leadership development

Honoring Nations: What is Good Tribal Governance and Why is it Important?: Tribal Leaders' Perspectives

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Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Moderator Joseph P. Kalt facilitates a rich discussion by an impressive panel of Native nation leaders about the role leaders play in building and sustaining successful tribal programs.

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Citation

Anderson, Marge, Jamie Barrientoz, Peter Captain, Brian Cladoosby, Justin Gould, Kathryn Harrison, and Claudia Vigil-Muniz. "What is Good Tribal Governance and Why is it Important?: Tribal Leaders' Perspectives." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Sante Fe, New Mexico. February 8, 2002. Presentation.

Joseph P. Kalt:

"This next session is dedicated to hearing from tribal leaders and former leaders, former chairs who have had Honoring Nations award-winners. In listening to the discussion of Honoring Nations programs, of course, you understand that those programs are programs. They are run by managers, directors, and so forth, and yet when we talk to the managers and directors, what they keep stressing is the need for support from senior leadership within the community, and so we thought it would be very useful to start by hearing from those senior leaders about their roles in building excellent programs in tribal government.

We're going to allow these individuals to just take some questions and talk about what they see as the role of senior tribal leadership in building successful programs in tribal governance. And we'll talk about...Justin Gould as well. Justin, like all tribal leaders, I know Justin's been on the phone this morning having some problem back home. Let me introduce our panel. After we go through questions and answers from your talk show host, throughout the audience we will be circulating some little 3x5 cards and any questions you have that you'd like to pose to the panel, just filter them up toward the front here and we'll give those questions to the panel. And if that doesn't work, we'll do it live from the audience.

Let me begin on the far end with Jamie Barrientoz. Jamie is the vice-chair of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. Grand Traverse is actually a three-time honoree in the Honoring Nations program, only a two-year old program. They must be doing something right. The tribal court, the planning efforts, and the land use claim trust fund from Grand Traverse are outstanding examples of tribal governance. Kathryn Harrison is the retired chair of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. Grand Ronde was a winner of an Honoring Nations award for their enhancing intergovernmental relations programs. Next, Brian Cladoosby is the chair of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. Swinomish was a winner of an Honoring Nations award for its efforts in cooperative land-use planning. Marge Anderson is a past chair of the Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians and also Mille Lacs has been a three-time honoree for their conservation code for the 1837 ceded territory, for small business development, and for their outstanding language development programs. Next, Peter Captain is First Chief of the Louden Tribal Council, and the Louden Tribal Council's Yukaana Development Corporation was an honoree for its outstanding work in the development of environmental cleanup mechanisms that have dramatically changed the face of their part of Alaska. Next, Claudia Vigil-Muniz is the president of the Jicarilla Apache. Jicarilla was a winner of an Honoring Nations award for the wildlife and fisheries department, a world-renowned program in wildlife conservation. And lastly, Justin Gould from the tribal council of Nez Perce; Nez Perce was a winner of an Honoring Nations award for its work on the Idaho Gray Wolf Recovery Program where Nez Perce has been a leader not only in its own community, but in the region in the preservation and introduction of the gray wolf. With those introductions, it's now your turn to talk and I'd like to begin with what I suggested a moment ago.

The honorees, your programs, are directed by on-the-ground managers and directors who are in their offices today or some of them are here, but we keep hearing from them that they couldn't do it without senior leadership that saw what they were doing and supported it. And so I'd like to just put a general question to you and get your comments on the way you look at the do's and don'ts of building successful programs like the programs of your own communities that have been honorees, but you don't have to talk just about those programs. I'd like to just hear what you say -- as senior tribal leadership -- about the role of that leadership in building these programs. I'll actually take a volunteer for the first time. Who has any thoughts on that? Kathryn.

Kathryn Harrison:

"It's really an honor to be here. As a past chair of a tribe that had faced termination for 29 years, I'm just astounded that I'm here, that we have taken our place in the family of Indian nations where there's a lot of hard work and, what I see as, a way for councils -- and I mean all tribal councils -- to work, to build their tribal government and their community and their nation is to be a team player.

What I saw on our council, each one had their place and each one had their duty. We had loggers, we had past loggers, past truck drivers, construction workers and they were left to get the young people, but they were already I guess mid-life I would say. They already had their life skills and to me that was a plus. There was no time to get out and say, ‘Well, I want to be somebody so I want to talk first.' Everybody had their role and knew they were valuable. So in our newsletters when I was chair, you would never see a report by me. I wasn't the one, and any chairman says they did it all there's something wrong. It's a team effort. And we heard over and over yesterday, ‘We're families.' As a tribe, one nation to another, we're a big family, so that team effort goes in there, too. You heard today, ‘Watch your back. I'm watching your back.' That brings to mind Sue Shaffer who, every time she goes on the [Capitol] Hill, you know she's going to protect every one of us and she is the chair of a past-terminated tribe.

I think maybe one thing we've learned is having lost our federal recognition for 29 years, we appreciated what it was that we had and it took everybody working together to gain back...for 11 years we were...to gain back that recognition in the eyes of our federal government. One of the things that inspired me each time we were discouraged, we had the good vision to hire former Congressman Elizabeth Furse. Of course, she had not been a congresswoman yet. But she guided us through our restoration effort and every time we went to our little one-room office we had to pass by our tribal tombstones of all those people that had gone on before us and had sacrificed and that always inspired us. If they could do it, if they could walk to where we were today and not even understand languages because there were so many different languages, then we could do it for what they had suffered for. And to me it's teamwork."

Marge Anderson:

"I'm really honored to be asked to sit on this panel and I don't know where to start. It's a long story, but if you bear with me, we'll get a history on where we were and where we are today. We were a very poor tribe. In fact, we had probably about 50 employees to what we have now; we have a total of about 3,000 employees. Not all of our...there is enough tribal members to fill all those positions so we have both Indian and non-Indians working for us. Early on, we had one form of government that the tribal council did the hiring, the firing, hearing appeals on the same board. And we took a look at that and we didn't think that was...we knew that wasn't a good way of doing government, tribal business. And we created a system of government based on the United States system, separation of powers not, that was based on the Iroquois Nation separation of powers. And through trial and error and everything else we had growing pains and through that system we created the executive branch, judicial branch and legislative branch and the executive branch was the chief executive and I had eight commissioners. You have to delegate, they have authority so they can do their jobs and through Band law, the duties and responsibilities were through Band law and we followed those and only answered to me. That's how we got this going. We had a lot of issues.

