our survival. If we get you know down the road five hundred years from now, and nobody remembers our history and nobody speaks our language, it’s not going to be very healthy for our people. So this is a tip to make sure that five hundred years from now we’ll still have a viable language and still have a sense of who we are as a people."

Q: "Pretend for a moment that I am a newly elected tribal leader who has been chosen to serve his nation for the first time. Drawing on your extensive experience as a tribal leader, what advice can you share to help empower me to rebuild my nation?"

Mankiller: "I think the best advice I would give is to develop teams of interdisciplinary teams of people to help you in problem-solving; don’t try to do it by yourself. And to rely on people, not just on staff, but people in the community to help you solve big problems. I think that that’s very very important. The other thing is that I think it’s important for leaders to remain focused. The mistake I see not just in tribal leaders, but in leaders in general whether they’re leading a country or leading a parent committee, is that they try to do too many things. And so it’s very important to say, 'What is it I want to accomplish during my term? What are the two or three major things that I want to accomplish during my term?' And then stay focused on them. We have such a daunting set of problems to face each day in tribal government that sometimes you can get sidetracked and the little things take up as much time as the big things and so it’s important to remain focused; that’s another thing I think is very very important. The other thing is I think there needs to be kind of a seamlessness between – this is just a personal thing – between your personal life and your professional life. Indian Country is a very small place and within a tribe it’s even smaller, so that you can't mistreat women, for example, and then be in a leadership position of leading women. So I think that people expect their leaders to conduct themselves in a certain way and it’s important to do that. I had the privilege of working with Peterson Zah, President of the Navajo Nation, and he is just a great example of a family man, a grandfather, someone who always conducted himself with just great dignity and great respect and I think that that’s important too to remember when you’re in leadership its not about you, you represent people and always keep the faces of those people in your head when you go someplace, you’re representing them and when you speak, you’re speaking for them. I think that’s important as well."

Q: "You talked about the importance of leaders focusing on the big picture and not getting sidetracked with the little things. How important are rules and specifically, rules that clearly define the boundaries of your position, how important is that to empowering leaders to be able to focus on the big picture? Because oftentimes, among some Native Nations where the rules aren’t clearly defined, the council feels particular, the council or chief executives feel like they have to do everything because there’s no rules or boundaries set to keep them focused on the big picture."

Mankiller:  "Right, I think that the single most important aspect of that is for there to be a clear role for the executive officer, whether it’s a principal chief or chairman of a business committee, and a clear role for the tribal council. One thing that helped me was that those roles weren’t fuzzy. We had three branches of government, the tribal council had a very clear legislative role and they also had a role for fiscal oversight and budgetary issues, and then my role was to manage, and the courts had their role. And so I think that having a clearly defined role is critical, very critical. And if people don’t have that now, I would encourage them to work very hard to make that happen. I can’t imagine having to make decisions by committee you know, consult people, work with them, but not having fifteen or twenty different people trying to make a decision."

Q:  "These days you’re dedicating a lot of your time and energy to raising awareness about the importance of Native Nations, providing the mainstream media and the general public a clear balanced picture of contemporary Native America. In particular, the amazing stories of success, innovation and renaissance that are taking place across Indigenous Country. Why is this educational effort so critical to Native Nations ability to achieve their nation-building goals?"

Mankiller: "It’s critical because even after hundreds of years of living in our former towns and villages, most Americans don’t know anything about us and there’s not accurate information about Native people in the popular culture, there’s not accurate information about Native people in literature, there’s not accurate information in secondary schools and universities. And because there’s so little accurate information about Native people, a lot of nonsensical stereotypes get developed. And because of those stereotypes, every time a tribal leader goes to the United States Congress and particularly for new members of Congress, they have to educate them about the history of Native people in this country. And so there’s still a number of people who want us to be like we were three hundred years ago or something. And so I think that it’s critical; I actually see shaping public perception as a sovereignty protection issue because I believe very strongly that public perception shapes public policy and that unless we take control of our own image and help frame our own issues and change the image of our people, that it will ultimately affect public policy."

