informed decision-making

Northern Cheyenne Constitutional Reform

Year

The Northern Cheyenne Tribe is a sovereign nation. It is a federally-recognized Indian tribe with powers and authority to govern the activities of its members. The Tribe is governed by a Constitution and Bylaws first adopted on November 23, 1935. In the early 1990s, in order to meet the demands of the expanding population and economic growth of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, the Tribal Council determined that its constitution needed to be amended. A Constitution Revision Committee was established to facilitate this process. The Committee was assigned the task of coming up with proposed constitutional amendments, hold public hearings and present their findings and recommendations to the Tribal Council. Finally, on May 10, 1996, a set of constitutional amendments was voted and adopted by the membership of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe. The amendments were divided into three parts: Governmental Reform, Separation of Powers, and Code of Ethics...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Gourneau, Norma, and Ian Record. "Northern Cheyenne Constitutional Reform." Red Ink: A Native American Student Publication. Vol. 8, No. 2. American Indian Studies Program, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. 2000: 63-66. Article.

Patricia Riggs: Making Change Happen at Ysleta del Sur Pueblo

Producer
Bush Foundation and the Native Nations Institute
Year

Patricia Riggs, Director of Economic Development at Ysleta del Sur Pueblo (YDSP), discusses how YDSP has developed and honed a comprehensive, multi-faceted approach to ciutizen engagement over the past decade in order to ensure that the decisions the YDSP government make reflect and enact the will of YDSP citizens.

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

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Riggs, Patricia. "Making Change Happen at Ysleta del Sur Pueblo." Bush Foundation and the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. St. Paul, Minnesota. February 6, 2014. Presentation.

Ian Record:

“So without further ado, I want to introduce Patricia Riggs. As I mentioned earlier, Patricia is the Director of Economic Development for Ysleta del Sur Pueblo in El Paso, Texas. We’ve worked with Ysleta del Sur for a number of years sort of off and on and we’re often asked to come and teach, do executive education with some of their leadership or program managers and so forth, and what we often find is that we end up learning a heck of a lot more from them than we actually teach them. We consider them one of the breakaway tribes that are really enacting these nation-building principles we’ve talked about and doing it in very culturally distinct ways. Patricia is going to talk about actually making change happen, how did they actually make change happen because they were faced with a crisis about 12, 13 years ago now, 2002, that threatened to really derail the nation and how did they come from that point where, listening to you guys talk, where a lot of your nations are, the struggles that you’re having and how do you actually begin to go down that nation-building road. So without further ado, Patricia Riggs. Thank you very much, Patricia, for joining us and enduring the cold weather.”

Patricia Riggs:

“Thank you very much. I’m really glad to be here. I know I emailed Ian yesterday and asked if it was still on because it was one degrees, and to me that’s like really a catastrophe because we don’t get that kind of weather. So I guess to you it’s pretty normal. I’m here and I’m really happy to be here and I want to share with you some of the things that we’ve done at Ysleta del Sur Pueblo. We’ve actually done quite a bit of work over the last 10 years and I know and I feel how you’re struggling to get everybody involved in what you’re doing. So I’m glad to share the practices of the programs, as well as the strategic plans and how we implemented them at Ysleta del Sur Pueblo.

One of the things that we really truly believe in is citizen engagement and we do it as a comprehensive approach. So we get everybody involved in whatever program or project that we’re working on and at first it was really, really difficult. We really didn’t have a plan, we didn’t have a structure and we just kind of figured it out as we went along, but what we’re doing now is we’re looking back and kind of evaluating our successes and coming up with a model, not just for ourselves, but to share it with other tribes as well, and also teaching that model within our own community to the different programs so that they can follow it.

So as far as community engagement is concerned, we really believe that all our tribal members have to be involved in the planning and decision-making, and especially when it comes to a particular issue. If it’s something that could be life changing for the tribe or has just significant meaning, we make sure that we get that input from our tribal community. And then the other thing is…one of the things is we really try to make sure that it’s not just one group or one person kind of setting the agenda for what we’re trying to change because that involvement from the community is necessary in order to get the buy in for the project. And then also just listening and respecting the community and leadership and elders, all your people that are going to help support this program. So at the end, you get all that feedback that you got for the community and that’s the tool that you use in order to make an informed decision.

So as we worked over the years with the community and we came up with different plans and program models -- as I said earlier -- we looked back and kind of started to look at what we actually did and at first we used things that were like theories and models and things that were developed by academia and what we realized is that all the time we had to tweak them. We were constantly tweaking them to make them meet our needs. So what we determined is really this is what our comprehensive model is at Ysleta del Sur Pueblo.

First you have to have a purpose and a passion. So we all know our purpose as leaders in our tribe, that we’re there to preserve and to do things for our community so that we can build stronger communities but…and so we all have passion for that, but we also have to break down that purpose into more detailed objective so that we can have a plan for what we’re doing. So we also harvest ideas and input from the community and along the way we have to find those core champions. There’s the people that will help you in the community to get things done and then…

So what you’re doing now with this action plan is you’re visualizing and assessing your community and then you’re going to plan. So you also have to measure the outcomes and impacts and at the end you have to have the data that something changed or that something was improved and you have to report the results. And I have ‘report the results’ at the end, but it actually takes place all the way through.

So this is that same model with a little more background to it. So for us the things as far as purpose and passion, includes really looking at what the Pueblo needs are. So our needs are always about our values and our culture and traditions and governance, but then you also break down those things into the other things that are necessary to survive today. So the purpose or the passion for your particular project could be health, education or in my case economic development.

So in regards to harvest ideas and input, what we really found as we kind of worked with the community is that it really is honoring the people. In the work that we do, we need to honor the people and that’s why we need that community engagement because they have something to say and they also sometimes don’t articulate it in the same way that we do because we’re professionals and we’re trained, but they have input that sometimes you’ve just got to bring out from them. And then also we talk about things like historical trauma and just everything that we have to do to survive as a community. So sometimes it’s really hard to get the ideas and input and get community engaged because they have their own things that they’re dealing with. So we have to find different ways to bring it out.

So one of the things that we do is we always talk about community values and figure out how we’re going to instill those values in the projects that we’re working on. So when you’re working with the community, you’ve got to earn that trust. You’ve got to demonstrate to them that what you’re doing is for the benefit of the entire community. So in order to earn that trust, you’ve really got to listen. When we first started listening, we started listening by doing like small advisory groups and focus groups and as time went on, we found that more and more people wanted to communicate what they felt about what we were doing.

So we started doing surveys and…which is not really a traditional way of getting information, but we made sure that the surveys really had questions in them that people cared about and that were going to benefit out community in the long term. And much to our astonishment, people were answering the surveys and we had these open-ended questions where people were just putting these really profound statements that we couldn’t have said any better. And as we started collecting the information, we found like maybe…we found trends and if it was about rebuilding or re-establishing maybe like old pueblo [style] homes, we kept finding those…people had the same concerns. So we were able to report that out and find consensus in that. And then the other thing is we never said who said what, but we put statements and actual quotes and people began to become proud of their quotes actually being in our reports.

We had a lot of community meetings and we did a lot of study, but we always have to report it out, always. So then what we found is we…you have to have those core champions in your community. You have elders and traditional people and opinion leaders. When you have your advisory groups, you get the people that have a lot of influence in different clans or different parts of the community and we brought them along. We also looked at the different partners, youth, as well as employees, and programs. One of the things that I do want to say about using employees is sometimes when we use employees we don’t realize that we saying, ‘Oh, they’re all tribal so that’s our community.’ But what we don’t realize is the employees are usually the ones that are better off and have bigger incomes and have less need than the people that are really out there in the community. So you’ve really got to be careful to make sure that your groups are really truly diversified.

And so what we’re doing right now, we’re creating these action plans. So we’re visualizing what we want to do, and assessing what our community needs are, in order to make that plan. But really what I call it is a shared dream. We have a shared dream to sustain our cultures and our communities both traditionally and economically and unfortunately nowadays we really have to have an economic foundation in order to save our culture and our languages and our traditions and our ceremonies. So we really...by getting the input from communities, we’re able to visualize and to have that statement and create those goals and mission and vision statements.

Of course you set the goals and do all the traditional things that you do in strategic planning here, and so then we measure our outcomes and impacts and that really is about collective success. We’re a community who all have to have some sort of collective success in order to continue to live as a community. But we do those things like, for example, we teach nation building and we do the pre/post tests and we make sure that we increase the knowledge. If we do financial literacy, we make sure that people are actually saving money and that they’re creating bank accounts. And if we do…we have a VITA [Volunteer Income Tax Assistance] program. So we…but you report all those things out to the community and then you report the results.

We have all kinds of ways that we report the results. We have newsletters, we do community, what we call juntas, which is where the community is informed of certain things both business and traditional doings, but it’s a place where the community has a voice and so we also present whatever it is we’re going to…any big project that we’re going to start working on, we present it there. And we have a really good website also.

This presentation has kind of evolved over time and at first we were just doing the presentation maybe to council and the community and we…parts of the presentation we were doing to…presenting to youth council, but now we’re finding that more and more as we build more programs that are more sophisticated that you have to bring consultants in. And a lot of times, our tribal members don’t have certain expertise, so you have to bring those other people in to help you with your programs.

So these four…the 'Five Rs for Tigua' is what we’re calling them is we’re really advocating that people have a job to do and that they need to do it correctly and that they need to consider the community. Note that whatever you’re working on, you’re representing the entire Tigua community and the Tigua people. You have a responsibility to teach, protect, speak up for, ask, inquire, develop trust and stand up for the community. You have to reach out to the community and you have to teach, educate. Sometimes we go back and forth, it might take a year or two to actually get just the vision for one program. But you have to make sure that it is what the community needs. And then research, and this is mostly for researchers coming into the community, but even us as tribal employees, we have the responsibility to know that there’s cultural issues in research and that culture does matter and that whatever research and data that we collect that we have a responsibility to protect and then of course report the findings.

So I’m not going to go through all of these, but I’m sure you heard them every day in your work. I heard some people talking about negativity and how it is…how hard it is just to get past that, but the fact of the matter is that it’s just actually always going to be there and that you, as hard as it is, we have to find ways to tell people that that’s not actually true because some of these things that are being said are actually misconceptions or aren’t really true because…there are times that I’ve been sitting at the table and we’re discussing how we’re going to develop this new program or change something and people are saying things like, ‘Ah, what does it matter? Nobody cares. Tiguas aren’t going to listen. Tiguas don’t want to learn,’ and just some really negative statements where I think if I was somebody else, I would jump over the table and just kind of slap them upside the head, but you can’t do that, you’re working for the community.

One of the other things is that I know that we all have problems with our council, but sometimes we also use that as an excuse to not move forward. It’s easier just to blame everybody else than to look at our own programs and look at what we’re doing and to determine if there’s ways that we can change things to do better outreach and to educate people and to take more time to explain how things can be changed or things can be better. Believe me, I’ve gone through all kinds of just things with a terrible council, I don’t want to get into it, but there are days that they support me and there are days that they don’t support me at all. So I just have to figure out how to get through it and just keep moving. Otherwise I might as well just throw in the towel.

Does everyone think that sustainable development is a really difficult concept to teach? How do you build better economies? It seems really complex, right? But in reality we’ve been doing it forever. This is sustainable development -- finding ways to use your resources in a way that is best for your community.

This is Taos Pueblo, which somebody just mentioned today, but this community has been there for hundreds and hundreds of years and it’s still there and it’s still being maintained and people are still living there.

This is Ysleta del Sur Pueblo in 1880. Unfortunately, it’s no longer there in that way. What happened is in about 1880 the county decided that they wanted to extend a highway. So they held condemnation proceedings against the tribe and they tore it down and they put the highway right through there. So now actually to go through our ceremonies, we have to go across a busy highway and they have to stop traffic, tribal police stops traffic for us to go into procession to go into our traditional ceremonial places. But we’re still sustaining ourselves and we’re still sustaining our culture and despite all this adversity we’re still doing what we need to do to continue our ceremonies.

So I just can’t imagine what the people felt when the entire Pueblo was being torn down and the kind of adversity that they faced in order to continue our traditions. So we have a lot of adversity in front of us, but there’s been that adversity all the time, and it’s people like us, and it’s people like you that are going to get our people through it. So I’m just saying don’t give up because we’re still here and no matter how much…I’ve gone to bed crying. I never do it in front of community. I’m always like, ‘Suck it up, Pat.’ But I know how it feels to be working so hard for your community and just not feeling like you’re not getting to where you want to be.

I just feel like everything that we’re doing is a test. So we have these big things to do that are a test for our community and it’s a test that other people have already been through and it’s our turn to pass that test. So there’s different ways that we need to do it and one of the things that we do at Ysleta del Sur Pueblo is we’re always finding ways to educate the community and to empower the community. So as Ian said, we have all these different seminars, but we’re also now able to put these presentations on ourselves. So we’ve been learning everything that people like Native Nations Institute has showed us, as well as Harvard Project or NCAI, and we’ve tailored just about everything we’ve learned to fit into our community.

The other thing is we go to conferences and we have the opportunity to go to training and get certifications, but our people don’t. So somehow we need to bring those things back and make sure that we teach it in a way that they can understand also. Right now you all are developing programs and your action plans. These are our views of how we see what we need to do to reach our community. Like economic development for example, we want sustainable self-determination. Land use, we do land use also. We have to bring housing, roads and water. And we have social and health concerns, we have cancer, diabetes, and child abuse just like any other Native community. And then we also have education programs and we want to get them from pre-K to get them college bound, and actually become college graduates. And then we have cultural programs as well.

But there are ways that we view it and all those technical aspects of the programs that we’re developing, but you really have to sit back and think about what the community thinks because they’re viewing it different. They have the…a lot of it is not as complex to them and also about what it means to them personally and traditionally and culturally. So we have to find ways to make our programs culturally relevant and change those messages to get it out there to the community. Just keep in mind that they have a completely different view potentially than you do. At the end it might be the same, but how to make sure that you’re on the same page is you…it takes a lot of effort.

In order to harvest these ideas and input, we also have to address the longstanding concerns such as land loss, historical trauma and discrimination. Some of our people or our kids don’t even know that our…their great-grandparents went to boarding school. We have really nice housing and a really nice community, but these…all this housing and new infrastructure is new. All these other things such as historical trauma and…it didn’t go away. You can’t put somebody in a new house and it all of a sudden disappears. So we really try to discuss these things and talk about it even to the youth.

We also honor Indigenous knowledge and make sure in everything that we do we get those expertise from the community to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into what we’re doing. And then just realize…I know that…I think I heard somebody talk about how everybody has different views. So in Native communities, we all don’t think the same so we need to make sure that we get the different views from different community members and that we get those people with the knowledge. So look for those people that can help you with your programs and again earn trust. I can’t stress that enough.

So this is about value systems and as I said I teach this to different people, sometimes with local agencies that work with the tribe, but the top part here is kind of the value systems that everyone has or should have. They’re values from different organizations, maybe tribal…city governments, corporations, but then we also have our own set of value systems and we have to make sure that these things mesh and that they balance in order to get our programs and our goals out there.

A little bit about community engagement. If you invite them, they will not come. This is the flyer method and I did it, too. When I first started I just kind of sent out some flyers and then sat there and talked about how nobody was engaged, nobody cared, and in reality how many flyers do you get or correspondences that you never look at? And if you’re never looking at them, how do you expect to have a different reaction from your community members? So you have to figure out different ways to engage your community.

This is us at work, playing games instead of working, but we’ve developed these different games, traditional games and this is a game that we did with the directors. You can see they’re having a lot of fun, kind of icebreakers and stuff. But the point that I want to make is sometimes we have these inter-agency or director meetings and we start doing all our planning, but we’re not really engaging your community because this is your community -- it’s the people that are out there.

So what we do as far as trying to do effective marketing and getting the community engaged and involved is we actually will host a different series of events and we have different partners engaged. We will take our message to things like Grandparents’ Day. We’ve had like just mini pow wows to show off what the youth can do, and also go to the elder center and take our message to them and try to get people involved in the projects that we’re working on, and just recruit advisory people from even a community picnic. We do a lot of things for the vets also because we’ve also found that they’re just…there’s a lot of leadership there as far as the vets are concerned and so our message is put out there through various ways.

You really have to look for those core champions. You have to work with the youth. We do have a youth council and we teach them the nation-building concepts and we work with youth in entrepreneurship and other ways, but the thing about youth is they all have parents. So when you honor your youth and you demonstrate to them and you have these awards and certificates, their parents come too. And then so we do a lot of things with leadership as well. As I said, we work with elders, with the different program directors and then we also invite traditional people to a lot of our events and we have them give the traditional prayer, we might have them do storytelling or a blessing.

And then we also have the tribal enterprises work with us and we teach this to new employees coming in, but we also teach it to the enterprises as well. So we ask the people that are coming in, especially when they’re outside of the community, to take this training, which actually has about…there’s actually 10 different presentations that we do. We work with them as well and they also sponsor us, but it’s also a marketing and advertising tool for them also.

So these are just kind of again different things that we do. I won’t go over all of them, but of course food always works, and letting people talk, and also we all have our own little kind of tribal jokes that we tell also.

This is just a map that I kind of put out there to try to help you map how you’re going to get your community…you can do it whatever way that you want, but depending on the project, the map might go in different directions to be able to get the input and engagement and support that you need from different community members. I think Ian is going to have this available. We don’t have a whole lot of time. I don’t need to go over that. I think we all know that. But sometimes you get people from the outside that just don’t understand. The reason…teepees might be relevant where you have Sioux, Lakota, but for us we have Pueblos. That stereotypical kind of put some guy on a horse type of thingstill happens from time to time. We actually had one director who was non-tribal that thought that she could incorporate cultural relevancy by just putting the word 'tradition' in front of every bulletin agenda item.

June Noronha:

“Pat, just a question. So when you say not to do it. You’re not saying not to do traditional education, right?”

Patricia Riggs:

“No, it’s actually two different things. What not to do is put the word 'traditional' in front of every bullet item and expect it to be traditional. And then in order to really get out there and figure out what you need to do for your community, you really do have to know the footprint of the community. You need to know everything. What are the community values, what do you think the elders are concerned with, what is this generation concerned with and what is the next generation going to face? We need to know the ancestors and our history and everything cultural and ceremonial and where our sacred places are because everything -- no matter what it is that you’re doing -- it somehow interrelates. And you have to take all those things from the past and all our cultural things and apply them to what we’re doing now.

I have ‘make no assumptions’ out there, because a lot of times we don’t really go out there and study what the needs are. We just kind of make these assumptions based on our own experiences, but you really do have to have a collective measure of what the community needs. And then I have this up here because our communities have always been planning. And so this model, whether we know it or not, it worked in the old days, too. So in our community, we had to build homes. So that was our purpose and our passion, but we had to go out there and we had to look for the clay and we had to get the trees so we had to harvest the ideas from people in the community to figure out where to get those resources from. We had a core of champions that would actually make the things happen and build the architecture in the community and then we had to visualize, assess and plan. Our communities always faced east.

And then we had to measure the outcomes and impacts. We figured out whether we were building homes that were going to sustain the community and then report results. We love to brag. The same thing works with food. We had to plan our acequias. We actually created or established the entire irrigation system, what is in El Paso’s lower valley, which is no longer under our control, but we’re the ones that put the main channels of water systems into that community. And then of course our ceremonies took a lot of planning as well and throughout the year.

Why did we do this? Ian talked a little bit about how we had major problems that we really had to address and that we were kind of dumbfounded on how we were going to move forward. Well, our tribe, because we were situated in West Texas, we were never federally recognized because we were part of the…Texas was in the Confederacy when Abraham Lincoln acknowledged the Pueblos in New Mexico so we got left out. We continued to practice our ceremonies and continued to have a tribal council, but it wasn’t until the 1960s, when we were losing all our homes to tax foreclosure because our properties weren’t on trust and in the 60s we were in El Paso. El Paso was growing around us and everybody in El Paso had electricity and running water except for us. We had this community right in the middle of El Paso and our unemployment rate was 75 percent, our education was fifth grade. We worked in the fields that were once ours to sustain ourselves.

And so we had somebody come in, an attorney assisted us and we were federally restored in 1969, not restored, but recognized. So our economy started to get a little bit better. Our unemployment was by the 70s at 50 percent, which is better than 75 percent and our education started to rise as well. At least we made it to high school and we built our first housing division. When we were recognized, we were also terminated at the same time. I know it’s kind of odd, but Texas had the Texas Indian Commission so the United States transferred the trust responsibility to Texas, but when Texas went broke in the 80s they decided the first thing they were going to do away with was the Texas Indian Commission. So we had to go back to Congress and get federally restored.

So that’s when we decided that we were going to open the casino because Texas had passed a gaming law with the Lottery Act. And there was one small clause in our restoration act that said, ‘The tribe shall not have gaming that is illegal in Texas.’ And with that one sentence they were able to sue and close us down. So for a short time we experienced high employment rates and we had…our unemployment rate went down to five percent, we started building all this infrastructure and housing, we started buying our land back. We went from 68 acres to 75,000 acres and then when Texas sued, they actually won, and most of that is because we were in the Fifth Circuit and the Fifth Circuit doesn’t really have any experience with tribes.

So by 2002, the casino closed and our unemployment rate went immediately up to 18 percent in one year and we haven’t been able to lower it to single digits since then and all our businesses except for the smoke shop were failing so we had to come up with something. So we started doing nation building. And in order to do nation building we really started looking at our…and assessing where we were as a community so we did a lot of data collection and those are one of the surveys that we started getting information from all the community and started having to educate them about how important it was for them to give us this information because we needed to bring more money into the community. Some of the money came in through grants and we needed this money to be able to build other ways to be able to sustain ourselves and we didn’t think that the grants were going to be a long-term solution, but we needed them to have…jumpstart us.

I’m not going to go through all the profile, but just to let you know that we do on an annual basis collect all this data. We know who’s enrolled, what the poverty levels are, what the unemployment levels are and what basically the status of all tribal members as a whole. When we started working on different projects, first we started with a comprehensive economic development strategy, which include economic and community development in both housing and jobs and community development corporation and we established Tigua Inc. to separate business and politics. And then we also created policy and infrastructure that would help the tribe be more successful.

One of the things that we did is we changed our tax code because for some really odd reason the tribe had decided to borrow the State of Texas tax code, which made absolutely no sense and it was way too long and we couldn’t enforce it. So just by changing it we went from like a 200 page tax code to 20 pages. In one year we went from $58,000 in taxes collected to $1.2 million.

And then this is our new Tigua Business Center, which is an incubator for the Tigua Development Corporation, as well as houses Economic Development and that was in Brownsville. There was an old Texas Department of Public Safety maintenance facility and now it’s a LEAD certified energy efficient building. And then just real quick here…

We’re also doing a lot of planning and development in land use. So planning and development and protecting our lands is important to cultural preservation as well as our traditional practices, but we also need land for residential and commercial uses and agriculture and transportation as well. So this is kind of lays out our plan over the next 100 years in a snapshot, but really what the reality is is that we need to preserve Ysleta del Sur Pueblo because we’re in the middle of the city and the city keeps encroaching even more and more on us and we have all these kind of technical things that we need to do, but in the end 100 years from now it’s still about preserving Ysleta del Sur Pueblo and continuing our culture.

We are always continually looking for resources to get this done and planning and this is all the planning that takes place in the modern sense, but I think it was Winona LaDuke that said that, ‘Loss of biodiverse land and natural resources is directly correlated to loss of culture for Indigenous communities.’ So in the end we’re trying to buy back as much land as possible to bring back and to keep those traditional places.

This is just an example of our land use survey and we did different…these are…on the bottom we had these maps and we had the community draw out in certain areas what they wanted the community to look like and then of course we went through a series of different questions. And these are…I talked a little bit about us when we do the reports, we put actual statements. We don’t identify the people. These are also statements. And then what we found as we were talking to the community is that they wanted to see our cultural life cycle built into the way that we planned our community. So we have places for youth to nurture them in our plan and as well as places where people come together to do, like we have a nation-building hub and elder center. And at the end how is our plan going to sustain us into the next generation. And then this is some of the modern areas that look not so nice right now, but these are also areas that are slated for land acquisition that we no longer own and this is a plan of what we can potentially do with them. This real quickly is, everything in yellow is what we own because we have a severe checkerboard situation and we know we can’t buy everything back, but what’s in purple is what we eventually want to look like.

We also do some things around citizenship. In our restoration act also our blood quantum was set at one-eighth. So we had to go back to Congress to remove our…we were one of the only two tribes in the country whose blood quantum was set by Congress. So that was one of the big things that we just recently had passed by Congress, so there’s a lot of planning around that and how we’re going to get everybody on the rolls and also provide services for everyone. And then this is just a little joke for my nephew Chris [Gomez], just saying that people in the community have thoughts and messages to convey, so make sure you get them.”

Eva Petoskey: Empowering Good Leadership Through Capable Governance: What My Leadership Experience Taught Me

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Eva Petoskey, citizen and former council member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians (GTB), discusses her experiences as an elected leader during a pivotal time in GTB's history. She also stress the importance of Native nations developing capable institutions of self-governance in order to empower their leaders to think strategically, engage in informed decision-making, and focus their time and energy on achieving their nations' long-term priorities. Finally, she provides a detailed history of GTB's development of its revenue allocation ordinance.

People
Resource Type
Citation

Petoskey, Eva. "Empowering Good Leadership Through Capable Governance: What My Leadership Experience Taught Me." Leading Native Nations interview series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. October 3, 2013. Interview.

Ian Record:

"Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I'm your host, Ian Record. On today's program, we are honored to have with us Eva Petoskey. Eva is a citizen of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and served as an elected member of the Grand Traverse Band Council from 1990 to 1996. She also is the better half of John Petoskey, longtime general counsel of the Grand Traverse Band, who is serving as Indigenous Leadership Fellow with the University of Arizona's Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy. Eva, welcome and good to have you with us today."

Eva Petoskey:

"Thank you for inviting me."

Ian Record:

"As I mentioned in your introduction, you served a total of six years as an elected council member of your nation during a critical time in the nation's growth and development. Can you briefly paint a picture of what that time was like and the kinds of decisions you were confronted with as an elected leader?"

Eva Petoskey:

"Sure, but first I think I'll introduce myself in our language because it is our custom when we're asked to speak, especially for our tribe or our experience with our tribe to do that. So [Anishinaabe language]; that's my Anishinaabe name and my clan. So now I'm in a better position to speak."

Ian Record:

"Okay. So I appreciate that and I was remiss -- I usually ask folks to introduce themselves when we start, but I'm curious, you and I have sat down a couple of times this week to talk about your leadership experience and you came into elected office at a really critical time and you mentioned a story that when you started in office the council actually met in a pole barn?"

Eva Petoskey:

"Well, actually our casino was operated in a pole barn and our council chambers were a very small room that we met in and so yeah, we were a much smaller operation and 1990 was two years after we finally adopted our constitution. We did receive federal recognition in 1980, but it took about eight years to get approval of our constitution because it had a lot of complicated issues. But once we had a constitution, we had elections and I was in the second cohort of elected tribal council members after our federal acknowledgement. So at that time, in 1990, our tribe employed about maybe 50 people, maybe that's on the high end of the estimate and currently we employ about 2,500 people. So you can see over the course of 25 years -- well, it isn't quite 25 years, I guess it's 13...I don't know, I can't do the math, whatever 1990 is from our current time here. I guess it is almost 25, 23 years, yeah -- so we've had a lot of growth and those six years that I served was a time when there was tremendous development.

We...I think...during that time, we signed the first gaming compact with the State of Michigan. Of course the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act had just been passed I think in '88 so we were among the new gaming tribes. We had a small gaming operation that was operated out of a small pole barn and it was making money, but after we entered into the compact and even before that time we did some gaming development locally and expanded our casino development. From the time I served from '90 to '96, we went from a small pole barn to two upgrades in a facility within our Leelanau County reservation, Grand Traverse Band Anishinaabe town reservation. And then later in 1996 -- at the end of my time of service -- we opened the Turtle Creek Casino, which is a large operation. So a lot of expansion in gaming, a lot of infrastructure development. I'm not a gambler; I really knew nothing about gaming, so a huge learning curve for me and other council members. Some of our council members had worked within the gaming operation so they knew more about the operation of the casino. I was totally new to that. I had come to it with about 15 years of work experience in human services, social services, education so I was not...that was a big learning curve for me and I think for all of us and a lot of the policy infrastructure that we had to develop.

In terms of other developments...do you want me to continue on? We had huge growth again in terms of health care. At the time that I was elected, we were operating our health clinic out of a modular building, a very small clinic that served primarily the Anishinaabe town community and we had a six county service area. So it was difficult for our members from other areas to come into the Anishinaabe town community because sometimes it was as much as a 60-, 70-mile drive to come to the clinic and that was the only tribally supported, Indian Health Service-supported clinic that we operated at the time. And so now over the course and during the time period that I was in office, we built a very large health facility using primarily gaming revenue, a few other grants, and some support from the Indian Health Service. But the Indian Health Service dollars were never enough and probably will never be enough to provide the support for health care and both health and behavioral health services that we provide through our clinic now. During that time, those six years we built this fabulous facility and have been operating it ever since, so that's another area of really substantial development.

Treaty fishing, inland hunting, we had a lot of continuing issues related to exercising our treaty rights to fish in the Great Lakes and Lake Michigan within our treaty territory. We were in a transition from using gill nets to trap nets. It was an enormous transition for fishing people, men and women, because the gill net is more of a traditional way of catching fish and to try to change your whole equipment and upgrade, all these...it's very complicated. It's very complicated and a wide array of issues that we dealt with: land acquisition, putting land into trust, those are some of the...we developed a lot of housing during that time. We also had I think only one tribal house that we had built in 1990, maybe there were a few more, but now we have tribal housing in all surrounding service area, out of all six counties I think five of the six counties now have tribal housing."

Ian Record:

"You mentioned health care and the fact that some of the gaming revenue that you had generated -- which rapidly grew during your time in office and certainly after -- went to healthcare and went to housing and so forth. And that involved the establishment of the revenue allocation ordinance, basically the tribe creating an ordinance in conjunction with the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act to determine how the money that they were generating through gaming was going to be used by the tribe. And as you've shared with me, that was quite a long, drawn-out, contentious deliberations process. Can you sort of paint a picture of what that process was like in terms of coming to a decision about how the money was going to be spent and actually putting that into law and just what the revenue allocation is?"

Eva Petoskey:

"Sure. Before I do that, though, I'll say that we...even prior to the development of a revenue allocation ordinance, we did have a budget procedure and it was in policy. And so we had a transparent budget process where every...we developed an annual budget and we hold public hearings for the members to have input into the budget process and to review the priorities for the budget. So we already had that in place actually. And it was fairly new. We'd developed it during that time. I felt...for me that was one of my top priorities that we have a transparent budget process and that we have...that members have the ability or citizens have the ability to be involved in developing some of the priorities. So I'll say that first. We also were a tribe that...we kind of took development slow. We were trying to pay as we go, we didn't want to get into a big loan agreement with someone and so we were saving money. This was prior to the development of our per cap discussion...internal discussion on per capita distribution, so we had quite a bit of money saved, several million dollars. We were hoping that we would be able to use those funds to do gaming expansion without going deeply into debt. But somewhere around maybe 1993, a group of tribal members -- called themselves the Tribal Members Advocacy Group -- which actually normally I would be all for, because I think it's really important for citizens to have input into their governmental decisions, and in a way I was all for it except I was on the wrong end of the issue on the per capita distribution at that time, myself and...we had a seven-member council, four of us were not for the per capita, at least initially, and three members were. So we did have a majority to keep the per capita discussion distribution at bay. However, after a lot of internal debate and dialogue there was a petition drive to put the per capita distribution on the...as a referendum. And when I saw the petition, it was shocking to me as an elected -- I don't call myself a leader -- elected official of the tribe because everyone that I knew, all of my friends, all of my relatives, with the exception of my mother, had signed the petition for the per capita distribution. And I think my mother would have signed it possibly had she not been my mother. So there was a...it was a huge move, it was a huge movement, there really was no stopping it. So to me, it came down to the question of did I want to remain in office because I think had we dug our feet in? We probably wouldn't have been and that would have delayed the process, but I don't think it ultimately would have made a difference; the momentum was just too great. So I just say that for other tribes and other people in similar situations, not to say that you should necessarily make that choice, but it is an option and it was an option that I chose to eventually vote for the per capita distribution partially, probably in large part, so I could be part of the process of putting together the ordinance that would control how we would use the money and how it would be distributed. So if I'd have been removed from office I wouldn't have had that opportunity to participate in those policy decisions so it was a conscious decision on my part, a huge compromise. But those are the things that I think are the difficult challenges in leadership, especially if something... it didn't sit right with me. I made the statement in one of the public meetings that one of the challenges with the per capita distribution was that we would be in some...in a lot of cases, the people who could benefit most from the resources in terms of their income, people living in poverty or well below poverty, who were currently eligible say for food stamps or other benefits, health benefits, Medicaid, would lose those benefits. So in a way it was a wash. We were basically paying the money out to the federal or state government and while that was true and the facts supported it, it was really an unpopular statement because no one really was wanting to listen to reason at the time. So it was quite a learning experience. It was not a rational...particularly rational process, but that's politics and that's leadership, learning to set up the most rational system you can and then when the decision making isn't rational, learn to sort out with some degree of wisdom or insight as to which way to go, so we did put together a revenue allocation ordinance. I think we were probably one of the first tribes to do so, and right or wrong to avoid being held hostage by the momentum in the community we allowed, at that time it was up to 50 percent of your net revenue from gaming could be allocated to per capita distribution and that's what we did."

Ian Record:

"So the...and I know there's been some minor tinkering with it over the years and we'll get into one of the recent developments around it here in a second, but how does the per capita distribution policy currently work for adults and then how does it work for minors? And I know you've shared with me that the minors' trust accounts was a very contentious issue at the outset."

Eva Petoskey:

"Yeah, it was contentious, but let me say generally that the per capita distribution is half of the net revenue goes to individuals and the remaining half is split...well, I guess the remaining portions are split: 25 percent goes to tribal government operations, which would include all services and the operation of government itself. And then 15 percent to -- I always get these two wrong -- 15 percent to long-term investment and I think...or I think it's 10 percent to long-term investment, 15 percent to economic development, so that there were three other funds set up: tribal government operations, long term investment and economic development. So that was the whole pie of the...our revenue...I don't like to use acronyms -- so the revenue allocation ordinance. When it came to how the per capita distribution was to be, the 50 percent of per cap, that was very contentious and I sat as the chairperson of the committee that put the revenue allocation ordinance together. There were about maybe 10 or a dozen of us on the committee from all factions including people that were in the leadership of the TMAG, the Tribal Members Advocacy Group. So we all sat together and I think I told you this earlier when we were discussing this, I'm kind of a storyteller so forgive me if I start...I could be here for probably hours, but I'll tell the short story. I decided that we needed to use...try to come together. So we did this in a talking-circle format using some of our ceremonies, just simple...the smudging and then using an eagle feather that I had brought to kind of help us come together as a community to figure out how we would, now that we'd made a decision, how we would carry that decision out. So we had a lot of discussions and some of them were heated and well, I don't know if they were heated, they were... ctually they were quite civil I should say, they were quite civil, but a lot of difference of opinion expressed and...one of the things I brought up, I asked the group, "˜Many tribes, ours in particular, has a long history of kind of disruption, enormous disruption due to loss of land, a rapid kind of economic change, the whole culture over the last, we call it the '150[-year] Anishinaabe abyss period' and we certainly were emerging from that.' I think we're emerging from that now, but certainly was a very dark period in our history I would say from the 1850s forward until probably in the 1970s when we started to reclaim our place and through the law, which has been a good tool for us. But as a result of that abyss period, we have many of our people who were put in boarding schools, my mother went to Mt. Pleasant Indian School, my husband's parents went to Mt. Pleasant Indian School, all of that generation, people in our parent's generation and many in our generation either went to boarding school...my grandmother went to Carlisle, so it goes back several generations. So people were... had their lives disrupted in many ways. So we always bring this to the table in our deliberations because this is who we are. Many of us are people who have suffered enormous loss in terms of our family relationships, our cultural identity, our language, our ability to speak the language in our community. The generation that spoke the language is...many have passed on, but my mother's first language was Anishinaabe or Odawa. All of my family members could converse and I grew up hearing this, but now in this generation that's not the case. So I go into...I just say that because this is sort of who we are as we sit at the table together. We are all of these people that have...all of these humans that have brought all of this collective history to the table when we have a discussion and this particular discussion on how to distribute this money that we had, which most of us had never had, was a difficult one. So I did ask the group how many of us...because one of the issues that was very contentious was whether or not children should have an equal portion in the distribution and some of us had the position, including myself, that felt -- and a number of the group felt -- that everyone should have an equal share. There was another contingency that children should not have a share and that the money should go to their parents and then there would be more money just go for people 18 and older. That was probably one of the most contentious complaints and other smaller things about how frequently the distributions should be made, etc., but the one over who receives a share and what type of share was really a contentious discussion and in the end we made a...we agreed on a plan where everyone would have an equal share, but it was a painful discussion and at one point in the discussion I did as the group around the table just to tell you about not only our tribe, but the circumstances of many tribes and maybe...probably as many...maybe more so in our region of the country, I don't know how the impact of boarding schools and some of those effects were out here in the southwest. I'm not as educated about that, but in our part of the country many people were raised outside of their family, not by their parents, either through foster care, adoption, or through boarding schools and in our group of people around this table discussing our per capita distribution, only two of us had been raised by our parents, myself and one other member, one other citizen. So that was a sad commentary on where we were, where we are still. I think the impact of that..."