One, I guess I'll be talking about sovereignty. We had some conflict with the State of Minnesota that required us to waive our sovereign immunity in order to get the services from the state, which were by the way, passed through from the feds. We refused to sign the contract so we went...our people went on without service for about two years and our tribal government went without pay for a long period of time. But we stood our ground. We would not waiver and finally the state legislature passed a law that says they would not require tribes to waive their sovereign immunity in order to get programs, food on dollars.

But there was a lot of, like I said, fights along the way. One of them was treaty rights, 1837 treaty rights that we tried to resolve through mediation and we took it to the state legislature and they turned us down. And we told them, ‘We're going to win this,' and thought they would settle peacefully but they refused to do that so we went to court, into the federal court to the court of appeals and to the Supreme Court of the United States, which was a 5-4 decision at that time. At least it was a win."

Claudia Vigil-Muniz:

"I'll be the youngest of the women and let the elders go first. Good morning, everyone. My name is Claudia Vigil-Muniz. I'm the current President for the Jicarilla Apache Nation. I've only been in office for about a year and a half, so the program, the model program that has been referenced to was many years ago.

I believe that that program was successful because it was allowed to be developed. The managers and the people involved were allowed to create the program for what it has become. It's still in place today and mostly because we rely on that as a resource, a financial resource -- two of our primary resources are oil and gas and the game, not in terms of gaming but the real game -- the operation had to make some changes, but we have two biologists on staff who are non-tribal members who have contributed to the program and to the management of that particular game park that has allowed it to grow and develop and I think that's what's key in the does and don'ts. I really couldn't make any recommendations, but this is how it worked for us and this is how it continues to work for us.

We also currently have a ranch or a...we refer to it as Chama Lodge. We were successful in outbidding the State of New Mexico a couple years ago for the piece of property. At that time, the tribal council thought it was important that we get that piece of land back because that was original territory to the Jicarillas and it also plays a significant role in our traditional beliefs. We've taken that under a private...it's more of a chartership. We have a corporation that monitors that program and we let them operate on their own. And it's a package hunt and it's a private facility that's located on what we refer to as Chama land and it's an exclusive facility that brings in trophy hunters. And so we have that entity. And in one end, if we ever get this land successfully into trust, those two programs will most likely be combined and monitored by the same...in the same method that we have done in the past. And because of that role that we've taken, the government has basically stepped to the backside and allowed the managers to handle it. It's been working for us because they're the expertise, they know how to handle the animals and they know what to do with them. So in that particular issue, I think it's been very good for us."

Brian Cladoosby:

"Good morning. My name is Brian Cladoosby. I'm Chairman of the Swinomish Tribe. We're about 70 miles north of Seattle. I'm finishing my 17th year on the council and I'm finishing my fifth year as Chairman. And as I think about this question, the do's and don'ts of building good programs, I think the do's are, you need good strong leadership in order for these programs to work. You need to be inclusive and you need to know your past, you need to know your tribe's history, you need to know your history with the state, with the county, you need to know the federal policies that have affected your tribes, you need to know what you want today and you need to know what you want for the future.

And some of the don'ts, I think, is, number one, don't think you can do it all by yourself. That's where I say, be inclusive, don't micromanage. We're a small tribe of about 750 members to 800 members and I've got around 200 employees underneath. An elder once told me to always surround yourself with people smarter than you and I have no problem doing that. He said, ‘When you do that, you can take credit for their accomplishments and point your finger at them when they screw up.' But I think one thing you can't do is micromanage the people underneath you. You've got to let them do their job. And maybe some of you staffers at other tribes know what I'm talking about when you have strong councils who like to think they have to run every single program. But I'm a firm believer in not micromanaging. So my ‘don't' is, don't micromanage. Of course, don't make stupid mistakes. Some of you may have known leaders in the Indian and non-Indian communities that have made stupid mistakes. And so, don't make stupid mistakes or you're not going to be able to build good programs.

And don't think you're an island. We as tribes cannot think that we're an island. I cannot say, ‘Okay, Swinomish, I don't need you Tulalip' or ‘Swinomish, I don't need you Yakama' or ‘Swinomish, I don't need you Lummi.' We can't think of ourselves, don't think as an island. And reach out. And that includes the non-Indian communities. We need to reach out to those non-Indian communities. We are continually educating them, so don't ever stop educating those non-Indian communities, because their leadership changes all the time but the people in the communities are always there. So we not only need to educate the leadership, but we need to educate the people in our communities. And so I'm going to keep my comments brief because there's others up here also, and ditto to the ladies that have spoke also before me. Good remarks."

Peter Captain:

"Hi. I'm Peter Captain of the Louden Tribe from Galena, Alaska. It's in the Yukon in Alaska. First, I want to squelch a couple myths. For one, we don't live in igloos, although that's been around for years.' And we also are inclusive. In starting out, we have 229 tribes in Alaska and we're just one of them, and just about every village in Alaska is a tribe. And each village has two forms of government. You have the state government and you have the tribal government, and of course the federal government. But one of the first things we did was to be inclusive is we held many town meetings and invited the various entities into our meetings. And we had a five-year plan for a village and our portion of the plan was to take care of the economic...I mean the environmental portion of the plan. The city took care of the sewer and water and what not and the fish and wildlife and other entities took care of their federal... One of the things you hear is be all-inclusive and doing that, we found that we could function better in our endeavors. I'm always one for passing on knowledge. We have one of the more aggressive tribes in Alaska in all aspects of education, environmental cleanup and what not. And we don't limit that to ourselves. We try to pass it around.

We have what we call a Yukon Consortium. It's a consortium of about six villages right in the vicinity and we include all those villages within our group to pass on our knowledge, not to hold it in. This -- as you'll hear other people repeat this -- is passed down generations upon generations and my hope is...I'm not doing things for myself. I've never been one to do things like that. I do it for my people, of course, but ultimately I do it for my children and grandchildren and seven generations down. They're the ones that's going to be benefit from it. That's where we come from. Thank you."