Conclusion: "Well Wilma, I’d like to thank you very much for joining us today. I’ve learned a great deal and I’m sure our audience has as well. That’s all for today’s program of Leading Native Nations, produced by the Native Nations Institute and Arizona Public Media at the University of Arizona. To learn more about this program and Wilma Mankiller and her inspirational story, please visit the Native Nations Institute’s website at www.nni.arizona.edu. Thank you for joining us. Copyright 2008 Arizona Board of Regents."

Harvard Project Names Three Honoring Nations Leaders

Author
Producer
Indian Country Today
Year

Sharing outstanding programs in tribal self-governance and helping to expand the capacities of Tribal leaders through learning from each others’ successes is the mission of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development’s Honoring Nations program.

Recently the Honoring Nations program announced the selection of three Nation-building leaders for its 2014 Honoring Nations Leadership Program, supported by the Bush Foundation. The program is designed to foster nation-building capacity in the Bush Region–Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota–and will provide the opportunity for the three participants to contribute to the 2014 Honoring Nations awards cycle, which will include participation on a site visit and reporting to the Honoring Nations Board of Governors. Nation-building leaders will also have the opportunity to participate in a tribal governance session facilitated by the Native Nations Institute...

Resource Type
Citation

ICTMN Staff. "Harvard Project Names Three Honoring Nations Leaders." Indian Country Today Media Network. May 28, 2014. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/harvard-project-names-three-honoring-nations-leaders, accessed May 31, 2023)

Harvard Project Names 18 Semifinalists for Honoring Nations Awards

Author
Producer
Indian Country Today
Year

The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development recognizes exemplary tribal government initiatives and facilitates the sharing of best practices through its Honoring Nations awards program.

On March 3, the Harvard Project announced its selection of 18 semi-finalists for the 2014 Honoring Nations awards (listed below). Programs are judged on their significance to sovereignty, their cultural relevance, their transferability and their sustainability. Honoring Nations financial awards will help them provide models of success...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

ICTMN Staff. "Harvard Project Names 18 Semifinalists for Honoring Nations Awards." Indian Country Today Media Network. March 4, 2014. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/harvard-project-names-18-semifinalists-for-honoring-nations-awards, accessed May 31, 2023)

A Better Education for Native Students: The Morongo Method

Year

The Morongo School offers a promising way for Indian nations and communities to educate their children so they have a firm foundation in their own culture, and acquire skills to gain entry and complete college...

Resource Type
Citation

Champagne, Duane. "A Better Education for Native Students: The Morongo Method." Indian Country Today Media Network. September 03, 2013. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/a-better-education-for-native-students-the-morongo-method, accessed February 23, 2023)

A new Native American village based on tradition helps a Tribe reclaim its sustainable roots

Author
Year

The Ohkay Owingeh Tribe and Pueblo in New Mexico has returned to its roots with an award-winning, mixed-income housing project based on traditional Native forms. It's an exciting and inspiring project. Built by the Ohkay Owingeh Housing Authority explicitly as an alternative to sprawl-type housing, Tsigo Bugeh Village is a $5.3 million residential community that reflects traditional pueblo living with attached units divided around two plazas, one oriented to the solstice and the other to the equinox, as the tribe’s original pueblo was built. As the Housing Authority’s website points out, the homes are attached, their scale and massing similar to the original Ohkay Owingeh pueblo: “this is key to our architectural heritage, and the idea of community living that is central to our way of life.”...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Benfield, Kaid. "A new Native American village based on tradition helps a Tribe reclaim its sustainable roots." Switchboard: National Resources Defense Council Staff Blog, February 8, 2012. Article. (http://www.citylab.com/housing/2012/02/native-american-public-housing-project-returns-its-roots/1172/, accessed February 24, 2023)

Rebuilding The Tigua Nation

Producer
Patricia Riggs
Year

The Tigua Indians of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo in Ysleta, Texas produced this 16-minute film in 2013 to demonstrate how a Native American tribe can work hard with business skills and tribal customs to shape a prosperous future through education for all levels of the Tigua Nation.

Native Nations
Citation

Riggs, Patricia. "Rebuilding The Tigua Nation." Ysleta del Sur Pueblo (funding provided by the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development's Honoring Nations program). February 27, 2013. Video. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeolxGMrl0Q&feature=youtu.be, accessed October 16, 2013)