Ian Record:

"But you used that as a counter to the contention that parents should get their kid's share because they're the ones taking care of the children."

Eva Petoskey:

"Yes and I...it didn't make me popular, but I said a difficult statement of, "˜How well were we cared for by our parents? And no offense to anyone or to any of your parents. I am in the same category.' I just had a really strong mother who didn't allow things to happen and a really strong grandmother and some other people did too, obviously. But anyway, yeah, that was why I brought the discussion up. It was a hard discussion, but it did in part bring us around to a reasonable decision, which I think there have been problems with. So since we've had the per capita distribution...like I said to you the other day, I could probably talk for several days on this because it was a long, contentious process and other tribes have dealt with it in other ways, but now that...once we had a decision about how we would distribute, there have been challenges with it. Some young people don't use their money wisely. The money is held in trust for the young people until it is paid out when they're age 19 and...over 19, 20, 21 over three payments. So some young people use their money wisely. I guess they probably...whoever, however they're using it, I think they may think it's wisely, but maybe not. And others have not used it as wisely. We do have a new law I understand, I wasn't part of developing this because I'm not currently on the council, but we do have an amendment to the revenue allocation ordinance that requires that a child have at least a GED or a high school diploma in order to receive their payment. If they don't have it, I think it's deferred until they're 21. So I think that's a very good development. I would have liked to have seen that even sooner and I know other tribes have similar and maybe even more restrictive criteria to encourage people to continue to complete their education."

Ian Record:

"I'm glad you mentioned that. And you are right, there are a number of other tribes that have gone that route that may have not had it in place initially, but saw the effects of just sort of a basic issuance of the money once they turn a certain age without any sort of conditions set on the issuance of that money. I'd like to turn now to the topic of leadership and I know I'm asking you to look back a bit because you...it has been close to 20 years since you were in office, but if you think back to 1990, when you first came to office, what do you know now that you wish you had known before you first took office in the first place?"

Eva Petoskey:

"Well, I'm 25 years older so I've lived a bit. I guess in answering that question, I'd say probably two different avenues that I could answer that. One is I think I certainly have more knowledge about how government conducts itself. I didn't have that much coming into it and I think that's the case for a lot of newly elected tribal leaders that they come in inexperienced in tribal government. Even if they've worked for the tribe, it might not have been in a position where they were required to work with policy or maybe even to understand the larger historical and political and legal context in which tribes operate. That is very common for people to walk into it. So I think, in retrospect, I had some of that because I had 15 years of work experience in Indian Country and so I had some of that. I did work for tribal organizations and so I had some experience. I knew some core ideas of self determination, sovereignty. I even knew what sovereign immunity was because I'd worked with contracts with tribes. But I think a lot of people come in without that, so I think it's very important for people to have some education coming in either before...I know there are some tribes that have instituted some training programs for people interested in running for council. I think those are excellent ideas. Certainly if your tribe doesn't have that then having some kind of orientation and education program and process once a person is elected. I think to the extent that you can use people with prior tribal council experience that is a great benefit because not only will they get the information about the complex legal structure and all of the public policy issues, they also get some firsthand experience on people reflecting on their own leadership and some of the mistakes and successes that they had or mistakes they made and successes they had. So that's one track, I guess: education, education, education, education. I wish I had more of it when I came into this, but at another end I wish I had more wisdom. I wish I'd have been a wiser person. When you're young, a few...sometimes young people are wise, but more than often we're not when we're young. We tend to be impulsive. I know I would frequently get angry. Now as I've grown older, I've trained myself. I still get angry, but I usually don't speak when I'm angry. I've learned how to tell myself to hold that until I'm not angry. So I would even say it would be good if tribes -- whatever their culture is, whatever their Indigenous world view -- is that some of those teachings could be also shared or discussed as you go into your elected duties, that the person newly elected has an opportunity to sit down with someone, an elder or some other appropriate leaders within the community to, if they haven't had that proper or appropriate education and maybe some people do, they already have that. So we have -- in our Anishinaabe way -- we have the Seven Grandfather teachings, which tell us how to conduct ourselves in our relationships with other people. I see that sometimes we put them up on a poster someplace, but they're very difficult to follow in our relationships and looking back at my experience on the tribal council, aside from all of the challenging issues that we dealt with, the complex...context in which we found ourselves in, and in our case and the people that served with me, the enormous amount of development that we accomplished and worked tirelessly to accomplish was often painful in terms of our interpersonal relationships. And as you can imagine, when you're related to many of the people you serve with, that's just normal in a tribe that even on the council your relatives are sometimes on the council and certainly in terms of your constituents, your parents, your nieces and nephews, your cousins, just every...there's a very thick set of relationships. So how you treat one another in those heated political contexts, in the heated political context will last...will follow you for a long time."

Ian Record:

"One of the things you mentioned to me yesterday when we were chatting was this issue of consistency and in your relations with the people that you serve that the answers you give to the requests that they often make are consistent and the explanations for the answers you're giving them are consistent. Can you touch a little bit more on that in terms of being clear with the people who come to you with their hand out to say either 'yes, I can do this for you and here's why' or 'no, I can't and here's why,' and making sure that those answers are consistent no matter who's coming to you?"

Eva Petoskey:

"Yeah, this is a huge issue in tribal government. I think it...the responsibility there needs to be borne by the elected leader in term...and by the citizens. So I think...I'll talk about both of those, because I think it's a shared responsibility because if it is the norm that the council is kind of a patron system, which isn't outside of our cultural norm. See, that's one of the issues, that it's not really an unfamiliar cultural idea that you would give things away to your relatives. It's just that in the context of government, they're really not yours to give as a person, as an individual. They belong to the community. Whatever resources you have been elected and given the responsibility to be a good steward of are the resources of the community, so it really is different than giving out your own personal property, things that you've acquired in a giveaway at your home or in some kind of celebration where you're feeding everyone. That's your personal property and that is, within our cultural teachings, that's a different thing than taking the property of the collective and giving it out to your relatives. To me, that seems unethical. But I wasn't always...oftentimes your relatives would come in and expect you to solve a problem immediately, to give them some special consideration and I always gave them -- everyone really -- I tried to give special consideration in terms of listening and not shutting people off and then trying to help them problem solve where they could find a solution to their problem within our system. That implies that you have a system that helps people find a solution to their problem and that is part of developing your tribal infrastructure so that there is a known process for solving a problem, whether it's an employment problem or you felt like you've been treated unfairly, whether it's in employment or some other issue or involving your lot assignment or all kinds of controversies that come up. And we as a tribe, I'm sure others too, have...took us a long time to develop all that infrastructure so that there was a place for a person to go to get their problem solved or at least to try and they may not like the results, but at least there was a process in place. So it's both a shared responsibility on the part of the leadership to act in an ethical manner, again keeping in mind that the resources that you have been given the responsibility to be a good steward of are not yours, they're the community's, and so if you want to have a giveaway, go do it at your house with your own stuff unless it's the community giveaway and you're participating and it's open for everyone on an equal basis. And likewise, the members, the citizens need to understand that the more citizens that serve in government and in a good way, and the more citizens that come to understand how it's really a collective process and these are our collective resources and together we can build a nation and we can learn to put our...it's hard to learn to put your individual needs aside because many of our people live in poverty. It's still the case today. It's still the case. We have...if you go into the communities around our tribe, many of the homeless people are our tribal citizens. There's still a lot of people living...struggling to have their basic needs met and it's understandable why people feel frustrated sometimes. I totally understand that and yet it's an ongoing challenge for the elective."

Ian Record:

"And isn't it first and foremost a challenge of education? You mentioned that a lot of hard work has been done to build up the governmental infrastructure so that there are processes in place to help people that come with their hand out. And we've heard other leaders talk about really the education needs to begin with the elected official in that interpersonal exchange with the constituent to say, "˜Look, I cannot do this for you because we have a process in place that can address your problem. That's not my role.' We often hear leaders talk about role confusion, that they think they're a social service administrator and not a policy maker."

Eva Petoskey:

"Exactly. Exactly. Well, that speaks to understanding what your role is and in most tribes the...I know in our tribe, the role of the tribal council members and the chairperson are specified in some detail in the constitution and that serving as a social service liaison is not one of them, although it is to look out for the assets and best interests of the tribe and to provide for the wellbeing and education, health of the tribal citizens. But a lot of people don't ever read the information on what their roles and responsibilities are and I found many times across Indian Country -- I won't point just to our own tribal council, but some of the work I've done elsewhere -- that many people don't read their constitution or even if they think it was a good idea to have a constitution because sometimes you get into that discussion. "˜Why are we adopting these types of governments?' And I think it's all a developmental process. I think that in our case, I look back at those times as we began to work...I wasn't part of working on the constitution, but as I've heard the stories I'm glad that we went in that direction and I think we put some good ideas into our constitution. We do have a separation of the judicial in our constitution so we have a separate court. That's an unusual situation in Indian Country. And we have both executive and legislative functions within our tribal council and then we have specific roles and responsibilities and a lot of other things that are spelled out that took great... that were given great consideration. We did not just adopt a constitution. We had a lot of discussion about how that should be and what type of government we wanted to have."

Ian Record:

"How empowering was it for you as an elected official to have that constitution to fall back on when somebody was not clear about your role and was coming to you and asking you to do something that was outside of your role for you to say, "˜Hey, look, I'm not allowed to do this and this is where it says I'm not allowed to do this'? Because unfortunately in a lot of tribal communities, leaders don't have that luxury to say, "˜Look, I'm prohibited.' It's sort of...there's so much gray area involved that they can sort of finagle it however they like. Was it...did you feel it empowered you or there was a sense of comfort there to be able to fall back on that rock-hard foundation?"

Eva Petoskey:

"I didn't use it so much in the context of dealing directly with individual citizens, but I did occasionally use it in dealing with some of the things that other council members would want to do and sometimes behind closed doors, which is where some of the really challenging discussions occur, even though we have, of course have to have open meetings, but there were certain things involving legal matters and really complicated legal matters that we did in closed session and sometimes we would have rather contentious discussions there, and I do recall on several occasions getting out the constitution and saying, "˜Read this, folks.' And sometimes people would want to fire people just arbitrarily. I hope I'm not...it's not an unusual thing. I'm not putting down my own tribe. I see it everywhere and I'd just remind everyone, 'That isn't our job. That is not our job,' in spite of the fact that maybe that person had said very insulting things to me and to the entire tribal council, but it was our job to maybe try to create a better climate so people didn't have to come in there and be that angry or have some other rules about how we conduct our business or just take it. If we weren't going to create those kind of rules. I know some tribes have now created rules about how... I'm not talking about Robert's Rules, but how...and of course tribes use those...but how...what the tone of the conduct of the meetings should be and that there must be a tone or respect. I like that idea. We don't have a rule like that currently, but I sure...if I were back...in retrospect, I would love to have a rule like that. I'd love to have those Seven Grandfather teachings not only on the wall, but somehow incorporated into our conduct so that we can hold ourselves accountable."

Ian Record:

"This last answer of yours has given rise to a few questions in my mind and the first deals with transparency. You touched on this issue a couple of times now, and in talking with your husband John and having him share with us all of the hard work that the government has done to not only build its infrastructure, its governmental infrastructure, but also build the background history of why it was developed the way it was. So you guys have gone to great lengths to document everything from council meeting minutes and making them not only...not only archiving them, but making them instantly accessible and obviously that helps for the purposes of transparency, but doesn't it also help for ensuring that folks that are in the position that you were once in can make informed decisions, can say, "˜What was the reason why we first started this particular project and what does it mean for the decision that is before us on this project today?'"

Eva Petoskey:

"Well, certainly as technology gets quicker and quicker -- at one time that wasn't possible because we'd be digging through all these old papers down in the basement of the tribal government center -- but now that it's readily available apparently our current council who actually uses that does a search, what did we decide on this and what's the history of this? And so I think that could be a very useful tool going into the future with technology as it is today. I think that wouldn't obviously be present if we hadn't have archived all that and I wasn't part...well, I guess I was part of that decision. One of the things I was going to mention that we did write a couple of tribal histories, especially some of the recent history and the early history of our federal acknowledgement and what led up to that. And so those documents are available also, but so that in the sense that you're archiving your process as you go along is a wonderful benefit to future generations because there is a record there to the extent that people are able to study it and with technology it's easier to study it. So it's awesome to do that and I think a real benefit both to the current councils and the future generations to see what people were thinking."

Ian Record:

"So another follow-up question deals with this issue of instilling culture into governance, into the practice of governance. And you mentioned that it's one thing to have the Seven Grandfather teachings written on a wall and it's quite another to figure out how do you practice it in the actual activities of governance at the elected leadership level and throughout the governmental organization. You're a big proponent of that. In our discussions you've brought that up numerous times. Can you speak to the importance of a Native nation consciously working to incorporate in a systematic way its culture into how it governs, into the crafting of a strategic vision for the future of the nation?"

Eva Petoskey:

"Yeah."

Ian Record:

"Easier said than done, I know."

Eva Petoskey:

"Well, it's difficult because it goes to the issue of who can speak. And I think when I was younger I didn't feel as though I could speak, but I'm 61 years old and I'm not 80, but I always felt like it would be great if I could have had a group of advisors that were elders and my selection, my ideal selection of elders in our community would have been people over 80 because it seemed like the people I knew, including my own mother or other people I knew within my extended family and other people I knew in the community who were over 80 seemed to have developed a different view, even if they had some culture...if they had the culture intact, they had their language, but as you age something happens and you have a different view. You're facing that kind of eventually your own death and I think...one of our elders told me that, "˜If you have the good fortune to come close to death as a young person, you're very blessed.' And I thought, "˜Well, that's an interesting thing to say,' because usually we think of that differently. But he was saying that it gives you a different view, a longer view of life, what is really important. I think sometimes we have, I think, lost view of that. So I always wished I could have had a group of elders over 80 advising me. I did. I had my own mother so I was lucky. So I think having elders in the community, however that community defines that whether through age or through some other ceremonial leaders, I think that is wise. I think...I really believe that dialogue and consensus is culture because sometimes without that... you're growing a seed, you're growing a seed of translating your own traditional teachings and culture and language into your contemporary setting. So I always feel like people were going way too fast. I think one way to incorporate your culture into your governance is to slow it down, and maybe not in all contexts because some meetings have to be conducted maybe in a more rapid manner because you're dealing with so many issues, but there should be a time where people can talk together and maybe...then again, sometimes the constitution doesn't allow the tribal council to speak together on tribal issues outside of a meeting that's been called so that's kind of problematic, too. But maybe it's not the council speaking or talking in a formal way, maybe it's an informal meeting with the constituents, with your citizens where you can talk things through. That's what our Anishinaabe people always did, always. I observed it in my own life, people solving problems through talking it through until everyone had been heard and then what comes out of that is remarkable, it's powerful. Once everyone's been heard, all of those ideas can be used to take something forward. And if you're applying the Seven Grandfathers teachings, which are principles upon which you're to live and to treat other people that what comes out of that would be part of what we call [Anishinaabe language], which is to live a good life and that idea is central to everything that is in the Anishinaabe world view. I know that other people and other tribes have other words and concepts like that, but essentially, what it means is that it's the interdependence of all things so that you as a human being are connected to your own inner self. That's why I spoke my name and my clan. Your own spiritual and inner self, your own ancestral history, but it's not like you're standing there alone. You're in this web of relationships that are both inside you and outside of you and it includes not only all the human relationships, but it also, and this is very important I think going into the future, it includes all of the other living things on the planet and in the universe so it includes all the plants, all the animals, all of the water, the sky, the rocks, the moon, the sun, the stars, all of the ancestors, all of the spirits out in the cosmos, the whole thing is interconnected and that it is your responsibility as a human being to walk in a good way and in positive relationships with all those things. So I think in that way in the incorporation of the culture and I think as we are going forward...I know within our tribe some of us women have really been starting to talk very...amongst ourselves about the environment and how can our tribe take a position. This is very culturally relevant let's say for every tribe, and in our case it's the water, in our case in Anishinaabe worldview, women are the keepers of the water and so we...I think...so that's one way of how do you incorporate this into tribal governance in terms of setting the priorities for what the tribe does in the future and the vision of the tribe in the future, you have to have elders and people with that collective [Anishinaabe language] vision to speak up so that we're not just taking care of ourselves, which is important -- not at all to diminish that -- we're taking care of those inner circles of [Anishinaabe language], but we're also taking care of the larger circle of the planet that we live on, very important today. Every day we wake up with an acute awareness of how responsible we are and I think tribes have a lot of power in that way because I know we do. We still have...we still retain our inland hunting and fishing and gathering within the Great Lakes, within regions of the Great Lakes and within inland. So we have a lot to say about our environment and if I live long enough I'm going to continue...that's going to be one of my priorities is on the water and things like that."

Ian Record:

"Well, Eva, we really appreciate you taking some time to share your thoughts and experience and wisdom with us, really appreciate it."

Eva Petoskey:

"You're welcome."

Ian Record:

"That's all the time we have on today's program of Leading Native Nations. To learn more about Leading Native Nations, please visit the Native Nations Institute's website at nni.arizona.edu. Copyright 2013 Arizona Board of Regents."

Catalina Alvarez and Robert McGhee: What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office (Q&A)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Tribal leaders Catalina Alvarez (Pascua Yaqui Tribe) and Robert McGhee (Poarch Band of Creek Indians) field questions from seminar participants on an array of topics ranging from codes of ethics to creating mechanisms for transparent governance.

Resource Type
Citation

Alvarez, Catalina. "What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office (Q&A)." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. October 10, 2012. Q&A session.

McGhee, Robert. "What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office (Q&A)." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. October 10, 2012. Q&A session.

Audience member:

"Robert, coming from a similar small tribe and situations I can relate a lot to what you brought up as far as what you're dealing with. I just had a question as far as the transparency. I agree with that and I know that it's...I'm sure it's a work in progress. What has worked and what hasn't as far as are there limitations as far as how transparent each governmental entity is for tribal members and do you get a lot of backlash when they ask for a document or want to see something that they're just not entitled to?"

Robert McGhee:

"They're entitled to every document that we have, able to see [them] as long as it's not employee related, if it's not involving certain employees or certain individual members themselves. What we do is...and one of the things, we do an annual report. We put money aside every year, we publish a book and the book goes out to every tribal member, it's talking about our current financial status and we put a letter in there asking them to keep it amongst themselves and this is for you and your household. And then two days before it goes out, well, about a week before it goes out we actually have a large community meeting that goes over the annual report and explains it page by page. So we go through all the funding issues, we go through ‘this is where all the money went, this is what's left, this is what we're we agree...' We'll tell them, ‘We wanted to build a capital reserve account to protect future assets and this is how much we're putting in there.' So that's the best way we handle it and if we have any documents that we're concerned, because we do have council members who do like to talk and they're social people. We have one council member, all he does, and this is not to be disrespectful but he's always at the funerals and someone who's going into the hospital, which I respect. But we tell him and it's like, ‘You need to tell them that you're coming on behalf of all of us because we can't all go to...' But he loves to talk and I don't think he means it disrespectfully, I really don't, but he just loves...so now we take any information that is valuable at the council meeting, if we want to have a private discussion, I actually take it back up from all the...they'll agree to me, 'You can have...I don't want mine.' Because if they have it in their hand they're more apt to share it and give it away and we'll be the first ones to say, ‘I don't want mine, you take mine back,' ‘cause then we'll just collect all the information from the tribal council, we'll have it destroyed and it's easier that way on some regards because it can be sensitive topics that they really shouldn't be discussing so we do take up some of those things. But the transparency is, it's difficult but it's a double-edged sword."

Audience member:

"But more positive than negative as far as being open to the community and there's no...because leaving that expectation or leaving people to their own ideas or what's going on behind closed doors. You're kind of alleviating that to an extent?"

Robert McGhee:

"I think so. They have the opportunity...every council member, we have...every council meeting, we have two a month, what we've done now though is our first council meeting is actually business and the second council meeting we have every director rotate in every entity come in and give financial updates and updates of who's been hired, who's been...like how many employees we have and things like that so that helps a little bit. If we can alleviate where they don't have to ask us a question or they don't have to...then we'll try to do it."

Audience member:

"Thank you. And just a final question for the two of you, as far as going forward as far as governance, economic development, sitting, being chairs and different committees, how important is it for leaders to be educated and be able to provide that additional information that if you just...all you know is the rez, all you know is that immediate community, you haven't lived off, you haven't experienced any other let's say tribal entities or network, how important is that to be able to move forward for the futures to come?"

Catalina Alvarez:

"Yeah, I think that's a...you have to be...where nowadays, we're not this small reservation, we're not this small tribe. We're running with a lot of and dealing with a lot of millions of dollars and you need educated people that are going to be making those right decisions for the tribe. A lot of times we would have...you still have those mindsets of the older generation that feel that they don't need those kind of people or sometimes they're like in his case as well -- I'm going to pick on Marcelino [Flores] over there -- we have some people that are very educated and that know a whole lot and we have a tendency not to...I think we have to have a balance of where we get the educated people but also having the previous council, the old founders of the tribe also respect and embrace the knowledge that he does bring because I know that a lot of times like I've talked to Herminia [Frias], at least have the sense that if you don't know where you're at as a council to know and to ask that you need to find the right people for those positions because otherwise, like with us, I know I've told some of the council, we are still in the process of trying to get back the gaming board, because a lot of us feel we are not capable of running a gaming institution by any means and that's where it becomes difficult, that you have a council that still wants to be in charge of everything. And is it beneficial for us? Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't. We were burned also with the gaming board and finding the right people because sometimes you get burned by those same individuals on the gaming board. There's a balance that you have to find educated people, also people that are practical in knowing what needs to be done."

Robert McGhee:

"I think the key is if you're not...if they don't have the say...we educate as much as we can across all areas. It doesn't necessarily have to be college educated. It could be business education, tribal law, business literacy. We've actually had people just come in even to the council and teach debits and credits so they can have a better understanding if tribal gaming...because there was a distrust issue too amongst...you have a board over here and we have a top management staff and they're presenting this and it's overwhelming what they're presenting to you. And now though they have to go through it step by step by step and it's an easier process but I encourage if you can put any type of, in place, training and education at your council level, please do, I would recommend that you do it. But also do it for...what we've just started doing for all of our directors and program directors and executive directors is we have sent them through intensive leadership training and they have really...they said that was the best thing that the council has ever done. We felt that they were a part of the organization, that we were listening to them and now they're going to offer it, we're going to offer it to even all the employees because it wasn't fair we felt when I said, ‘we went through this,' and let... It's called 'Lead by Greatness.' We went through this training and it wasn't really fair for us to have the training and not the people who run our programs. And so we've actually...that just started this past year and they're enjoying it and now it's getting down to all the employees. And all the boards and committees like I pointed out before, they're all...all tribal members have the opportunity to serve on those but they have to submit an application and the application actually has to say, ‘Why do you want to serve on this board?' If it's the Cultural Authority, ‘Why do you want to serve here? Is it because you have something to give or do you just want to learn more? Why do you want to serve on PCI Gaming?' Because we realize, like she said, we don't have the expertise to run all of these economic development properties that we have. But you've got to make sure that your job descriptions and you've got to make sure that your...are strong job descriptions and things that get people in the right places to do that for you. We have mentoring programs for our tribal members so they can serve under leadership positions, to learn that way."

Audience member:

"This is in regards to how you deal with or listen to tribal members. There's kind of a two-part question that I heard and I don't know what your responses are, maybe your suggestions on how. The first thing here is congratulations and I think we all know it's a blessing in disguise to be an elected official. So how do you kind of keep a happy about hearing that, ‘Congratulations, you're on council.' And then the second part seems to be, ‘Well, I think you guys should be doing this or you need to do that and I voted you in.' And how do you listen to the community, how do you respond to those questions?"

Catalina Alvarez:

"I'm not sure, like, how do you...the first one that you said, that people just congratulate you and still smile after you know what you got yourself into? Yeah. You have to at least...you're always going to be in that position I think either way, no matter where you're at. We all put up a front even though we're not...maybe we're not happy inside but at least we...we'll just...we portray a different image by saying we're fine and we're good and everything, but I think when tribal members come and expect things of you and are asking you to do things differently, usually when I get asked a lot of things and mostly complaints of things are not doing or I was left out of the process, before I would normally, being a first-year council [member] I would automatically just get it and run with it and not really hear the other side of the story. Now, usually I would ask them, ‘Well, what would you do in these positions? Give me some feedback on what it is that you want accomplished and we'll see what we can do,' but I'm not going to...I always tell them, ‘I'm not going to promise you that it can be done because of course I'm only one voice of other 11.' So it's very important for the community to know that it might not happen and it's okay to tell a community member no. But you've got to watch out that you don't say 'no' too close to elections! [Laughter]"

Robert McGhee:

"One thing she did say was right on that it is okay to tell a community member 'no.' But what happened is that I think the way I handle it is...I wanted to serve. I've wanted to serve as a council member since I was a child. That was...I wanted to come back and do that. I think now though it's when...when someone looks at you, ‘Well, I want this,' I'm like, ‘Well, you tell...why, why do you want that? Does it benefit just you, is it benefiting the family or does it benefit all of us as a whole?' Because I'll let them know in a heartbeat that if that program costs $2 million to fix or a million dollars to fix, you're taking away $2 million or something from another program that we need to look at. So it's almost, you provide me the solution. If that's a problem then, okay, how do we fix it? I think if you throw it back on them that way, because sometimes they have a tendency to put you here and they remind you that, ‘Oh, you think you're up here?' Well, I throw it back down on them and it's like, ‘No, I'm here with you and I do not know how to fix that problem. So how do we fix that problem together? Or why don't you come to a meeting and present solutions.' And they actually...some of them like that because then it gives them...they're involved again and they can make those...be a part of the decision-making process or at least come up with some great ideas that we actually have considered and moved forward with. I'm with nine people but you have 3,000 other people out there, they have some great ideas and I think if you take the opportunity just to challenge them though to say, ‘Well, why do you want that and does it benefit everybody? Because our job as nine is to benefit everyone and it takes a majority first to support it. And have you talked to the other nine? And if the other nine believe in it then that's actually something we could probably do.'"

Audience member:

"My question or thing is when I got in office I ran for chairwoman last term and I didn't make it but I had all these ideas and now that I'm here, how...because a lot of people aren't educated as...when they get on council. They finished high school but they did other things and there was no really like ethical issues that occur, understanding and following policy and procedure within the business frame and then the constitutional issues. How do we follow our constitution yet do our ordinances and all those? But my main thing, my main question is -- and you said you go to, you have training and stuff like that -- is the ethical issue is that when we know there's a relative, a friend, somebody that we have a conflict with we're not really up front to say, ‘I'm not going to be in this discussion, I'm going to step away.' How do you get those values across to your council members so that there is transparency, because the people out there know who's related to who and who's friends with who and all that stuff."

Robert McGhee:

"I know that sometimes what we have to do is you have to remind council members that there is actually a possible conflict and impropriety, there's a...what's the terms that actually gets...an appearance of an impropriety. So as long as we feel that there's an appearance, we will actually let the other council member know. We challenge, it's like, ‘I don't know if you should really be involved in this. You may not know this but this actually impacts so and so,' and we provide them the relation. We tell them the relationship. So maybe some of them do know it but they just needed someone to challenge them to say, ‘I think it's best that you step out, do we all agree that so and so needs to step out,' and they do. What happens is the majority of them will do, once you've just shown where the relationship is and usually you're doing it because of...and don't do it attack-tive. You do it, say, ‘I think...isn't so-and-so in that program or isn't...did so-and-so apply for that job, isn't that your sister-in-law...,' because you are related but there are so many things sometimes you do get confused on even what is a nepotism. Is sister-in-law, is my aunt, is my sister? We know some of them are but then you have, well, your grandparents but they take care of that child. So there could be the possibility of that. So I think if you point it out, we've done that in the past, we just did it or you have your legal department if they're in the room, too. Our legal department's always with us. We'll lean over and say, ‘I think there's a...' and we'll, ‘Hey, that's why that person gets paid the big bucks, you need to go tell that there's an appearance here and maybe it's best to not be...you can be here and maybe just not be a part of the decision.'"

Catalina Alvarez:

"For us, I think the first time that I got into council we actually passed an ethical ordinance and I believe with the new council you're given all the ordinances that have like a fiscal ordinance and the ethical ordinance so you can go back and read them. And it's a way also to challenge, for council to hold each other accountable. That's kind of worked a little bit. I laugh because Herminia used to be our chairwoman the first time that I got into council and of course there was a...it was used against her. She brought the issue into us as ethical ordinance and it's just...the council saw it as a way, ‘Okay, this is how we're going to use it against her now.' But it in essence the...why we decided to do an ethical ordinance was really just to hold each other accountable and making sure that the community knows that we are not going to be in those situations where nepotism does occur and that we're all on the same playing field."

Audience member:

"This question kind of piggy backs off of the last question, but as elected officials and members of council how are you able to effective work against factionalism in council? I think that in a lot of tribal communities relationships ties, family ties run really deep. And so in spite of council and elected officials assuming integrity in their positions, they're always subject to sway. And I think that you see that in a lot of council where many times members will kind of group together on certain decisions and push legislation, ordinance or policy a certain direction when maybe it's kind of not based on the content but more on maybe who they're talking to and who they're being influenced by. As leaders, how are you able to combat that or at least address it within your councils and your communities?"

Robert McGhee:

"I've pictured...I've painted this like perfect council up here and we are not...by no means perfect. We do have our issues but with 3,000 there's definitely a difference between 3,000 members and say a 10,000 member tribe where factions can change elections. There's no doubt. One of the things that we have done is...it's funny, when we know certain people are getting together on a vote, we'll be like, ‘Well, I really don't care.' We won't be a part of it because it depends on what the issue is. If it's something about, oh, we're going to...it's like if we want to spend money here for this program, well, if I don't have a say or a personal attachment to it or something like that, we'll be like...but they've worked up this whole, us five support it or...’Well, have at it and if it works that's great and if it fails, I'll be the first one to let you know that failed,' but I won't be...but we won't do it...we don't air it to the rest of them. I think that if it comes to stuff that is...we have a strong and hopefully a lot of you do have an ethics code and the ethics code was the hardest thing to get passed. That was the hardest. It went to a vote five different times over a year because...and we kept...when we would challenge our tribal council members at the table, ‘Why are you not supporting the ethics code? Are you unethical?' But what happened was even our general council members who are looking, who are at these meetings and seeing so and so quit, he's not or she's not supporting the ethics code, not supporting the ethics code. It all came about though, the reason that individual was not supporting because the appearance of the impropriety. He was so scared of that word because of like you said factions or your council member's brother on another side of the family would be like, ‘Well, hey, he was a part of that decision that...' And so there's an appearance there and he was terrified of that ‘cause he was involved in business himself. And so we were like...so we made it stronger where the appearance, we gave it a little bit more teeth into that document to help him support it. But I think when it just comes to the factions I would...we don't have strong factions, we know that board and committee...it's funny it's only on board and committee appointments because they want Johnny in that position and they'll go meet and we'll say, ‘Well, which ones did you guys...who do you think you're going to choose today.' ‘No, we didn't do that yet.' Call them out on it. We do. But we've got a pretty good close relationship because we've spent so much time together in retreats and workshops and I do not...we do not have a problem calling each other out and one of the things that we had learned from one of these retreats that we went to, they pretty much told us, ‘Call them out. If they are not being the leader that they're supposed to be or if they're not supporting something...say it. Why are you not supporting this initiative? I need an answer.' And we couldn't have them flip-flop anymore either, that was the other thing too. We'd be in a workshop and we'd go around and just do a roll call. It was like, ‘You support it, you support it, you...' and then we'd get to a meeting and, ‘I don't support that.' Made us look like...that only happened a few times. So then we had another leadership, together, Kumbaya saying, ‘I get angry when you do that.' It was almost like a social therapy session. ‘I get angry when you do this. That's not appropriate ‘cause you're giving me your word and all that I feel that you have is your word. That's what makes you a credible person to me is your word and your actions and your actions are going against your words.' So now they actually will tell us, ‘Okay, I'm just going to be honest. I'm not supporting that.' Or if they're about to flip, because they've done it, we'll have another workshop, ‘I want to change my vote.' ‘What? Why?' And then I said, ‘Well, you told us before that from now on you're going to stick to your vote or stick to your decision,' and I called him out. He's like, ‘Yes, but I did tell you that if I changed I would let you know beforehand.' I'm like, ‘You've got me, you're right.' And he changed. He went in that council meeting and his vote changed and I'm like, ‘Well, at least you let me know beforehand.' I was leaning over to another council member, it was like, ‘We lost that one.'"

Catalina Alvarez:

"I think we're still trying to figure that out. You're always going to have I think, at least since I've been in council we have not had like this kind of council that can just sit down and talk, but we always had those kind of factions and we know that they're, sometimes they're influenced. The last...we haven't, this council since it's barely starting, we haven't gotten to that point but the previous council, we knew something was up and the committee knew what was going on and council members would pull in of course all their family so you were kind of pressured to vote in that direction. One of the things that took years and it still has been an issue was like that in the [Adam] Walsh Act, I couldn't believe how difficult it was for council to say that we want to first have the same kind of stuff...that we were going to opt into it and then where we were going to put our note...to notify the community, in which methods. It became so...I'm not even sure, well, I'm assuming that a lot of...in council you would have a sexual pedophile as a family member, that's the only reason why I thought that they could...they thought that I thought that they would be so hesitant in securing our community, but not until we actually had a switch in council that that...we were able to figure out where we were going to post the sexual pedophiles and what kind of notice was going to be given out to the community. But I think a lot of times that [faction], it's always going to exist because we're a tribe of 16,000 or 17,000 and we're always going to have that [faction]. We have council members that are related to each other and you know that they're going to pass ordinances and policies that are going to benefit their families or friends and it's very difficult to find out, at least for us right now. We're still....we're in the stage of trying to figure out how we can...how to resolve that."

Audience member:

"Just a couple of questions here. I'm busy scribbling things down. In today's world of course we live...we all live in two worlds and that is we live in America but at the same time we live within our tribal nations. And quite often, we have a clash in cultures and cultural values and we need somewhat to reconcile some of the things that we do. And was mentioned earlier the idea of nepotism. In the white world of course, that's a no-no. You don't do that, that's unethical behavior. At the same time, as a tribal member, we're taught form a very early age that our responsibility is to our family. Our responsibility is to our relatives, our responsibility is to our community. That's where our citizenship is, that's where our allegiance and where we should be focused. And we also understand that when someone close to you, a relative or whatever, comes for your assistance, you are not supposed to refuse because they're the ones who are going to support you when the chips are down, when you have a tragedy, when you have a sorrow, when you have a great need, you depend upon your family, yet and this job as tribal council is going to be gone in four years, but you still have to face that family member. And that's a difficult thing because you want the betterment of your nation, but at the same time when you're close relatives or clan members, clan fathers, whatever it is comes to you and needs something, how do you reconcile that? I know that's a challenge, ‘cause we have to keep our cultural values alive but we still have to work and thrive in the modern day era. So that's one of the things I think that has to be reconciled.

Another is with our traditional ways as you've mentioned earlier, to call them out. I think from a traditional mindset we're taught not to do that ‘cause we choose avoidance over confrontation whenever we can. And when we have a conflict with somebody, that's when we give direct eye contact, that's when we have that confrontation with them and we go full force. But we don't like to do that but rather we avoid confrontation whenever we can. If that means going on the other side of the street or not returning a phone call or not showing up for a meeting, for many of us, that's the proper thing to do rather than call them out. That's more of a modern day, white man kind of a thinking, at least I think. Utilizing our elders is another traditional way where we as tribal leaders or whatever we are think we're all it and leave out that segment of decision making or reliance upon our tribal elders to utilize them.

And I think what I'm gathering as part of what's happening here is to rebuilding nations is really about going back, going back. It's not building the tribal nation, it's rebuilding and it's remembrance and keeping a lot of our cultural values alive, of the form of governance that was thrust upon us. And if we look at those things, I do have a question specifically for you guys or anyone can answer this and that is, what would happen if salaries were not paid to elected council members and only expenses were paid, what kind of people would we have in there? What would we gain, what would we lose, what would it look like if we went back to that traditional sense of governance where these were not paid positions? Looking forward to your responses."

Robert McGhee:

"Just want to touch on a couple things there that you stated before. Yes, I have an allegiance to my family but I was raised to have, mostly from my mother, my father was a military man and things, but my mom, there was something about honesty, there was something about humility. And what bothers me is say when I have a larger family, not the nucleus but the extended family come up and ask me to do something that is inappropriate. I don't have a problem asking them, ‘Why are you asking me to do this? This is not...' because right now when you sign, when you run for council it's no longer mom, dad and my brother and my nephews and my grandparents, it's my...it's the 3,000 other members. Now every council member in here may have a different idea of that. That's mine. I represent all of them, the ones that you don't want to represent, the ones that still will call you by not your real name, any other name, the ones that still have some varied problems that we need to address. So I always know that I can go back to my family once I'm done serving my terms if I choose not to get elected because my dad doesn't allow us to speak tribal politics in our house either whenever we have an event or anything like that because he used to serve there. So he's like, ‘No one's allowed to come up to each other and talk to me about this or that or why did you do that?' He posted it on...he actually has a sign, he writes and he puts it on the door, ‘No politics are going to be discussed today,' which is helpful because sometimes you do...all of us here, you do get tired of going to certain events because you know someone's going to come up and ask a question or question you about this so at least I know it's...in the house, dad's house, it's off limits even at my brother's house ‘cause he served too. So he's like, ‘We don't talk about that.' To get back to your calling out question, I think I put that, yes, when I said calling out but keep in mind that we do it respectfully. It's one of those things of when I know...I don't necessarily have to call you always out in front. If I know you're upset, what I'm going to do though is have a conversation with you somewhere to ask why because I don't think me personally that we can move forward until I know what your issues are.