Justin Gould:

"Thank you, Joe. It's a pleasure to be here this morning up here with this panel. My comments are somewhat similar to those expressed so far. I'm realizing now I really don't want to be in Jamie's shoes because I think I'm probably going to cover everything else that hasn't been said. I'm just kidding. Like the person sitting here to my right, it's an honor and a privilege to become a tribal leader in Nez Perce country and inherit some of the hard work of previous leadership. I was not on the tribal council when the Nez Perce Tribe got involved with gray wolf recovery as has been expressed by Joe here. Just to kind of shed some light as to...before gray wolf management, the Nez Perce Tribe was involved very heavily with many natural resource issues, primarily the fish management issues. And I believe it was from the record established in the direction that the Nez Perce Tribe had taken that naturally prompted the tribe in becoming involved with other natural resource management issues.

There is a long history in Indian Country of tribes striving to better their communities, striving to better themselves, and the common theme that the Nez Perce see in Indian Country is the direct relationship to the natural resources. It's evidenced everywhere you go in Indian Country, there's a story, there's a lesson to be learned in every part of our respective places.

Getting back to the Nez Perce story, it began in the late ‘60s with the tribe becoming federally recognized and having a formal government with constitution and by-laws, I believe it was around 1964. And at that time the fish runs were still alive and well in our country. The completion of the four lower Snake [River] dams had not even transpired yet. The Grand Coulee and Hell's Canyon dams were on the chalkboard and getting ready to go up. The Nez Perce Tribe learned early on that if these two dams were to go in it would drastically affect the future of the salmon in the interior northwest. Sadly these dams went in and consequently wiped out I would say 90 percent of the spawning beds of the Columbia River Basin salmon runs. And in the next 10 to 15 years, four or five other hydro systems were located in between these far-reaching projects toward the ocean, buttoning up the interior northwest for barging, irrigation, recreation. It was not until the late ‘70s, early ‘80s, that significant losses were recognized on the banks of the respective tributaries that our people used for thousands of years. And it was at that time a faction of our people recognized the need to create a level of awareness to bring about positive change to the situation the salmon were facing in Nez Perce country.

It didn't happen overnight. I recall these long nights as a child with my tribal leaders as a boy every night, every season there was another issue to discuss and at that time I felt we were beginning to organize ourselves and our thoughts. And it's taken a generation or so to really impact the home front in terms of educating our own people to the significance of these losses and what it means to the value of our culture that's providing the support we needed as leaders now to continue on in this good work of the leadership that we've replaced in some cases. It was only recently when our tribe was asked if we wished to reintroduce a species to the Columbia Basin that had been extinct for 20 or 30 years -- example would be the Coho salmon, the fall Chinook, the summer steelhead, the sockeye, the eel, lamprey. It was opportunities to look at these species and become true leaders and really step away from the followers that inevitably got us to the gray wolf recovery table. But it's the example that I'm speaking of now that is the basis for the tribe's involvement with gray wolf recovery.

Once we successfully returned and extirpated stock from Columbia Basin to its homelands again, the Nez Perce Tribe learned a valuable lesson and did its best to share what we could with anybody that would listen to take advantage of these opportunities when they present themselves. So four years later we got adult returns from the first generation we transplanted and the concept the tribe has is not concrete to concrete like in some cases like hatchery operation, but from gravel to gravel. And so for the last 10 years now you could say we've been double planting all of the streams. We will take the hatchery surplus and take them out into the streams and let them spawn with the natural or be reared with the natural and the wild stocks that are out there thus providing the double...doubling the size of the small runs to the estuaries. And it was through a series of political moves by the tribe that we became party to the Pacific Salmon Treaty as an Upper Columbia River Tributary Tribe, and it was again from the efforts made by the faction of the Nez Perce 20 or 25 years ago recognizing that the fishery was being destroyed and something needed to be done.

All of the issues that are in Indian Country just take a little bit of organization and leadership in my opinion and many great things can and will happen if strong leadership avails itself to those specific issues. So that's kind of the basis for Idaho Gray Wolf Recovery and for the Nez Perce was getting management capabilities and being recognized in a field of science to be equal or greater than the experts in those fields and continuing in that fashion as being the only choice of the Nez Perce Tribe. Extinction is not an alternative for the Nez Perce Tribe so we will look to find every way possible to continue on with the work that we've begun. It's my hope personally that the work that I'm able to do the short time I'm on the tribal council will be another positive lesson in terms of legacy for those who are yet to replace me. Thank you."

Jamie Barrientoz:

"I'm Jamie Barrientoz and I agree with all the comments that were made. I just want to just highlight a few. For our tribe, we haven't got to where we are today -- like the others were saying -- we didn't get to where we are just because of the select few that stand out in the tribe. It's a collaboration of all the people in the tribe.

One of our awards from Honoring Nations is planning and development, and through our planning and development initiative we include throughout that part of our protocol is to hold public hearings and to include all of our members. And you'll see in the documents here that we held a series of planning meetings with our members where 400 tribal members turned out and they all gave input and very valuable input. That helped us to incorporate our culture into what we were doing. We accomplished that and the things that we've done are so beautiful and will be there for the long run because many minds put much thought into it and the council was very gracious and didn't stand in the way and didn't get bogged. We held our egos back, because oftentimes egos get in the way of the tribe and people think, ‘Well, I don't...' I'm just speaking for my tribe. ‘If it's not my idea then it's not going to happen at all.' We need to learn to set that aside before we can even move forward. We need to accept that we need to compromise and we need to agree and disagree on many issues and accept that Jaime Barrientos doesn't have all the answers, and I don't.

And we surround ourselves with many smart people, but also we surround ourselves with many practical-thinking people with common sense, because so often we can get caught up listening to just the lawyers and we can get into trouble sometimes just doing that. And so we've learned from many experiences like that that just having...surrounding ourselves with everyday people, people that are living in the community, the laws and the things that we are doing how it's going to impact them. Those are the people that we get the most valuable input from because those people are the ones that are living the day-to-day life on the reservation in the communities.

And so that's kind of where we come from, that's where we stand and all of our council meetings are open to the public and the majority of the time, the time that I've been on the council, I've spent most of my time on the roads. But I like that and I like to communicate. I'm corrected all the time but that's how I learn. I'm 30 years old and I have learned a great deal from many of my elders. And my mother and my grandfather and grandmother always told me, ‘Never forget the elders because that's truly where it comes from.' That's something that we need to work hard at doing, because oftentimes we think about if we're going to invest in something we need to get value back and we always think about the dollar and the returns that we invest in. Sometimes we forget about the culture and that's one thing that we're very strong on at Grand Traverse Band is our culture and our history and we will continue to be that way. Thank you. That's how we do it."