The full-time council...I agree with you on the...our part-time members...about four years ago we only got paid a stipend of $50 a meeting, five years ago. However, though, I would say the difference between that was there was also a different leadership at that time, too, so the council wasn't involved...a lot of them were involved but they just didn't feel that they had the time because there were some things going on where, ‘We're going to have a meeting today at 10:00.' ‘Well, I can't make a meeting today at 10:00. I'm working.' And until you got this...until you can change where you know that the leadership or whoever, the chairman, is going to respect if it's either a part-time council or a full-time one to know that we'll work around various schedules. I meant they do it for us now. We ask them, because like I said, two of us are part-time so we only have workshops on one day a month, all day. I actually use vacation time to do that. But the rest, they're welcome to attend their committee meetings. The committee meetings that I serve on, I'm allowed to determine when those meetings are so I think it could work as a part-time, but I don't think you would have the problems that you do. But keep in mind when you're full-time too, I think there are added pressures where a lot of the general council members now are looking at qualifications of putting somebody in office because they're paying them this much money. So that's actually a good, I would say a good side to it. Now, individuals are having to run on their qualifications because they're making salaries that are...that the program director or so and so, I make this and I have to have a master's in this or I make... So what are you bringing to the table as a council member that you're worth that much money? And so I think that's a good thing to it. It's stepping up to get other individuals involved that have qualifications or whatever those qualifications are it just could be not necessarily educational, it just could be serving on various committees or boards or things like that. And we have a cell center, just so you know, and that's where all our seniors hang out, all our elders hang out and I'm there probably...I eat lunch with them once a week to twice...to hear what they have to say. And we play bingo with them in the area and that's the best time to do it is when they're all gathered and just, ‘Well, what do you guys want us to see or where did I screw up today,' and they'll let you know quickly where."

Catalina Alvarez:

"I think as...and you're right, as individuals we're taught from the beginning our roles, our female roles and male roles and where you stand and even how we should address our elders. I think one of the things with the previous councils and when I first came on to council is we have our cultural leave availability for employees to do their cultural participants and participate in their culture activities. And I think as I talk to elders as a council, when we would get into discussions and I had one of the councilmen go, ‘You're supposed to respect your elders all the time.' It's true, but as a council, you guys are all equal, we are all equal at least my response to them because you were all elected by the people and they expect you to have a voice like any other individual on council. That was my response to him. And I think that more and more the council understands that we all should have a voice in how we do things and even elders in our council, they're always constantly...and I point out to Mary Jane [Buenamea], ‘They'll keep us in line as well,' but I think they're open to know that we all can share our own ideas and still try to move forward on some of our activities. I know that the last council since I was the only female, they would not include me in some of the discussions on cultural and even like on stipends that we give for our festivities, which I would get upset because I'm like, ‘as a council, male, female, I'm here as a voice to the people that voted me in. So you can't hold that against me that I can't give my input on what's going on.' But I think as we move into a full-time council I think if they weren't...if we wouldn't receive a stipend, it would be very difficult to move as fast as we have I think. As a council it allowed us to pass a lot of and meet more frequently to get things done within the tribe."

Audience member:

"I had my question for Robert and I wanted to know...you talked about the three sides that have to be heard. Could you just tell us very quickly what those three sides of any issue?"

Robert McGhee:

"Your side, the other side and the opinion. There's always this side, this side, but then there's also just what's the opinion out there of this problem. There's a lot more of those than there are the opinions themselves.

Luann Leonard, Stephen Roe Lewis and Walter Phelps: Bridging the Gap: How Native Culture Forges Native Leaders

Producer
Native American Student Affairs
Year

Luann Leonard (Hopi), Stephen Roe Lewis (Gila River Indian Community), and Walter Phelps (Navajo) discuss how their personal approaches to leadership have been and continue to be informed by their Native nations' distinct cultures and core values and those keepers of the culture in their communities. 

Resource Type
Citation

Leonard, Luann. "Bridging the Gap: How Native Culture Forges Native Leaders." Native American Student Affairs, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. November 14, 2013. Panel discussion.

Lewis, Stephen Roe. "Bridging the Gap: How Native Culture Forges Native Leaders." Native American Student Affairs, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. November 14, 2013. Panel discussion.

Phelps, Walter. "Bridging the Gap: How Native Culture Forges Native Leaders." Native American Student Affairs, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. November 14, 2013. Panel discussion.

Aresta La Russo:

"So to begin the program the Native American Student Affairs of the University of Arizona, they're presenting "Bridging the Gap: How Native Culture Forges Native Leaders." Our panelists are Native leaders. What I will do is they will introduce themselves and then we will begin.

I want to introduce myself. My name is Aresta La Russo. I'm a member of the Navajo Nation and my clans are [Navajo language]. I am a student here at the University and I'm over in the American Indian Studies Program. I'm a Ph.D. student there. [Navajo language].

So today our speakers are Lieutenant Governor of Gila River Indian Community, Stephen Roe Lewis; Walter Phelps, Navajo Nation Council Delegate; LuAnn Leonard, Arizona Board of Regents and member of the Hopi Tribe. [Applause] So if you could introduce yourselves panelists, that would be great."

Walter Phelps:

"Good evening. It's an honor and a privilege to be here this evening to be with you. My name is Walter Phelps. [Navajo language]. I represent...out of 110 chapters on Navajo, I represent five chapters, which is Leupp Chapter, Birdsprings Chapter, Tolani Lake Chapter, Cameron Chapter and Coalmine Chapter, so those are the chapters I represent in Western Agency in Coconino County."

LuAnn Leonard:

"Thank you. It is also an honor to be here. My name is LuAnn Leonard. I'm a member of the Arizona Board of Regents and I'm also the Executive Director of the Hopi Education Endowment Fund. I'm Hopi and Tohono O'odham. My village is Sichomovi Village up on the Hopi Reservation and my father's from a little village on the T.O. Reservation of [village name], almost near the border of Mexico. But I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, but I've been out on Hopi for about 29 years. And my daughter Nicole is here, she's up here in the front and I have a nephew who's also here. So U of A [University of Arizona] is a very special place.

Stephen Roe Lewis:

"[O'odham language]. My name is Lt. Governor Stephen Roe Lewis and I am from the Gila River Indian Community. We're over 20,000 members and we just...as you know, we're right off the I-10 just south of Phoenix and I grew up in Sacaton, pretty much the home spot and the seat of power for the Gila River Indian Community. We have seven districts and we have 17 council members. Please don't hold that against me, I graduated from ASU. I told my council I'm coming down to enemy territory and if I'm not back by midnight to send out a search party. But I'm really honored to be here, especially with this...real honorable fellow guests here as well, representing both the Hopi Tribe and the Navajo Tribe and as a tribal leader we work together, all the tribes in Arizona. Our paths cross and we work very respectfully as tribe to tribe, nation to nation tribes. Thank you."

Aresta La Russo:

"I want to say thank you for being here. Your presence here means a lot to our young students here who are getting their education to help their people back home. And I also want to say thank you...I want to acknowledge Karen Francis-Begay from the Office of the President, Tribal Relations for that office, and also our Native American Student Affairs Director Steve Martin -- thank you -- and also the students who have organized these events for the Native American Heritage Month, which is the month of November.

So to begin, we have 60 minutes allotted for the questions and they are structured and you have two minutes each to answer the questions. After the one-hour session for questioning, we're going to have questions and answers from the audience also. The first question: As a leader in the community, how have you handled times of criticism, opposition or failure? And give us examples of how well or not well you handled being in such situations. So if we could begin with Lieutenant Governor."

Stephen Roe Lewis:

"With a two-minute deadline I feel like I'm a pageant member or something. Thank you for that and as a...really as an elected tribal leader you really carry the hopes, dreams and values of your community, of your tribal community. We at Gila River, we're home to two tribes, both the Akimel O'odham and the Pee-Posh peoples. As tribal leaders, we are held to the highest standard and we are supposed to represent -- even though we're human beings -- in other words, we represent the best values of our community. And one of these values is that we respect the elders. That's a traditional teaching, a traditional behavioral control, societal, where the elders, their wisdom is something that you respect completely. And when you, if you're out during a tribal council meeting, you're out at a district meeting or any meeting or if an elder...with their teaching moments, when they lecture you...lecture, that also comes from our value, which is what the Akimel O'odham call our Himdag, which is our culture, our values, who we are. When those elders or who the society views as elders, when they lecture you, you take it, you listen and you respectfully take those words of wisdom. At times you're criticized and at times you may not even totally agree with them, but because of that value we place, because of those societal values that we place on our elders, you take that as a positive, you take that as a learning experience, especially as a leader. Even though you're a leader, you always have to respect your elders and there have been many times that I've been lectured and criticized and you take that in stride, you take that with dignity and then you...afterwards you try to understand why that occurred. So at least with that specific I'll lead off the discussion. Thank you."

Aresta La Russo:

"Thank you."

LuAnn Leonard:

"Thank you. Being a woman and working and living on the Hopi Reservation has been challenging. As I stated, I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, so I'm an urban Indian by the way I grew up, but I'm a reverse transplant I always say, because usually the trend is you come from the reservation to the urban area and you stay, but I did the opposite, which is a little different. When I...in regards to the question, when I graduated from Northern Arizona University in 1983, I worked for the Phoenix Indian Center for a couple years and then I went to the Hopi Tribe, very young. I think I was 23 years old, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, wanting to help my people. I got my first job as a college graduate and I believe I made $6.25 an hour, which was a lot at that time. So I'm working at the Hopi Tribe and I was working with parents and students and I'll give you this example of what can happen.

We had a situation with two students who -- it was during a summer program. So I sat them down, they were causing trouble because of their relationship, talked to them in a firm voice. Later that evening, one of the aunts of one of the students was very concerned and she was upset and so she called me. And I don't know if you've ever been on the phone with somebody who's yelling at you and you can't get a word in. All you can do is listen. But this woman was saying things like, "˜I know you're from the city. I know you're only going to be out here for one year, you're going to use our people and then you're going to leave. You're going to make money and make a name and then you're going to leave,' among many other things. And I was just this young kid about the age of some of you here, and all I could do was listen and at the end I was in tears, but all I could tell her was, "˜Thank you.' You grow really tough from things like that, but I see those as times when you grow. You have to accept that kind of criticism and thank them. It only makes you stronger and now, 29 years later, and I think I've done a lot of good things for not only our people, but people across Arizona. When I run into that woman, I always smile at her and she knows that what she said was wrong, but it only makes you stronger. And so I accept criticism, it's easier because of that; it's easier to accept criticism than it is to accept praise for me. It's kind of a little psychological thing."

Aresta La Russo:

"Thank you. Walter Phelps."

Walter Phelps:

"Thank you and thank you for that question. Recently I came across a comment by a lady who said that, "˜As leaders your destiny, you become your destiny and you become the backbone.' She said, "˜As a leader who has become a leader, you are the backbone.' And then she said, "˜But you also have to grow your own funny bone and your wishbone.' I thought that was a very insightful statement because I think that all of us have different backgrounds, all of us have different personalities and I get the privilege to watch my colleagues, to observe my colleagues. We have 24 council members on the Navajo Nation Council and I can see the unique personalities, the strengths and the unique personalities of each individual, each leader that's there. So it's really a privilege to see that and especially to observe that, this being my first term in office.

But I think that as a leader, you have constituents. Our people always say that we have 300,000 Navajo constituents and with the five chapters that I represent, we have a certain percentage of people and people come from all walks of life. You have to anticipate that you will get people that will support you and that will be there to cheer you on and to encourage you and tell you, "˜We're praying for you,' but on the other hand, you also will come across people that will just basically try to express their views or their issues to you in their own unique way, which may not seem like a very friendly way or a very diplomatic way, but at the same time, what I've learned to do is just try to listen, try to listen.

What is it that they are trying to say? What is it that they really are trying to express? And the other thing you have to also remember also is that voice that you're hearing, no matter how harsh and how unkind it may seem, it represents a percentage of your people. It represents a percentage of the views of certain peoples and what you try to do is you try to process that. What you don't do is take it personally and that can be a challenge. But I think that being able to listen, being able to treat them respectfully, that's all that they expect. That's all that's required."

Aresta La Russo:

"Thank you. And thank you for your leadership and thank you for all you do. The second question: I'm sure this second question -- it's about advice -- and I'm sure you have received many advice from elders, maybe your constituents. But the question is, what advice did an elder give to you to help you as a leader and probably maybe one that stands out the most? So if we could begin with Lieutenant Governor."

Stephen Roe Lewis:

"Thank you and this is my, going on my...well, I just completed my second year in my term, my three-year term. Shortly after I was elected, a veteran tribal leader from Arizona, we were talking and although he's retired now, but he...one of the words that or the pieces of wisdom that he passed on to me as a tribal leader, especially when you're in a position where you're faced with...you're always in an imperfect position where you don't have as much information as you might need or there's a lack of time where you're being pushed because of a certain issue that it appears or a situation that appears needs to have action. And what he told me is that there's no situation where you as a tribal leader, that you feel that you need to be pushed into making a decision right then and there. That's what he found in his many years as being a tribal leader. He said, "˜Never get pushed into or pressured into making a decision before you're ready.' He goes, "˜They can...most...99 percent of the situations that come up can at least be decided tomorrow, at least by the next day.' And so never...and I thought of that, too, and I've applied that as well because as a tribal leader, like I said, sometimes you...there are more than one side, two sides or three sides to an issue and I think that was probably...there's a reason why some of our most thoughtful tribal leaders thought about things. And although sometimes from the outside they're wondering, "˜How come they act so slow sometimes within the deliberative process of tribal governments?' But I think that was...from how...I've taken that and applied that from a day-to-day perspective as a tribal leader. I think that piece of wisdom that passed down to me, that's really served me well."

LuAnn Leonard:

"What I've learned or what I was told was in this day and age we want things instantly, especially the younger folks, but I've always been told by elders that there's a reason why things take time. And I know there's a lot of kidding about Indian time and all of that, but this really played out true and I'll give you an example.

I had a nonprofit where we...the Hopi Tribe gave us $10 million, which we have invested and it -- right now it's valued at about $21 million -- but we were changing investment houses around 2008 and what was going on around 2008? The big recession. And we were going to change from Charles Schwab to Merrill Lynch and Merrill Lynch is this giant and here we are the little Hopi Tribe. We were trying to get our agreement signed and it took months. It took months and the reason was Merrill Lynch wanted the Hopi Tribe to change our legislation, which meant changing a law which would allow them, if we went to court, we would go to state court versus tribal court and we stood our ground. And eventually after about six months, we came up with wording and we were able to -- that was agreeable to both sides. And so the Hopi Tribe, it was like David and Goliath or the giant and the little man, but we stuck with it and they...we didn't have to change our law and they accommodated us, which was great.

But the beauty of it was, all that time that...2008 hit, remember stocks plummeted, everyone was losing money. You hear about these big endowment funds that lost millions of dollars. Non-profits were hit hard, but all our money stayed in bonds, which did decent during that period. And so I've really learned from something like that. We survived that area without a big hit like a lot of these non-profits did. But it's true, there's a reason why things take time and I think something was watching over us at that period. It's really hard because, my daughter will tell you, I'm not the most patient person in the world, but there is a reason why things take time."

Walter Phelps:

"I spent about maybe a total of eight years in South Dakota. My wife and her family live near the Rosebud Reservation and we worked with this organization, basically a ministry organization and they...after several years, after a few years they wanted me to, I guess, learn the administrative part and also the leadership part. So they gave me a title, it said Learning Vice President and I liked that title. But anyway, one day, we had a big warehouse like this, it was about this, maybe a little bigger than this room here and one big garage door on one side. And we would have distributions come and people would unload stuff and when you stood in the front of that garage door there was piles of material and supplies all over. There was no organization. It was just completely packed and full.

One day, our president came and led us to that doorway and he wanted us to start organizing and cleaning it. We stood there and looked at that and just looking at it was discouraging and he said, "˜How do you eat an elephant?' I had never heard that before. And he said, "˜One bite at a time.' So I never forgot that because looking back on that, there's a lot of wisdom there because every challenge in life may seem overwhelming, it may seem very big, but you just take it a step at a time, a bite at a time and I think that there's a lot to be learned. There's patience there that can be learned. Through time you begin to understand certain things.

Recently, you'll hear this during election season. Next year is election season and I've already heard some individuals say that, "˜You know, we thought that these new leaders that came into office were going to really make some huge changes.' They said, "˜Nothing has changed. Nothing's changed. Everything's still the same.' But when you look at it from the governance level, governance is a huge ship. It doesn't alter course quickly. So once you begin to appreciate that, it's...creating systemic change, creating change that could be positive and noticeable, it comes...it'll come eventually. You have to lay the groundwork for it. I'll probably never forget that piece of wisdom that was given to me."

Aresta La Russo:

"Thank you. And so what I heard was, don't be easily persuaded when making big decisions, there's a reason why things take time and basically, one step at a time. So thank you. Your answers to these questions, for the students here, these are advices they are also taking, listening and taking with them throughout life. The third question: Being members of an Indian nation, give examples of how your cultural and traditional teachings have motivated your success. And if we could begin with Lieutenant Governor again."

Stephen Roe Lewis:

"Well, again, thank you for that question. And like I said in the beginning, as tribal leaders we are...we try to not necessarily epitomize, but we have to, at some point in our lives, demonstrate those values of what makes up our tribal communities.

For the Gila River Indian Community, and specifically the Akimel O'odham, we were historically agricultural. And when you live in the desert and you're agricultural, there's a way of cooperation, cooperation for the common good. And those...always cooperating with one another whether it's in your family, whether it's in your village, whether it's in your clan, your extended family, it's that respect, mutual respect and cooperation. And also because of our agricultural heritage, it's self-sufficiency, it's making sure that you're a productive part of your community and that you have a role to play. Because of that self-sufficiency, you have a responsibility and a role to give back and to enrich your community. And when you try to...it's good that Mr. Phelps, Councilman Phelps was talking about, "˜Come election time...' and again, election time always comes. And there's really, there's a big difference between governance and governments on a large level and especially as a leader, your leadership skills, you have to guide your people through...there are technical challenges and there are adaptive challenges. Technical challenges, those you can read a book, there are specific skill sets that you can bring in, you can look to financial advisers, you can look to public policy experts, you can look to economists, but it's those adaptive problems where your tribe, you're going on new ground, you're trying to bring your people along, slowly bring your people along to surface an issue, surface a problem.

With our community, we have...we're looking at exactly what does culture play in our community? We have a declining percentage of those people who speak, who are fluent speakers and so you have that criticism, "˜How come it's not being spoken? How come it's not being spoken in the family? How come it's not being taught more productively as part of cultural curriculums in our schools on the reservation?' And so you wonder why, you wonder why there's that gap between what those values are and what the reality really is and as a leader you've got to bridge those. You've got to look at exactly...as your people are adapting to these new changes, you've got to realize as a leader, what are the most important bedrock principles of what your culture is, what has sustained you, what has made you survive as a people all these years and use those. Use those as tools, use those as touchstones when you try to communicate to your people and you bring them along as a tribal leader. I think that's really what true leadership is.

And of course there's leadership versus authority. Your authority as a tribal leader, you have a role that's really demarcated whether it's in your bylaws or whether it's in your tribal constitution. Sometimes leadership though, sometimes you have to go beyond that role of your authority. You have to go beyond sometimes to really...if you want, if your people are stuck on some issue or stuck on some social problem, you're wondering why there are high incidences of drug abuse, those societal problems, those social problems, and how you can use those cultural touchstones, reach back into your culture, how you can use those tools to reawaken your people, to how you can use those tools as a call to action to start to focus on some of those issues. As a leader, you have to, at times, light the fire under the people. Sometimes...and you have to really gauge whether they're ready, you have to gauge how you're going to do it and in what type of a language and I'm not really necessarily talking about your traditional language or the English language, but the type of language, the type of words you use. Those can really...that's when you're really out there, when you're really, as what sometimes referred to as a leader, when you're on the line, when you're on the firing line there. You really are exercising leadership at that point. Thank you."

LuAnn Leonard:

"The Hopi Education Endowment Fund is a nonprofit of the Hopi Tribe that...where we raise money for the scholarships and grants for our Hopi students to go to schools across the United States. So some of the Hopi students here receive our money. When we created the fund, the tribe gave the first give of $10 million, which was huge because they really put their money where their mouth was. All tribal councils say education is important, but we were so proud the Hopi Tribe did that 11 years ago or 12 years ago.

So we had, I was...came in as the first director and I had an opportunity, I had $10 million, I had no staff, no office, no computer, anything at all, but I had this $10 million, which some of it I could use for a budget. And I could have put...created our office and opened it up here in Tucson, Washington D.C., someplace where rich people live and start our new office. But I felt strongly that this organization must be for Hopi, by Hopi. I wanted to create jobs on the reservation for staff, Hopi staff to run this office and be able to be productive, but also make a good wage and be able to participate in culture. And so I brought on three college-educated employees and we began the Hopi Education Endowment Fund.

We deal with culture every day as we run our non-profit. A non-profit like Make A Wish, Big Brothers Big Sisters, stuff like that, they all have different approaches toward fundraising and fundraising was a new concept for Hopi and I'm sure for Native people. But what we've done over the years, people call it, they say we 'Hopi-fy' it. For example, death is not a, not something that a lot of us talk about, but in fundraising people leave money in their wills and things like that. So what we did with us, we really don't...you don't plan for your death, but in our way and I'm sure some of you can relate is you plan your grandparent's and your parent's plan who's going to take over the house, who's going to take over the field, who's going to take over the cattle. They leave things like that and there's a concept called \ˈnō-ə\ in our traditions on Hopi. And so we created a \ˈnō-ə\ Society and we... so we use our culture, we kind of modernize it in different causes, but we...being Hopi and running a Hopi organization, we know how far we can go without abusing it and that's the beauty of that.

And I hope, as people, as you get educated and you go back to your reservations and start working for the people, you'll experience the same thing because it's great to be able to have a program like that that you can take great pride in. For example, we never use kachinas in any of our brochures and things like that because we know how far we can take it without being disrespectful. And our people are always there to police us. But one thing, just real quickly, that we ran across was people think philanthropy, fundraising, what is that? But when you think back, who were the first philanthropists, who were the...who was the ones who got those Pilgrims through that first hard winter? It was Native people and we all have this in each of our cultures. We all have different practices and it's our jobs as professionals to pull that out and be able to use that in a new concept. So that's how we use Hopi culture in the everyday workplace."

Walter Phelps:

"Again, thank you. I think this is a great question to try and provide examples that can help motivate...what motivated me, what could motivate maybe somebody else. I guess on one hand, when you're young, when I was young, I wanted to know what my future was, what was in store for my future, what was my purpose for being here. So I remember coming home from, after being away for several years, coming home to my community there at Luepp and we were in a meeting like this and one of our elders said, and he was talking and he said, and he was the leader, he was the council member, council member that represented our community in Window Rock and he was speaking to us and he...I don't remember what all the context of his subject was about, but one statement that he made stuck with my like an arrow. It just like pierced me like an arrow and I walked away with an arrow stuck in me for years to come. And that eventually, it eventually, those words of wisdom eventually brought me down.

But what he said was, '[Navajo language].' In other words, why should you be such a promising person, such a promising person, an individual with such potential and just be that way and not do anything with it? More or less, that was the context of that statement. And I think those words eventually made me realize that there is a purpose, there is a purpose. And if I'm going to succeed one way or another and contribute back to, as to why I'm here, I just have to say, not everybody can be a council member, not everybody is cut out to be a mechanic, not everybody can be a doctor, but if you search for it, if you search for it, pray for it, it'll come to you. I've seen people study for engineering. They spend years in the classrooms in their institutions of learning. They come back to the community. What are they doing? They're doing something totally different. They find their passion in something else.

So what you're doing today may not be what you're going to be doing maybe 20 years from now. It could be something totally different, but I guess the pursuit of that is our privilege as Americans to pursue where we find ourselves and what we find our passion to be and what brings happiness and joy to us. And to me, people ask me, "˜So what is it like? What is it like being a council member?' I said, "˜Well, I enjoy my work. I enjoy my work. It's a challenge to me. I get up every day and I want to get up and do what I'm supposed to do today. It's a joy. It's a joy to me.' I guess it's a path and it's a journey when you find...when you know that you're on the right path, you will find fulfillment and it will be a challenge and you will enjoy doing it."

Aresta La Russo:

"Thank you. [Navajo language]. I think from your speeches, from your comments, basically the principles of your culture of each tribe, we heard the words self-sufficiency, cooperation, philanthropy, giving and also the concept of \ˈnō-É™\ and we're here for a purpose. So that's to sum it up. So thank you. So we're going to go on to our fourth question and I'm sure you all have mentors. So who were your mentors that influenced you? But I guess here if you could mention a couple of them that would be great. And if we could continue on with the same line up with Lieutenant Governor."

Stephen Roe Lewis:

"Well, I think, as a leader and just as a human being, there's a process of growth, process of maturation and I've had the opportunity to go to school, to go to graduate school and you're exposed to a bunch of different...bunch of ideas, you're exposed to the great works, you're exposed to depending on your study. You can talk about Martin Luther King or Gandhi or Cesar Chavez or you start talking about even our great Native leaders in history and our great leaders within our individual respective tribes and then once you go back to your tribe, at least for me, and really take a leadership position and you start to reflect on your own personal journey.

And for me I guess I've always known this, when you start to think about those lifelong lessons and you start to reflect on, for me, on the people around you who raised you, your parents. I had the opportunity to not only spend some time with my father and my mother, but also my grandparents, your extended family. I know aunts and uncles are very important in tribal traditions as well. I know one of my uncles who was a -- and this is really kind of timely because we just had celebrated Veterans Day -- my uncle who was a Vietnam veteran and really had trouble adjusting always when he came back, but he was in the infantry, he was out there in Vietnam, out there really exposed to the horrors of war. But one thing I learned from him was that he, and from a leadership perspective, he walked point a lot for his infantry, for his platoon and he always surveyed the areas. He always...he listened, he used all of his faculties and smell, hearing, sight, just really developed those skills and tested an environment before you go in.

And I think I really want to apply that as well to leadership. You have to go in, you have to use all of your senses, you have to really understand exactly what the barometer of a situation is if you're going to go in and do problem solving, if you're going to go into a meeting and you have to reveal bad news or challenging news to your community members, to your tribal members, to tell them that there's a shortfall in funds, to tell them that the housing budget has been cut by the council, to tell them that so and so might have been terminated. And so you really...and before that, you have to, you're almost like a scout, which essentially was what my uncle was and you're always measuring what the winds of change or the winds of exactly what's going through your community. What is the pulse of your community out there, the pulse of your environment?

You can't...as a tribal leader sometimes, and I've noticed this, is that when they obtain these positions and thereby the people who put them in there by they separate themselves from their community, they're in their tribal office and where before they might have gone out and were among the people, now they're in meetings in their office and they're traveling a lot, maybe traveling to Washington, D.C. -- and there's no criticism about tribal leaders who go to Washington, D.C., I've been to Washington, D.C. more times than I can remember in the past couple of years -- but you can't lose that tie to your tribal membership. You have to really...an old political axiom is "˜all politics is local' and that does go with tribal politics, at least in my experience. You really have to be attuned to what your tribal people are thinking about. You can't lock yourself up in your office once you get into office.

But I guess, going back to who really influenced me as mentors I would have to say my uncles, my aunts, of course my father and my mother. They were very instrumental. My father was one of the first...in fact, he was the first Native American to pass the bar in Arizona, first Native American to argue and to win a Supreme Court case and it was a tribal taxation case for our tribe back in 1980. And so public service does run in my family. So you have to really reflect what type of legacies run in your family. Of course, probably public service runs in everyone's family, public service extending to veterans. As we know, Native Americans, they've always served the highest percentage of any other group in the United States. Since the war on terror over 50,000 tribal members, 50,000 Native Americans have served and of course I think we all, of course, we have an illustrious history of Native Americans who've served. I think it's obvious for the tribes here represented; they can speak about their rich history. For Gila River, of course it's Ira Hayes. He was one of the flag raisers in Iwo Jima on Mt. Suribachi and really epitomized the sacrifice of all Native Americans. So as...when you're trying to find your way, you're trying to find your call to serve, what's very important and I think what really sustains you is, what is your...the legacies that you've...in your family, in your extended family. What are those legacies that you can continue on and you can bring with you as a leader in whatever position you choose to attain? Thank you."

LuAnn Leonard:

"You will each need a mentor to help you grow professionally. A mentor is not only a friend, but a colleague and a friend who will, who can be brutally honest with you to help you grow and I have two mentors. The first is a U of A grad. His name's Wayne Taylor, Jr., former Chairman of the Hopi Tribe. We were in tribal government about, gosh, 20 years ago when we first met and we had dreams for our people and we were both just younger professionals and we got along very well. And when election time came about, he was the one we wanted to get into office so that we can act on those dreams. And he was a one-term vice chairman, two-term chairman and has done so many successful things. So it's been great growing up with him.

My other mentor is Yoda. I call her Yoda. So picture this. I'm young; I just got my job as the Executive Director of the Hopi Education Endowment Fund. No experience in fundraising, philanthropy and that, but I had motivation and I had a good idea of what I wanted to do. There was this lady named Barbara Poley. She's the Director...she was the Executive Director of the Hopi Foundation, which has been on the Hopi Reservation for over 30 years. She's been through it all. She was a friend, but also she was a colleague, and so I call her Yoda because I see her as the Yoda, the master, like the Jedi master. Here I was young Luke Skywalker wanting to do great things and just charging forward. But then Yoda helped pull me back telling me, "˜LuAnn, you've got to hold on. Think about this, this, this before you do this.' We laugh about it nowadays because Yoda is so ugly and everything, but she really is a Yoda and I hope that each of you find that Yoda in your life because you will need it once you get your education and go out there and pursue your dreams."

Aresta La Russo:

"Thank you."

Walter Phelps:

"Thank you. I think the...my first mentor that will always be somebody that I will remember forever is my father-in-law. My father-in-law perhaps was one of those individuals that I will never forget. We were privileged to get to know him after I got married and not knowing that he had a short life span to live not too long after that because he got cancer and by the time they finally discovered it, it was too late. It had already pretty much eaten up his whole insides and it was too late for treatment. But the man was a leader. If there was a man among men, he was the man. The memories that I have of being with him, being around him, watching him being the leader that he was with all the people that he worked with, he was a leader. He was a great leader. And when he passed away, his funeral was just packed. People came from all over the country; from back east, from Canada, from the west, the east to the west and north to the south, they all came to his funeral. I remember one gentleman, one leader from the Sioux Nation came and he said, "˜He was a pillar. He was a pillar among us.' But when you knew him personally, he was a very humble man, very humble man. He spoke very few words. When he spoke, his words had depth and he did not waste his words. His words were...they were not fancy words or anything, but he was always to the point, very matter of fact, common sense, never an unkind word about anybody, always very respectful of all the people he worked with. It's not to say that he wasn't frustrated or perhaps angry, but he never showed it. He never showed it. And I feel like I have a long ways to go to be like the way he was. He was a very spiritual man and also he was a man who prayed. If there was someone that helped me to become the person that I am, he contributed a lot.

Today, I'm privileged to work not only with the leaders that I now work with, but I also work with former leaders, those that had those positions before me and also have worked with other leaders. And I can think of one gentleman, in fact this past Saturday I held a meeting way out in Black Falls and he just happened to come to the chapter house. He's an elderly now. He's retired and I invited him. I said, "˜Hey, would you like to attend that meeting with me and maybe...I'd be happy to drive you over.' So he said, "˜Oh, yeah. Sure. I'll...' He said, "˜Let me go talk to the war department first,' which was his wife. So he got permission and we left. But he to this day is a mentor. He has so much experience, so much experience in working with leaders, working with people at the community level and I can always rely on people like that that understand people. My father-in-law once told me, he said, "˜You'll find later on in life,' he said, "˜You'll find that it's easy to run heavy equipment, work with machines and equipment,' but he said, "˜the hardest thing to do is to work with people.' He was right. I have to say, he was absolutely right."

Aresta La Russo:

"Okay. Thank you. So the message to me, if I could reiterate, is having mentors and they guide you and as students academically and for your professionally development and someone who's brutally honest with you and who is a friend. Thank you. So we have a little bit of time. I have two more questions that I would like to ask and I believe these are questions that we as Native students have experience or know about or we wonder what are our leaders facing? So the question is, what do you feel or think are the biggest challenges facing Native American leaders?"

Stephen Roe Lewis:

"Well, I think for me as an elected leader and there's my...the governor of our tribe, in fact he's traveling back from Washington, D.C. right now. President Obama held the Tribal Leaders Summit with the White House and that's been going on for the past week and I'm sure all the tribal leaders were there. And of course I have to stay home and I have to make sure the tribe is still running.

But really what I've noticed, especially when we attend either tribal or national meetings like National Congress of American Indians and then you listen on like Indianz.com and you really see...this happened for Gila River, both myself and Governor [Gregory] Mendoza, we're one of the youngest to be elected to these positions. Usually you have senior members of our community who were elected, who served their professional career, who served our community and so really this is sort of a turning point among leadership among my tribal community. And then you start to see that really with other tribal communities as well. You see that up in the Plains, up in the Northwest coast and the Southern Plains, you see these tribal leaders who have...who were landmarks, who have really served in difficult times, in the "˜60s and "˜70s, '80s, and now you have this new generation of younger people, 50s and 40s and even 30s, who are being elected to tribal leadership among different tribes. And so you have this new generation that is slowly -- and it's only natural of course -- slowly assuming tribal leadership. There are new challenges, there are the...there are more sophisticated problems that you deal with. Keeping the pulse of your people is more difficult, making sure that you don't get alienated from your own constituency.

We're in the, really in the first wave of social networking. We have a lot of...I'm just constantly amazed at how many of our community members, how many tribal members, how many Native Americans who are on Facebook and all these other social networking sites. I'm sort of slow to adopt. My son who's just starting high school, he's an expert. In fact he kind of helps me with my own smart phone, making sure that I stay ahead or at least keep up with the technology. And then you...it's kind of interesting because then we even have some of...this really occurred during our last election, a lot of our young community members, tribal members are on Facebook, are on social networking sites and then you start to see a lot of our elder community members who might be homebound, they learn from their own grandchildren how to access those social networking sites too. So you have this virtual community on these social networking sites and so that creates a whole new different dimension to governance, a whole new different dimension to communication as well. So you have all these really...we're sort of really in this important transitional stage I think for tribal leadership.

Especially as well, I think from more of a formal governance perspective I know a lot of tribes are dealing with their constitutions. You have a lot of constitutional reform going on among different tribes as well and you have tribes grappling with do they want to keep their IRA [Indian Reorganization Act] form of government, do they want to reform it to a more progressive form or do they want to also make it hybrid models to incorporate their cultural values into their tribal government. Do you want to include...because most tribes are still on that tribal council, heavy tribal government where most of the express power is with the tribal council and there's not necessarily a separation of powers with the executive or with the judicial. So a lot of tribes are dealing with that, exactly how...making those...the tribal governments, making them accountable to the people, making them valid to the people and the process about going about that. Those are very important complex challenges that I see tribes, not only my tribe, but other tribal communities going through as well."

LuAnn Leonard:

"This one's kind of hard for me because I'm not an elected leader, but I've served elected leaders as staff, assistants and have worked with many of my chairmen of the Hopi people. But just watching them and knowing what they deal with, what I've seen them facing is, it's really hard to balance progress and tradition and this is coming from one of the most traditional people in the Southwest, the Hopi Tribe, where we still have our customs. You could look at the old Edward Curtis pictures and those things are still happening today because we protect them. And balancing how do you protect that without infringing on it, jeopardizing it? That's what I see them having to deal with. There are many opportunities out there for progress for our people. There's land leases with Peabody Coal Mine, just like the Navajo have, our neighbors next to us, power lines, all of this. How do you balance for example bringing a power line in and making sure that you're not near a cultural site that's significant to your people. So having that knowledge, but also having that authority and that power to be able to make the right choices, balancing that. I see them dealing with that.

I also see them dealing with, and we just dealt with this last week, with you students. What we're finding...we had a Laguna gentleman who did his Ph.D., he got his Ph.D. from U of A. He was...his Ph.D. was on how Laguna is using their students. What we're finding...what he found and what's similar with Hopi and probably with others is you're investing a lot of money into students, but what are we doing as a tribe to help bring you guys home? Are we creating jobs with decent wages? Do we have the housing? Do we have the medical facility? I joke, we don't have Starbucks and stuff, but we have so much more to offer and it's so fulfilling to work for your people, even if you have to sacrifice. But you shouldn't have to sacrifice having to live with three families in one home and so the...what we posed by bringing this gentleman in to start the discussion, the dialogue on the Hopi Nation, was what can we do as tribal employees, as leaders of non-profits and community members to make sure our students can come back because we are losing a lot of you and we do need you back. We do want that investment to pay off and I know I have full faith that it will, but we need to have people out there I guess like in the Hopi Education Endowment Fund who's willing to take that step and start that dialogue and get people thinking."

Walter Phelps:

"Again, this is a big question. What are the biggest challenges facing our leaders, our Native leaders? I think that the... what's happening today, what's happening...what started happening a year ago in regards to the sequestration and also the government shutdown, that has brought a lot of things to surface for us. It has, I guess, basically helped us to realize that we are in very unique times of leadership right now. In past administrations perhaps it may have been a lot easier to send more earmarks home to the communities, even from the congressional level. I used to be a congressional staffer so we succeeded with a lot of earmarks, even from the congressional level into our district. This was Congressional District 1. And health care, there's so much to talk about in terms of Obamacare [Affordable Care Act], but I think that...when I really think about this what perhaps is the biggest challenge for the Navajo Nation -- I really can't speak for the other nations, but perhaps this will go across the board as well -- is sustainability and independence. That's I think our biggest challenge. We have to start pushing and working so that we can stand on our own two feet.

I come from a rancher background. My dad had cows, horses, sheep. My brother back here drove me down here, he's been a bull rider and a calf roper, very successful one, and I remember riding my horse one day out there in the field and I came across three cows. The mama cow was standing right here and the other cow was standing right next to it and then another baby calf was standing on this side. The big, probably like a...I don't know if it was a two-year-old... the mama cow's in the middle nursing off of her own two year old cow and then the baby cow feeding off the other one. So in essence there was three cows feeding off of each other, nursing off of each other and when I remember that, I think about what are we doing as a nation?

We have the federal government, tribal government and the state government; each one has resources, very limited now, shrinking every day as we speak. We're trying to feed off of each other to sustain each other. We've got to find a way...we need to find a way so that we don't have to continue down that same road because at some point in time, I don't know when, how much longer it's going to be, but the U.S. government, the last time I knew was 16 and a half trillion dollars in debt, deficit. And so I think the biggest challenge for us is how do we move from here to the next point so that we can move our nation towards more stronger and sustainable nations so that we can truly be independent and exercise our sovereignty."

Aresta La Russo:

"Thank you. So what the challenge is, keeping balance in these transitional times whether it's with technology or within the governmental structure, and also another challenge is losing students not coming home, that's a challenge, and also having Indian nations, tribal nations be sustainable and independent in getting from Point A to Point B. Thank you. So the last question is, as leaders, as community members, as tribal members, what advice would you give to students in their future endeavors as leaders of all sorts, whether within their community, whether within their educational system, whether...? Yes, there's many ways to be leaders."

Stephen Roe Lewis:

"Well, thank you and I think this is a question that brings the discussion, the dialogue full circle. And this goes to being the essence of leadership and it doesn't have to be...we have three very important roles of leaders up here. You have an elected leader, you have a leader within a non-profit setting, and also you have also another elected leader as well. Leadership means going back in whatever capacity that...you could be a leader as an engineer; you can be a leader in the medical field. Leader means finding out exactly where your tribal community needs to either adapt to, to grow to. If there's some lack of capacity, as a leader, you could be that catalyst. You could be that catalyst to calling people to action on a certain issue whether it has to do with behavioral health, whether it has to do with diabetes, has to do with crime. There are so many ways that you can be a leader. It doesn't have to...leadership...and I think that's really...

When you talk about authority and leadership I think those are very non -- at least in my opinion -- non-Indian views. As a leader, you don't necessary have to have certain authority. You can go and you can make a change at any different part of your Indian society, of your tribal society. You don't have to be an elected leader, you don't have to be appointed, you don't have to be in a certain position. You can be an ordinary citizen, you can be in any capacity and you can exercise leadership. As students, you can...whatever gifts, natural, intrinsic gifts that you have proclivities to, whatever intellectual study that you're going to get your degree in, there are inherent opportunities to be leaders, to take that knowledge. Just like what was said, we have...and it's not just with the Hopi Tribe, it's with all tribes.

We're experiencing really a massive brain drain in Indian Country because there aren't those jobs for tribal members back home. If you're a molecular biologist, really what sort of job can you get as a molecular biologist back at Gila River, as a nuclear engineer or these very specialized fields? And I think that's why we really, as both as someone who's attaining those degrees, but also as tribal leaders, I think that's exactly where that gap is, where tribes who actually, at least for Gila River, when we are trying to educate our young people, we don't want to lose them to the outside world. We want them to come back, bring that knowledge back and what we found too is that most of our community members, if not all, they want to come back, they want to bring that knowledge back, bring those degrees back and put them to work in the community. So there are...so just...and I hope you just...you don't mix up authority with leadership. You can exercise and be a leader in any capacity within your tribal society."

Luann Leonard:

"I want all of you students to always remember this, that you are the lucky ones. You think about your reservations, you think about your people, you think about your high school classmates who are still there with a lot of kids, no jobs. On the Hopi Reservation, these guys are carving dolls, hoping to sell a doll to buy those diapers. You are lucky and you are privileged to have an opportunity to be at the U of A. Never take that for granted and do the best that you can so that you can use your skills to come back and help our people in some way. Some of you are going to come back and you're going to serve directly your people. Others, like he's talking about, a microbiologist who probably can't come back, but they can do research that can benefit diabetes or something that will help our people. Find a way that you can serve, find a way that you can give back because you are privileged and you are the lucky ones in this world, the reservations that we live in.

And the second thing is, I find it so amazing that in this whole world, the bahanas, white people, they...first man on the moon, first woman Supreme Court Justice, all of these...I call them the 'firsts.' They've been taken up. But in Indian Country, in your own communities, there are so many firsts left. When I was asked to be a Regent, I had to go through a Senate hearing at the State Capitol and they had to vote to allow me to become a Regent. Governor [Janet] Napolitano at that time is the one who appointed me and when they went in to make that vote, I was there and there was a bunch of people there and then they took the vote and the people left and I was thinking, I asked, "˜Why are there so many people here?' And they said, "˜You don't realize, you're the first Native American to ever serve on the Arizona Board of Regents and they have been around for 140 years. So that's...you just became a first.' And I say that with great pride, but I want you...I use it as an example because there are still firsts out there and each of you can find that First. Maybe you're going to be the first doctor in your community. Maybe you're going to be the first woman chairman or chairperson of your tribe. But there are still many firsts out there left for us and we should be thankful for that."

Walter Phelps:

"Again, I want to say thank you for the privilege to be here with you and spend this little quality time with you. I'm sure you have lots of questions as well. There was a statement by someone that said, "˜Why does the bird sing? Why does a bird sing? It's not because he has all the answers, but because he has a song, he has a song.' I think that if you pay attention to little details, it'll take you a long way. Just pay attention to little details. Tie your shoestring. Remember that? Button your shirt. Just do the little things, do the little things. Great people that have become great people paid attention to the little things and I think that that's very...probably the best instruction I was given. So if you see a trash can full of trash, take care of it. Don't let somebody else worry about it. If there's dirty laundry laying around, pick it up. Don't depend on somebody else to do it. That's the path towards greatness.

In my studies, I study some of the great leaders from way, way, way back. This is in the B.C.'s. Some of the greatest leaders that history talks about, you know what they were? They were shepherds, they were sheepherders. And my mom said one time, she said, "˜I used to be so embarrassed because we used to herd sheep with donkeys...' When she was young I guess they used to herd sheep with donkeys.' And she said -- my mom's a Christian -- she said, '...until one day I went to church and they said Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem.' And she said that totally changed her perspective. But what I've noticed is some of the greatest leaders were simply sheepherders and I think there's something magical in sheepherding. There's something magical in it. They're the stubbornest animals there are sometimes, but if you pay attention to them, take care of them, they'll take care of you. That's what we were told. [Navajo language]. It's your livelihood; it will take care of you. So I think that whatever it is, those little simple details in life that can really make a difference."

Peterson Zah: Native Nation Building: The Place of Education

Producer
American Indian Studies Program
Year

Dr. Peterson Zah, former Chairman and President of the Navajo Nation, discusses the importance of higher education in empowering Native nations' efforts to achieve their nation-building goals. He also discusses the Navajo Nation Permanent Trust Fund as an example of the strategic orientation that Native nations need to have if they are going to truly become self-sufficient.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Zah, Peterson. "Native Nation Building: The Place of Education." American Indian Studies Program, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. September 23, 2013. Presentation.

Peterson Zah:

“[Navajo language]. Thank you, Manley [Begay], for the introduction and then thank you all for being here today to share some ideas, some things that we all as Native community need to think about as well as discuss among ourselves. I really appreciate the invitation to come here.

In working with Diane Humetewa, most of you know she’s a very fine lawyer. She’s the former U.S. Attorney and now has been nominated by the [Obama] Administration to become the next federal judge here in Tucson and she’s one of these scholars that we rarely have as American Indian, Native people. And I think…and I believe what Manley says that some day you’re going to hear more about her because of her commitment to...the concept of justice and she’s that good, just really an outstanding citizen.

My talk as I understand it from little brother here says talk about nation building. I think nation building is the way to go in sovereign Indian Country problem nowadays. We’ve come a long ways where we would take an issue by itself and maybe an issue with a certain group and we try to work with that specific group in trying to resolve the issue, but we have come this far where we now have to work with other entities around that group. No problem has ever been resolved satisfactorily when groups are trying to do that by themselves. You have to work with other entities. There’s just no way around the whole idea.

When I went to Arizona State University, I wanted to increase the student population because that’s what the president wanted. He says, ‘We get American Indian students and we can’t seem to go above 672 and when we do, they leave us the next year and we need to keep them there.’ That was his charge. And then I started thinking, ‘Well, he hasn’t given me any staff or any money so this means I’ve got to do this alone.’ And I knew that I can’t do something like that alone. I’ve got to involve other people, I’ve got to reach out, I’ve got to change the concept of how people recruit students.

And so I went over to the recruitment office and I says, ‘Can you guys tell me where you recruit more students for ASU [Arizona State University]?’ And then they started going to the board and they said, ‘New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Denver, Colorado.’ And I was sitting there and I said, ‘What about Indian reservation?’ And one guy who was the director says, ‘We don’t go Indian reservations because there’s…when we drive out there, there’s nobody around.’ And the guys says, ‘I drove across from Flagstaff, Arizona, through Hopi, all the way out to Gallup, New Mexico, and I saw two people.’ And the guy was trying to justify why they don’t go to an Indian reservation and I told him, I says, ‘You know what, they’re underneath all those bushes. You have to beat the bushes for them to get up and then when they get up, you grab them by the neck and then you drag them here to the university. And when they come, make sure that you educate all the staff people here at this university to welcome them, give them a reception, a warm welcome. You people don’t do that. You don’t do that.’ And so that’s how the recruitment got started.

And for me personally instead of trying to hit the different meetings or tribal council meeting or to the school board meeting, I go to a Yeibicheii dance, traditional Navajo dances, and I grab the microphone and while the Yeibicheiis are dancing away, I’m talking about education and trying to convince the parents that any child who’s able, capable, academically inclined, have a desire to better their lot, those individuals should be given an opportunity. And so basically that was the approach that we use to get students to come to these institution because the normal process sometimes don’t work. You have to think out of the box and maybe do strange things to get people over to where you want them to be.

And so I was so happy in 2008, a Navajo student came to me and she says, ‘Mr. Zah, I want to look at your calendar.’ Look at my calendar? I thought she was there to discuss a problem that she might have and I thought to myself, ‘Well, there’s nothing to seeing my calendar with her,’ and so I opened my calendar and then she says, ‘Mark that date!’ And I said, ‘What’s happening on that day?’ It’s like, ‘Graduation at ASU.’ And I said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ She says, ‘I don’t know, but I want you to be there, we want you to be there. We, the graduating students and faculty.’ So I marked it on my calendar and that day I went over to Grady Gammage Auditorium and I was there for the graduation and I thought that…two days before the graduation I thought she might come back in, ‘And I know she wanted me…maybe she wants me to talk,’ so I started writing my speech. And being ready so that when she comes back, I’ll say, 'Yes,' and then I’m the speaker.

She came back in and I said, ‘Well, I’ve got it all written out.’ And she says, ‘Written out what?’ And I said, ‘My talk.’ And she said, ‘No. We don’t want you to talk.’ I said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ And she says, ‘All we want you to do is sit on the stage.’ And I said, ‘What’s happening?’ She says, ‘All of the work that we have been able…’ and she was one of these students that was very active. ‘All the work that we have done recruiting, retention, increasing the graduation rate, all of that, the cumulative of all of the hard work you’re going to see in May on that date at ASU graduation.’ So I went, again I wasn’t happy with our conversation. I says, ‘What do you specifically want me to do when I’m sitting on the stage?’ And she said, ‘Smile. Smile. You’re going to be happy and you’re going to be smiling.’

And what she meant was that, 'We’re going to have over 300 American Indian students graduating and we’re going to march them in from your left, they’re going to get their diploma, because there are so many of them we’re going to have some more on your right and they’re going to get their diploma and you’ll be sitting there, these are all your students that you recruited. And out of that group we’ve got 22 doctorate, 56 master’s degree,' and many, many of those students became principals, teachers. Many of the master’s degree students were in charge of programs in Navajo.

And so when you get other people involved in the recruitment that you’re trying to do, that is something that you should look at as your goal because you can’t do it by yourself, you can’t do it alone. You’ve got to get other people involved. So basically that was something that ASU enjoyed and that was the day I decided in my own head, ‘We’ll never match that again, so I’m going to resign and retire.’ So the next year I left and I’ve been in retirement for the last…going into my fourth year. I thought I was going to stay home. I even bought a rocking chair and I wanted to just sleep, but it didn’t happen that way. There’s more work at home and if you’re not connected to any program, if you’re not a tribal employee or university employee or state employee, you can do many things because you’re free. You’re free.

And so basically, with me, since my retirement, I’ve been just working out with people in trying to improve their programs; many, many of them that need political muscle because here’s what’s happening, for those of you that are American Indian students and Navajo students, particularly. We have out on the Navajo, for example, Navajo Housing Authority, Navajo Oil & Gas, Navajo Gaming Enterprise; we have all these other divisions, there’s hundreds of them. All of the young, articulate, smart Navajo students are running those projects, rightfully so, except they’re not very well versed in their own peoples’ language, lifestyle. They have a hard time communicating sometimes with the elderly people. And they have a hard time communicating with their own tribal council members so they come looking for me to re-teach in many ways, to have them re-learn this whole idea of Navajo way. And so that’s how I’m helping some of those programs and projects. You take two entities, one is the council of 24 and let’s say Navajo Oil & Gas and then I start talking to them and say, ‘These guys are into oil and gas business. Navajo Gaming Enterprise is into gaming business. They’re also now in hospitality business, whether we like it or not. They have hotels. Do we as a traditional people know all that much about hospitality business? So how do we as American Indian people explain that to the elderly people?’ And so that has been my work and the chair back at home stays there and maybe on occasion it rocks, but I’m still out there doing things that really needed to be done.

And so for those of you that are young, I would recommend that you spend less time with this little gadget here and maybe pay more attention to what your grandma and grandpa has to say because that becomes even more important. I go to these dinners sometimes with people. I never turn down a dinner with people that I’m working with because I like to eat, just like anybody. When I sit down and eat with people, there’s all these people that comes in and they have dinners with maybe their grandchildren, their siblings, sons and daughters and when I look over to that table, the young ones are all on their cell phone and their computers and they don’t talk. They don’t talk. The Navajo is following suit. They’re exactly doing the same thing and that’s why I always tell the young people, ‘When you’re with grandma and grandpa, turn them off. It won’t hurt you.’ Turn them off because they have so much to offer that sometimes we have a hard time trying to acquire through normal ways. And that’s why you have a high-paid CEO for let’s say Navajo Gaming, Navajo Oil & Gas. The Oil & Gas CEO is an engineer. He’s only maybe one of the very few, two or three, that knows how to talk Navajo that can talk still to the council, but still has problems with trying to figure out the political ways of the Navajo people.

So when Manley says this is a class or this is a talk around nation building, we really, really need to do that because Indian tribes are nations and we’re trying to build Indian nations to be like a state, not necessarily a state, but like a state and be able to learn how to operate that government. We’ve got…we came a long ways, we’ve still got some...a ways more to go, but we’re getting there and so I always like the concept of nation building. Navajo Nation years ago has taken on that task where much, much of...some of the trust funding, just trust money that we created goes into nation-building concept, so that using the nation-building concept, those trust money goes to the chapter houses and they talk about their problems, decide how they should use those monies. So trust money is beginning to really help out the Navajo people. Manley mentioned something about the trust money, let me just tell you a little about it.

For any tribal nations building a trust fund is really, really hard because there’s a tremendous need from the local community and from the local people in terms of satisfying some of those needs and you need resources. So you’re a little weird if you become the tribal chair or the president and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to save some money.’ People look at you very funny and they say, ‘Save money? We got elected, we’ve got to deliver services so therefore we need more money.’ There’s that mentality. If you were elected you’d probably end up doing the same thing. So I was with this weird group that said, ‘We’ve got to save some money,’ because if you look at the Navajo revenues, we’re getting about 75 to 80 percent of our revenues comes from the coal and some day the coal is going to be gone. Some day the mineral resources are all going to be gone. Some day the timbers are going to be no longer there. It seems to me and it only makes common sense to save some of that money now to secure the future generation of the Navajo people and that’s why we created the Navajo Trust Fund.

Up to that time there were…it was kind of a bad word to use when you mentioned trust and the trust fund came about because Navajo Nation won a United States Supreme Court lawsuit in 1984 in Kerr-McGee v. the Navajo Nation and we went through a lot with that particular case. And I remember sitting in the council when we spent days about how we should handle the lawsuit. At that time the Navajo lawyers, there were no, well, very few Navajo lawyers, Navajo people who became lawyers. And one of your esteemed members of the faculty here, Judge Austin, was one of those young people. And when we were doing that, talking about how it should be handled, Navajo council was saying that, ‘We’ve got to get the best lawyer in the United States. We’re in Supreme Court. We want to appropriate a million dollars. So Mr. Zah, you go find that person and we’ll pay them a million dollars to defend us.’ That one thought, but I knew that there was two or three Navajo lawyers at the time. Claudine Bates Arthur was one of them, Louis Denetsosie was the other one, Herbert Yazzie was another one. And so we had few Navajo lawyers and we decided that maybe what we should do is call on a Navajo and that person can choose anyone he or she wants to handle the case with them in Supreme Court. And so we brought in the group and we interviewed them and I don’t know if there’s anyone here who knew Claudine Bates Arthur. Claudine Bates Arthur was a Navajo gal that was about that high. Her father was a Tachii’nii, so is this man here, my father’s a Tachii’nii, so is Manley, so that makes her my sister and I used to call her [Navajo language], my little sister. And I says, ‘Can you handle it?’ ‘Oh, my god, handle a Supreme Court case in the United States?’ and by that time she was out maybe five years, six years out of law school. She had a good friend, Elizabeth Bernstein who now lives here, east of us here in a community. She chose Elizabeth Bernstein. So the two of them, we used to fly into Phoenix and we had these mock trial. We selected judges or lawyers that knows Indian law and they acted as justices, four or five of them and they made their presentation. Then we had some more lawyers to critique them. We went over that, over and over so many times before we ever got into Supreme Court.

When we went into Supreme Court, I was there with Edward T. Begay, who was the vice president, and maybe one or two council delegates and we were sitting in the front row just like the way you’re sitting here. And when the United States Supreme Court justices came in, nine of them, they all sat, it was kind of scary, intimidated by those people that know justice, that knows the law so much to be sitting there. And Claudine and Elizabeth did a really, really good job in making their presentation. And at the end of that day we were so happy and some good question, good question, outstanding questions by the justices. And the one thing that I remember at my age you have a tendency to forget things, I don’t even know what I did yesterday, but I remember specifically one justice said to Kerr-McGee, who was extracting coal in the Farmington area that filed a suit against the Navajo Nation, one justice says to Kerr-McGee lawyer, ‘Your client, when they went out to Navajo Reservation out there, did they go out there on their own will? And then went and found the Navajo coal and then they went to the tribal council and asked for a lease? Or did the Navajo Nation seek them out in the community and then against their will brought them over to the Navajo Nation and had them work there to extract coal? What happened?’ And the answer was that ‘we went out there on our own will.’ ‘And are you being taxed wherever you are operating?’ They were asked that question. And they said, ‘Yeah, everywhere we go we’re being taxed except the Navajo,’ and that’s what this case is all about. So the justice says, ‘Then what makes you think that it’s okay with you that you’re paying taxes to all those other states in the other areas except the Navajo? You have to pay taxes too because they’re looking for revenues. Their people are hungry and their people need jobs.’ And that justice really went into the lawyer from the other side and I think that’s what the case really turned on. That was the last time Navajo Nation won a legal case in United States Supreme Court and that’s when we won over $177 million.

The question was, ‘When the $177 million that we got, what do you do with that money?’ I was the tribal chair. I was the most popular guy in Window Rock because the bank just turned over all that money and I was maybe, looked like you, nice, young, handsome. And I had that money and it was almost up to me and the council as to what we wanted to do. What would you do if you’re being put in that position? Just think about it. What would you do? Wanting advice, seeking advice. You know where I went? Not to New York City on the Wall Street, not to any of the money managers -- I went to my mother, who was a traditional Navajo person with sheep. And I was telling her what had happened, that we got a lot of money that we won and I said, ‘Mother, if you were me, what would you do with it? If you were a member of the council, what would you recommend?’ And she says a question back to me and said, ‘Can money be treated like a sheep?’ Uh, can money be sheep? And what she meant was this. She says, ‘I’ve been a sheepherder all my life and I have this size corral and 200 to 300 sheep can get in there. And when I have that many sheep, I can sell them, I can feed you kids. We can have mutton day and night if you have that many sheep, it won’t affect our herd.’ And she says, ‘Remember one time you were a freshman in college at ASU when our herd went all the way down and we only had 15.' 'That was a pathetic sight,’ she says. ‘We only had 15. And I told you kids, I gathered you kids, your sisters and your brothers, and I said, ‘you can’t have any mutton this year.’ That 15 has to grow back up. If we wait one year, that 15 is going to be 30. If we wait another year, that 30 is going to turn to 60 and then we’re going to be back at the comfortable level.’' Her question was, ‘Can you treat money the same way you treat sheep?’ And when I heard that, I says, ‘Ah ha, she’s talking about trust. She’s talking about creating trust fund.’ So you put money in the bank and the money will grow.

And I went back to Window Rock really, really happy, thinking to myself, ‘There’s the answer and I’d gotten advice from somebody and I don’t even have to pay her.’ And so that’s how the trust money came about and the trust money right now is almost two billion. It goes back and forth depending on the economy and what’s happened at Wall Street. And when we get over to two billion, they’ll probably get another A rating. So this time it’ll be Double A. So that’s where Navajo Nation is right now. The council has already decided to use interest earned to build the casinos. So using the, and not the principal, the interest earned, [Navajo language]. Each year they decided to use that. So just think about it this way, if you have almost two billion, let’s say you have two billion, if the interest rate is five percent, how much is that? If the interest rate is 10 percent of the two billion, how much is that? They’re using that money, but not spending the principal. So using the interest earned they were able to build the casino at Gallup, Fire Rock. They were able to build Farmington, New Mexico. What was the name for that? Northern Edge. Navajos, they always give their own name to these places. At Gallup, [Navajo language]. Fire Rock, [Navajo language]. There’s a fire, then you just sit around the fire. They haven’t given the Twin Arrow a name yet, it’s too new, but they used that money to build that and the one at Ship Rock and then now with the Twin Arrow so all that trust money, interest that they earned each year was used for that.

Why am I telling you this? We’re talking about nation building that you have that class here, that’s what the course is about. Navajo is the only tribe that I know where in the process of building those casinos, they didn’t have to go to the bank. They didn’t go to Wells Fargo. They used their own money to build those casinos. So during the grand opening, the first customer that came in and spent the money that went to Navajo into the tribal treasury. All these other casinos, I stayed at the one over here and I donated last night and that money goes over to Wells Fargo and it’s going to be like that for I don’t know how many years, 20 or 30 years. So the whole idea of trust, creating a trust fund, that’s what it did. That’s what it did. And you have to understand the principle, interest earned; the principle, interest earned. We can’t allow the council to spend and go after the principal, almost two billion. People always ask me, ‘[Navajo language]. Why are you so stingy with that money?’ They ask me. And here’s what I tell them. I tell them that ‘If we do a good job of handling this trust money and then we wait another 15, 17, 18 more years, it could be up to three or four billion. If we wait another 10 more years, it could be up to five billion and it’s just going to keep on growing. And if we don’t allow the council to spend that principal, you know what could happen? 20 more years the whole Navajo Nation can live off the interest that it earns each year and we don’t have to beg anybody for any money elsewhere. That’s what it means.’

But it took a lot of courage, it took a lot of spunk to do that because it was an unusual thing to do at the time, it still is an unusual thing for anybody to do. That was one of the things that we did during our administration. Karen [Francis-Begay] is here, my daughter. Her father took part working with me at the time to create the trust fund and we had that in mind. So it’s getting there. It’s getting there. But the thing about it is this. Every once in a while the council would [say], ‘Pete Zah out there?’ ‘No.’ [Navajo language] ‘Well, let’s go. We have $1.7 billion. Can you make a motion to get $500 million out of there?’ [Navajo language] So I guess by saying that, we need more people to safeguard, to safeguard that principal in the trust fund. I’m telling you only one trust fund. There’s 10 others. There’s 11 trust funds. So it was something new that was happening back then and it didn’t come from an individual with a big huge doctorate, university degree. It came from a sheepherder -- the suggestion, the idea. So you should never sell yourself short. Idea can move mountains. Idea is something that is a very, very powerful thing, particularly if you move it. It can move at its own pace and that’s why you’re going to college and the importance of going to college here really expands your mind so that you’re well versed in what’s going on in the world. And that’s something that I think all of the people that work with the students should realize and recognize that that’s the way to do it is to get that college education. So it’s important that you continue to work in those ways.

The other thing that I wanted to just tell you is that Navajo Nation is embarking on many, many major decisions right now, huge decisions. Because if you look at what’s happening to the coal industry, the whole nation is moving away from the use of coal to produce electricity. Right now, Navajo has a role in deciding something about the electricity. So this thing probably comes from Navajo. So if Navajo don’t want to get into that, we can go over to the light and turn it off. This electricity comes from Navajo coal, but EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] is really clamping down on fossil fuel, the use of fossil fuel to produce electricity and Arizona Public Service, all of the entities like them are beginning to suggest to the Navajo people that they should sell their power plant. So you have a power plant over in Page, I think four or five units there. You have a power plant over in Farmington, New Mexico, four or five units there. Those guys who own that, all of a sudden in the year 2013 became such nice guys. They want to sell it to the Navajo Nation. They’ve been mean all these hundred years, but one day somebody told them, ‘You’ve got to be nice to them,’ and so they’re saying, ‘We’re going to sell it to you for $182 million,’ or whatever it is. What do you think about it? For me, we’re going to be buying a used car. You know what I mean? A used car that has, what? 400,000 miles on it? And that’s going to cost us a lot of money. It’s up for discussion right now and you should be able to participate and all of the other things that will go with it. So here’s what I can’t really see, EPA, if you read…last night, I read another article that came out in USA Today how all of these plants are going to be shut down and new plants, they’re not going to be allowed to build new plants using fossil fuel and that means that electricity-producing firms are going to go to the natural gas. And why are we sitting in the council talking about the use of fossil fuel when EPA’s doing what they’re doing? It just doesn’t really make any sense. So you should participate in those discussions and see where you come out with your question on the proposed activities. And as a student, as a young person, I think you should try those kinds of discussions among and with your own people.

I really like what you are doing here regarding some of the classes that you are having. The students seem to be very well engaged in what goes on, they want to learn. And then for those of you that are Native American, education is so important in your life and in our lives. The Navajo people for example have come a long, long ways going all the way back 100 years ago, even 50 years, 60 years ago. In 1940, 1945 the United States discovered that there were 37,000 Navajo people that are of school age that had not enrolled in a school, that were not going to school. Imagine that: 37,000 Navajo people not in school of school age. I was one of them. I was one of them. So United States devise a program called Special Navajo Program and they put me into that institution and I became a student at Phoenix Indian School way back in 1948. And I always tell my grandchildren, ‘That program was called Special Navajo Program, so I’m special.’ And it was a program where you went to school for five years, only five years and they gave you a diploma, a certificate that shows to the market out there in the community that you’re a good worker, you’re a good carpenter, you’re a good painter, you’re a plumber. These are all the things that you’re good at and then they give you a certificate and they kick you out of the school. So I was on that program and something like the last week of school I decided, ‘I want to go to college!’ And the teachers would laugh, ‘You want to go to college? My god, you should have decided that 20 years ago.’ But I have a little fire in me and I decided as I was walking out almost practically crying that, ‘I’m going to show these guys and I’m going to invite them some day when I’m graduating from a university. To hell with them.’ And so that challenge is important because most of the teachers there, they said, ‘You can’t do it. You’ll never do it.’ When I was graduating from ASU in 1962 getting my degree in education, I sent a personal invitation to all of these teachers that were still at Indian School. None of them came. I wasn’t disappointed, but none of them came. I’m telling you that because you can’t always depend on those kinds of things. It’s what you’ve got in here. It’s what you have in here. It’s a desire that you have to do certain things.

So when I came back on the Navajo Reservation, I knew that there were some things that really needed to be done. And from DNA People’s Legal Services Program I decided that there were some people who were asking me to run for the tribal chair and there were a lot of people that said, ‘You can’t do it.’ And I said, ‘Oh, my god, that’s what they said back there.’ ‘You can’t do it because Peter MacDonald has all the power. He has all of the money,’ and they had a magazine, they had a magazine called Mother Jones Magazine. I don’t know if you remember and they had a picture of him with holding the coal saying, ‘The most powerful Indian in America,’ and so people that found out I was running they said, ‘See, you’re not going to win.’ Well, that was all I needed. That was all I needed. So when people say that, it kind of makes me angry, makes me angry and I want to prove to them that they are wrong.

The same thing as when I went to work at ASU, there was a provost -- imagine that, a provost -- he’s in second command. One day he walked into my office, I was sitting there trying to think how I should do certain things about our American Indian program and the provost sat down, he introduced himself and he says, ‘Pete, I’ve been reading all these rules, statistics, data, and you’re in charge of American Indian programs.' 'My advice to you,’ he says, ‘is that any American Indian who wants to enroll at ASU, we should just send him away. We should send him away to a school where they can last at that school and get their degree. This record shows that we’re losing them left and right and they never stay. We’ve got one of the poorest record on Native American retention so my advice to you is instead of getting some more white hair over that issue, we should just send them away. You’ll be doing them a favor.’ That was what the provost told me. True story. The exact words. So when I heard that, I was thinking to myself, ‘Well, that’s what Phoenix Indian School told me. That’s what the election process on the Navajo, some of those people told me. Now, Mr. Provost, you’re the third one.’ So I made sure in May of 2008 when all these kids were graduating, getting their degree, I invited him. I invited him and I had him sit in the front row. I wasn’t smiling like the way the student wanted me to. I was smiling at him.

So you’ve got to have that desire, you’ve got to have that fire in you. You’re the only person that knows yourself best, when to do some of these things. And so don’t ever fall for people that are trying to shortchange you because they don’t know you. You’re the only one that knows what your capabilities are. So I just wanted to leave you with that and be able to use that. I used to be a basketball coach because I played ball at Phoenix College. And one of the things that I learned from the coach was that there are some kids you have to baby, you have to baby them and say, ‘Hey, that was not right, son.’ You have to put your arm around them, you practically have to cry for them to learn. There are some other people that you have to shake, get after them. So using that psychology, different people because of our chemistry, we get motivated in different ways by different methods. You need to find your niche and what that niche is, what excites you, that’s I think very important thing to learn in life. And that I also want to leave with you and thank you for the invitation. [Navajo language]."

Manley Begay:

"Yeah, go ahead here then over there. Go ahead.”

Audience member:

“I was just wondering, today are any of the other tribes in the state trying to do the endowment approach, do you know?”

Peterson Zah:

“The reason why I’m telling you about the trust fund and endowment is that we have Indian tribes who are into casino that are beginning to make money, not a whole lot. If you’re a member of that particular tribe, then you should encourage them that while they can, while they’re making money to create endowment funds for the nation because you’d be surprised how fast that works. That’s your security. It’s like a child having a security blanket. It’s something that I think you need to encourage them. The question over here was the endowed funds over at ASU, the one that Manley was referring to, what’s happening there is this. Sandra Day O’Connor is the person that the law school was named after at ASU and she’s doing a good job working with the university in bringing in funds to the law school. What university has decided is to use my name and raise money using my name so that they can keep the Indian Law program going in perpetuity. Any money they get, they’re going to put it into trust, and then using the interest earned they’re going to go out and hire the most prominent Indian lawyer and have them teach that course one year or two years. After the two years is up, they’re going to bring in another person using that endowed money and then they’re going to have that person give them service for another year or two years. And if you have money endowed and put into trust, that thing can keep on going forever and that’s what they’re trying to do.”

Audience member:

Last year, about a year ago, the Resources and Development Committee in conjunction with the Dine College, they hosted that 'Nation Building Summit.' And I think shortly after you wrote an editorial to The Navajo Times and I think you had cautioned people about the like -- how can I phrase this -- like the council is approaching the spending of the permanent trust fund without much planning. And so if at any point it goes to referendum and the people indeed do choose to spend that money for whatever purposes, infrastructure, development or whatever, what kind of -- from your perspective -- what kind of planning do you think the students now within their education should be focusing on if that happens?”

Peterson Zah:

“There’s 110 chapters on the Navajo Nation. There’s 24 council [members]. What she’s referring to is a year ago the Navajo Nation Committee of RDC, Resource Development Committee, the Resource Development Committee decided that, ‘When we go out to these 110 chapters, they always have some needs, whether that’s employment, whether that’s materials for the chapter house, whether that’s food for the people to eat, they always have a need,’ they said. ‘But we don’t have any money,’ they said. ‘So why don’t we ask all these 110 chapters to come in and we’ll ask each one of these 110 chapters what they want.’ Christmas in the middle of the summer, so to speak, ‘and then we’ll add up that money, however many it is, we’ll add it up and then we’ll go to…’ At that time the trust money was at $1.5 billion. They said, ‘We’ll get the numbers from the 110 chapters, we’ll add it up and that’s how much money we’re going to get out.’ And it was anywhere from $75 to $150 million. That’s a lot. $75 to $150 million and all the 110 chapters were represented, RDC members were there, the council delegates of 24, some of them were there.”

Manley Begay:

“We were there, the two of us.”

Peterson Zah:

“Well, this is a Navajo trick between him and I. I was not really invited to be there, but they invited Manley to be a guest speaker the second morning, the second day. And Manley comes up to me in the morning and he says, ‘Why don’t I speak for a little while and then when all the people come back, I’ll give you the floor. I’ll yield my time over to you and then you can speak to the group.’ So I said to him, ‘Well, if that’s what you want to do, let’s do it.’ So it was a deal, Navajo trick. And so he gets up there and the chairman of the RDC gives him the mic and he was speaking away and then he says, ‘You know, we haven’t really asked a guy who created those money and save all of that much money. Nobody’s ever asked him. He’s sitting here. So I’m going to ask Mr. Zah to come up and see what he thinks. Is this the money that we could use for what is being discussed yesterday and today? So why don’t you come up and say something.’ So he stepped down, the chair then got up and she said, ‘Okay, Mr. Zah, get up and you talk. Here your brother’s given some time. Whatever amount of time he has left, you could use it.’ Well, that was all I needed. That was all I needed and I told about how the trust money was created, how the case was handled, who handled the case and then I told them about creating an escrow fund.

I says, ‘This is…this case that we won is over taxation and we’re going to tax all the companies that operate on the Navajo Nation and we want to build an escrow account so that while the case is pending in court, they could be paying. So each year the companies can pay into an escrow account the money that they’re supposed to pay for that year. And I told the companies, I brought in the companies just like you, there were a lot of people there, the president of Peabody, the president of this and the president of this, they were all there and I told them, I said, ‘You know, you guys sued me and why don’t we have an agreement? We’re in court. Why don’t we create an escrow account over at the bank and then you pay your money into that account? If you beat me, then you take all the money back. If we win, then we get all the money. That’s a fair deal. That’s America. Competition.’ [Navajo language] And so they agreed to it. And I told that story to the people and I says, ‘You know, it’s like this, we put a bucket here. It’s raining or there’s snow and the water is dripping [Navajo Language]. The water is dripping into that bucket and all during that time when it was dripping it start building up to over $270 million and then we won and we got that money. And then we ran to the bank to put it back into trust for your children [Navajo language].'

Now this council here, they want to take the money out. It’s like taking food out of your own grandchildren [Navajo language]. Now these guys have a legal problem, the council [Navajo language].’ I said, ‘Some of them were criminally charged for misusing the discretionary fund.’ [Navajo language] I said, ‘They were using discretionary funds and they ran out of that discretionary fund so they’re looking at that. That’s what they want.’ Oh, those guys started listening and I told them, I said, ‘My recommendation is that we leave this alone until they take care of their legal problem, until the court says, ‘No, they’re not guilty’ [Navajo language]. I just don’t trust them. When they get some of that money out, they’re going to go back to that discretionary fund. There’s no use in hiding. I’m an old man, I’ve got nothing to lose. I’m your cheii’.’ [Navajo language] And that’s when all hell broke loose. And so we end that…we ended that where the people went back into their respective groups because they were having a big breakout session and they all decided that, ‘No, we don’t want to spend the money. We want to save. We want to save for our children, generations of Navajo people, not now.’ [Navajo language] These guys still have legal problems that hasn’t been cleared up in court.