Joseph P. Kalt:

"Let me put a question to you about the following. It deals with continuity within these programs and with the directions you try to set. All of you are elected officials, you're politicians, and politicians sometimes is used like a bad word but in fact, it's an act of tremendous courage to step forward and say, ‘I'm going to try to serve my people and I'm going to put myself out there, they might turn me out.' And all of you, Claudia is relatively new, Kathryn's retired, all of you have been through transitions at some point. We know that these programs to succeed need continuity in them. Any thoughts that you have about what you do in your community to put that continuity in there, recognizing there's going to be turnover in the elected officials, or things you wish you could do because some of you have probably been burned. It's a politician's life. It's a tough thing to do. Do's and don'ts or what you wish you could do around this issue of continuity -- how do you do it? How do you get continuity in programs when you retire, when you're newly elected? Claudia, any comments? You're recent, you said you're recently in office."

Claudia Vigil-Muniz:

"One of the things I'd like to stress is that something I learned a long time ago. I was in the education field for a long time and I had the opportunity of hearing a gentleman speak who was a former governor of the one of the pueblos here in New Mexico. And he put things into real clear perspective and it affirmed my way of thought and how we as Native American people fit into this whole picture. He basically said that we walk, you've heard this story of how we walk two paths and we have to know where the fine line is.

In one hand, we live in a society that has a different way of thought and we've had to adopt a western way of thought and that's the way of our lives now today. In order for us to survive, we have to be able to walk both of them because in the other hand we go home and we step into a different role and what...I guess it really didn't hit me until just by chance it was during the holidays and we went to his particular village and there was this gentleman that had spoken the day before at one of the universities and there he was. He was the leader of the group that was singing and from what we were told in that particular village, it's an honor to be selected as the head singer. That brought things into clear perspective about the role we play; for me it did. And also it's kind of fitting in terms of my own upbringing. My father was the one individual that I really idolized and who taught me. These little conversations that we would have during our visits, little did I realize what he was preparing me for. And some days I sit there and I think, ‘This is what he was talking about'. And sometimes I wonder, ‘How could it be that he knew that he didn't know.' Everything that he has prepared me for is for what I'm doing now.

The other thing is I'd like to clarify I'm not a politician. I do not agree with that. The reason why I say that is because, to be real honest, I didn't put my name into the race so to speak because I wanted to. It was because I was asked to and I had to discuss this with my mother, with several people and they basically told me, ‘You know what the honorable thing is. You know what it is that you have to do.' So I thought, ‘Okay, we'll do it.' Just to throw the numbers off. Little did I know I was going to win. But I think that it's important that, as Native people, that guides us in our decision-making and how we fit into this whole picture. Unfortunately, we do have to become the politicians as you refer to it. In my culture and what my father taught me was that that is not a good word and it has a lot of bad meaning to it. And you have to take it and use it to your best-decision making, because when I step into that role coming down here to Santa Fe, I do have to become the politician and I have to learn how to play the role of the beggar, so to speak, and that's sad that we as Native people have to do that. We have to come and beg for everything that we think our people could benefit from. Unfortunately, I don't know about the other states, but in this particular state, in my presentations to the state legislatures, it's always been to literally remind them that we play a role and that we too are citizens of the state and that we too deserve to be treated fairly and equally. And unfortunately, we have to come to that role. But I think that I deserve that same mutual respect from my colleagues as well as from other leaders and from other entities, government entities. And until we get that same status, I don't know if we'll be able to function as expected because of the term that the white man uses, which is assimilation. Unfortunately, that process is almost completed for all of us.

The villages here in New Mexico still maintain their beliefs and they're very strong about it and they are to be admired for what they maintain. Their history goes back a long, long ways. Mine -- in particular with the economic development that's taken place -- you can see where we're losing our children and a lot of it has to do with that almighty dollar. Having to remind your own people where you come from is what's most important and knowing who you are and where you come from so that they can make the right decisions, reminding them about the mutual respect that should exist so that we can progress on some of these issues because there again, we have to play the role of...the same role as the rest of the world in order for us to survive. If we don't, we don't educate our children and if we don't point these issues out, we're not going to do it. Our children are the key to this whole thing and we keep hearing about the seventh generation. Where are we at in the midst of that? And it's up to us to decide and to guide our children in that direction."

Joseph P. Kalt:

"Claudia, if I could follow up with one question. You've been president for a year and a half approximately. As you came into your position, on this question of the continuity of programs, what specific steps did you take to review the personnel, the programs, assess their strengths and weaknesses? What's it like, in other words, to be in this new transition and how did you go about managing that process? What specific steps did you try to take?"

Claudia Vigil-Muniz:

"I came on and I've been assessing basically on my own and observing to see how things...because as any tribal entity, there are a lot of rumors that go flying left and right about how you're going to...their interpretation of how you're going to be leading. It's been difficult, because you have to play a role as a personnel director and as a leader, so to speak, because you're constantly...when you go home you deal with bad personnel issues, at least in my case I do. And so redefining that, a lot of the policies are in place, they've been created and they're there, but what I've been having to do is actually implement them. I refer many things back to the departments and to the directors, executive directors, and trying to maintain the continuity, so to speak, but there's a lot of resistance because the policies have never been really enforced. But it's important to me because, in order to move forward in the economic development portion, several things have to fall into place. The personnel matters cannot interfere with the role of the government.

Earlier we heard about the separation of powers. Well, in our particular situation, to a degree, it exists, but still it needs to be refined. And in this assessment process, we also have to update our own policies and our own procedures based on who we are. They've been developed for us and that's what we're doing right now, but the continuity portion of it has been assessed to the degree that they've been allowed to function. And then now we're going to back and we're going to say, ‘Wait a minute. These things are going to have to be refined,' and looking at it from the positive things of improvement rather than from the negative things and trying to encourage everybody's participation, because I don't believe in functioning only hearing one side of the story. For too long we've done that. And coming from a matriarchal society this has always been encouraged and allowed and for some reason we got caught up and we have a misinterpretation that has distracted us. But now I think we can get back to hopefully...my term is four years and I don't think I'll see that. If I'm elected again, if the people wish, then we'll continue it. But it's only striving for the achievement of what everybody would like to have and everybody's say so."

Joseph P. Kalt:

"Anybody else on this continuity question. Marge?"