That’s the way you have to be. You see that thing that I was talking to you about, the little fire inside of you, the little fire inside of you. You’ve got to have a courage to do all of this. I don’t know what they think, but from that day on I was not a popular person with the council. But that’s okay, the hell with them. I helped them. I helped them, but when they decided to deliberately mislead the people and do something wrong, somebody has to speak up. So essentially, that’s my work unfortunately right now. But it’s okay because as Navajo people say, 'The elderly people have lot of wisdom, and it’s something that we use based on our experience.' And so that’s what happened in relative to your question.”

Manley Begay:

“I attended all these sessions, these breakout sessions. My brother says there’s 110 chapters, there’s 300,000 Navajos, we have 27,000 square miles of land, we have every issue under the sun: water issues, land issues, road issues, sewer issues, housing issues, elder issues, veterans issues and the list goes on. So all these breakout sessions dealt with these issues at Navajo. So what they were doing was, ‘Okay, here are our needs: elders issues, veterans issues, so forth and so on, children’s issues, education issues,’ and they tacked on dollar amounts to them. In the half a day that $1.5 billion was gone, it was gone. And they were saying the need was even greater than $1.5 billion, which is true, but if you want to secure your future as a nation, you have to save that money. You’ve got to think way ahead, not right now, but way ahead because the Navajo Nation is going to get stronger, the grandkids are going to come, the great grandkids are going to come. You’ve got to think way ahead. You can’t just spend all this money now. So when I went to these sessions, that’s what was going on. After my brother spoke, people said, ‘Wait a minute, [Navajo language], wait a minute. Let’s think about this a little bit more clearly. Let’s not just think about ourselves, let’s think about the future,’ and that’s what happened. So everything got stopped. Now we’re beginning to see the rewards of the money being set aside. Just spend the interest, don’t spend the principal because the principal was already spent, it was gone, it’s gone. Once it’s gone, it’s not going to come back. So if it’s going to be the Navajo Nation Permanent Trust Fund, let’s make it permanent, let’s not make it temporary. It doesn’t say 'Navajo Nation Temporary Fund,' it’s a permanent fund for the future. So that’s what my brother did, put that together. Another question.”

Audience member:

“Could you speak a little bit how you went about establishing the Supreme Court for Navajo Nation?”

Peterson Zah:

“Supreme Court was something that…it was considered in reaction to what was going on at the time. This is really, really crazy. There was a suit that was filed against the tribal council and one of the judges had the case and that judge ruled against the council on an issue. So the council then decided or that particular delegate then decided to share the issue with the rest of the council and the rest of the council said, ‘Well, instead of talking about all this, let’s just get rid of the crazy judge,’ and so they did. Another issue came about almost identical, a different judge handled it this time and the tribal council lost again so the council said, ‘Well, let’s get rid of that guy, too.’ And when you start getting rid of judges like that consistently, it means you’re sending a message to the world that you have inconsistent thinking, inconsistent tribal government and that they’re not stable. It needs to be stabilized. So we created a Supreme Court where we said, ‘Council has to get out of there. They should not be doing what they’re doing,’ and so we created the Supreme Court. And they were an entity unto themselves and I ended up as an individual that chose as a chairman of the tribe…that chose the Supreme Court justice and the panel of the Supreme Court. And so now it became a three-branch government. So the courts and judicial system is one, legislative, and the executive branch. So they’re deciding on many of those issues without having to fear that the council may go after them and that was the purpose of Navajo Nation Supreme Court. Supreme Court did a lot of things. They created what they call peacemaking process, peacemaker court. Peacemaker court is another concept of…another way of settling disputes and the way the Navajos were doing it, it went over wild, all over the place, even the states were calling in the Navajo Nation tribal judges to talk to the state judges about how they’re dong theirs. It went everywhere. The Navajo courts were a consistent guest at Harvard University, Yale, Stanford, all those big law schools where they conducted some of those sessions and so…then it even got recognized internationally. So under that kind of independent court/judicial system, they did a lot. And that was the purpose for creating the nation’s court, Supreme Court, and now they’re kind of like a model to all of the other Indian tribes. And you have a situation now where the Navajo judges are people, Navajo people who have law degree that are sitting there that talks Navajo. They can go back and forth on the values of those two entities. And the outside people, the outside lawyers, now they respect the decision of the Navajo court and because they decide those issues to the satisfaction of both parties.”

Manley Begay:

“One more question.”

Audience member:

“What do you see like the, for the Navajo Nation to become like economically and financially stable and zero reliance on the government, what do you see as the biggest obstacle for Navajo Nation to get there? Is it like a mindset or is it...what do you see that…what’s preventing us from getting there, I guess?”

Peterson Zah:

“Economic development is very, very [expensive]. Any kind of economic development is expensive and it’s also hard to get into that area because how the people are holding onto the land. Young people just like you, when you drive across the reservation, you’re driving, ‘Next service station 45 miles,’ and you look at your gauge, ‘Oh, my god, I’m going to run out,’ and so you have that situation now. And the reason why that is persistent is the people who have grazing rights to the land that comes up to the highway, they don’t want gas station. Somebody was telling me seven percent of the Navajo population holds grazing permit, seven percent holds the whole Navajo Nation in abeyance for the lack of economic development. They’re hostage, holding the Navajo people hostage. And that’s a major, major problem, the land issue and I think we need to correct that in some ways. I don’t really know what the answer is, but somewhere in between just getting the reservation open and then having some concept of ownership of lands in some degree and then having the land use right or land use…yeah, land use, write program at each chapter. If you belong to a chapter, you should be able to say, ‘Hey, we have this chapter house here. We should have schools here, schools for our children. We should have housing here for us to live in. We should have business development right here, service station. We should have…that’s what we should really be doing.’ But the chapters are fighting themselves because those are the grazing permittees land, grazing right land and the first thing they say is, ‘No.’ You’ve got to have a different concept.

I like my dad, my dad who used to be at Low Mountain Chapter and this is kind of funny. My dad had a good sense of humor. He was trained as a Navajo Nation Code Talker and one day he went home, we were with him and he says, ‘I came home because I want to be with you guys and I’ve got two weeks off because after I get back to San Diego, we’re sailing to Japan. We’re ready to go to battle,’ he said. ‘And I won’t be seeing you guys for a long time.’ [Navajo language]. So he went back. Two weeks later he was back and I said, ‘Hey, what happened? I thought you were going to be gone for a year.’ And he says, ‘No, don’t you know that the war is over in Japan?’ he says. ‘The Japanese people found out I was coming so they surrendered.’ He always had a real good sense of humor, the stories about him that I’m going to tell you.

Well, he belonged to that chapter and he was a chapter officer at one time at Low Mountain and Low Mountain had no chapter, Low Mountain had no houses, Low Mountain had no roads. We had nothing. And when people in the community would say, ‘We’ve got to have a place to build our chapter house,’ all these land permittees said, ‘No. [Navajo language]. No. No. No. Keep it out of there.’ [Navajo language]. Well, my dad had a grazing permit and so he says to these people that were planning a chapter house, he said, ‘You could come over to our land where we have a permit, grazing permit,’ and he says, ‘I’ll give you that land free,’ he says. ‘And when we have a chapter house, then I want to have a road that also goes through my land, highway all the way to the other highway, connected, all on my land,’ he says. And he told the chapter people, ‘When it snows and rains, we all end up in the mud. So when that day comes, I want only my family to use that road,’ he said. ‘All you other guys, you get your truck in the mud and you stay there,’ he said. He says, ‘That’s what you’re doing. That’s what you’re doing. That’s what you’re asking for.’ So they built a chapter house on his land where he’s holding the grazing permit and they put a road through where it was his grazing right land. And sometimes you have to say that to people. Some of those people didn’t think it was funny, but he thought it was funny that people were doing that. And so that’s how those things got…we need more people that are willing and in the best interest of the community, in the best interest of nation building, who think that way. He said, ‘I’m not sacrificing a land, that’s a poor use of word, sacrificing. I’m not sacrificing.’ And then the committee member says, ‘Well, the Navajo Nation has an account for anybody who gives up the land to pay for the use of that land.’ He didn’t want any money. He says, ‘You know, the real Navajo story is, you don’t sell your mother. You don’t sell your mother for money because that land is part of the Mother Earth. It’s for people’s use. It’s for [Navajo language],’ he says. ‘And I’m not going to get paid and I’m not going to demand money to sell my mother to somebody. Use it.’ He says, ‘I’m getting old anyway.’ And so we need more people who think that way, who are dedicated 100 percent to the community and to their people.” 

Adam Geisler: What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Adam Geisler, Secretary of the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians, discusses the diverse set of challenges he faces as an elected leader of his nation and discusses some of the innovative ways that he, his leadership colleagues, and his nation have worked to overcome those challenges. He also offers a number of pointers for how to lead effectively based on his own experience.

People
Resource Type
Citation

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

"Thank you, Renee [Goldtooth], for inviting me out here. It's an honor to be here. It's an honor to have the opportunity to speak to all of you. You're probably looking at me wondering, "˜Who's this kid? What can he say, what can he share, what does he know?' I'm going to hopefully enlighten you a little bit on some of the challenges that I endeavored through. My name is Adam Geisler. I'm the secretary for La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians. I've been in office for five years. I have been working for my tribe since I was 14 years old and I guess I'll just kind of start with, 'Tribal council, are you ready?'...

A little bit about the photo. We have a five-member council. We have roughly 10,000 acres with about 700 enrolled members that live on and off the reservation. We have roughly 189 houses, about 15 miles of roadway, three separate water systems, and the major northern loop of the utility for feeding San Diego running through our reservation. I always like to talk about my council because I think a lot of times in Indian Country we hear about all the politics and everybody fighting and people don't like this or that, somebody didn't get a house because of this or that and the road didn't get taken care of. I'm really blessed to be able to sit with a council that works together, communicates well, and really has been a solid opportunity for me to learn some things. The woman in the middle is actually my mother. Her name is LaVonne Peck. She is the chairwoman for our tribe.

In the first two years that we were in office, we went through a process with UCLA law department to update, revise and bring back our constitution, all of our ordinances and all of our bylaws, because they hadn't been touched in about 30 years. So there was a lot of things that didn't make any sense when you read through them from everything from enrollment to land. The reason why I say that's my mom is because number one, I want to acknowledge the fact that she's my mom, but anytime we're doing business I call her 'LaVonne' or 'Chairwoman.' Nepotism exists in Indian Country. I'm not going to act like it doesn't, but I did run for a separate office. In my second term, I ran unopposed. The same thing goes for her and I just want...I guess I'm coming from a unique perspective because what I didn't realize coming into this was how challenging it would be working with a family member as close as your mother in this process, but it has been very rewarding and I'm very fortunate to be able to have gone through this.

Some other things that I didn't quite understand when I got in...I was always sitting out in the general membership kind of wondering, "˜Hey, why aren't they doing this? Why aren't they dealing with that? How come I didn't get a budget for this?' And I had no idea the type of time obligations that that was going to require and I had no clue when I got into office that this position was going to afford me the opportunity to learn about energy, learn about gaming, learn about finance and I'm going to highlight some of those as we move through this.

So something that I walked into right away that I wasn't prepared for, I got in council when I was 25 years old, I'm now 29, and I had no clue that I was going to have the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] show up one day on my doorstep and say, "˜Hey, the Mexican cartel just grew a field of marijuana on the backside of your mountain.' "˜Okay. Well, how do I deal with this?' "˜Well, why don't we take you up in the helicopter so we can take a look at this and understand how these guys are moving product in and out and how we can work with your law enforcement to make sure that we can monitor this more closely.' That kind of dives into Public Law 280. California is a Public Law 280 state, which means that we have concurrent jurisdiction. Some of you probably come from reservations that are directly funded through the federal government for your police, your prisons or jails. We're not. Although we can establish them if we have the money to do it, we're really relying upon the Sheriff's Department, which doesn't always respond in a timely manner because they're small not necessarily because they don't want to. The days of that are gone. But that's part of the situation that I wasn't aware of.

The other big aspect that I wasn't ready to come into was domestic violence. I have it in the letters on the bottom; we lead statistics in some really sad areas. I didn't know coming into office that a woman will go back to her abuser 11 times before she's either killed or before she finally leaves the guy. In a community as small as mine with 700 members, this was actually something very prevalent that our community was tired of and finally addressed. We wrote some grants, we held the first ever Domestic Violence Walk in the state of California, which is partly why I have that purple ribbon there, and we brought out all kinds of people from both tribal and non-tribal to support the efforts that we're making towards these things.

We sat through a ton of meetings in my first couple years dealing with these issues, where people were coming and talking about the meth head that lives next door or the dealing that might have been going on. And by the way, my community is a beautiful community. I'm just highlighting some of the challenges that are there. Making it sound like La Jolla, you're going to walk in, there's going to be like people high all over the place or something. It's not like that at all, but the reality is that you all have these, Native or not, you're going to have these folks in your family, you know who they are, and the funny part is that the neighbor who might not be in your family is coming to you telling you to deal with it and you're sitting there trying to figure out, "˜Well, man, how do I deal with my cousin? How do I deal with my brother or my uncle?' And those things are very real when you get into this office and there's expectations on both sides. Your families are going to come at you and expect you to protect them, the public is going to come at you and expect you to uphold the ordinances and the laws and enforce the job that you're there to do. And so right off the top, I had to realize that being impartial...I've always been fairly impartial about things, but these types of issues really started to test your ability to do that on a daily basis because these things just happen.

So DV [domestic violence], drugs, alcohol abuse, and then kind of figuring out how we address that; we formed a program called 'AVELICA.' As I mentioned, in our language that means 'butterfly.' Obviously the women coming out of their situation, being more aware on how to address the DV issues. And one thing that we did is we creatively developed the program, we hired and trained advocates from within our own community, we established domestic violence shelters for the women and these were all things that I walked in, I never had a clue about how to address. And I'll go over some training components later, but just realize this, if you're going to be successful when you come into doing this, if you're motivated, you have a heart and you're willing to get up every day and wear some broad shoulders, you'll be able to make through it.

Jobs; we talked about cousins, brothers, uncles, aunts, nieces. Jobs is always an interesting discussion in Indian Country because I appreciate the former, the presentation beforehand about reliance as opposed to... I don't know, I think sometimes our communities get really dependent on these programs that come in. And so... and unfortunately I'm in a community where when I walked in the social norm was seasonal employment. We have a campground. I'm not a gaming tribe, I know a lot of people think, "˜oh, you're a Southern California Indian, you're rich.' Nope, not me. I've got Harrah's Rincon, I've got Pala, I've Pauma, I've got Pechanga, Valley View, but not me. I have a campground that brings in almost 150,000 people a year and supports our tribal economic development and government operations. But back to the idea that people came in wanting to know, "˜Where's my job? I put you in office, I expect you to get me a job.' And I said, "˜When I asked for your vote, I made it really clear to you that I'm not going to promise you anything.' And so my comment about jobs is, when you get into office, don't make promises. The guys that were in there before me, they got in, "˜I'll get you a job. I'll get you on this project. I'll do this, I'll do that.' I have stated...I've stayed where I'm at as long as I'm at because I don't BS my people. Excuse the term. I know we're being recorded. I don't. You have to be up front with your folks. You have to be transparent. You can't be afraid to share with them the truths about the realities that you're in. If there are jobs available, see what you can do to hire your folks. Tribal Force Account is an amazing, amazing, amazing thing that you can utilize. It's a tool that I didn't realize.

Partnerships with, for example...here's a road, this is the picture. I guess talk about the picture for a second. This road is a road that was done by all Tribal Force Accounts, which is really rare in California because we don't really have the dollars coming in federally or always the personnel to be able to staff a full-time roads department or a full-time public health department. And what we were able to do is bring in about 30 tribal members to come in and basically create a road going through the middle of a mountain -- because I'm on the side of a 7,500-foot mountain, which makes development fun -- and we put our guys to work. And what was really amazing about this process was number one, Davis-Bacon [Act] doesn't apply because through our sovereignty, through exercising our sovereignty we created our own Tribal Force Account wages, we set a standard that was proper for what our people were doing and in some cases we are beating Davis-Bacon. By the way, this project, because of tax exempt abilities and delivery onto the reservation, we also built this for one third less than what any other public department could build in the county, in the state or from a federal standpoint. So recognize that.

I'm going to kind of couple this with TERO [Tribal Employment Rights Office]. How many of you guys have a TERO ordinance on your reservation? How many of you guys really use it? When I got into office, no clue about what the heck TERO was, I didn't understand what are these four letters representing, what's the point behind it, why is it here? I learned very quickly that this is another tool that we have in Indian Country that we can utilize, the Tribal Employment Rights, Opportunities and Ordinances that you can establish and then use that in working with the Department of Labor to go after federal contracts and dollars are awesome. That's the part I didn't know about TERO. I didn't realize... I thought TERO was, "˜Oh, you're going to build a project, I'm going to tax it, then I'm going to take it and I'm going to train somebody with that money.' There's a whole other side of TERO that I didn't know about that had to do with federal contracting and compliance.

And one thing that I want to highlight that we were successful in doing in utilizing TERO in San Diego was we actually... we have 18 tribes in San Diego County. How many of you guys have that many tribes in your county? The answer is none because we have the most in the country. Sorry. We have 18 tribes in San Diego County, which means that federal contractors are required to notify all of your tribes about the fact that there's jobs coming online and the reason why that's there... everybody goes, "˜Oh, it's an ethnic thing, it has to do with racism, the Indians.' No, it's a political relationship that the tribes have with the United States government, which is why if you're qualified as an Indian and they're qualified as a non-Indian, you go to the top based upon laws that were passed based upon your political standing. Not because you're Indian, but because of the sovereignty that your tribe exercises and you being a citizen of a nation.

So what we did is we realized that all these federal contractors were coming up and they did not know how to send it out to 18 tribes because some are rich, some are poor, some have fax machines, some have an HR department, some have something in the middle. And so we got everybody together because the federal contractors were tired of getting audited and fined and in all fairness, how do you communicate with 18 different governments that all operate differently? What we came up with was a website called nativehire.org and this... write it down, Google it later. You're going to like what I have to say about this. Nativehire.org was a concept that came out in working with the Department of Labor, in working with the federal contractors in San Diego County and in working with the tribes. What we did is we sat down and discussed how can we get this information out collectively for job availability, for contracts that are out there and then how can we also...our tribes ourselves look for these things. Nobody has ever thought about how to create this. Well, we did. We created nativehire.org. It's basically an Indian version of Craigslist and monsters.com mixed into one. You can be notified via email when jobs are available. You can be searching for jobs and the cool part is it's going to be coming actually out here to Arizona and shortly it's going to be heading nationwide because that's the Craigslist part of it. I want to work in Idaho. You click on Idaho and all of a sudden 15 different jobs come up in Idaho that you can be eligible for and that you can qualify for under TERO because they're trying to meet these guidelines. So TERO was something I didn't know a whole lot about. Since then I've created a website to help implement this utilizing the federal TERO policies to employ people, train people and so on and so forth. And I will say this, the Bureau [of Indian Affairs] -- people beat up on the Bureau a lot and sometimes it's deserving -- the Bureau worked with us actually very hard to make this a success because that was the beauty of what we recognized. It wasn't the tribes pointing the finger, it wasn't the businesses pointing the finger, it was everybody just sitting down at the table recognizing that we had some issues to work out and finding a solution for it and the Bureau actually was able to help us find the dollars to get this thing generated through a 638 contract. I'll go over 638 contracts. I didn't know what the heck those were either when I got into office. So nativehire.org.

Financial awareness. Obviously, financial partnerships are key for your tribes to succeed moving into the future. In California we have tribes that, yeah, they went out and they made their money in gaming, but the neat thing that we're starting to see is they're getting into banking. There are tribes that own banks. They're getting into real estate, they're getting into, I guess hotels are real estate. They're getting into tourism components. And all these things are capable because, yes, they cut their teeth on the casino development but they realized that through these financial partnerships in leveraging with different industries they were going to be able to grow and maintain the self-resiliency of their tribe. Let's get off the federal dole. I might bother some of you by saying that, but to be real honest with you, my goal by the time I'm out of office is to make sure that I don't need those federal programs. That's what it's about. If we're going to claim sovereignty, if we're going to claim the ability to exercise our own rights and take ownership of our own nations, then we need to understand that there's a financial component with that.

So some terms I wrote over here on the side: profit and loss. Man, my first council meeting where I got a financial statement was a trip. I sat there for probably three hours trying to digest what my CPA [certified public accountant] was feeding to me because he was talking about debits and credits and encumbrances and half the terms that I see over here on the side that I had no clue. Audits: I didn't realize the shape that my tribe was in quite honestly when I got into office. You always hear about, "˜Oh, that guy stole, that guy did this, that guy did that.' Well, when I got in I didn't find anybody that was stealing, but what I did find was that my tribe was on high risk because we had not done the SF425s, the IRA reporting documents, or federal documents. We had not done our reporting to the federal agencies so we went on high risk. And had our administration not come into office at the time when we did, the Bureau was actually ready to yank all of our funding and we were going to be operated and functioning out of the BIA office out of Riverside, our local area office. Luckily, we were able to get all the documents together, complete all the reporting and unfortunately I had to go back two years. So my first two-and-a-half months in office were really, really...they were really boring to be honest with you. There was a lot of stressing out and a lot of numbers, but I got to learn a whole lot.

GAAP, GASPI, the difference between government accounting and standard general accounting practices in the way that tribal governments are unique, and this is a thing I think that states really have a hard time digesting. They don't realize that we have the opportunity to operate both businesses and government, and unfortunately they don't do it very well when they try it. I think tribes are an awesome model of how you can exercise these things and they could really learn a lot from us. I will say this -- in San Diego I think that they are, they're realizing opportunities that are there. Leverage ratios. I never thought I'd be negotiating a multi-hundred million dollar casino deal and I have...this picture is actually with us signing our letter of engagement with Key Bank. I don't know if you guys know Key Bank. Some of you may, some of you may not. They came on to be our financial advisor for our tribe and the gentleman in the middle, his name is Jay Maswagger, and he used to tease us because he said, "˜By the time we're done going through this process you're going to have an MBA, a Maswagger MBA.' The gentleman is Indian from the Middle East, from the East Indian. And he started to give me this huge education on things that I never knew about; waterfall agreements, how to structure debt appropriately, leverage ratios. These guys use these big fancy terms and it basically boils down to, "˜Look, in order for me to give you $10 I need to see that you're going to give me $2 first.' So I learned about things like that.

Natural disasters: for whatever reason the other two photos didn't show up on here. I've been through two natural disasters, federally declared. My grandma's house burnt down, my mom's house burnt down, my businesses were devastated by flooding, and I had to learn the entire process about how to recover both immediately, so address and respond, but then go into long term and then find the money on how to do that. By the way, something that has changed in the last five years is that you as tribes can now declare your own federal disasters. You don't need to wait for the state to do that, which is huge, that you couldn't do in the past. You might not think it's ever going to happen and then one day it's going to hit you and you'll realize, "˜Man, I wish I would have gone to do some training.' You're actually required by law to get out there and become NIMS compliant, National Incident Management System compliant. So if at all today when you guys go back to your tribes or if you're in leadership positions, go back and ask...oh, there it is. There's grandma's house. If you can, go back and start asking questions. Emergency management is not just about fire chiefs and cops. It really boils down to your community members because they're going to be responding to the incidents first. That's who's there, it's your family, it's your friends.

Energy. That's Secretary Chu before he headed out. I was a year-and-a-half into my term and energy conference in D.C. and lo and behold here comes Secretary Chu and I made sure I sat right behind that guy because I wanted to talk to him about what kind of dollars were going to be available in Indian Country. And he and I had about 15-, 20-minute conversation. Have you guys ever sat down with a secretary of the President's cabinet? It's near impossible if you can ever get there and to get 15 or 20 minutes is almost unheard of. Snuck in there. So again, be motivated, get up every day and do your best to get where you can around these folks. We got to talk about some of the needs and the roll out that was going on under the stimulus program and this conversation really changed my opinion about how I thought about energy in general. I didn't realize how inefficient the homes are on our reservation. I didn't realize the need for R38 insulation. I didn't realize the need for LEED which is like a fancy term for building green. I thought green was like a roof with grass on it or going back to the old days for us with like mud lodges and things like that, although those are actually very energy efficient. But also looking about how can you control your own energy future. We're going to come back to the sovereignty thing. Another part besides being financially astute, aware and responsible is also controlling the energy itself. In the northern loop of San Diego County runs the main distribution line that feeds North County San Diego. Well, guess what, their easement's up in 2021. So in 2021, that means that I can either condemn their lines and they're going to have to go around my reservation, which is all federal land, impossible environmentally, or they can work with me and they can work with me to generate an energy production on my reservation. We're actually starting a 10 megawatt energy production facility of PV on our reservation right now; photovoltaic (PV), photovoltaic panels. So again, another thing that I really wasn't aware of.

Partnership. I'll just go point at these really quick. The main reason I wanted to put this up there is because partner with everybody. Try partnering with people that you think will never partner with you. Have those conversations. Have the uncomfortable conversations because those are the ones that are actually going to bear fruit I think in the end when you really need to talk with those folks. You guys ever heard of Bob Filner. He was our mayor that got booted out of San Diego. I just put this up here because he showed up at Native Hire, when we launched nativehire.org. These are all chairmen and there in the middle is Mr. Filner and I thought it was interesting because again, you never know where politics are going to lead you. You never know who you're going to meet. But partnerships wherever you can make it happen.

Training. You guys are here. Obviously you're proactive in trying to find training opportunities so just get out there. I was able to take financial training courses; I was able to take energy courses. They have these conferences. If you're elected into office, ATTG, Aid to Tribal Government dollars are a way that we have been able to afford to go out to these things. A lot of times there's scholarships available. I put this photo up here. That's not me speaking at NCAI. It's actually a gentleman from Pala and I put this up here because we're here talking about leadership. He's a former council member, he's actually a hard core conservative and he gave Romney's speech -- I don't know if you guys were there -- at NCAI in front of the whole delegation. And I don't put this up here to be political but my point is this: that's a heavy room to walk into and knowing what you're up against and knowing what people think and just generally how Indian Country operates and to have a man walk up there and speak his mind, speak his voice and exercise the way he thinks was just something that I thought was worth highlighting because he's educated, he's smart, Harvard background, pilot, but he didn't get there by just being lazy, not showing up to things. He got there because he was motivated and he wanted to train himself and it put him in front of a very large audience at a very heavy hitting conference.

Pass the knowledge. You're not going to be there forever. How many tribal councils out there actually picked out people out of their membership to go up and be trained so that they could be replaced into the future? We did. I'm 29. I don't want to be doing this forever, and the reality is that if you're going to do this job effectively on a day-to-day basis, you're going to get a little bit tired. It's not going to be something that you're going to be able to do, in my opinion, I know some guys can do it for 20 or 30 years, but a lot has changed in 20 or 30 years. And when you don't have the dollars like us that means that I'm doing it. I don't have staff, like I said, I don't have an HR department, I don't have an energy department; it's me and it's my council. We have two people that work with us intimately on these projects. So pass the knowledge both here and both with the youth. I should have put a slide up here on education. Maybe you can hit on the educational component a little bit.

Lastly, recognize your successes and your strengths. You wake up every day and you fight for something; water rights, energy, housing dollars, just motivating your people sometimes, but recognize that you do do that work. It's okay to recognize that you do work hard, in a humble way. But then also don't be afraid to share it. I'm happy to be here today to kind of talk about a whirlwind of things that I've been able to be a part of, but La Jolla's actually set the model in a lot of ways and I'll be happy to say it. We are the fastest recovery in Indian Country after our wildfires in 2007. No offense, but nobody's ever beat us in our recovery time; everybody back in their houses in nine months. We were the first tribe in a long time for the Bureau to actually hand us over $2 million and say, "˜Go build the road,' because everybody was scared, the old days of the Bureau. "˜We're not going to give you the cash. You Indians don't know how to spend it. You don't know how to operate your government.' I said, "˜Really? Watch this. Just give me the cash.' Government-to-government contract, here we go and we got the thing done. So don't be afraid to share those successes and if you guys have questions, I'll be happy to answer them later.

Tough stuff. Five things. Most challenging thing about this job: ICWA [Indian Child Welfare Act]. I struggle so hard with ICWA because these are the kids, these are the future, these are people that don't have voices necessarily for themselves, and this is the hardest part. Our council meets quarterly with our ICWA representative, the county case workers, our clinic case workers, and these things just rip your heart out. If you have a heart while you're on council and you go to your first ICWA meeting, you'll understand what I mean because you're hearing horrible stories about these kids and their living situations and the way they were treated and the saddest part is it all boils back down to families that you know. That's the hard part and sometimes you can't do anything about it. Sometimes the mom that is using drugs that is smart enough to take the kid over to her other mom's house so that she can leave for the weekend to go do drugs is not being a neglectful parent because she was of right mind at least to take the kid out of the situation. Now to me I'm going, "˜Mom's using drugs, mom's not really being mom, mom maybe shouldn't have the kid.' Those are the types of decisions that you're going to run into that I was never expecting. And then, when you make the decision for placement, when the county comes to you asking for the recommendation or your tribal court or however your ICWA is set up and you make a recommendation based on the best interests of the kid's health...we had this. I'll be real honest. Our council agreed to take a child from a home and put them into a non-Indian home, which I understand that this is the point of ICWA, but the reality was that to find Indian homes in our area that were going to be healthy for the kid, didn't make sense at the time to transition them out because the home that they were in, the kid's not...how's it going with the kid in this home? 'They're not cutting themselves anymore, they're not drinking, they're not sleeping around,' and I'm going to take a kid out of that situation? ICWA is the hardest thing you're ever going to have to deal with when you're on council.

Last four things, most surprising thing, you guys just heard the whirlwind. If you've got a small council, you're going to deal with everything. You never know what's going to happen in a day. You're going to wake up one day and you'll be talking to Secretary Chu or you'll be talking to the governor and then you're going to get a phone call about the dogs chasing your kids home from the bus. That's just your day when you're on council, it's just how it is. I had to quickly learn about a variety of different laws. One thing I could change that I do a lot better now with is I don't sweat the small stuff. You can't do it all and I'm not saying that you give up by any means, but the sooner you recognize that there are just going to be things that happen that are out of your control, the easier it's going to be to lead more effectively when you're up there. And part of what's helped me do that really comes down to the last thing.

Effective leaders. Yeah, you listen. You guys are all here, you probably understand this. You all listen. You have to be patient. You have to be fair. But for me, the biggest way that I...the main core reason why I'm able to get through this on a daily basis is because I have a connection and a relationship with who created me. I have a religious understanding of how I work with god and how god works in everybody else's life and in mine. You need to stay centered when you're doing this because everybody is fighting with you. Well, a lot of people are fighting with you. There's a lot of great people encouraging you. There's going to be people pulling you this way, people pulling you that way and at the end of the day if you can't stay centered in what you believe, how you were raised and what you think, you're not going to be successful. You're not. You're going to get overwhelmed. So I would just end with sharing that. Wake up every day, reflect on who you are, reflect on what you know, and start there if you're going to get into office because it just gets crazy sometimes. Thank you very much for your time."

Angela Wesley: Huu-ay-aht First Nations' Forging of a New Governance System

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Angela Wesley, Chair of Huu-ay-aht Constitution Committee, discusses the painstaking effort the Huu-ay-aht First Nations undertook to develop a new constitution and system of governance, and how they continue to work to turn the promise of self-governance embodied in their new constitution into governance practice.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Wesley, Angela. "Huu-ay-aht First Nations' Forging of a New Governance System." Leading Native Nations interview series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 4, 2013. Interview.

Ian Record:

Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I’m your host Ian Record. On today’s program we are honored to have with us Angela Wesley. Angela is a proud member of the Huu-ay-aht First Nation and has worked since 1980 with First Nations communities throughout British Columbia. Since 1992, she has been providing advisory and facilitation services in the areas of strategic planning, community development, communications and community engagement as well as governance capacity building. In recent years, her focus has been on providing assistance to her own nation as well as the other four First Nations that are signatory to the Maa-nulth Treaty. As Chair of the Huu-ay-aht Constitution Committee and member of the Huu-ay-aht Treaty Governance and Lands Resources Committees, she was instrumental in the development and community ratification of the treaty, the Huu-ay-aht First Nations Constitution and a suite of foundational laws that set the stage for her nation’s return to self governance as of April 1st, 2011. Angela, welcome and good to have you with us today.

Angela Wesley:

Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Ian Record:

So I went through your rather voluminous bio and shared some of the highlights, but why don’t you start off by telling us a little bit more about yourself. What did I leave out?

Angela Wesley:

I think you pretty much covered it. Some of the things that I’ve done more recently, or that I’m involved in more recently, involve being involved on some boards. And one of the things that I’m really liking doing right now is venturing into the academic world a little bit and I’m chair of the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology as well, which is a public post-secondary institute in British Columbia that was founded by First Nations in the interior of BC [British Columbia]. So I’m really starting to see my abilities to cross over and start sharing information on governance through that field as well, so really an exciting new eye opener for me and a new venture for me.

Ian Record:

So we’re here to talk about governance reform, constitutional reform and specifically the work that your nation has been involved in in arriving to the point it’s at today. And I’m curious -- let’s start at the beginning -- what prompted your nation to consider going down the reform road to begin with?

Angela Wesley:

Well, I think it’s a bit different in Canada than it is in the [United] States, where we didn’t have constitutions as I understand tribal governments in the States do. Really we were embarking on nation rebuilding. The constitution was one piece of what we were doing in rebuilding our nation. Our nation was involved in treaty negotiations and has been involved in the BC Treaty Commission process since about the early 1990s. So in thinking about where we wanted to go and really thinking about the vision for our nation, that’s what sort of prompted us to look overall at our nation and what needed to change. As we got deeper into our treaty negotiation process, we realized that we really needed to reform our government and start to rebuild our nation into something that meets the vision of our community. We started off I think back in the 1990s -- and not to say we didn’t always have a vision -- but we started to try to articulate that and bring that to our people and to say, ‘Where is it that we want to go as a nation? Clearly we have some healing that we need to do. We need to change the way we do business.’ So we really spent a lot of time talking to our people about what we wanted for the future, and our vision statement is not dissimilar to almost any First Nations’ vision statement, where we want a healthy community, we want to be able to govern ourselves, we want to make our own decisions, we want to set our own priorities, we want to revive and strengthen our language and our culture and we want opportunities for our people for the future. And that really set the tone for an entire nation rebuilding process I think.

Ian Record:

So it became obvious very early on that, 'If we’re going to fully engage in the treaty process and take advantage of that opportunity, we need to jettison the Indian Act system altogether and develop one that reflects who we are and where we want to head.'

Angela Wesley:

Absolutely. One of the biggest pieces that we were looking at or one of the bigger pieces we were looking at in treaty is the ability to have self government. We struggled originally in our treaty negotiations. We were being told by Canada that they wanted to keep self government outside of the treaty and that was a show stopper for us. Unless self government was included in the treaty and protected by the Constitution of Canada, we weren’t going to have a treaty. So on the basis that that was something that was so important to us we realized that we needed to start building our constitution and talking about what we wanted from our government in the future.

Ian Record:

We’re talking a lot at this seminar that the Native Nations Institute is holding on constitutions and the importance of process, that often for many Native nations, whether in U.S. or Canada or elsewhere, that there’s a broad recognition among people in the community that our current system is not working for us, it’s not going to get us where we need to head, but then a lot of folks have difficulty getting from that point to the point of a new system. Can you talk about the process that your nation devised to develop this new constitution, to engage in this nation rebuilding effort?

Angela Wesley:

Sure. I just want to start by talking about maybe there wasn’t such a broad recognition by our citizens of the situation that we were in and I think that sort of formed the basis of how we approached communication with our citizens as well. We started off, we have a general, what we called a 'band meeting' at the time, and I give a lot of credit to our leadership at the time and our former chief counselor Robert Dennis, Sr. was very instrumental in putting a process in place that the people would feel comfortable with. So it was opened up to the floor and it was the citizens that appointed the committee that was going to look at the constitution and we were told to go and find out what people wanted. So we were given a lot of flexibility and latitude in terms of how we approached things. So we really sat down, we talked as a committee about what it was that we wanted to achieve. We talked about our vision, the need to really get people to understand that that was the basis of moving forward was that we all had this collective vision and it was a vision of the people, it wasn’t a vision of a specific government or a specific council and I think that’s how we started. We did a lot of research, we looked at constitutions of other nations, we talked about other peoples’ experiences, and really what we started with was a questionnaire process. Once we had talked we went and did a little bit of interviewing and speaking with our people about the vision and is that in fact what we wanted. I don’t think anybody could argue with that’s what we wanted, we want to change our world, we want a better place for future generations. And everybody agreed with that.

So having said that, then we started to probe a little bit further, what people wanted from their government. So we started with a very intensive questionnaire process, and I always give credit to a young woman in our tribe, Trudy Warner. She was in her 20s at the time and very enthusiastic. She was working with us and she was assigned to the committee to be our administrative support. She ended up taking a questionnaire around, and I don’t think it was so important what was in the questionnaire as the fact that we went out and talked to people about it. So we devised some questions, some of them were good, some of them not so good, but it opened up the doors for people to start to tell us what it was that they wanted. We asked about terms of council, we asked about what kind of ethical behavior we expected of council, we asked about what kind of terms we thought would be appropriate, we asked about how disputes might be resolved, we asked about how to incorporate our traditional hereditary system into our government, which was huge for us. That was one of the things we really wanted to do. So we engaged in a process of communicating with our numbers over a long period of time. We probably did this over five to seven years on and off; it wasn’t consistent. We were a committee and we were limited by finances and what we could do; it was very expensive. We have probably 80 to 85 percent of our people living away from home, so it involved going out and going to the people or bringing them in, which was very, very expensive as well. But we really, we talked a lot to our people, we talked we brought that back and we talked as a committee about what that meant and what did our people really want. I think that some of what we found was that what I started with is that people didn’t really understand the system that we were under. We’re so used to blaming our band councils for things that go wrong without understanding that the Indian Act is behind all of that and that our councils really are structured under an Indian Act system that so clearly does not work for us, that oppressed us for so many years. And that’s what our people grew up with. So a lot of people didn’t know about our traditional systems, they didn’t know how we used to govern ourselves. All they knew was this oppressive system that we’d lived under that had hurt them in huge ways.

So sort of interesting, maybe to back up a little bit to the questionnaire process, our young citizen went out door to door, bless her heart, by herself and knocked on people’s doors and said, ‘I have this questionnaire and it’s my job to come and talk to our citizens about what it is you’d like to see in government.’ And she heard a lot of venting. So we tried to give her a lot of support and told her to not to react, don’t get defensive, don’t feel like you have to defend the council for things that happened 30 years ago, but listen, allow people to say what’s on their mind and bring that back to us, because that’s all relevant to what we need to change in the future.' Along with that commitment from the committee, she also had a commitment from our chief councilor at the time, who said that, ‘If somebody needs to talk to me, come back and tell me. Don’t take it on for me, but I will go.’ And he made that commitment and he did go and follow up with people, which was huge. So once people had a chance to get some of that stuff out that they had been holding on to a lot of times for 30, 40 years -- people had gone been taken out of our community, they’d gone to residential school, they’d seen what had happened to their parents and grandparents in the community and they’d gone from there and never come home. So these are people who have memories from the past that aren’t good memories in a lot of cases. So we were able to get through a lot of that. When people had the chance to just say that and get it off their chest with nobody trying to defend how they feel, then they kind of went, ‘Oh, okay.’ And they would say to Trudy, ‘Well, what are you here for?’ She’d say, ‘Well, I have this questionnaire.’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, come in. Who are you and what family are you from?’ And there was this warmth all of a sudden that, ‘Come and have a cup of coffee and do what we do traditionally,’ is share information. So she was able to, I think, with her personality, with her youth, with her enthusiasm and with the commitments and backing that she had from the committee and from our leadership was able to break through in a lot of cases and make people feel Huu-ay-aht again. We actually had people say, ‘I didn’t think I was Huu-ay-aht anymore, I didn’t think anybody cared about me. But I was important enough, somebody came to my house and talked to me about these things.’ It was a huge breakthrough for us.

Ian Record:

It’s interesting you bring up this thing about recognition. My experience in the many nations I’ve worked with on constitutional reform -- primarily in the United States -- has been that people in the community fixate on the symptoms of dysfunction, which typically means they focus on the council, ‘Everything that’s wrong with us is because of the council,’ when they don’t it’s very difficult for them to draw that connection back to the roots of the dysfunction, which in many cases are an imposed system of governance. How important was it for you guys to shift that focus in your community to show people that, ‘Look, at the root of what ails us, what’s holding us back,’ if you will, ‘from rebuilding our community into something that we think is important and is culturally relevant is this system that is not of our own design.’

Angela Wesley:

It was the foundation of our communications, both in our constitutional communications as well as in our treaty negotiations. We just felt that it was so important for us to realize that there was no way out of that system unless we created something ourselves, and that’s what we were trying to do through treaty negotiations, to be able to get governance tools, access to lands and resources, additional financial boosts that could help us to move forward and to create that economy for our people. So in order to do that, we had to show that there was nothing in the current system that we could see that was going to allow us to dig ourselves out and to be able to change our world. We needed something else to add to it and having governance, having good governance in place through our constitution together with having some extra tools, access to lands and resources, recognition of our rights, the ability to build the economy was what was going to change our situation. And like I said, so many of our people just had no idea what the problems were and when we started to talk about that I think it really opened eyes and gained a lot of support. And the support wasn’t 100 percent. A lot of people were taking a leap of faith. We were creating trust through doing this kind of communications with our people and saying, ‘Can you give us a chance? This is what we think is going to help us to change our world. Let’s do all of this together.’ So that was it was really the root of what we were communicating to our people is that how else are we going to change, how else are we going to change our social situation because it’s not good the way it is right now.

Ian Record:

I wanted to back up to something you said earlier about the importance for Huu-ay-aht of having this new governance system that you were creating be an expression of the people’s will and not necessarily an expression of political will, meaning you wanted to ensure that it was the product of the people as a whole versus the product of a particular council or particular elected official or someone else. And we’ve seen where other nations have succeeded with constitutional development or reform, that recognition going into the process, that we’re going to sabotage our own effort if this either becomes politicized or becomes viewed as a politicized process at the very beginning. Can you speak a little bit more about why that is so critical to sort of make sure that the process itself is an apolitical process in how you guys ensured that you insulated it from sort of the political impulses along the way?

Angela Wesley:

Yeah, it probably was a key to our success in terms of the communication or in terms of the approval and ratification of the constitution. I can’t give enough credit I think to our leadership to be able to have stood back not only from the process of building a constitution, but also recognizing that we were trying to incorporate in some fashion our hereditary system back into our government or at least the ability to do that as time went on into the future. And again our chief councilor at the time is a very traditional individual as well. He’s a historian for our tribe and I think that really helped to show people that we were really trying to do what was best for the nation. So there wasn’t political interference, but there was huge political support for developing that system and I think that the leadership showed that they weren’t afraid, that they weren’t afraid of the changes that were coming up because this was what was the best for the nation. So the separation is good, but the leadership was such a critical element of it as well to be able to stand up and really support what we were doing.

Ian Record:

It’s interesting you keep using the word 'support,' because where we see tribes succeed is where the elected leadership plays a supportive role, not a directive role. Where we see tribes struggle is where the reform process is quickly viewed by people in the community as just another initiative by the current leadership that’s in charge. Do you see that as crucial where do you see that as maybe sending a message to the people in terms of, ‘This is something that’s so critical that it’s got to be bigger than us as a group of leaders, it’s got to be about the nation as a whole?’ Did people kind of stand back and say, ‘Wait a minute. This is a real opportunity for us to re-engage, to have our voices heard,' as you mentioned? You mentioned the one person saying, ‘Wow, my government’s never asked me for my opinion on anything before,’ to say it’s not just a command and control decision anymore, this is going to happen from the ground up.

Angela Wesley:

We really it is critical. We really emphasized that with our people as well to say when and who have you ever seen that’s had the opportunity to say how it is that we want to be governed as a nation. To take advantage, we encouraged people to take advantage of that possibility; we encouraged people to use their voices in a positive way. The system that we were in, I think, really led people to be complaining about things all the time. There was no way out, there was no way to resolve disputes, they just went on and on and on. And to have us going out into our community and talking to people about solutions and to have them feeding into, ‘Okay, if that didn’t work, what can work and how can it work better for us, how can we take how we used to govern because it sustained us for thousands of years, how can we take those principles and those values and move them into our government of today so that we can do things better?’ And I think people understood that and it didn’t even really become a visible issue of, ‘Oh, it’s not the politicians that are involved in this?’ People just started to engage because they liked the conversation. So I don’t think it was so much a factor that people hung anything on the process and said, ‘Well, the politics aren’t involved.’ I think they just started liking having the conversation and started feeling more and more comfortable with it. Probably one of the earliest things that people really responded to was the chapter in our constitution that talks about individual rights, to actually see in black and white that people would be treated equally, that they would have equal opportunities within the nation as citizens of the nation; that really sparked something. So starting there, having that conversation as a basis for our communication on the constitution was really, I think, winning as well.

I think people really felt that it was something that was going to reflect what it is they wanted. Because when you go out we often talk about how you explain such complex matters to people who are just trying to get by in their lives and we really chose to try to make our communications really relevant as opposed to saying, ‘This is what provision 16 is going to say in legal language.’ We tried to keep our constitution as plain language as possible and to make it relevant to people because that’s their question, ‘What does this mean to me and my family? How is this going to change the world? How is this going to protect the assets of our nation for future generations, for those who aren’t born yet?’ Those are the kind of things that were on people’s minds. So having the conversation around those kind of things as opposed to around what the provision is going to say, we tried to capture what people were saying and put it into the language.

Ian Record:

It’s interesting you bring that up because often the refrain that we hear in many Native communities -- particularly those that are struggling with reform -- is a sense among many in the community that they simply don’t understand why they should even care about the constitution. They have no sense of how it impacts their daily life, the current constitution and how a new constitution could improve their daily life, and so forth. And it sounds like that was at the forefront of your mind as you went into this process, is to educate people about and making sure that the deliberations were accessible so they could understand, ‘This is how this new system will improve your situation individually, your family’s situation, and the nation’s situation as a whole.’

Angela Wesley:

I think so, and I think that people saw that this was a way of helping to make our governments, future governments and present governments, more accountable to the people. The way the Indian Act is set up right now, your funding flows from the federal government to the council. So the accountability of councils in a legal sense is right back to the Ministry of Indian Affairs, and there’s really not a whole lot of concern on the part of the department as to whether you are accountable back to your citizens. It’s becoming more and more prominent now, but and it’s also becoming more and more of a practice among First Nations to be accountable to their people. So despite the fact that it’s not really a requirement -- although Canada has paid a lot of attention to that in recent years -- nations are becoming more accountable to their citizens and citizens are demanding that accountability. And I think the constitution strengthens that and allows us to do it  to have councils be accountable in a way that is acceptable to the people. What are you going to report to us, when you are going to report to us, to see that these things have to happen? They have to happen according to our own laws, not according to the Indian Act or Ministry of Indian Affairs. It’s because this is what our people want.

Ian Record:

It sounds like things have gone well with your nation in terms of governance reform, really governance rebirth, if you will. But I’m sure at some point you encountered some challenges.

Angela Wesley:

Oh, absolutely.

Ian Record:

And given that it took you seven years, I’m sure there were lots of challenges, a lot of bumps in the road along the way. Can you talk about some of the biggest challenges that you faced in the reform process and how you worked to overcome those?

Angela Wesley:

Well, I think the whole...in terms of our community, I think what I’ve just been talking about in terms of the understanding or lack of understanding of the reality of our situation was probably the biggest hurdle that we had to overcome in the development process. We did end up with a high approval rate of our constitution and of our treaty, and I think it was just our people agreeing that we needed to take this leap of faith, that this was our chance to try to do something for ourselves and to do it our way. So I think that that was a big leap of faith.

Ian Record:

That sounds to me like that was an initial challenge of getting the people to recognize the reality of their situation, of just how pervasive the Indian Act how it affected them in so many ways that they may not have been aware of. But how about when you got really into the process full-bore, you got beyond that initial education, were there some other obstacles you encountered, external factors, internal factors that threatened to derail the process?

Angela Wesley:

You know, politics will always sort of pop up and matters become more urgent as time goes on, but I think that by and large, given the process that we went through, I think we were able to overcome any kind of hurdles. I think that the committee that was put in place and the leadership that we had in place was able to work together to understand that we were there to support each other and that made a lot of difference, I think, to how we approached when we were getting towards the end when it’s sort of crunch time and you’re going to start looking at going into a vote. There was some apprehension on the part of our leadership and our council maybe that, ‘Where is this going to go?’ They were sort of feeling like any arrows that were going to come were going to come towards them and we said to them, ‘Well, we’re the ones as a committee that should be taking some responsibility, and feel comfort in the fact that we’re happy to stand up in front of our people and explain why the constitution is the way it is,’ and it is entirely because of what it was that people wanted in our government in the future together with trying to build a system of good governance. So I think we overcame those.

The challenges I guess that we’re looking at now, we’re two years into being self-government or self-governing and it’s hard. We didn’t expect it was going to be easy. This I think now is when we’re starting to face the challenges, when we realize what it means to be fair, to treat people equally. When those things that our people told us that they wanted, it now takes much longer to make a decision because you have to go through, you have to be transparent, you have to treat people equally. There aren’t exceptions. If there’s an exception for one [person], you’ve got to think of how that’s going to happen and play out for the rest of the citizens as well. So what all sounds really good and is really good takes a different process and takes a different way to be able to move forward. So I think we’re having those kind of challenges right now.

I’m seeing I’m not working directly in my nation right now, but I’m still always very connected. I’m working with our economic development side now actually, so sort of shifted over into that. But you see our leadership struggling. They want to do things right. They want to follow our laws. And I think if there’s things that can be learned, it’s to really think about what this is going to mean as you’re drafting your laws, because I think in some places we found that we’re almost overly accountable and what we don’t want to do is to constrain ourselves with our own laws. But the beauty of being self-governing is that we can change those things if and when we need to. And recognizing that I think is a big part of our learning curve.

So being self-governing doesn’t mean that everything is working perfectly for us right now -- far from it -- and when will we ever be doing things perfectly? No government ever runs perfectly. But we certainly feel better, I don’t think that there’s a person in our nation that thinks that we made the wrong decision in taking on self-government and doing it for ourselves. It’s hard, it’s going to be difficult for us as we continue to move on but we’re getting better at it every day.

Ian Record:

So it sounds to me given that you’re just about two years now into your new governance reality, if you will, that your nation is still working to grow into its new constitutional skin, its new governance skin, it’s going through those growing pains of actually transforming that document on paper into practice.

Angela Wesley:

Oh, definitely.

Ian Record:

And this is something we hear from a lot of other folks, we’ve worked with a number of tribes who are now three, six, ten years into their new constitution and system of governance and they describe this same sort of dynamic taking place, where it’s one thing to have a new constitution and it’s quite another to actually live that in practice. And I would imagine for you as with other some of these other nations, you’re really the larger task really is to transform the political culture that has been in place in your community for so long, the Indian Act culture. In the U.S., for many tribes it’s the Indian Reorganization Act political culture, where suddenly you can no longer go to the council for absolutely everything that ails you, every problem you have. Now there’s processes in place that you have to follow. Can you maybe shed a little more insight into how that’s unfolding in your community, and I would imagine it entails an ongoing education challenge does it not?

Angela Wesley:

It is. It’s definitely a learning curve. Under the Indian Act, as we’re hearing in the courses through NNI and the kind of sessions that we’re in today, you need to put up the mirror sometimes and see how it is that you’re operating. Councils are expected to do everything. That’s the history of most First Nations in Canada and I assume in the U.S., and transforming at the leadership level into being visionaries and creating the environment to succeed is a really difficult thing to do, because citizens still expect you to go and take care of everything, all of the things that are going on in the community. So it’s difficult for citizens because they can’t do that anymore, and it’s difficult for leadership to try to let that go and to put the administrative systems in place that allow the questions to be answered and that allow give citizens a place to go to get their questions answered instead of to the political side. So it is, it’s a transition; it’s a huge transformation. It’s a new way of doing business and operating our government. So it’s I give a lot of credit to our leadership in trying to get through that and trying to remind themselves every day that they need to show citizens where they need to go to get their questions answered as opposed to coming to them, because that’s the critical part is that you can’t leave our citizens hanging, they’ve got to have somewhere that they can go and that’s the council’s role.

Ian Record:

And I would imagine this clarification, redefinition and then ongoing clarification of the new roles within your new system is absolutely critical, because as you’ve laid out, your governance, your new governance system is expected to achieve far more ambitious things than the previous system was under the Indian Act. You’re tasking your governance system and the leaders who lead that system with creating this brighter future of your own design. And so I think this point that you brought up is absolutely crucial, where you’ve got to make sure that you create the space for your leadership to be visionary and to actually figure out, how do we implement the vision that we’ve created for ourselves for our own future?

Angela Wesley:

Yes, definitely. And being able to feel comfort in the organization that we set up is the other big part of it as well. You can put your constitution in place, but unless you’ve got an effective administration as well to be able to take care of that we had to do a lot of reorganizing at our administrative level as well. We had a typical First Nation operation or band council operation or band administration, where we had our band manager who had everybody in the organization reporting to them. So that person as well needed to be able to focus on making sure that the council’s wishes and directions are undertaken and that’s what their role is as well. So there’s a shift in roles all throughout the organization. People have to learn new things. People who are really good at managing resources now also have to learn how to manage people. So it’s a shift at all levels within the government and that’s going to take time, and I think we need to go easy on ourselves a little bit in these early years and just realize that we need to relearn a lot of things and we need to learn how to do business effectively and efficiently for the benefit of our citizens.

Ian Record:

So a couple things out of that. One is that I think what you’re referring to is what we’ve heard from other folks from Native nations who’ve been involved in reform efforts is you’ve got to in many instances dial back expectations, that just because you have a new constitution doesn’t mean everyone’s problems are going to be solved overnight. There is going to be a learning curve, we’re going to make some false steps, we’re going to do two steps forward, one step back kind of thing, but the idea is that we’re in charge now and if we find that something in the new constitution isn’t working, as you mentioned, that we have the power to change it.

Angela Wesley:

And it’s not  in our case it’s not only the constitution, it’s the treaty as well, which both came in place at the same time. Probably one of the biggest lessons learned is to have not only that reorganizational plan in place to get your government ready, but also to start getting the economic side and getting that plan in place as well and start to make sure that there’s even small steps towards making changes that people will see some of the early things that we’re able to change that made a difference to our people. As we changed things like our education policies, we weren’t able to fund trades before and now we have the flexibility to be able to do that. So we’ve made little changes like that that make a difference to the people and to plan to do things like that to start to address some things that you can point to to say to your people, ‘Yes, things are working differently now. We are making small steps and hopefully as we continue to grow and build our economy, we’ll have lots of successes that we can look at and that’s going to happen over time.’

Ian Record:

The other thing I wanted to bring up from your previous response is you mentioned that the band manager, their reality has changed because of this new governance system, and I think that that’s often lost on folks is that this new constitution, this new system of government, it will definitely change the role of leadership or clarify perhaps the role of leaders and it will transform it will necessarily transform the expectations citizens need to have of their government, but really what you’re saying is that it’s going to change reality for everyone that is either part of the nation, works for the nation, or interacts with the nation. And can you talk a little bit about how I guess compare and contrast the new governance reality at Huu-ay-aht with the old governance reality? Say I came and visited the community under the Indian Act system and I had to work with the band government on something and now I’m getting ready to come back, I call you on the phone and say, ‘What should I expect, how are things going to be different for me if I have to come and work with the nation on this particular issue?’

Angela Wesley:

I think there’s a lot of fundamental differences, and we’re getting used to working within a new system as well. Having a treaty, having the constitution to go along with it and having a whole new set of laws, things have to be done differently. It’s not as easy now as going up and calling all the council members together and sit down and, ‘We have this new initiative we want you to look at.’ There’s a lot of things that need to go into it before it gets to that council level so the way of doing business. Do you need a permit to be able to go out and do certain things on the land? Do you need to be talking with our manager of natural resources to get all of those kind of things in place? Nothing goes before our council now without a full briefing note and some options that are provided to them so that they’re making decisions based on full information. One of the things that’s in our Government Act is a requirement for the way decisions are made and it’s actually written into our legislation of what needs to be considered at the council level in making a decision particular, well about anything, but particularly in relation to things that require money. Have you got all of the information that you need in order to make the decision? Have you looked at what the impact is on other programs? Where is the funding going to come from? Are there other options here? Is there a need to consult the community on this? What kind of impacts there’s a whole list of those things that are in the laws. So it’s our law that requires those things get done and that means a much more thorough process is required. So things are different, things take longer and hopefully we can refine that as things go along, but it’s probably better to walk on the side of caution a little bit first, at the same time being able to move forward economically and be able to make those changes in our nation.

Ian Record:

So I mentioned in the introduction that you have been intricately involved in your nation’s development of a whole new suite of foundational laws. You get the new treaty in place; you get the new constitution in place. Where did you guys focus your lawmaking energy at the beginning? What to you was, ‘We’ve got to address these issues right now. There’s nothing on the books that helps us deal with X, Y and Z.'

Angela Wesley:

What we did in approaching our lawmaking was to look at the real critical areas. We had gone through a process that I described of creating trust in from our citizens that we were going to do things right. So the first laws that we put in place were, we called them 'laws that govern our government,' because people were a little afraid. What are these new laws going to be and are we going to be expected to have all these new laws in place that we need to know. We thought it was really important that we put in place laws that show our people that our government needs to be accountable. So we have things like a Government Act, a Code of Conduct and Conflict of Interest, Election Act, Citizenship Act, all of those kind of really foundational pieces. We didn’t start touching the bigger areas that we now have lawmaking authorities under like adoption, child welfare, education, culture and language. We’ve got lawmaking in a lot of areas, but we decided first that we need to continue to build the trust of our government and allow our government some time to settle in to governing well. So we really put laws, a lot of laws in place that talk about how our government operates and how they’re to be accountable back to the people.

Ian Record:

So basically what it sounds like you’re saying is you worked to enhance the lawmaking engine to then make laws in the areas where you had newfound or newly affirmed powers.

Angela Wesley:

Yes. Yes. Yes and to make sure that there were ways in place that citizens could have an input, that they would be able to always have a say in government, making sure that our Government Act specified for example what the rules were around having people’s assemblies where people would have their voice, what the rules would be around providing financial accountability back to the people. So these were our laws that we promised people when they said, ‘How can we be sure council isn’t going to run off with all the money that we get under treaty?’ Because the constitution says they can’t and because there’s a law that says what they need to do and how they need to report back to the people. So we’re making sure that those checks and balances were really firmly in place before we start venturing off into other areas. Other areas that were really important to us in lawmaking was protection of our lands. So we have a few laws that deal with lands and resources. Areas that still allow our people to exercise our rights, harvesting rights and that kind of thing, so we made sure laws and permitting process and that were in place so that on effective date people wouldn’t say, ‘Well, how am I going to go and hunt now? Where does all of this happen?’ So we worked really hard to make sure there was no disruption in those kind of activities as well.

Ian Record:

So I have a final wrap-up question for you and that deals with lessons. You guys were involved in a process that lasted several years, you’ve managed to come through the light at the end of the tunnel and you have a new governance system in place. What do you feel that other First Nations in Canada, other Native nations in the United States can learn from the Huu-ay-aht experience?

Angela Wesley:

Well, that’s kind of difficult to say. You never really want to say what we’ve done that other people should do. We’ve done what we think is best for us. We’re happy to share our story and to see if what we’re doing can be of any assistance to others. We are grateful to those who came before us as well, there’s now 10 First Nations in British Columbia that are no longer subject to the Indian Act. We learned from them. We learned from the Nisga’a, we learned from Tsawwassen, we learned from other nations that are self-governing under self-government agreements as opposed to treaties. So I don’t know how to answer that except for to say it’s really important to bring the people along because if they don’t understand the change that’s coming up, nothing really changes for them. It’s just a shift in power from one to another and they won’t see the difference unless they’re involved in that. So I think that’s probably the biggest thing that I feel proud of that we did in our nation is we really did our best to bring the people along.

Ian Record:

Make sure they’re on board the nation rebuilding train before it leaves the station.

Angela Wesley:

Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. So it was a healthy experience for us. We’ll talk to a lot of our citizens who aren’t happy with the way things are going, I’m positive of it, but that will never go away either. But I think what we’ve learned through the process and what our citizens have learned is to use our voices and to try to be positive in terms of saying how things can be better. If it’s not working, let’s not just complain about it, because we can fix this if we want to. So I think that’s something that we’ve learned and that we’ll continue to learn as we become more comfortable in governing ourselves once again.

Ian Record:

Well, Angela, I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts, experiences and wisdom with us and good luck to you and your nation on your new governance journey.

Angela Wesley:

Thank you.

Ian Record:

That’s all the time we have on today’s program of Leading Native Nations. To learn more about Leading Native Nations and the Native Nations Institute, please visit the Native Nations Institute’s website at nni.arizona.edu. Thank you for joining us. Copyright 2013. Arizona Board of Regents.

Ned Norris, Jr.: Strengthening Governance at Tohono O'odham

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Tohono O'odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris, Jr. discusses how his nation has systematically worked to strengthen its system of governance, from creating an independent, effective judiciary to developing an innovative, culturally appropriate approach to caring for the nation's elders.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Norris, Jr., Ned. "Strengthening Governance at Tohono O'odham." Leading Native Nations interview series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. February 16, 2012. Interview.

Ian Record:

“Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I’m your host, Ian Record. On today’s program we are honored to have with us Ned Norris, Jr. Since 2007, Ned has served as chairman of his nation, the Tohono O’odham Nation, winning re-election to a second four-year term in 2011. He has worked for his nation for the past 35 years, serving in a variety of capacities, from Vice Chairman of his nation to Director of Tribal Governmental Operations to Chief Judge of the Tohono O’odham Judicial Branch. Chairman, welcome, good to have you with us today.”

Ned Norris:

“Thank you very much. It’s good to be here.”

Ian Record:

“I’ve shared a few highlights of your very impressive personal biography, but why don’t you start by telling us a little bit more about yourself?”

Ned Norris:

“Well, I’ve… born and raised here in Tucson, born at San Xavier when it was a hospital in 1955, and pretty much grew up here and spent all of my life here in Tucson, and got married to my wife Janice in 1973. And actually Friday, February 17th will be 39 years that she’s put up with me.”

Ian Record:

“Congratulations.”

Ned Norris:

“So I really appreciate that. We have children, we have grandchildren, and it’s great seeing them, and seeing how our kids have developed over the years and seeing how our grandchildren are coming along.”

Ian Record:

“Well, we’re here today to tap into your knowledge, your wisdom and experience regarding a wide range of critical Native nation building and governance topics and I’d like to start with tribal justice systems. You’ve taken on many different roles in your nation’s justice system including court advocate, child welfare specialist, and judge. And so I’m curious, generally speaking from your experience and your perspective, what role do tribal justice systems play in the exercise of tribal sovereignty?”

Ned Norris:

“As I was thinking about this, I was thinking about where we were as early as the late 1970s. For some people that’s not early, for some people that’s a long time, but when we think about where our tribal system, judicial system has developed since ’79 and forward, we have really come a long way in realizing that the court system itself plays a significant role in ensuring or demonstrating our ability to be a sovereign tribal entity. Obviously the tribal legislature’s going to make the laws and the executive side of the tribal government is going to implement those laws, but the court system really has a key, significant role in determining, in how those laws are going to be interpreted and how those laws are going to be applied. And for me that’s really a significant role in the tribal judicial system ensuring that whatever we’re doing internally with regards to applying the law as it is written by the legislature and implemented by the executive branch that it is ensuring that sovereignty is intact, that it’s ensuring that we have the capabilities of making the decisions that we need to make in order to govern our nation.”

Ian Record:

“A law professor here at the University of Arizona who you know very well, Robert Williams, who serves as a pro tem judge for your nation’s judicial branch describes this systematic effort your nation has engaged in over the past three decades or so to build an effective, efficient, tribal justice system from the ground up. Why has the nation engaged in that effort and why is that important?”

Ned Norris:

“I think that it has a lot to do with the fact that we’ve got tribal legislators over the years that have really began to take a holistic look at the tribal government as a whole and realizing that for the most part as late as the 1970s, early 1970s, our tribal judicial system was really what I would refer to as a BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs]-type system. Tribal codes were developed, but they were really taken off of boilerplates of BIA codes and so on and so forth. So I think that our leadership, our tribal council began to realize that these laws don’t always have the kind of impact that we would like them to have. And so in order for us to be able to govern ourselves and to determine our own destiny as it relates to [the] tribal court system, we’ve got to begin the process of changing the system and bringing it more up to speed, so to speak.”

Ian Record:

“And part of that I guess, regaining control of the justice function of the nation, things like making sure that you are charge of law and order, that you’re in charge of dispute resolution, that when you have a young person who has a substance abuse problem that they’re being taken care of, that issue is being taken care of internally versus them being shipped off the reservation, making the system more culturally appropriate, where the people in the community feel like this makes sense to us. Can you talk about that dynamic in the work that the nation has been doing in that regard to, I guess, make the justice system their own?”

Ned Norris:

“Well historically, I think it’s unfortunate that back then, and even to some extent even today, tribes do not have the level of resources available to address the more intricate needs of a substance abuser, an alcoholic, whatever the case may be, and so even today there are needs. There is a need to identify resources, whether it’s on or off the reservation to address that, but I think most importantly is the idea that we would be able to create the kinds of services that we’re using off reservation and bringing those services on the reservation where we’re playing a more direct role in that person’s treatment, in their rehabilitation and really looking at it like…from the perspective that this is family, this is part of our family. This individual isn’t just a member or a citizen of our nation, they are a citizen of our nation that we should take more of a responsibility to try and help within the confines of our own tribal nation, our people. And so I think when we think about it from that perspective, we begin to realize that maybe the services that we have are not as adequate or not as resourceful as we would like them to be. So we’ve got to be able to identify that and be able to identify where those voids are and bring those services into that program or create the program that…where those voids exist.”

Ian Record:

“It really boils down to the nation itself best knowing its own needs, its own challenges versus somebody from the outside that is simply just bringing in something from the outside that may not…”

Ned Norris:

“Not only that, Ian, I think that in addition to understanding that we have…we as the nation membership have a good understanding of what those needs are and what those resources are or aren’t, but also really realizing that if we’re going to bring or utilize outside resources to do this, those resources aren’t always going to be there. We’re going to be there, we’re going to continue to be there, our members are going to continue to be there and what makes more sense to us is to be able to take control and bring those services, develop those services where they lack and provide the services more directly by the nation’s leadership itself.”

Ian Record:

“One of the things that Professor Williams points to in this effort that the nation’s been engaged in around the justice system for the past 30 years is how the nation has invested in its own people, how it’s worked to build the capacity, internal capacity of its own people to provide justice to the community. Can you talk a little bit more about that? You’re a byproduct of that effort.”

Ned Norris:

“Well, I think that when we talk about investing in our own people, over the years in a more significant sense we’re…we’ve been able to establish our gaming operation. That operation has played a significant role in our ability to bring the kinds of services that aren’t there, that haven’t been there, or those kinds of services that we would for many years just dream about having and even to the extent that we’re developing our tribal members. I think, just to give you an example, pre-gaming we probably had less than 500, 600 employees that worked with the tribe and now we’ve got well over, I think it’s about 1,400 tribal employees and we’ve got a varied amount of programs that have been developed that are really beginning to address a lot of the needs that we’ve been having over the years. And not even that, the ability to develop our own tribal citizens in providing them an opportunity to train academically, whether it’s a vocational program, whether it’s a two-year or four-year college, whether it’s earning a bachelor’s degrees, master’s degree, doctorate degree, whatever the case may be. We’ve been able to provide that kind of an opportunity for our members to be able to acquire the kinds of skills that they lack academically and bring those skills back to the nation and apply those skills.”

Ian Record:

“Yeah, and I think what you’ve addressed is there’s a major obstacle for many tribes in that they’ll invest in their people, they’ll send them off to get a good education, but then it’s really critical that there’s a welcoming environment for those college graduates to say, ‘We’re sending you off to get a skill to come back and apply that skill here on behalf of the nation.’”

Ned Norris:

“Exactly, and part of our challenge as tribal leaders is making sure that we create the ability for those members to be able to come back. Too many times I’ve shared with different audiences over the years that we’re graduating more O’odham with bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees than in the history of the whole tribe, however, where we may lack in the ability to create the kinds of jobs that those individuals trained for. And so we need to prepare ourselves to be able to receive those tribal members back and provide them the kinds of job opportunities that they’ve spent four, six year, eight years in college acquiring, but also not only be able to do that, but to be able to pay a comparable salary for the kinds of positions that they’ve trained for.”

Ian Record:

“I’d like you, if you wouldn’t mind, to paint a picture. Before we went on air you were describing a little bit about what the nation’s justice system looked like when you came on board and started working within that system. Can you compare and contrast what the justice system and what the justice function looked like back in the early 1970s or mid 1970s, to what it looks like now?”

Ned Norris:

“Wow. It’s a night-and-day comparison really, because just physically we didn’t have the kinds of facilities necessary to really do… provide the kinds of justice services that our people should be afforded and we…when we talk about facilities, we talk about staffing, we talk about laws in themselves or codes, back in the late ‘70s, the early ‘80s, there was a time there that our law and order code was a boilerplate from the BIA code and I think that it took some years and some education and some effort to begin the process of understanding that this boilerplate code is obsolete in our mind and we need to begin the process of developing our own tribal codes. And so we began that process in writing our own tribal code, our law and order code, our criminal code, our civil codes and other codes and that took a process, but once we’ve done that and the tribal council adopted those codes, we started to apply them in the tribal judicial system. And so I think that when we compare where we were in the late 1970s to where we are now, the only… the concern that I have is, being a former judge -- I spent 14 years as one of our tribal judges and from ’79 to ’93 --and I’ve seen the court system develop over those years and seen how obsolete the laws were back in the late 1970s to where we were able to develop those laws. But also realize that back then in the early 1990s, I began to think about realizing the time that the court system is no longer processing and dealing with human beings, but they’re dealing with numbers. You become a number at some point, a case number or whatever because early on we came into this with the perspective that we’ve got this tribal member that is maybe committing crime, but there are a lot of factors that are contributing to why that tribal member has committed that particular crime and that we, the court system, although it has the law before it and the law may provide a jail sentence and/or a fine, the idea wasn’t always to throw this person in jail because of the crime they did, but to try and dig a little deeper into what’s really going on within that individual’s situation. Is it the home situation? Is it…was the person an abused person over a time of their life, was that person a victim of incest that just was never dealt with? And so we came to this with the perspective that the court system enforces the laws, applies the law and issues sentences, but some of that sentence has to take into consideration how can we help, how can we help this individual, how can we help the family address those issues that are impacting or having an influence in them committing the crimes that they’re committing?”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned that for several years you were a judge and so you’ve seen firsthand how the court system works and you’ve been a part of that court system. There’s an issue…there’s a major infrastructure challenge for a lot of justice systems across Indian Country. Can you talk a bit about what Native nation governments can do to ensure that their justice systems have the support they need to administer justice effectively?”

Ned Norris:

“One is, there was a period of time where the tribal legislature was what I refer to as the supreme authority on the O’odham Nation, at that time the Papago Tribe of Arizona. And as that supreme authority, there was really not a separation of powers between a three-branch system. And so, over the course of those years, early on the tribal supreme authority, the legislative authority really infringed on or encroached on what should have been an independent judicial system. And so I think, in answer to your question, tribal governments, tribal leadership should realize that it is imperative to the success of a tribal governmental entity that an independent system of judicial…a system to dispense justice is not having the kinds of influence by the other two branches of government that would impede its ability to deliver that justice. And I think that once we begin to understand that and realize that and realize that that not only does that involve the legislature not meddling into the judicial process, but it also has to involve an understanding that because in many tribal governmental entities the tribal legislator controls the purse, controls the funding, that they not use that as a basis to not fund the needs of the tribal judiciary. And I think that because the council has the authority to disperse funding resources that the courts still have to go to the council and ask and present their budget and ask for funding for infrastructure, for whatever the case may be. That there still has to be a relationship there, but I think that the tribal legislature needs to understand too that they shouldn’t use their role as a tribal legislator to deny the kinds of resources that the court system needs.”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned this issue of political interference and this is something that comes up in virtually every interview I do with folks on this topic of tribal justice systems and they all…almost all of them mention this issue of funding and how that can be rather than direct interference in a particular court case, but this kind of more subtle, insidious process of denying funding or reducing funding or holding funding hostage to…in exchange for certain considerations -- that that sends real messages and others have talked about how this issue of political interference can be a very slippery slope. That if a chair or a legislator, once they do it once for one person, word’s going to get around that, ‘You just need to go to this council person and they’ll get involved with the court case on your behalf.’ And in many respects doesn’t that distract the executive…the chief executive of the nation, the legislators from focusing on what they really should be focusing on?”

Ned Norris:

“Yeah, if we’re taking so much of our time and energy dealing with a relative’s court case and not allowing the court to apply justice to that situation, then obviously it’s taking us away from our real role, which is to provide the kinds of leadership and direction that we need to provide to run our government. So yeah, political influence, I think early on was an issue. Now, I think it’s rare. I think that we’ve educated our leadership to the extent that they understand the concept of separation of powers, that they understand that they shouldn’t use their position to try and influence a decision that the court is going to make. We’re not 100 percent, but we’re far less than what we were in the late 1970s and I think that that whole process just took a series of education and in fact, in some cases, some case law that’s already been established where the legislative branch was trying to encroach on the powers of the executive branch, we’ve had those cases in our tribal court system and those decisions are the law at this point.”

Ian Record:

“This wasn’t originally in my list of questions, but since you brought it up, I’d like to talk about the role of justice systems and the judicial branch, particularly your nation, in essentially being a fair umpire when there are conflicts between the executive function -- whether it’s a separate branch or not -- but the executive function of the nation and the legislative function. How important is it to have somebody, whether it’s your courts or an elders body or somebody, some entity that can, when there is conflict between those two functions to say, ‘Okay, let’s take a look at this and let’s be the fair arbiter here.’?”

Ned Norris:

“I think that it’s critical. I think it’s critical to be able to understand at some point in that particular dispute process that we’ve got to sit back and we’ve got to realize that as the two branches that are in dispute, is this an issue that we really want the courts to have a major role in deciding or do we want to come to terms or come to some level of understanding, try and resolve the matter before it ends up in court? I think that we should look at those kinds of issues from that perspective because once you get the court involved, the court is going to make its decisions based on the law, and the law is not necessarily always going to be the way to resolve or the way that you may… either side may want this particular issue resolved, and I think for the most part too, the court itself should realize if there’s an opportunity to resolve the dispute outside of the court, laying down the gavel and saying, ‘I hereby order…,’ that giving the parties an opportunity to resolve this dispute, whether it’s an encroachment by either branch, executive to legislative or vice versa, that we always have the opportunity to try and come to terms on resolution even if it means calling, I don’t know, I don’t want…I guess we could call him an arbitrator or mediator or a council of elders, to come in and provide some level of traditional means of resolving the dispute. I think that that’s important, but it’s important for the parties to make that decision. I’m not always open to the idea that court systems will order you to call in a council of elders or a medicine person to come help resolve this issue. I really think that that’s got to be the tribe themselves to make that decision. Over the years, the court has issued those kinds of orders and I think that they’ve worked, but for the most part I think that it’s the parties themselves need to make that determination and that decision.”