Marge Anderson:

"I think first of all you have to have checks and balances and accountability and hire a team who has expertise in those areas of education, services and so on. I think it's...in Indian Country, you've got elections out there and we had continuity when I left office. And it's unfortunate the recent elections I was in Phoenix so I don't know what's happening there now. But you need to have long- and short-term goals and a strategic plan to see where you're going."

Brian Cladoosby:

"Continuity with programs. I'm going to be speaking on programs that we've set up with others outside of our communities in the non-Indian communities and I think of the in-stream flow that we have established. As many of you know, water's a big issue out there in Indian Country and our tribe was the first one in the state in the last 20 years to establish in stream flows and there's already attacks by politicians to try to undermine that. So it's, once again, educating, educating, educating.

We have been able to set up a program with the Department of Ecology, EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] to allow us to do NPDES permitting, that's the National Pollution Discharge something-something committee. That's why I hire those smart people, they know about those names. I think it's like poop and stuff...that's laymen's terms. But our tribe is able to issue those permits and programs like that need to continue. Our land-use planning, the award that we won through the Harvard Honoring Nations, a program like that needs to have continuity. Our police on our reservation, they carry...they're also sheriff's deputies in the county. Programs like that need to continue and our utilities. We recognized back in the ‘80s and ‘90s that when you control the utilities you control growth on your reservation. So we came to agreement with the other purveyors in the county and they recognize us as the only ones on our reservation that will be allowed to issue a permit.

Now these are programs that have been established...I can go on and on and on. We have a list of probably another dozen programs that we've established, but how do you continue continuity with those programs and make sure that they last and continue? For one, you have to have a foundation. You need to create a foundation; you have to have some kind of mechanism in place that people will recognize in perpetuity. Now there's no guarantee that that will take place because like I said, our in-stream flow...one of the county commissioners in our county who is running this year and his platform is going to be the anti-Indian crusader out there fighting the tribe on all issues and he's already got some lawyers from Seattle, downtown attorneys reviewing that to see if there's any cracks, any way that he can get his little finger in there. So I think educating, educating, educating.

We continue to have new politicians and we are politicians and...I finally...someone had told me what politics means. It's a Greek word. It's 'poli' meaning 'many,' and 'tics,' 'blood sucking insects.' I refer to those as the D.C. politicians. But I think just educating, to have continuity to those programs you need to continually educate these new officials that come into office. That's the only way you're going to have continuity. We've had two new county commissioners this year. I spent two hours with them just educating them on things that the tribe has done with them over the years, so I think that's the key, just educating these...and I'm just referring to outside programs, not internal programs."

Joseph P. Kalt:

"Thank you. Kathryn, yes."

Kathryn Harrison:

"Thank you. I think one of the things that has worked for us was reaching out to the communities but not only that, being role models as tribal council. It's not a 9-to-5 job. Once you're elected, no matter what you do, where you go, awake or asleep, you must be a role model for your people. That includes and inspires continuity among the next lot to come along.

The other thing is when we campaigned for our recognition, we told everyone, ‘We won't have any surprises.' That included our people, the people in Washington, D.C. and the local people, the county commissioners, the schools. So our meetings were open and that is why we established our intergovernmental program that was our winning program with the Honors for Harvard. I like to have Justin and Nicole, Justin Martin and Nicole stand and be recognized for the good work that they do in reaching out to our legislative people not only in the State of Oregon, but in Washington, D.C. They keep their finger on the pulse of what's going on in Indian Country, they advise us of bills we need to monitor, they tell us when to come to the state capitol, the attempts [unintelligible] on Indian services, which includes every representative from every tribe in Oregon that's recognized and [unintelligible] representative from [unintelligible] and also a state senator and a state representative.

I think the other thing is you include all our people. We've held a lot of meetings that we included the county commissioners and everyone around us to show what we were going to do and ask them, ‘What do you think of this? Where do you see us in five years, in 10 years?' That included them. You have to show your people what works and once it's in place it's going to take a lot of convincing from the other side that wants to try to change anything and that puts continuity in place. And the last thing I want to say is I think we all agree how important spirituality is. That's what's carrying all of us, no matter what trouble we face, no matter what obstacles we face and that's what's going to pass on from our ancestors. That's how they overcame the struggles, that's how they pass on things to us and that's something we must never forget.

One thing I learned to say to our council is, ‘If you want to be treated like a tribal government then you have to act like one.' And by the way, I had black hair when I started. Thank you."

Peter Captain:

"I remembered what the other myth was coming from Alaska, not all tribes are oil rich. Unfortunately, ours is one of those that's not oil rich. So we have to be innovative in the things we do to keep these programs running. Our state dollars and federal dollars are being depleted. So we need to come up with innovative ways to keep all our programs running. You hear people say, ‘Well, you've got to surround yourself with smart people,' and that's good. You also have to integrate within your school systems the teaching of the young children on the different pollutants and the different aspects of the worldly comings, otherwise they're not going to know what's coming down the path and when it does hit they're going to be caught off guard. So a good solid education, if you can incorporate those within your school system, great. Short of cloning that's one way of continuity."

Joseph P. Kalt:

"Something I think that Claudia said must have sparked...you mentioned about looking at these programs and maybe some of the systems you have in place may not be working as well. A number of people are asking questions that deal roughly with the same thing. People would like to hear you talk about the way you handle issues of hiring, having to fire and promoting the career development of your employees. What role do you as senior leadership play in that regard? Any comments on that? A number of people have actually sent me questions like that. I know people wonder about those relationships. Anybody? Marge."

Marge Anderson:

"In our system of tribal government, separation of powers, that's delegated to the [unintelligible] policy board, which consists of all the commissioners and they handle all the personnel issues. I didn't have to worry. So that's how we handle those issues. What was the other one?"

Joseph P. Kalt:

"Both the enterprises and the programs, are they handled in the same way?"

Marge Anderson:

"The enterprises, we have a general manager and we have a corporate commission. We did have anyway, and that's where the personnel issues were dealt with."

Joseph P. Kalt:

"Continuity, though I heard you say could be an issue here. Anybody else? Jaime."

Jamie Barrientoz:

"For us, many times, the tribal council went, particularly with just the Grand Traverse Band members, we have public forums where...at our council meetings we have an open forum where any member can say anything that they want of their choice and oftentimes those kind of issues are brought out there and then we give the direction to those members on what they need to do to get their issue resolved. We do have an administrative appeals board. That's not perfect. We're always continually having to refine that, because we're a small tribe and often family members get involved on the board and then they get involved in employee disputes and we have to sometimes separate that and sometimes if you're new to the community or whatever you don't know who's related to who and what kind of click is going on. But we have those and we do have dispute [resolution] mechanisms, but mainly for the Grand Traverse Band members they come to the council and the council points them in the direction that they go. There are some times where the situation is so gross that the council has to intervene and make a decision based upon the tribal manager or the CEO not taking charge because oftentimes the tribal manager or the CEO is unsure if he gets involved. Which segment of the tribe is going to be coming down on him? So it's a real touchy situation, it's continually being refined, but it seems to be working for us. For the most part it seems to be working for us. There are some cases that are so difficult that they have to go to the court system and that's how they resolve it."

Joseph P. Kalt:

"Marge."

Marge Anderson:

"I need to add if they go to the [unintelligible] policy board they're going to work with their supervisor. If they're not satisfied with that then you go to the [unintelligible]. If you're not satisfied there then you go to tribal court."

Joseph P. Kalt:

"Brian?"

Brian Cladoosby:

"Personnel issues are the toughest to deal with in Indian Country. I hate dealing with personnel issues. That's why I tell my directors, ‘If you can solve it, solve it.' But we have this thing in our policy called nepotism, but I think it needs to be defined differently in Indian Country. But it is tough to deal with personnel issues in a tribe, especially a small tribe. At Swinomish, where the vast majority of our people are located within a very small area so everybody knows everybody and everybody knows everybody's business and the casino, we have 300 employees down there and we started just gung ho with a lot of tribal members filling those jobs and slowly. And I'm speaking to the choir here for those that have casinos, slowly by slowly those numbers start to dwindle for various reasons and you get calls as the chairman. ‘My daughter just got fired.' And I said, ‘Well, what happened?' ‘Well, she...it's not fair. She's a tribal member, she should have that job.' So I call the casino. ‘Well, the last 21 days she had 21 either lates or no-shows or no-calls or tardies or something.' And so it's real hard to deal with because you're so...you know them, you grew up with a lot of them. There's just such a personal connection there and it's...but...you know what I'm talking about. Personnel issues are the toughest to deal with, but unfortunately as the chairman you're put into a position where maybe a tribal member needs to be let go because they've been accused of sexual assault or sexual harassment or something like that and that's when the director comes to you and says, ‘I can't deal with this, can you deal with this?' I think personnel issues are the toughest in Indian Country to deal with."

Claudia Vigil-Muniz:

"Yeah, ditto. I mentioned earlier that I've been trying to refer back to the policies and procedures that are in place and so I kick them back. We have what we refer to as the five meg-department structure where we have five executive directors, one in...[unintelligible] director and education, public safety, health and welfare, education and public works. I guess, in the past, no one's been using these executive directors and they didn't know where they fit into this whole picture.

So when a decision comes to my desk, and as you well know, everyone has a tendency to go directly to the council or to the leader, and it's like, ‘No, I'm sorry. I'm not going to...I won't deal with that.' I'll kick it back, I'll call the executive and then I tell them, ‘This is your problem, you need to handle it, come up with a solution. If we can't resolve it, we have a human resource program, let them set up a grievance hearing committee.' Council is the last resort, and I keep reminding them that if they come to the council, they've exhausted all the remedies. And so people are finally beginning to adapt and adjust to that method.

The other...for the enterprises what we...we have boards in place for a lot of the enterprises that we have because they're under federal statute corporation. So they have a five-panel board that makes all the...that will make the decisions for them so that it leaves us out of the picture and that's how I've been handling it. Like was mentioned, with the nepotism issue, trying to keep things in perspective and try to correct the behavior that was mentioned about people being tardy, coming in late and what I keep reminding them of is that what I was taught was that anything you do in this organization it's yours, the resources are yours, what it pays for is yours. So you have a say so in every decision that we make here, but you have to remember that if you're going to go crash that vehicle that was on loan to you from the motor pool, that comes out of your pocket. It may not be a direct impact, but the fact is that you have ownership in that vehicle because in the title it is Jicarilla Apache Nation. And by doing that they're like, ‘Oh, yeah.' And so trying to re-establish the ownership part of it because the ownership, somewhere we've lost it along the way because it also flies to such things as being involved with the public school system. You hear this all over Indian Country, ‘Well, the school district isn't doing this for us, they're not doing that for us.' Well, what are we doing about it? What are we saying about it? Those are our children that go to those schools, so it just doesn't make any sense constantly going back and reminding, ‘You do have a say so on any of these things.' So I think it goes back to the gentleman here from Swinomish where you play a role in all of this and I think that's important for our people to understand that."

Joseph P. Kalt:

"You touched on something there and I have a question related to this. I'll introduce it by way of a story. One of the tribes we work with at the Harvard Project, one of the tribal chairs says to me one time, ‘All this stuff is great, Honoring Nations, nation building. My daughter's the president of the student body of her high school and doesn't know what I do for a living.' I've got a question. What ways do you have in place and what are you doing to involve the youth in your community in tribal government? They are the future leaders. What steps are you taking, what concerns do you have in that area? Justin."

Justin Gould:

"Being relatively young, it's not hard to remember the days of youth. Ten years ago, I got involved with the United National Indian Tribal Youth Program. In 1991, I was the National Youth Coordinator for the 1992 Alliance, an Indian advocacy group on Capitol Hill. I was a person who made the second to the motion at the policy table right after I swore my oath to be an elected official of the tribe. The motion maker made a motion to create another subcommittee within the structure of the Nez Perce Tribe. That new subcommittee is called Youth Affairs Subcommittee and it's a culmination of various efforts of the different youth provider programs within our tribe. We have social services who has concerns with our tribal youth dedicate employees to that cause. We have education liaisons who are dedicated to the needs of the youth in terms of their education. We have various examples to draw from that are essentially the same path and direction and vision but with no true administrative support to enhance one another's abilities to provide that positive future for our youth.

So under discussion a lot of that came out and before I called for the question I just reminded them that by taking this serious stance toward youth initiatives and youth services that will make it better tomorrow for us when we become the elder and they become the leader and if we could keep this direction going. I looked at my elders and said, ‘I will take care of you tomorrow and through this youth affairs committee we can set that value strong within Nez Perce territory that these children coming up have an obligation as well to take care of us tomorrow.' And that was the basic theme behind the rationale to it, looking at the national statistics in Indian Country among other things prompted us to do that.