Ian Record:

“I would like to jump forward basically because of what we’ve been discussing and talk about the fact that virtually every tribe that I've worked with there’s always going to be some level of friction between the nation’s executive function and the legislative function. It’s just the nature of politics; it’s the nature of governance. And you being in that role of chairman now for multiple terms, I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about that despite your best efforts, there are times when you come to an impasse or there’s a conflict that emerges. Can you talk about how do you build constructive working relationships -- as a chair -- with the legislative branch, the legislative function of government to try to make that relationship as productive and as seamless as possible?”

Ned Norris:

“Well, I have to say that I’m proud of what my first four years of leadership has done to do exactly what you’re asking because I felt and I sensed and I heard from many council members that there was really a breakdown in the relationship between the branches. And we knew then, Vice Chairman Isidro Lopez and I, and now even Vice Chairwoman Wavalene Romero and I realize, that it’s got to be a continuous effort to build that relationship, still maintain and understand there are certain constitutional authorities and powers that each individual branch has, that we need to understand what those constitutional powers are and that we don’t encroach our authority and violate what those powers are, because once you start doing that then you begin the resistance between the two and it doesn’t make for a good working relationship. We knew coming into office four years ago, and even continuing in my second term, that we’re going to need to continue to develop that relationship and I’m comfortable that where we’re at some, almost six years, five years later that we’ve been able to have a level of understanding that decisions are going to need to be made, that decisions that even though I have authority to veto decisions of our legislature, it’s been...in four years I think I’ve exercised that power twice and -- actually three times and -- both of those times those issues have been resolved. One issue is still pending in court, but I think that in itself speaks for the fact that we have a very understanding working relationship between the executive branch and the legislature and it’s really a continuous level of communication, it’s a continuous level to understand where they’re coming from on that particular issue, where you think you’re coming from and how do you work together to resolve your differences and how and at what point do you want to compromise in order to be able to accomplish what it is you want to accomplish. I think for the most part all of us want what’s best for the people of our nation. How do we get there from here to there, we may have some differences. And it’s discussing, resolving those differences to hopefully come to a positive outcome for providing the leadership that our people need.”

Ian Record:

“I’d like to switch gears now and talk about tribal bureaucracies. In addition to serving as your nation’s Director of Tribal Governmental Operations -- as I mentioned at the beginning -- you also have served as its Assistant Director of Tribal Social Services and as a former Commissioner for its Tribal Employment Rights Office, its TERO office. What do you feel from your diverse array of experiences, what do you feel tribal bureaucracies need to be effective?”

Ned Norris:

“Well one, I think clearly the individual that has a level of authority in that bureaucracy needs to understand themselves what…where do their powers derive from and to what extent do I have any power at all? And I think the individual then taking that in the whole from let’s say the tribal legislature or… I’m constantly having to make the kinds of decisions, leadership decisions that I need to make, but I’m constantly asking myself in my own mind, ‘Do I have the authority to do this?’ And I think that that’s the kind of understanding in our own minds that we need to continue to ask ourselves, ‘Do we have the authority to do this? What does the constitution say on this particular issue? What have the courts said on this particular issue? What has tradition said on this particular issue?’ And being able to understand that in all those perspectives I think is really where we need to…it’s going to help in the bureaucracy that’s created, because to me 'bureaucracy' isn’t a positive word in my opinion.”

Ian Record:

“Tribal administration.”

Ned Norris:

“Tribal administration, there you go. The Bureau [of Indian Affairs]’s a bureaucracy, but in tribal administration, I think that if we’re going to be able to…the end result is how do we get to be able to provide the kinds of needs that our people deserve and are entitled to? And are we going to create the kinds of roadblocks…and if there are roadblocks, then how do we break down those barriers, how do we break down those roadblocks, how do we begin to sit at the table with each other? I’ll tell you, there was a point in time where -- and I think it’s with any government -- but there’s mistrust, there’s a certain level of mistrust between the tribal branches or the governmental branches and it’s needing to understand that regardless of what I do there’s still going to be some level of trust. I’ve got 22 tribal council members. I still have to accept the fact that I know there’s at least one, maybe more, of those 22 council members that don’t want to see me where I’m at today and accept that. I accept that, but that doesn’t mean that I not continue to do what I think I need to do in working with my supporters and my non-supporters. They’re still a council member, I still have to work with them, I still need a majority of council to get the kinds of approvals or decisions to do things that I need. We need each other. The council needs the executive branch and the executive branch needs the council.”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned at the beginning of your response about the importance of every individual that works within the nation and for the nation understanding what their role is and what their authority is. Isn’t that absolutely critical when you talk about say, for instance, the nation’s elected leadership versus say your department heads, your program managers and things like that? That there’s a common understanding of, ‘Okay, when it comes to the day-to-day management,’ for instance, ‘of this program, that’s not my job as an elected official. That’s the job of the department head and the staff below them.' Because that’s a major issue that we’ve encountered across Indian Country, where there’s this constant overlapping of role boundaries if you will.”

Ned Norris:

“Micromanaging.”

Ian Record:

“Yes, that’s another way of putting it.”

Ned Norris:

“Yeah, micromanagement. I think for the idea or the idea of overstepping one’s authority where it appears, or at least you’re experiencing micromanagement, I think that for some time there was even a certain level of micromanaging that was going on and attempted to be going on from tribal council members or council committees on executive branch programs and we even see a certain level of that even today, this many years later. But I think how we handled those situations really has an impact, because I think for some time, we’ve got to realize that I’m not going to disallow my department directors, my department heads or anybody in those departments to not take a meeting with the tribal council committee if the council committee wants them to be there. That wasn’t always the situation in previous administrations, but for me, the council needs to be as informed on those issues in their role as a tribal council member. I think that when we think about micromanaging, again I think that it’s really a level of communication as to how you’re going to deliver. I’m not going to sit there and say, ‘Council member, you’re micromanaging my programs and that’s…I have an issue with that.’ I think that how we explain to them that we’re going to provide you the kinds of information that you need, but as the Chief Executive Officer under the constitution I have a certain level of responsibility to make sure that these programs are doing what they’re intended to do and I will assume that [responsibility]…I will exercise that responsibility, but we’re going to keep you informed, we’re going to keep…and if it’s personnel issues, that’s a different story. That’s clearly…we’ve got to protect the employee and the employer, but I think that for the most part we…how you communicate -- I’m trying to explain this. I’m not sure I’m doing a good job of it -- but how you explain without offending is critical to the outcome. And I don’t want our council to think that I’m prohibiting our departments to communicate issues with the council, because once we start doing that then you start to create barriers there and I don’t want those barriers, but at the same time the council needs to understand that if it’s an administrative issue that is clearly within my authority as the Chief Executive Officer for my nation. I have directors, I have people that are…that I hold accountable to make sure that those issues are addressed.”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned a term that I think is really interesting, I’d like to get you to talk a bit more about it. You said, ‘It’s critical to explain without offending.’ And we’ve heard other tribal leaders and people that work within tribal government talk about the fact that the impulse to micromanage, the impulse to, for instance, interfere, for an elected official to interfere on behalf of a constituent, for instance -- it’s always going to be there. The question’s how do you explain to that person that wants to interfere, that wants to micromanage, that this is not the way we do things because we have processes in place, we have policies in place that prohibit me from doing that? That’s not to say, as you said, that we can’t have a communication, that you can’t understand what’s going on and why, or why a certain decision’s been made the way it’s been made, but we have processes in place. How critical is that to have that…I guess to have that basis upon which you can explain without offending? That there’s these processes in place that are critical to the nation functioning well?”

Ned Norris:

“Sure. I think that it’s extremely critical to be able to have a level of understanding, but a certain level of trust. I think follow-up is key. I think if you’re going to have a council member or a council committee that is raising issues that are clearly an administrative function of one of my departments, then I’m not going to leave them out of that issue because they have a reason, they have an importance, they have a constituent out there that brought the issue before them. They need to know, they need to understand and so I’m going to make…I’m going to give them the assurance that as the chief administrator, I’m going to make sure that my people are going to follow up on that issue, but I’m also going to make sure you know what we’ve done. Not necessarily what disciplinary actions might have been imposed, but how are we going to address that issue? And make sure that I get back to them and tell them, ‘Here’s where we’re at with this issue, here’s what we’ve done. I want the program director to come and explain to you where we’re at on this as well.’”

Ian Record:

“You mentioned this issue of personnel issues, which are inevitable. They always arise -- whether it’s a hiring and firing dispute, whatever it might be -- and you mentioned it’s a whole different ballgame, that that really is critical that that’s insulated from any sort of political influence whatsoever. And we’ve heard others talk about how important that is to achieving fairness within the tribal administration, achieving fairness within how the nation operates, how it delivers programs and services. Can you talk a little bit about how your nation has addressed this issue of personnel disputes?”

Ned Norris:

“Well, I have to say that I…we have a lot yet to develop. We have a system to grieve, there’s a policy, personnel policies are in place, there’s the policies outline as to how individuals grieve an employee-employer situation. And I’m not…I haven’t always been 100 percent satisfied with the system itself. And so we’re currently going through a rewrite or a restructuring of what that system should be and really all in the interest of facilitating the process in making sure the process is more friendly to both sides, the grievant and the grievee and so on and so forth, because I think that our process involves a panel of individuals that may not necessarily have the level of training or understanding of what their duty and responsibility is as a panel member hearing that grievance. And so we have a panel and an individual or individuals on that panel that may think their authority is much bigger than what is really outlined or that they may need to make decisions that aren’t necessarily related to the grievance itself and those kinds of decisions have come out and our current policy provides that as chair of the nation, the chair has the final decision over a grievance that hasn’t been resolved at any one of the lower levels. And it’s by that experience that I realize we’ve got to change the process; the process needs to be more equitable I think to not only the process, but to the grievant, the person grieving it themselves. So I think that you want to make sure, you’ve got to make sure…you’ve got to ensure to your employees that we have a system to grieve that is fair, that they have confidence in, that they have the comfort that they’re going to…they know that when they get to the process, that that process is going to move along as fast as possible, but that their issue is going to be resolved. And I think too many times we don’t get to that point, but I think it’s the process itself that needs to be looked at, but we need to develop a process that is fair.”

Ian Record:

“I’d like to talk now about a symbol of pride for your nation, and that’s the Archie Hendricks Sr. Skilled Nursing Facility and Tohono O’odham Hospice. What prompted the nation to develop this amazing, what’s turned out to be this amazing success story and what has it meant for the Tohono O’odham people and in particular, its elders?”

Ned Norris:

“Archie Hendricks Nursing Care facility was a dream for many years. I was in tribal social services when, not long after the tribe contracted [Public Law 93-] 638, those social services from the Bureau. And it was really unfortunate that too many times when our elders needed nursing care that those elders were, as a figure of speech, shipped to some nursing facility in Casa Grande, in Phoenix, in other areas of the state and literally taken away from their home, taken away from their family. And too many times, the only time that those elders came back was in a box, when they’d deceased at that facility. And too many times having our elders placed in off-reservation facilities limited or to some…and in some cases prohibited family members to participate in their care in that off-reservation facility. And it just made sense that we begin the process of creating a facility on the nation where our elders can stay home at a location that we think is kind of central to where members, family members can commute, have more easily the ability to commute to that facility and visit. Too many times…a lot of our folks don’t have vehicles. A lot of our folks pay somebody else who has a vehicle to take them to the post office, take them to Basha’s or take them to somewhere, in a lot of cases drive them to Phoenix to visit their elder in the nursing home. And even though that still is the situation today with many of our members, the drive is a lot shorter than it is just to go to the Archie Hendricks facility. But also not only to be able to bring our elders home and have that service here on the nation, but also to…it’s an opportunity to instill tradition and instill who we are as O’odham into the care of our elders and in doing that, also having the opportunity to train tribal members in that particular service. We have a number of tribal members that have gone on to earn academic programs that are now applying those skills in the nursing home. So it had a win-win situation all the way around, not only bringing our elders, but a job opportunity; an opportunity to create a program that wasn’t there.”

Ian Record:

“Obviously that success story has addressed a particular need and as you’ve shared, a very dire need. But I guess on a larger overall level, doesn’t it send a very powerful message to your nation’s citizens that if we have a challenge, if we have a need, we can do this ourselves?”

Ned Norris:

“Oh, I think that’s true. I think that that’s maybe one of the bigger messages that we’re demonstrating because even today we think about…in fact, I had some, a family member come into my office that were concerned about their child or their nephew that was in an off-reservation youth home placement and that individual turned 18 years of age and was released from the facility. Well, the concern was there was really no services that was provided to him while in that facility and so in their own words they says, ‘Why can’t we build the kinds of facilities that we did for our elders for our youth? Why can’t we bring our youth home into a facility that can provide the kinds of services that they need?’ And why can’t we? We should. We should move in that direction. There was a time when the nation operated a couple of youth homes, a girl’s home and a boy’s home. I’m not sure right now what the history is as to why that doesn’t happen anymore, but I think the bureaucracy is what I remember, was the bureaucracy got hold of the situation. It was probably a licensing issue that the Bureau required that we weren’t able to comply with and so on and so forth, but I’m not suggesting we want to run off, run facilities without being accredited in some way or certified or licensed in some way, but I think that we need to understand that if we’re going to move in that direction…and I totally agree that we need to begin developing those kinds of services on the nation, but we also have to realize do we have the capability to do that? Do we have…? We can build a house, we can build the home, we can build the facility, but do we have the resources to run the kinds of programs that it’s going to require, do we have the trained personnel, do we have the…all the requirements that you need in order to run a sound helpful service to these youth -- can we do that? I think we need to do an assessment ourselves and if we feel we’re ready to make that move, then by all means let’s start putting the…making those facilities available.”

Ian Record:

“It’s interesting you mentioned that your citizens are now thinking, ‘Why can’t we?’ and that’s a very important shift in mindset, is it not? To where…from where in many Native communities 20-30 years ago, it was always, ‘Let the Bureau take care of it. We don’t need to deal with it.’ To now, ‘Why can’t we do it ourselves?’ That speaks to this larger shift that we’re talking about, the message that it sends to the people, does it not?”

Ned Norris:

“Well, it’s…I think about former leadership and I think about leaders that have had an impact in my life and I always share this story about…you remember the TV commercial, ‘Be like Mike,’ Jordan’s Shoes, ‘Be like Mike, play the game like Mike’ and all this and that? And I have my own ‘Be like Mike’ people out there myself. I think about the late Josiah Moore, an educator, a leader, a tribal chairman, former tribal chairman of our nation. I think about a Mescalero Apache leader by the name of Wendell Chino and think about other leaders that have gone on, but have demonstrated their leadership over the years. And I think to myself that those are the kinds of leaders that have vision, those are the kinds of leaders that have fought for sovereignty, that have fought for rights of tribal governments and those are the kinds of values as a leader that I think we need to bring to our leadership. Is, how do we protect the sovereignty of our sovereign nations? And it’s really unfortunate because somebody asked me, ‘Well, what is tribal sovereignty?’ And I says, ‘Well, I don’t agree with this, but too many times, tribal sovereignty is what the United States Supreme Court decides it’s going to be in a case or the federal government,’ and we can’t accept that. We shouldn’t accept that. We don’t want to accept that. We may not be a true sovereign, but we have certain sovereign authorities that we need to protect and we need to continuously exercise and whatever rights we have as a people, we need to exercise those rights, we need to understand what those rights are, we need to protect those rights just as well as protecting our tribal sovereignty.”

Ian Record:

“Isn’t part of that process… and you’ve mentioned this term a lot, assessing, assessing, assessing, assessing. Isn’t part of that process assessing where your nation could be exercising sovereignty or where it needs to exercise sovereignty, but currently isn’t and saying, ‘Let’s push the envelope here?’”

Ned Norris:

“Sure. I think that is. I think that…I like to do assessments, I like to do that mainly because you think you might understand what the situation is and you think you might have the right answer as to how you’re going to attack that situation or address that situation, but too many times we go into a situation not realizing what the impacts of your addressing that issue is going to be and so for me, I like to, ‘Okay, I agree with you, let’s address that issue, but let’s make sure we understand what it is we’re dealing with and whether or not we have the ability to address that issue,’ because to me to do something with half of an understanding really creates, to some extent, false hope because people are going to see that you’re moving in that direction. And if you’re not able to fulfill that movement, you’re going to stop and people may have liked to have seen what you were moving on, but don’t understand, ‘Why did you stop? We had hope in that. We thought you were going to address that issue.’ ‘Well, you know what, we didn’t do our homework and we couldn’t move it any further. That’s why.’ I think that we need to be, if we’re going to make a decision as a tribal leader, we need to fully understand the ramifications of what that decision is and to the best of our ability make informed decisions about the decisions we need to make and then move forward.”

Ian Record:

“I’d like to wrap up with…I’d like to wrap up on a final topic of constitutional reform. And as you well know, there’s been a groundswell of constitutional reform activity taking place across Indian Country over the past 30 years, in particular in the wake of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. And back in the mid-1980s, your nation, the Tohono O’odham Nation, completely overhauled its constitution and system of government. And I’m curious to learn from you, what did the nation change and why and what did it create and why?”

Ned Norris:

“Well, I had the experience of being involved in my tribal government under the old 1937 constitution and then the new 1986 constitution, and although I wasn’t as involved in the development of the 1986 constitution, I understand some of the history and that it took, and as I understand it, that whole process took some 10 years to accomplish, to be able to…there were several drafts of our 1986 constitution. The constitution committee had understandings and misunderstandings and decisions that they couldn’t come to terms on amongst themselves. So it was just a long, drawn-out process, but I think a 10-year process that was well worth it. And I say that mainly because I saw the government under the old constitution and I see it now under the ’86 and realize that even under the ’86 I don’t think that we fulfilled the possibilities under the current 1986 constitution. Going back to what I said earlier about that supreme authority under the old constitution, in many ways the council was the legislature, the executive and the judicial. And for me, you had that supreme authority under the constitution in 22 members of their tribal council. And so there were…because of that I think there were times as tribal judges or as…well, yeah, as tribal judges where we may have sat back and thought to ourselves, ‘Oh, I’ve got council person’s son or daughter in front of me in this courtroom, I better be careful on what I decide here.’ That consciousness or sub-consciousness about the fact that you’ve got a council member’s relative in front of you that you’re either going to throw in jail or you’re not going to throw in jail: ‘If I throw them in jail, then the council member’s going to come after me.’ I think there were those kinds of influences that the old 1937 constitution brought about and in different ways. That was just an example, but in different ways. And so when we…when the development of the 1986 constitution really brought on the whole concept of a government that is separated by three branches and three branches that are equal in power and authority and three branches that are clearly defined as to what that power and authority is in the constitution itself. I support that and I continue to support that. We’re going through a process now because over the last…since ’86 there have been some things that different districts and different and even I think need to be changed in the constitution. Literally, just take a look at our 1986, our current constitution and you’ve got more pages that cover the powers and authorities of the legislature than you do four or five pages under the executive branch. And so even on paper, is that truly a system that affords the level of powers and authorities that should be granted to each branch respectively. And so I think that constitution reform is good. I think that though there are still things in the constitution today that we don’t understand, that may not have been fully implemented or implemented at all, but I think that…and even educating our members on the constitution, I think, hasn’t been as adequate as it should have been. Because you look at the constitution, the constitution, the powers and authorities of the constitution is derived by the people. The people themselves need to understand the enormous power and authority they have under the constitution and they, under that power and authority, need to hold us leaders accountable for ensuring that we’re protecting not only the provisions of the constitution but protecting them as well.”

Ian Record:

“It’s interesting you bring this up. We’ve heard so many other leaders of other nations whose nations have engaged in reform, either successfully or unsuccessfully, and particularly among those who’ve engaged in reform successfully, in that they’ve implemented certain changes, they’ve had the citizen referendum and it’s passed and all that sort of thing, they’ve all discussed this sort of critical moment where you overhaul your constitution, it becomes law and everyone kind of sits back and goes, ‘Whew, that’s done.’ But it’s really not done because you’ve eluded to this challenge of not just changing what’s on paper, but changing the political culture, changing citizen’s expectations of their government, educating the people about, ‘This constitution has a very direct impact on your daily life and here’s how.’ Is that something that… a dynamic that you’ve seen in your nation in terms of the challenge that it continues to face?”

Ned Norris:

“I think that everything that you’ve just mentioned as a leader whether you’re chair, vice chair, council, whatever the case may be, we need to understand that. We need to understand that simply amending, changing, instituting a brand-new constitution on paper doesn’t solve the problem, doesn’t resolve whatever issues. Yes, it may be a better constitution in your opinion or a group of people’s opinion, but how we apply that, how we interpret that, how we educate the authorities to the people that the constitution is going to impact is a whole new process. And it’s a responsibility that we should take on as leaders to make sure that our people are… have at least an understanding of the constitution, but and I think to some extent have a working knowledge of what that constitution has to offer.”

Ian Record:

“You’ve mentioned vision and the importance of leaders having vision and you mentioned Wendell Chino and Josiah Moore. What’s your vision? What’s your personal vision for the future of your nation? And how are you working to make that vision a reality?”

Ned Norris:

“Vision, you’ve got to have visions in all aspects of leadership. What is the vision for the health area? What is your vision for the continuation of your economic development? What is your vision for the services that are delivered or that lack or that you dream about? What is your vision? And I think that one, the vision really has to take into consideration, where do you want to see your people, where are your people at now, where do you want to see your people five years from now, where do you want to see them 10 years from now? And we want to continue to educate, we want to continue to develop, we want to continue to be able to address the kinds of issues that are impacting, whether it’s a positive or negative impact on our people. We want to be able to identify a continuous identification of needs that our people have and how do we begin the process of addressing those issues, those needs, those whatever the case may be. I think that vision involves all of that and it’s not simply saying, ‘Well, my vision is that we’re going to rid the Tohono O’odham Nation of unemployment.’ That is a vision, but how do you get there? What do you…you have to…in order to have vision, you’ve got to be able to understand that there are things that are going on now that are going to impact your ability to apply that vision; and unless you understand what those issues are here, your vision isn’t going to mean anything. And so the vision might be big and it might have a bigger perspective, you want to address the health needs of…our vision is to eliminate diabetes amongst the O’odham. Great! I think all of us that have those kinds of problems on our nation want that as a vision, but how do you get there? What do you have to do now in order to address those issues? I want our kids to be positive, productive citizens of not only themselves and their families and their extended family and their communities and their nation, but I also want…I realize that there are things that are impacting our kids now that are going to have an impact on whether or not they’re going to be a productive individual. Too many times we take, we accept things, we accept things as the norm. Too many times, we accept alcoholism as the norm. Too many times, we accept drug trafficking or human cargo trafficking as the norm. That is not who we are. That is not the norm, and we need to impress on our people that those things are having negative impacts on us as a people as a whole and those things are going to have those negative impacts and are impacting our future, are impacting our ability to be the people who we are. And so the vision is being able to realize and understand those issues and make the kinds of changes in order to have a productive nation.”

Ian Record:

“Well, Chairman Norris, I really appreciate your thoughts and wisdom and sharing that with us. Unfortunately we’re out of time. There’s a lot more I’d like to talk about and I think we’ve just scratched the surface here, but I really appreciate you spending the time with us today.”

Ned Norris:

“I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.”

Ian Record:

“Well, that’s all the time we have on today’s program of Leading Native Nations. To learn more about Leading Native Nations, please visit the Native Nations Institute’s website at www.nni.arizona.edu. Thank you for joining us. Copyright 2012 Arizona Board of Regents.”

NNI Indigenous Leadership Fellow: Michael Kanentakeron Mitchell (Part 2)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

In part two of his Indigenous Leadership Fellow interview, Grand Chief Michael Mitchell of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne touches on a wide range of nation-building topics, notably the importance of clearly defining the distinct roles and responsibilities of leaders and administrators working on behalf of Native nation governments, and the need for leaders to refrain from micromanaging the day-to-day activities of Native nation administration. He also discusses the need for Native nations to invest in the education of their people, and then to provide them opportunities to contribute to those nations onc they have completed their education.

Resource Type
Citation

Mitchell, Michael K. "NNI Indigenous Leadership Fellow: Michael Kanentakeron Mitchell (Part 2)." Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 3, 2008. Interview.

Ian Record:

"This is our second interview with Chief Michael Mitchell, the first Indigenous Leadership Fellow of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the University of Arizona. What I'd like to ask you about next is this question about defining moments. We see across Indian Country in the work that the Native Nations Institute does these defining moments where Native nations essentially say, "˜Enough is enough. We're tired of the federal government or the state or whoever, whatever external force it might be dictating to us how we're going to run our nation, how we're going to determine our future and we're going to take charge.' And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about when that moment came for Akwesasne and what that moment was."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"It wasn't long after I had become Grand Chief that I began to notice that the [Canadian] government has their hands in everything. Anything you want to know about education, health, social, housing, you had to ask somebody from government. That's how it was set up. And they had a system in place and the reporting system was directly...the final say always came from them. The other thing I noticed is there was a huge deficit within the community because they didn't have control of their budget. They couldn't forecast to the way that would be to the satisfaction of the community.

So probably within the first month, I got a pretty good reading and I went and secured a meeting with the Minister of Indian Affairs and I told him, "˜In my opinion, the people are not involved in the governance.' In theory, in literature, in all the stuff they write, governance for the people, but the way their system works, everything is going back to them. So the big thing for him was this, "˜How do you deal with this deficit?' Because the day that I got elected they sent in a guy from Indian Affairs to come down to Akwesasne and he said he had two mandates. One was to run the election because it was...elections were run under the Indian Act and Indian Affairs conducted the elections. The second was...he says, "˜I really came down to lock up your administration buildings because of this humongous deficit.' So this is what the Minister and I were talking about. He looked directly at me and he says, "˜How are you going to deal with that deficit?' I said, "˜I'm going to deal with it by setting up a whole new management regime. And in this regime, I'm going to separate the politics from the administration. And the second really depends on you, Mr. Minister. I want you to recall all your people and I want to hire my own people from the community that have the skills to do the administration. We'll set up a transparent governance system.' And I guess it kind of surprised him because he says, "˜You think my people are responsible for your deficit?' I says, "˜Yeah, you are. You don't give a damn how funds are allocated and if it's...they're always short of their goal. They never realize that there's no satisfaction then people don't care. People that come down from Indian Affairs to service the community, they don't care. It's not their house, it's not their school, it's not their roads.' I says, "˜You need to involve people in governance who are going to have a direct involvement in impact, they're going to be impacted by what you do.' And curiosity they say killed the cat, but this man says, "˜I never had that question posed in that way before.'

So he gave me a year. He gave me a year to put all these things in place. We're considered a large reservation and once he gave the go-ahead and pulled his people out, then the rest was up to us to try to find people to come home. They were either working in Washington or Syracuse or Ottawa or Toronto, Albany, New York City, but I had a list of people and I started phoning them up and, 'I'd like you all to consider coming home and let's do something for this community.' And it was a challenge. I made a plea to find the right people and they all came back. They left their jobs and they took time off and they moved home and we had a team, I'd say a core team of about 20 that head up all the different departments and in a team meeting you ask, "˜What is it that we have to do that hasn't been done before?' Well, for one, the people don't get information on what council's doing. They don't know your deficit. So we set up to give quarterly reports and at the end of the year an annual report, very carefully put together that deals with almost every aspect of governance, with stories that went along with it. But in the beginning, we also asked people to, from the community, to get involved in the governance and help us. So they got on various boards from the health board to legislative to justice, police commission. These were all things that weren't there before so they were new. That's what the adventure's about. Not dealing with the government, but dealing with your community because the authorities came from external. You have to look at what has to be done to get people interested in their governance and we thought of different ways.

Within the first few months, we made a community flag for Akwesasne and we put that in all the schools, just to put our identity in the community. And there already was in existence a nation flag for the whole Iroquois Nation. So we made a community flag to fly alongside the nation flag and beside Canada's flag. And this is when I went to the customs and all the government buildings and I said, "˜I want this flag flying alongside.' And it did a lot to stir up involvement, interest, pride and along the way, very early, we started changing the name of the St. Regis Band Council, and as I said a while ago, we... everything was "˜band.' And it was done for a purpose, not many people think about it. They say, "˜I'm from the Ottawa Band' and 'I'm from the Chippewa Band.' Over here they all say tribe, it's the equivalent, but it's a government terminology. But they forbid you to say nation and in my meetings I says, "˜Whatever happened, we were once nations. We belong to a nation.' So I started using that and nation thinking and in the community people, even the chiefs along the table that were veterans, "˜We don't talk like that.' I said, "˜I know, because the government trained you not to talk like that.' Anyhow, we made a game of it. We decided that we're not going to use the word "˜band' in the community anymore and had nothing to do with our finances but it had everything to do with pride. And so there was no more 'band office,' there's no more band programs,' there's no more 'band administrator.' Everything...it went around the table, everybody kicked in with ideas and I says, "˜Well, that's...all these things is what we're not going to say. We're going to give new names.' "˜Well, what about the St. Regis Band?' "˜Well, we're going to change that. Our traditional name is Akwesasne and we're a territory, we're not a reserve, we're not a reservation.' So with everybody's help it became the Mohawk Territory of Akwesasne. It just grew.

Some of the older ones on council that had been in the system for a long time, they didn't kind of like go along with this right away and it's hard to deal with a mentality that has been there and they left it up to me. They says, "˜Look, you've got to find a way that we all go in the same direction.' Well, I wasn't about to tell somebody older that, "˜You're saying things wrong, your terminology is wrong.' So we made a game. Put a coffee cup in the middle of the table and said, "˜In our council meetings, anybody that refers to anything in the community about Band, if you say that, you're going to drop a quarter in here.' And they said, "˜Why?' I says, "˜That's just to remind you not to say it.' So when it became a game, it removed the tension, it removed the threat of direct authority. "˜Okay, let's do that.' Pretty soon, even when I'm not there, they were watching each other and months later they all had it, but I didn't realize that it influenced the program and service department and so they did the same thing and they're catching each other and everybody's laughing. Nobody's saying, "˜You can't tell me that.' And then they said, "˜Well, when government people come to see us, they better address us the right way.' Now they're growing in confidence and so whenever we had to meet with external governments, Department of Indian Affairs and provincial governments, authorities, etc., they sat at the table, we explained to them, "˜We don't want to hear that anymore and so if you say that, you're going to start donating.' And to everybody else on the table, "˜Yeah, [you] better do this.' And we would catch them. But attitude changed. The mindset changed. You start looking at your community differently. And that was the positive part. But trying to pull everything together that the staff would think different, that your council would adopt a different attitude, you've got to think community. So that was some of the initial things. It's still going on 20 some years later, just introduce new council members and they tell them, "˜These are certain things we want to watch out for in terminology. They're going to...external government's going to come and talk to you, you better watch for these things,' and all. So I'm noticing...and then it affected community members at large. Nobody says "˜band' anymore in the territory. If they do, if you say it inadvertently, somebody will catch you. That got everybody pretty well thinking on a collective basis.

Now going back to the governance part, we started having more public meetings, put out a newsletter to report on council activities and in the first year, any issue that was controversial, "˜Okay, let's go have a public meeting.' And mostly it was me going to the community saying, "˜This is what you need to know.' There was a big turnaround and leadership; Indigenous leadership goes in different format. Some are accustomed to doing things in a closed manner. The secret to success is you start opening up and report what you can. And as I... I'm explaining this because there are some things like let's say social welfare. Well, you don't have a public meeting about somebody... what they're going to get for welfare, if they're going to get a social job of some sort. So there's a need to keep confidential and we tell them, "˜There's things that we can't tell you but there's things we can.' And people understood that. After a while they would ask questions because in a community you're wide open, they'll ask you anything and that's why a lot of councils don't like to have public meetings. We have a radio station in Akwesasne and I make full use of it. Any kind of announcements, put it on the radio. Want to report something about a meeting, get on the radio. Get that information out there. And soon after it became settled in, that that's what leadership was about. It's subtle, it's not any secret or it's not any formula that's magic, it's just common sense and you see the turnaround in the community when they recognize the sincere efforts leadership is making."

Ian Record:

"Well, I think too, from what you're saying, they get on board, they jump on board that nation-building train when they feel like they have stake in it. Finally, after all these years of having no voice in governance, they have a voice again and the leadership is working with them to make sure that that voice is heard."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Well, in the training I can offer this. There's always opposition, you always have opposition no matter whether you're well off or you're the poorest, and once they get an opportunity, people in the community, that they have a voice, you're always going to have a few that's going to be at every one of your meetings and they're going to grill you, and I've seen a lot of that happen. Most of the time you'll see people that all of a sudden, "˜Geez, I can ask questions. I'm going to come to the next meeting.' So in the leadership training, you have to know how you're going to address them but always make time for those people who come to the meetings who didn't get a chance to ask a question, because if it comes up that they feel somewhat of elitist themselves, they start hammering the council members and that's what a lot of council members are afraid of is, "˜I don't want to get hammered like that. I don't want to get insulted like that. I don't want to have a shouting match.' Well, you don't have to and now it's ingrained in leadership that you owe it to report your activities as a leader and they're not going to go back to any more closed-door sessions. And that's what separates good leaders from bad leaders is their willingness to say, "˜This is the way it's going to be.' And for young chiefs, young leaders coming in, sometimes they say, "˜I got elected to have more housing here and that's what I'm going to do.' "˜Well, I'm sorry, but there's 20 other things that also has to be done for this. We've got to worry about the roads, we got a lobby to our new facilities, there's a lot of other areas of responsibility.' "˜But I got elected on...I made that promise I would improve that.' You're always going to run into that.

So how you get people on side back home...it was sort of a tradition with the Head Chief that everybody went to him. Well, on council we have 12 district chiefs. Everybody was assigned a portfolio. If I'm going to go look for money and I take a portfolio with me, whether it's education or housing or economic development or justice, policing, whatever it may be, is that I don't have to take the whole council. I'll take the portfolio holder, I might take the staff, I might take an elder from the community and we'll go out for a few days to deal with the meetings. We bring a report back of those meetings, the results of those meetings, and then council deliberates it. And everybody has always to be ready to go out. So public speaking becomes a requirement. You can't just sit on the table and say, "˜Well, let him speak.' You have to learn how to present; very important to be a leader that you can stand up and make a report, deliberate, talk to government, be a public person. If you weren't that when you got on council and you're only going to do that one thing, you better think different. And that's what makes for good teamwork because now you're part of a team. And in the council makeup, they all have to think like that. This is a team and it's not just the council that's a team. Your team extends to your administration, to your staff. It also extends out to people in the community, that you're going to see that they're going to be able to...that we're part of this layers and layers of team and we're in there somewhere. They all have to be able to have an avenue to talk to leadership and that's why you have meetings and different portfolios. Anyway, it's...a lot of it was common sense. A lot of it was based on tradition.

One of the things that really didn't work for us, and it wasn't working when I became chief, was the term; we had two-year terms. And most tribal councils, chiefs, councils both in the States and in Canada, you'd be surprised, they still operate that way, two-year terms. And then you hear them, "˜I just got used to how I'm going to be developing, how I'm going to contribute to council, I have an understanding...' Boom. Time to have a...go back on the campaign trail. 'I've got to make a lot of promises, I've got to spend council's money.' How do you maintain a certain level of responsibility? How do you keep a level of your target that you want to hit, not this year, but you've planned that for three years, five years down the road, because you're going to have to have a joining of other ideas, other funding sources, so it doesn't happen right away. So what we did is we wanted to get out of Indian Affairs-controlled election, and so very early we opted out to develop a custom community election. And for the most part of that first term they went door to door and sat with people. And they had a discussion and I told them why a two-year term is not working under the Indian Act and if we opted out, do you want to see a three-year term or four-year term, a five-year term and also you had all that, people were commenting and at the end they settled on three years. And if the leadership is good, we can always go back, because now it's ours, if we want to extend that to four years the community will decide that. So we kept telling them, "˜It's your decision.' And then we had a massive vote after the first term and they brought it home.

Now back home there's a traditional side and they don't vote. So we got a letter from their council, the traditional council, that they liked the idea that we would bring an elected code, election code back home that would belong to the people, no longer controlled by government. And so those people who are always protecting, filing injunctions, "˜I want to go to court. I should have won. I want somebody to hear this. That guy cheated,' whatever it is, fine. We now have our own court, file with them. Matters will be decided here. If the community sees that you're way out of line, you'll also know about it. And so this is how our justice system became important to us, our courts became in handling these kind of situations. Now all of that is important. There's no one magic formula. It takes a combination of ideas to get people involved and that was some of the things that was done back home."

Ian Record:

"The title of this program is 'Leadership for Native Nation Building.' If you had say 10 minutes sitting down with newly elected leaders or young people, young Native people who are thinking about getting into a leadership position somewhere down the road in their lives, contributing to the nation building efforts of their own nations, if you had 10 minutes with them, what would you tell them about how to be an effective leader?"