Currently, I work with...as a natural resources chairman for the Nez Perce Tribe. I work with the other subcommittee chairs on developing holistic initiatives that will represent unity among all the generations alive on my...in my country in setting up literal examples of week to week, month to month, seasonal activities that we can all enjoin and share together in the spirit of health prevention, education, cultural identity, pride, all the good things that our forefathers had set aside time to provide to us. So it's just a simple continuation in a formal contemporary sense of something that we've all had a little taste of in our lives."

Joseph P. Kalt:

"Just let me put a question to you real quick. Specifically with respect to tribal government, is this Youth Affairs Committee attempting to expose the children and the kids and the high school kids and so forth to the work of the tribal government or are you working more broadly on youth issues?"

Justin Gould:

"Both. We actually have three youth that serve at the tribal policy level on this committee representing the different communities on the reservation; the eastern side, the western side and the northern side. So it's new but it's...and it's having a lot of growing pains, I would guess, but it's working. We now have an agenda that recognizes every youth provider to come in and be accountable and for the first time it has a direct impact to tribal policy formulation development versus being some kind of a quarterly report in a little bulletin fashion format that is like page 156 of a 600-page quarterly report. So that's kind of where we'd been treating them administratively, our youth, and this is a way to really let them tell us as tribal leaders what those concerns are. So it works."

Joseph P. Kalt:

"Good, good. Anybody else involving youth? Jaime."

Jamie Barrientoz:

"We have a junior tribal council that we established. It's a seven-member board of youth that are elected by the youth and they have a budget and they have a chair, vice chair, treasurer, secretary and they do their own fundraisers. And we have a thing called a Youth in Government Day where these youth -- not necessarily just the Junior Tribal Council -- but any youth that is selected through a process can job-shadow a council member or a high executive official on a day. And sometimes these youth are taken out on the road with us and exposed to these kind of meetings. We need to do more of that, but we are trying and we make attempts and they have a board just like a mini-council and they make decisions that impact the kids and how they try to influence us into making things easier for them because they understand what it's like with the environment that they're in in school and in the neighborhood and stuff. So we have that vehicle for them to be able to hear us. And there's an administrative...school administers board where the deans and the superintendents of the schools all get together quarterly and that's hosted by the Junior Tribal Council. They can talk to the school superintendents directly and say, ‘These are our issues as Indian kids. These are what we're facing and this is how we think you can help.' And the council is there and we're all there listening to their concerns and I must say that these kids are very smart. Sometimes we might take that for granted thinking they're young and they've still got a lot to learn but, man, I went to the last Junior Tribal Council and superintendents meeting and I was blown away by how much they really could articulate their point of view and move these superintendents into making policies that are positive for them and it was great."

Joseph P. Kalt:

"We're going to have to bring this to a close, but I'm always struck by the tremendous combination of leaders such as yourselves, show both the vision and tremendous ability to manage and to make things happen and to lead in good, strong directions. We've joked a little bit about the word politician but if you all are the examples, then the word is on its way in Indian Country to being a term of honor and respect as it should be. So thank you to all of you. Thank you."

Michael K. Mitchell: A History of the Akwesasne Mohawk

Producer
Native Nation Building: Governance and Development undergraduate course
Year

Grand Chief Michael Mitchell of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne offers students a broad overview of the governance history of the Akwesasne Mohawk and the efforts his people have made during his time in office to exercise true self-governance and rebuild their nation.

Resource Type
Citation

Mitchell, Michael K. "A History of the Akwesasne Mohawk." Native Nation Building: Governance and Development undergraduate course (faculty: Dr. Ian Record). American Indian Studies program, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 31, 2008. Presentation.

Michael K. Mitchell:

"[Mohawk language] What I said in my language is it's an honor to be here and I'm very nervous anytime I stand before a class that seem to be at the university level that have garnered so much knowledge from books that I don't quite know how I could relate, but I'm going to try.

I come from a territory that got dissected by the U.S./Canadian border. Half of Akwesasne is located in upstate New York and the other half is in Canada. Three quarters of what's in Canada is in the Province of Quebec and a quarter of it is in the Province of Ontario. So we have five jurisdictions on the outside perimeters of our reservation.

As I'm going along, I may be asking you some questions because I'm working on almost like an autobiography of my upbringing and political experience and a question I have is if any of you already know, what year did the American war of Independence end? Does anybody know? I should have you on Jay Leno. In the late 1700s, right? Because later on, it lead into the War of 1812, but around that time was when they put the international border. And for some reason it split our Mohawk community in half. So part of us became Americans and the other part Canadians. So you have brothers and sisters, one's American and one's Canadian at least by the standards on the outside.

We always consider ourselves to be nation members and citizens of the Mohawk Nation. And I don't know how much you would learn about the Iroquois in your American Indian studies but the Mohawks are part of the Haudenosaunee, Iroquois Confederacy, also known as the Six Nations. And the nations that make up the Iroquois Confederacy are the Mohawk, the Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Senecas and Tuscaroras. At the time, what we called the 13 Fires or the 13 Colonies, when Europeans were starting to settle in North America [want to break for a minute?] they met and got permission from the Iroquois Confederacy and established relationships with the Haudenosaunee as to where European settlers would take up residence. It started with the Dutch, Germans and later the English and each group that came, each group of settlers that came made treaties with the Iroquois.

Now in making these agreements there was one particular agreement that we know very well that was made in Albany, New York. It was called the two-row wampum because our people recorded our history in wampum belts. And this is a story that our people talk about in our earliest relations with European settlers. There was a belt that had two rows and our elders said that at that time it signified two ships, two vessels. One was a ship and one was a canoe and what they told the European settlers is that, "˜On this ship you came to this land to escape from religious prosecution, from not being able to practice your governments the way you would want to be represented and so in this land we're going to give you that freedom to do so, speak your language, practice your traditions, your culture, everything that you would like to be as a people will remain on that ship and in our canoe will be the same thing. Our governance, systems of government, our languages, our cultures, our traditions, our ceremonies, our religious beliefs will be in our canoe and they will go down the river of life together in parallel. I will never make laws, my nation will never make laws for your people and you will never do the same with us.' So it was that kind of a relationship. "˜But throughout time, we'll always be there to help you.' And as it was in the earliest times, Europeans were not aware of their surroundings, they were not aware of the many types of foods that they could cultivate and eat. So the Native Americans were the first ones to show them, the first time that they would ever have experienced squash, pumpkin, corn, beans and down the line, as well as medicines. In this exchange, Europeans showed them how to hunt, utensils, farming equipment, etc., so there was this exchange.