Michael K. Mitchell:

"I would tell them that language is very important. We've had two generations of external forces telling us we've got to get an education. "˜Your language and culture, tradition is not important.' So we're the end product. Young people now don't speak the language anymore so they're not aware of the traditions and then there's elders and there's community and there's people that all has steps. If you're going to be a leader, always support the culture and tradition of your community. And the wisdom that comes from the elders in the community, when they give you support and they recognize that you're going to be respectful of your traditions, then support comes and follows after that. And don't be a person who is going to talk it, but don't walk it. You have to show community...and you do it by a number of ways. If you don't speak the language, then try to say the most important things. In my language it's [Mohawk language]. "˜Hello, how are you, how are things going?' And you learn the basics and let people know that those are the first things that you're going to offer back is culture, tradition, language. Know the history of your community, know the history of your nation, because you're expected to know that if you're going to be a leader. Know it well. If there are things you haven't learned from the dances to the history to the songs, then support it. They don't have to be all that instant, but it certainly helps to support things that are Native. And there are times when you have to speak out, learn how to speak well. And if you can't speak in your own language to your own elders, you're going to hit a bump right off the road, so communication. And the most important part isn't coming from Harvard or some other place and come home, "˜Now I'm going to be a chief because I got a degree.' The most important thing is what's in here, what's in your heart, what's in your mind, because that's what's going to go out. And within six months, people will know what kind of leader you're going to be. If you're dedicated...

The chief that got elected for saying, "˜I'm going to get more housing,' there's a set thing in place that's already pre-decided what you're going to get. Unless you have a magic wand or you've got a lot of money you can throw to the community and say, "˜Here,' it requires teamwork. On any issue it requires teamwork. So you have to work with different people, you have to work with your staff. Don't bully the staff. They know what they're doing and you're going to need their help to pull things together, to plan, to write a proposal, to write a report, to prepare a strategy of what you're going to say when you get out there. Don't be ashamed to take your staff with you when you have to travel somewhere, you have to negotiate something or you have to sell something. And that teamwork is very important. We had a leadership course just a few days ago and I heard one example after another, staff's not respected, they don't listen, and then they're polarized. Secret for success for new chiefs: recognize the abilities of people that are there.

And the other thing that's always important, especially for the younger ones, for some reason reservations right across the country, territories on the Canadian side, small or large, we all have our enemies, we all have people we don't like, so don't take that with you if you're going to be a leader. You have to serve all the people. You have to let them know by your decisions that you have looked all over and you have served them well. It might not reflect right away but people will know that you're going to be a leader that's going to be for the community. Not just your family, not just your friends, not just the faction that you belong to or the people that say, "˜We got you in.' But when you're in that spot, make sure you're speaking for the whole community and expressing thoughts of the whole nation with respect. You don't go to school for that. They'll teach you...elders will teach you to have that kind of respect and so always have respect for your elders. Know the way to the temple of your nation, how far the way things are going because you can spot them. You don't have to be a politician to know there's factions, there are Hatfields and McCoys almost in every reservation and as soon as you get on, make sure that you pronounce yourself, "˜I'm here for the community.' And they might not like it, but by your decisions people will have respect for you.

The ones that say, "˜I've got a certain thing I've got to do here and that's all I'm going to do,' most times they will last one term, maybe two terms and that'll be it. Or they'll leave, they'll exhaust it because a lot of frustration, if you're going to look at things in an individual basis. See, everything with us is a collective. We're a collectivity. I don't know if that's proper English, but that's how I look at it. Sometimes I make up my own words in English, but our treaties have to benefit the collectivity of the nation. Our rights are for all of us, not just an individual, not for you to say, "˜I'm going to make money off my right,' because I see a lot of that happen in my time. You have to ensure that the benefits are equal. That's on any given subject -- opportunities for education, opportunities for employment, a vision for education, for a school, for an arena, for recreation, for elders -- but it's the collectivity and that's the mark of a young leader when he sees that, that's the nation I'm thinking about."

Ian Record:

"You've talked...you mentioned this chief from your own nation who kind of came in on this campaign platform of housing, "˜I've got to get housing for the people,' and was kind of taking that narrow view of what his job was essentially. In the work that the Native Nations Institute does cross Indian Country, we see...we see this mentality that often incoming councilors have, incoming chiefs have, of "˜I've been elected by the people to make decisions.' And that's kind of the extent to which they view their job and when it's really much more than about, "˜I've got to make all the decisions, I've got to have my hand in everything.' From what you've been saying in terms of what's really powered nation building at Akwesasne, it's a much broader view and a much more multi-faceted view of leadership in terms of what leaders have to be in order to serve their people and their nation."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Don't be ashamed to say, "˜I got stuff to learn to be a politician and I might take the first six months and learn my leadership craft well. I need to consult with more established leaders, I need to talk to the staff, I need to go seek feedback from community people, from elders.' You spread yourself out there and tell them you're not here to make decisions right away, because if you don't know what kind of decisions you have to make and you're making decisions, it's liable to be wrong, it's liable to be selfish and it'll come back on you. So give yourself a little bit of time to know what people...what things are in place and what people are feeling, what's on their mind. And for a good leader, he'll always go around the first six months of his term and listen. And it's not a crime to stand up and say, "˜I've got a little bit to learn here and I see some chiefs here that have been here for awhile. I know some people here that used to serve on council and I'm going to make sure I learn my craft well.' You get a lot of respect in the community if you can say that. On the other hand, yeah, I've seen the ones that pounded the table, say, "˜I'm here, I was elected, I'm going to make decisions.' "˜Well, you go out there and you look for money then.' "˜Well, the staff should be doing that. I'm going to tell them to go.' It doesn't make for that teamwork building that you're going to do. You might be mean, you might be tough, but six months down the line, people can't stand you. So what do you do after that? You're always on the outside because now you isolated yourself. So be a team player when you come into leadership, the most important thing."

Ian Record:

"You mentioned earlier this issue of when...essentially the crux of the defining moment of when Akwesasne really went down this nation-building path was when first of all you took control. You said, "˜We're not going to let these external forces dictate to us how we're going to lead our lives,' but then you did this important institutional step, which is you said, "˜We're going to separate politics from the administration of our governance.' And essentially what you're talking about and it relates back to this point of leadership, which is leaders can't micromanage. It's not an effective way to do things and achieve our priorities and our goals and objectives. I was wondering if you could speak to that a little bit more about first of all the importance of that, separating the politics out of the administration of tribal government. And then second, what kind of message that sent to the community."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"You know, the sad truth that sometime in the history of leadership, could be any community, you're going to have leaders around the table who have come from the staff, who have come from some program, who have come from school and have moved back home and that now they think they know what it's going to take and when they sit around the table, that's when you start hearing, "˜I'm going to go over there and I'm going to do this. I'm going to make sure that I'm watching that guy. I think that's not being done right, I'm going to be going over there and making sure that gets done right.' You're not a leader anymore and the word is micromanaging when you do that. If you catch yourself and you say, "˜I shouldn't be doing that because if I'm going to be a leader, those people can report. I can ask for a report to come in, I can look at it, as a council we can look at it, see how things are going,' but if I'm going to stand over the shoulder of somebody who's going to say, "˜I want to see what you're doing,' that's micromanaging. If there's programs that you have an expertise and that could be in any capacity, finance, you're over at the finance every other day watching. "˜I'm going to be watching how you're spending money.' That's not what you're elected for. People want to see you make decisions and they want to see you do things that are going to benefit the community at-large. Read those reports, look at and be able to write reports, make sure those reports are going to be going out in some way that's going to reach the community. But when I meet leaders, that's the biggest complaint, members of council, somebody's always in there, running over there and it's sad, but we have to appreciate in all walks of life you've got people coming back either from a job outside and they're home a little bit, they run for council and because they don't like something or they come home from school and they say, "˜I want to get on council here because now I have an education, I'm better, I know more than anybody. I got a degree, I got something.' And that usually triggers off the wrong message and certainly you don't intend to be a micromanaging chief, but ask yourself six months down the line.

Now what do chiefs do then? If you let the staff do the administration part and let the people do the finance part, they know the system, you direct that to say, "˜We will expect a report on this,' and you'll have it, but you no longer have to be running over there, chasing after people, looking over somebody's shoulders. You now have time to look at the politics of your community and start doing...analyzing the reports that are coming in, do some forecasts, do some three, five years, 10 years, 20 years. Where do you want your community to be in 20 years? That's a good leadership question. And how are we going to get there, what is it going to take for us to get there? What kind of population would we have then? So what kind of infrastructure are we going to require down that line? Because we have to start planning. Community planning is very important. So there's enough to do for political leadership not to be running over there. There's always people on every council that's going to be like, unfortunately, but that's a fact of life. And the more that people can be groomed and told and kind of guided and given responsibility, it slowly turns around. Sometimes the chief, the veteran chiefs will say, "˜What in the hell's the matter with you? Get down away from there.' Or it could be them that's always going over there, but the general council has to be aware that good planning requires good teamwork and good planning will get you down that line when you have a vision that you can look further down the road where you want your people to go. Because if you only got about 3,000, 5,000, 10,000, then work with your staff that's going to say, "˜Where are we going to be forecasting 10, 20 years down the road?' Then you can start planning.

We've got things that affect us from the outside. It could be anything from the state, it could be from the town, from the municipalities. You could be trying to create good relations with them, it could be defending a land claim and how are we going to use that. There's an endless amount of things for good leaders to sit around and say, "˜Boy, we've got a lot of work to do.' You don't have time to be micromanaging. Unfortunately, though, it's very particular...I guess it impacts most councils, because I hear it a lot and on one hand it's sad and on another hand it's a fact of life and so when you can recognize it, if it's you, if it's your council, all you've got to say is, "˜Let's not go there. Let's not get into that rut that we know is going to happen.' But unfortunately, somebody comes from a teaching background and they're going to be on council, so right away they say, "˜I'm here to make sure that those education...it's going to change over there. I'm going to be going over there and I'm going to be watching them,' or some other. You've just got no time for that. Good leaders start from the day one and they ask, "˜What are the things that we have to be concerned about?' And teamwork works best."

Ian Record:

"You and I both know that the governance challenges facing Native nations seem to get more and more complex from one day to the next. And what it sounds like you're saying is that teambuilding as you've mentioned several times is not just a goal, should not just be a goal, it's in fact a necessity if a nation's going to really move forward in an effective way. The idea that essentially councilors can't do it all by themselves anymore."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"I tell you why I like the word 'nation building.' You live on the reservation, you could be Lakota, Sioux, you could be Cheyenne, whatever nation you belong to, but there's seven, eight other communities that you belong to the same nation further recognizing you're not the nation. So you look at that and say, "˜But if I'm in a nation-building mood,' and I would always consider the whole nation first, 'I will impact for your benefit the nation. I will do things and make efforts to bring goodness and pride to everything that we're going to do.' Selfish thinking is, "˜Well, what do I want to get out of this in my time? What can I do for myself?' So nation building prepares you right off the bat that if you're going to be a nation leader, you have to think of everybody and the decisions that you're going to make has to impact for their benefit.

Leadership on a nation basis is that collective thing that I was talking about, it impacts the general benefit and it's the general interest of everyone out there. And it's not easy because nowadays we're like this: Some people have a casino, they've got good revenues coming in, good streams of revenues, they lease land, they've got good income and capacity building. You can have that very important ingredient in between that calls for good leadership mind, that's good planning. But let's say you don't have any of those things and you don't know where all your money's going to come from. Can you still have good leaders? So we're here and we're here. Yes, you can. And I think the true test of a leader is when you don't have all those things and you set those goals, you set those targets and along the way you find, yeah, there's something over there, there's a little bit over there and there's a little bit over there and as you collect them and as you develop teamwork, all of a sudden things start to move. But if you're a council that's going to be arguing all the time and those arrows are flying back and forth and sometimes it lands on your back, most cases it might happen, it could come from your community, it could come from your council, it could come from your staff, but the true test of a leader is to consider the farther, greater majority and do some community planning.

If you're shortsighted and it's that same guy that's going to say, "˜I was elected to do this,' well, it isn't going to happen. And we've seen it too many times in past events that they come and go. But there'll always be a spot for people like that and it's up to the other council members to influence them and say, "˜Here, we've got a lot of things, you're welcome to come and work with us and let's share some of this responsibility,' because portfolio, you may be the head of education, but other chiefs may come and help you with that. You may be the head of justice, but you can have another group that's going to work with you. It's not a one-man operation. Nor is the...sometimes you call them the Grand Chief or the Head Chief, the 'big chief,' whatever people would be referring to, it's just a man, it's just a woman and got a lot of responsibilities and for the Head Chief, he's got to hold everything together, he's got to make sure he's not the king, he's not the queen. It's a responsibility that is shared and that's the secret to good success."

Ian Record:

"From what you've been saying, Mike, one of the keys to Akwesasne's success over the past 25 years or so has been instilling transparency and accountability in government where none essentially existed before. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the importance of transparency and accountability to empowering a nation's leaders to do their jobs well."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Sometimes a chief will feel he's got to do everything so that he can get the credit for it and he'll want to have hands on personal charge of something. The secret to good leadership, if...let's say you are that person that can do it well, you can speak well, you can write well, you can articulate, then pull other people in with you. And the staff, there's got to be somebody in that particular area that you're talking about that will fit. You introduce the topic and allow for other chiefs to contribute, allow an elder or a staff person to be part of that team, because if you want to do everything yourself and you think that's the only way it's going to get done -- unfortunately that's very true with a lot of our people -- it doesn't always work because your own team will begin to feel like, "˜Eh, he's a big show-off. He's a know-it-all. He's the only one that can do it.' You're not part of that team and sometimes we don't see that. You go home thinking, "˜Boy, I sure gave it to them. I sure made a good speech. Boy, they must have liked me for things that I was able to say,' while in reality they probably said, "˜That guys was hogging the whole...wasn't a team player and he spoke way too long and he's very selfish in his attitude,' etcetera. So you have to analyze the situation and put yourself in the place where what do you want to do with the gift that you have.

The elders will say when you're born and as they've been watching you grow up and they put their hand on you and they say, "˜I saw you dance, you're going to be a good dancer. I heard you speak.' And as you're growing up, they'll say, "˜You're a good hunter. You have a gift.' And as you grow up a little bit more they'll say, "˜You're a good speaker. You'll be a good leader someday.' Use those abilities well. They didn't tell you that you're going to be the only one speaking. They didn't tell you you're going to be the only one singing because it requires everybody to sit together to make good music. It requires you to speak well and blend and carry people and work with them and that will resonate, that will have strength. In Iroquois teachings, when the Peacemaker came to the Mohawks and when they were doubting his message, he gave them one arrow and he says, "˜Break it.' So that Band councilman, he just crunches it and throws it back at him, show him how strong he is. He turned around and he took five arrows in a bunch and he says, "˜Now break this one.' So he's there trying to break it and it wouldn't break. The message that he was telling him was when you have people working together, when you have nations working together, the restraints there and it won't break. So these are things that are taught to us to say it's far better to concern yourself in working on a collective basis, working together, achieve your goal and if the nation has to fight on issues, it's better if we're all on the same side and going the same way. If we can't settle that, then we don't go fight. We manage to settle it at home. Make sure that by the time we get done we're going to go in a certain direction. So those are all important things to know."

Ian Record:

"How important an asset has an educated community been for Akwesasne as it's moved down the nation-building path?"

Michael K. Mitchell:

"What's that?"

Ian Record:

"How important an asset has an educated community, an involved community, been as Akwesasne has moved down this nation-building path?"

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Well, we covered it a while ago. It's easy to regress. When leaders...you have to allow for leadership to change. In my 25 years there were times when I left and made room for others to try it. Some will last a year, maybe they won't even complete their term but they will say, "˜That's a tough job.' But you always room for people to learn. Some are members of council. "˜I'm going to try that.' And then you appreciate how difficult it is because it's not that it's so difficult, it's what you do with it when you're there and how do you involve people and get them working together because if you don't do that, then those micromanaging minds come back again. And so with us it goes up, it goes down, it goes up. And when you have people that are fairly new, you're always going to have that problem because they're going to look at what they do well. And they will always say, "˜We need a lot of training. We need to know the issues.' But some will say, "˜We can't, we can't, we can't let people know we don't know a whole lot so we're not going to invite anybody. We're just going to drift in and we'll watch the house.' So nobody goes lobbying, nobody goes to meetings, nobody negotiates, nobody takes on the hard issues and you get to the end of the term, boy, the community says, "˜Geez, they didn't do anything here.' "˜We didn't have a crisis, we didn't get into any trouble.' "˜Yeah.' "˜We didn't go too far either.' So there's another change. So to me, it's always nice to see a blend of experienced people, new people coming in, elders, young people coming in, and with that blend you can do a lot. So I'm not going to say...and the reason I was a little stunned by your question, we're not in any degree in Akwesasne up here. It goes up and down and you learn as you go along.

I'll talk a little bit about my community. This long table, if you separate it in half, that's Akwesasne. This side is the United States, this side is Canada, and you separate what's on the Canadian side to two-thirds is in Quebec, one-third is in Ontario so that's five jurisdictions on the outside. Then you have a tribal council for the American side, then you have Mohawk council elected government on both sides. You have a nation traditional council that governs in a traditional way. So there's three governments and five governments, that's eight governments. I always think of the community, do they understand everything that goes on? And try to get as much information out. So it goes up and down and we have our share of crises because of all those borders, it's inviting for criminal organizations to say, "˜Ah...' There's the St. Lawrence River -- let me clarify -- right in the middle of our territory and for policing authorities, it's a "˜no-go' zone because these borders, the international border zigzags around islands so the law enforcement is virtually impossible on the river and people hear about that and so they take advantage of it. And people come and entice our young people to say, "˜Take things across for me and you'll make some money.' So it's always a battle to have a law-and-order society. It's always a battle to keep your young people on line.

Educated? Young kids will say, "˜Why the hell should I get an education, I'm making $5,000 a week?' Years ago, it's still going on, the greatest pride was for a high steel worker. "˜I work in New York City, I work in Philadelphia, I work in San Francisco.' Anywhere there's a big building going up, there's Mohawks on there. That's our skill. And we all aspire when we're young that that's, 'I want to be like my uncle, like my father, like my brother.' So that's the thing that's still ongoing. But now this new thing has come in that has influenced and it's not just cigarettes any longer. There's drugs going across, there's guns going across, and so it's becoming a real dynamic criminal activity and there's major players on both sides. So leadership is hard. It's hard to stabilize; it's an ongoing battle. Having said that, then knowing all that then you say, "˜Okay, well, what makes for a good leader, then?' It's all those things that you have to apply. And people go in and they say, "˜Well, that guy that got elected to look after the housing issue?' There's guys that went up on council to look after the smugglers, protect them or some other issue, and he winds up on council.

So it's...leadership is tough and it's as best as everybody else is going to work together and keep things moving. And it might be that someday be down or it could be just as hard for other leaders on other reservations, it's never easy. Historical, current, future leadership, Native Americans, never easy; but what you do in your time to be a leader, you leave a mark and if you want to leave your mark and if you've been on council a long time, how do you want that people to make their mark? It's nice for them after you've left council, people come up to you and shake your hand and say, "˜I'm really grateful that you've come home and dedicated your time and there's things that we see here that you've contributed to,' and you feel good inside. Or you can be selfish and say, "˜Well, I did my thing. I got some houses there. I did my thing and that's it,' and you have this empty feeling. So it's a lot of work, it's a lot of responsibility, and sometimes there's hardly any pay or very little of it so devotion as a commitment comes into play."

Ian Record:

"Your discussion just now brought to my mind a comment that one of your colleagues, Chief Helen Ben of the Meadow Lake Tribal Council, once said. She said that, "˜My job as a leader is to make myself indispensable.' I'm sorry, "˜To make myself...my job as a leader is to make myself dispensable.' And really what she was referring to is how important it is for leaders to govern beyond their own term in office or their own potential terms down the road, however many terms that might be, to really govern for the long term. And you've talked about that. I was wondering if you'd talk a little bit more about that and how that should be foremost in a leader's mind."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Well, when you work with your staff and figure out where you're going to be in 10 years, 20 years down the line and you start planning for it and you say, "˜Our population is going to double in that time and so we need infrastructure, we have to build new roads and all, we've got to allot some land, we've got to have a community center expand, our school programs, our buildings are going to have to expand so we have to work for those things.' After you leave, whether it's one term or 10 terms, but those are the kind of things that people will be grateful for, that you've had that wisdom and you'd had that long sight to say, "˜We've got to look at the future as well.' It is so important for leaders to gauge the present and where they came from, to where they are, to where you need to go. And if you're in a community where you have neighboring reservations and you can work together on something, not compete with each other, but whether it's solving a land claim, having an arena you can share, or a justice system you can share and the more things that you do, it extends beyond where you live. If your cousin, relatives are close by, there's eight reservations and you're all the same nation, then do that long planning, "˜What could we all do together?' Because maybe as a result that the collectivity of all those territories, it might be 40,000 and then in your planning you say, "˜Well, what do we need for 40,000 now?' So maybe we need a judge that's going to be trained or a number of them that'll be able to go around and hear cases for all of us and then we can all have a justice system, we can all have our court system, we can all have those laws that'll be for our people to provide for that law and order. But on my own, "˜I've only got 800. I can't afford to do that. But if we all chip in, what could we do?' So when somebody says, "˜I dispense myself to this community and to around,' that's what I see, the ability to well, work on issues from your community to your own region, your own area to national and international because you can go to a national chiefs meetings, National Congress of American Indians to Assembly of First Nations and you get to know the issues. It's always time well spent. What are the national issues that are affecting us? And to have that experience, to know it well and before you go, what are they talking about over there. So I'll just do a little bit of reading to know what's all the stats in regards to education, what are the funding, what are the national housing dollars, health situations and if you don't have it when you go up there, make sure you go around and you ask for that information so you can bring it home. Knowing data, have information on the national trend. Even if it's how many of our people make up the prison population? How many of our own people are dropping out of school, suicide rates? A leader needs that information because wherever you're going to go talk, you have to be able to quote statistics. You have to be able to know how we're impacted. Know the other side, too. A lot of our people are now going to school and graduating. A lot of people are now coming home. They're our doctors, they're our lawyers. Well, how many is that? How many from our area? What's the national trend? Those are things that leaders have to know, it's good to know to have in your pocket so that when you're talking to a government person on the side and he says something, there's no greater satisfaction if you can put him in his place with statistics. But if you know what you're doing, it'll certainly help."

Ian Record:

"So essentially what you're saying is it's critical as a leader to know your community and not just know it well and systematically, so you know for instance what problems and challenges your community faces -- whether it's drug use, alcohol use, whatever it might be -- but also on the flip side knowing what your assets are, knowing how well educated your community is, who those recent graduates as you said are. That can be critical as you try to apply those resources towards what your goals are."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"That long-term planning is knowing how many of your children are going to be coming back from college, university, having...all this time, how many are in a certain level and their career planning and you reach out to them. "˜Don't forget, we'll have something in place you can come home to.' The saddest part for all of us is that we have nothing to offer them when they get an education and the other sad story is that they graduate and they keep going and they say, "˜Well, there's nothing for me at home. So I'm going to marry off the reservation, I'm going to live off the reservation and I'll still maintain...I'll come home once in awhile,' and you get disconnected. So maybe not here, but maybe that other reservation needs a doctor, needs a lawyer, they need something. That's why I'm saying, make sure that on a collective basis you know what your stats are, what your numbers are, and where people are going and what they're learning and amongst yourselves create that team. The team isn't just around the council, isn't just around your community, it's your whole nation and even beyond and knowing the organizations that are out there. Could our children land in some institution, some organization that they could work for that would still benefit us, because they're always just a little jump to come back home."

Ian Record:

"Really what you're describing, and we see this in so many Native communities on both sides of the border, is this issue of brain drain, where your best and brightest young people go off, get their educations and then when they finish there's no opportunity for them. And what we've seen is where leaders, where nations do the due diligence of creating stability in their nation, stability in their governing systems, it tends to foster those opportunities where those young people can then come back and become a part of the community again and not drift away."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Yep. Let me point a few things out from experience. This is for young leaders and I'm thinking, "˜Well, I want to be a good leader, what should I do?' You get on council, get a list of all your students that are out there in college, universities that are far away from home. Write to them, tell them you're on council and get their thoughts, get their opinions. Tell them, "˜Your council would like to know and they'd like to keep in touch.' You don't know how it impacts a student that's far away, that's going to keep going unless somebody goes out and say, "˜Hey, I care and we're thinking of you and we're hoping that when you get an education, we hope during that time you're getting an education that you're going to maintain contact with us.' And it's never a bad idea for leaders to go and visit the schools where their students are going to school. Activities. Those students will probably have, if there's a bunch of them, will have some kind of a Native student activity going on. Leaders should go to those things. We only look at the statistics. How many people we lose, not dying, not suicide, not drugs. We lose our nation members because when they get outside and they learn and they don't want to come home because we haven't maintained contact with them, we haven't kept in touch with them, we haven't told them we care about what they do. And so they marry off, they marry somebody in the city and then they come back home and they say, "˜Hey, you're not one of us anymore.' And all those other things start coming into play. So the wisdom of a leader is gauged not just what goes on in his community, but with the youth and what is going to impact them down the line and that connection part. Sometimes we only concern ourselves when a person comes home and they're married to a non-Native. And it's, "˜Ah, damn it, they have no rights here. They just want our gaming revenue, they just want our education fund, they want our status.' And nobody maintained any contact and that's not exactly a welcome home. There's elders around and we haven't made that connection. So there's all kinds of reasons, pros and cons, but isn't it better to be proactive and maintain contact and tell them...your young people you care and give them that traditional and cultural and spiritual support so that they value who they are and they know who they are and that they will come home?"

Ian Record:

"And also creating the opportunities for them to come home, to follow those careers that they went off..."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"You want to be a good leader? Well, let's see. Let's build another school, a higher level. We need teachers now. What about our health institutions? We need our own nurses. We need our own doctors. That's the challenge of being a leader is what institutions can be facilitated and be homegrown and communications with your young. If you trained for this, there's something for you at home. And then when you do those things, well, then somebody's got to build those schools, somebody that's good with their hands has to build those schools so there's jobs at home, so a lot of community development."

Ian Record:

"Where we've seen this issue of brain drain really rear its ugly head is when you have a high level of political instability, meaning one administration replaces the previous administration and the new administration fires everybody and they put their own people in and very soon the message is clear to everyone in the community that -- and particularly those that have gone off to get their education -- if they've come back, they've invested their education, their skills in the community and suddenly they're out of a job. They say, "˜Why am I going to stick around for this?' We see that so many places and I was wondering if you could speak to that a little bit. You're starting to laugh I see."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Man, I've seen enough of those. I guess I could cry. You feel bad about seeing those things. I've seen them at home. Fortunately, it's recent past and as we develop more, there's less and less of it happening, but it still happens and attitudes like that. And so nowadays you always have to have a balance from the youth and family and elders in the community that is going to have to say, "˜We need good leaders.' It is who you put in, because the ones that get on and unfortunately somebody has an idea, he might either buy his way on, he'll garner the votes, he'll get on and he'll take the community to a certain direction. I look at it say, "˜Well, it goes on, it's like that all over the world. You have leaders of nations that are like that but why do we have to be like that?' And I guess it's just dialoguing, it's just communicating. When you give an example like that, you tend to turn around and say, "˜Not my community, we're not like that.' And you get home and you say, "˜Well, we were like that five years ago. This council's like that but do we want to be that way.' It's a lot of thinking, a lot of soul searching and when you hear of things like this, you tend to think of your home community right away. "˜What are we like over there? How much of this nation thinking goes on at home?' And that's the most important message. And it's controlled a lot by the people that don't even have that recognition or the thought that, "˜We're the ones that are in power here.' And we could take them out of power if they don't behave. But they don't go vote, they don't want to get involved. They're sick of the way the leaders are, but they don't do anything. So it's a society thing. But those thoughts have to be transmitted and I always try to go to the younger ones that are saying, "˜You can impact it. You can go home and...' "˜Well, there's nothing to go home to.' They say, "˜You ought to see my leaders where I come from.' Well, then, how about changing it. So I've heard all the different views, I've seen a lot of situations like that and sometimes I'm asked to sit with them and just by communicating they kind of recognize where they're at. You see them at national meetings, where a guy's up there and he's talking about how sovereign he is and then he goes home and he does his BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] thing. He falls into the system. How do you get out of that system? Nation building allows you to think on a broader scale. When you're thinking of the whole nation, you're thinking of the young people and the elders and the families, you're thinking of your community, you're thinking of your nation and then the challenge goes on from there. Man, there's lots to do for a leader without having to micromanage, without having to have bad feelings against one person or another or a group or to represent just a few. But let's face it, in reality it's like that."

Ian Record:

"Really what you're speaking to is that while it is really important to elect good people that have, as you said, in their heart the entire community in mind when they make decisions, it's also jobs...the job of effective governments to put in place those rules that either discourage or punish those bad leaders for acting in ways that only advance their own interests and not the nation's."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"In about our second term, we started recognizing that that might be a situation with certain leaders coming down, whether they're on council now, or we've seen this happen or you'll say, "˜We don't want it to happen.' So we put together a code of ethics for chief and council, how they're going to behave. One of the things that you don't do, and if you do, what does the community have to empower to take you out or discipline you or suspend you or remove you from office? And we went out in the community and got all that feedback and then they put it together. So when you are installed into office and you sign a commitment to the community, your pledge, you also sign a code of ethics that you're going to be a good leader. That's what I was saying a while ago that we've seen it and we learn from experience. If we don't want to go down that road, put things in place in your community so that when you have situations like that and all that is based on something that may have happened before, you see it, or you even have a fear that you don't want to go down there and you put things in place. And when leaders go into office, they will make a commitment that "˜this is how I'm going to serve.' They won't be embarrassed to say, "˜Yes, I will sign a pledge, I will sign a commitment, I will sign a code of ethics how my conduct will be while I'm in office,' and I've seen a few people taken out of office when they violate that, but that's the rule. And if there's communities that need to work on things like that, involve the community, they'll give you a lot of good ideas."

Ian Record:

"What would be your advice to nations, Native nations both in the United States and Canada who, for example, have been operating under either Indian Reorganization Act governments or Indian Act governments where it's essentially created this system where outsiders are calling the shots, where they're kind of stuck in this dependency mode and are searching for a way out or searching to begin to rebuild their nations as nations. What would be your advice to them in terms of where they might begin?"

Michael K. Mitchell:

"Sometimes you are impressed by something you've heard out there, it could be a national chiefs' meeting, it could be a regional meeting, it could be out there or another tribe that's, groups that have made a presentation and you bring it home. I guess the first point of contact is if you find people out there, bring them and introduce them to your council. If you have a thought that you say, "˜Geez, that's different thinking. They talk of different ways than we're doing,' invite them. And it's that thought that it's not just you because it's frustrating when you're the only leader that wants to change and everybody else is locked in. We call that the Indian agent mentality or the mode. If you find people that have these ideas or you've learned of some community that has done things a certain way, invite them or go visit them. Take a delegation, go visit them and bring that information back. It's productive. It can do wonders because a change in attitude, sometimes they don't know and they've got consultants, they've got lawyers running their business. There's nothing more adventurous and more satisfying than to have a community try something or leadership try something and say, "˜It'll get us far better results. Tradition, we haven't been doing that. We haven't gone down that way.' Well, there's always room for leadership to try something. If you've got an idea, bring it to council and if it's something that you can try...nation building is, sad to say, is still new. People are engrained in a certain mentality, locked in a certain way that they're going to do business. It's hard to change them. And as younger people come on and the more they see the outside and they have a broader perspective of things, those are the ones that will say, "˜We'll try it.' How do you change it? I guess we just have to try to advance more people out there, spread the word more. But there's...yeah, I know what you mean. There's a lot of councils out there that are still locked in and it's very unfortunate, but I get a lot of letters from chiefs across Canada asking about the same thing. "˜Can you direct us somewhere or somebody could come you can recommend?' And I recommend a lot."

Ian Record:

"So really what you're saying is, it's learn as much as you can about what other nations are doing in nation-building ways so you can then start a dialogue within your own community, because it's not going to happen overnight."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"As we were developing, in the first couple terms in Akwesasne, I started signing agreements with First Nations and they weren't just Iroquois communities. West Bank in British Columbia, that's at the other end of the country, we signed an agreement with them to exchange information, to share resources, to exchange thoughts on leadership, on issues, land claims, nation-building ideas, and as far as we have been separated we're always exchanging ideas. And they're one of the very few communities in Canada that have settled a self-government process with Canada and they created a constitution, a charter that was drafted by the community and now they're trying to, understand this isn't easy, with all kinds of things in here that are accountability factors that we haven't done before. Sometimes they'll say, "˜Can you fly up here and talk to our community?' Or if they're in Ottawa and I invite them to come and visit us. And they're not the only ones. There are others.

We had a trade treaty with Mayans in Guatemala. I heard what was going on with a tribe over there and they had finished a 30-year war and when they got home they got about a tenth of their original territory, they had no economy, but they're in a warm climate, they had access to coffee. We flew down there and said, "˜We'll buy coffee from you.' But I went to the government and I told them, "˜We're buying coffee from them. We don't want you to come in here and say I'm going to take the percentage off because I want to do this treaty with them that's going to say fair market.' And it ran about five years and it went quite well. A lesson we learned is, when is the proper time to take something like that and turn it over to a private entrepreneur and let him take that off? You've created the opportunity, but our council was saying, "˜Gee, that's our idea. We control that.' Well, it was up there, a lot of nice things being said and everything, then it came crashing down because as leaders changed they don't know what's going on, they're not so committed to it anymore. It was a wonderful idea. I advocate trade amongst First Nations, among Native American tribes and it was a longstanding tradition. It's like that for all of us. What could we do to improve our economies? What could we do for our youth to have, secure good employment? So it's something that's not on the table, but I would advocate to any nation-building group to think of those things because you share resources, you develop resources, you develop good nation people and they'll stay home, you create opportunities. I just throw that in there because that's something that's starting to scratch the surface.

I went through the Supreme Court in Canada on trade. All they asked me, the government in Canada, "˜Can you prove that you have an aboriginal right to trade by some treaty or some Aboriginal right? If you can prove in a Canadian court, we'll accommodate you, we'll implement it, and we'll negotiate the exercise of that right.' So we set up a test case. Four or five years later, it finally gets to court and I win everything. The government is so thrown back. I says, "˜You asked. This is a test case and now you have it recognized in a Canadian court.' Well, six years later, ministers have changed, government people have changed, your justice people are paranoid to no end. "˜We've got to appeal. We didn't think you were going to win here.' Well, it went to the next level. I won there, too. So now a new government is in place and they don't like it. "˜Well, we don't know who made that commitment,' but isn't it typical of our history? "˜Oh, that group made that treaty with you. We're no longer responsible for that.' So they went to the Supreme Court and then they altered, restructured the argument. So I lost on a 'no' decision. They didn't take the right away that we could cross back and forth, they didn't take the right away that we could cross with our own goods duty free, tax free. The only thing we were concerned about was the trade, with that decision you could threaten the sovereignty of Canada. With that decision you could threaten the financial institutions of our country because you could set up all the reservations with goods crossing back and forth. I says, "˜That's not what the argument was about. The argument was about the right for Native Americans to conduct trade amongst themselves. It can be regulated. It can be controlled. We can do it across the table from you but we have that right.'

So I got gypped, as all the lawyers in Canada would say, "˜You got robbed.' So I took them to the International Court and we've had the hearing, we're waiting for a decision so the adventure goes on. It's always a good fight. It don't have to be with spears and bows and arrows or AK-47s. The fight continues when you have spirit to advance those things, but the most important part, what can be done in Aboriginal trade that would really benefit our nations? It's unknown territory and yet we haven't realized we have a lot of resources, we have a lot of potential and that's the next frontier. So we can stay in a socially deprived, in social conditions or we can say, "˜We've got to do some nation building here and we've got to take that challenge up.' And I give that message to all the young leaders that want to build. It don't necessarily have to be right from home, but you look at layers and layers of processes of nation building and it's a lot of satisfaction. If you're going to be a good leader you'll last a long time because there's so many challenges out there for leaders to think about."

Ian Record:

"So the moral of the story is think outside and work outside of those many boxes that the colonial forces have created for Native nations and begin to forge your own boxes and your own opportunities."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"I had an elders' council advising me most of my time on council. And I would always ask them what did they think of something because sometimes they [slap], "˜That's bad for us.' "˜All right, well, let's talk about it,' and we'd get a bigger discussion going. And all of a sudden, "˜Well, it's bad for us now. What do you want to do with it?' "˜Well, I don't know. I think we should build an arena to have a place for our youth to gather rather than hanging around the streets.' Pretty soon other people join in and discussions flow and the next thing you know it turns into a better idea, but you have to be able to discuss the pros and cons of anything I guess, but I always liked the idea of taking matters to elders and running it by them. And after a while, anything new I would always go to them and say, "˜What do you think of us?' and get that feedback. And sometimes they'll say, "˜Well, wait a minute. This is an issue that our daughters, the women folk should know about. This is something that the men should know about.' So we'd call a men's meeting and get that feedback, especially if it means you want to build something and you know they're going to say, "˜Well, there's employment there,' but there's also unions and there's also these other things. So it's better to have that support if you're going to go out there and say, "˜I want that employment for my people in my reservation, I want the most, I want to be able to identify how much of that can best be turned around and have our people employed.' You're never wrong if you go back to your people and say, "˜What are your ideas and what's the feedback?' And when they understand it, they'll give you a good decision."

Ian Record:

"Well thanks, Mike, for this very informative discussion. It's been very enlightening for me and I'm sure for Native nations and Native leaders across North America."

Michael K. Mitchell:

"[Mohawk language]."