Anyway, in those days where they came from they told a story about being ruled by kings and queens, nobles, barons and peasants, religious prosecutions. So one of the earliest historical leaders in this country was Benjamin Franklin and in his earliest writings he talked about sitting at the council fire of the Iroquois and he watched how they governed their people, for it was something drastically different than what he was accustomed to and he invited others to come and observe when nations got together and talked about governance.

Their leaders were called [Mohawk language], chiefs. And contrary to the way politics are run today for both of us, because I'm an elected leader, usually have a term of three to five years. But in those days a Native American chief would be put up by the women of his nation. We all had our own clans. I belong to the Wolf clan. Among the Mohawks there's three major clans, the Wolf, Turtle and Bear. And so it would be the women of that nation is was said that would watch men form the time they crawl on the ground to the time they walk to the time they hunt to the time they marry, the women of that nation would know and judge the character of a man; how he provides, how he related, how he conducted himself as a human being, as a family person. If he was a good hunter, if he was a good speaker, if he knew ceremonial, cultural things that belonged to his nation, then they knew he would be a good leader. And so he didn't have to make promises to say, "˜I want to be a chief.' The women already had made up their mind that he would be a good leader.

And so when they picked a man to be the chief, the women had a fair notion what would make for a good leader and in them days, and we still have that system of governance today, a man had three chances in his lifetime, in his adult life, in his leadership life to be a good leader. If he did something against what would harm the people of his nation, the women would come to see him three times and straighten it out. He would have three chances to retain his chieftainship. And on the third time, they would have a head warrior with them to take his title away. It was considered a disgrace if a chief ever had to have his title taken away.

And with our tradition, a man who was a chief was given a headdress that had deer antlers and he carried that, he wore that in council meetings and in ceremonies and important events when they met with other nations. And so that symbol of office, if there ever came a time that he would be removed from office, there was a term called "˜de-horning a chief.' They would take his title away by taking his antlers away from him. He would never be recognized as a leader again ever in his lifetime. And so that was the system of governance for us. Then European governments came and said, "˜We have a better system.' And I'm going to talk about my experiences on the Canadian side, but there's parallels on both sides.

In Canada in 1867, they created a federal legislation called the Indian Act. It had three major objectives or principles. One was to Christianize the Indian nations, make farmers out of them, and educate them; what they call educating the Indian-ness out of them, make them non-Indians. And so they set up these residential schools. They would round up all the Native kids off their territories, send them hundreds of miles away in a church-run school and those kids wouldn't see their parents until eight, ten years later they would be allowed to come home. That was a system that ran and stopped probably around 1971, '73, they started closing off the so-called residential schools in Canada.

Did it work? Many times it did, for our people returned home strangers, no language any longer, no awareness of their customs and traditions, cultural values, can't speak the language, but they were educated. And the thing that happened with many is that they were lost. They couldn't mingle with their people, associate with them, but they couldn't survive in the cities, outside the reservations because now they had lost something very important, their spirit as Native Americans. So for many to get home, they had to relearn or get re-educated as to who they were. The churches played a strong part de-Indianizing of our people because all these schools were run by religious institutions.

Some significant things that happened is that when they started catching on as to the effects of residential schools in that just under a hundred years in Canada, is that suicide rates, social conditions prevailed on the majority of people who came out of residential schools. Suicide rates are high. In Canada there's 30 million people, population in the country. We form the majority of the prison populations in Canada because one other factor that was crucially important, alcohol wasn't meant for our people to touch. In the time that they drank they became...they lost their memory, they committed a crime, they killed somebody, they robbed something that would land them in prison, lifetime, 20 years. And so that became a big social impact in our development, progress as people.

We are now starting to realize the consequences because the values that we were taught as Native Americans, as Mohawks in nation for us, the virtue of what makes for a good person was in our cultural teachings, and when they took that away from us and tried to make us into something else, we couldn't adjust there, either. And so in Akwesasne, those that are on the Canadian side wound up in a school strange enough called 'Spanish.' On the American side they wound up in a residential school, which escapes me for the minute. Anybody ever hear of Jim Thorpe? What school did he go to? Carlisle [Indian School], that was the school where they sent our people on the American side, and a lot of our elders went to school with Jim Thorpe.

So they would return home. Now there are some people that use their education and they did make something of themselves but in between that was a sad story. So those of us that got an education within our community, there was a fight all the way through. I was raised by my grandparents and they gave me the cultural teachings, the language, ceremonial songs, what makes for a good person. Many of the stories of the nations that I find myself now being an elder in a community of sorts and as strange as it is, the governance that I told you a little earlier about how people get put up, my mother is a clan mother and they are the ones who put up leaders. And so I would say from the time I was small being raised that I had retained all these teachings that I was going to be a traditional chief, where the women would put you in office.

In the 1970s to "˜80s in our community, there was always turmoil between the elected leaders and the traditional people. And then for us there was elected leaders on the Canadian side and there's elected leaders on the American side and there was the Mohawk Nation traditional chiefs. So if it wasn't bad enough to have five governments on the outside, we had three inside the reservation. And like the Hatfields and McCoys, the elected leaders were usually the Christian leaders and the traditional chiefs were people who they called them the Long House people. They were the people who maintained the ceremonies, the language and the customs and traditions and they adhere to a traditional form of governance as I had told you.

Anyway, as in any society when they don't get along there would be skirmishes. So the nation people said, "˜We want to find a way to exchange our cultures in the event that maybe we could make for a better world in the next generation. So we're going to exchange some of our people.' So they send me over to the elected side and in 1982 I became, I was elected as a chief in the elected system and at that time I was probably the first one. We were referred to as pagans because we weren't Christian and the church taught them that if you're not a Christian you must be a pagan. So that was a very catchy name on council by my peers, to have a pagan chief. Not that I really knew much about it, so it didn't really bother me. But as I later found out, some cruel things. The priest in our reservation was a Mohawk from another reservation and so when you get somebody believing in something really hard, they espoused a lot of hatred and that existed in my time growing up. If you weren't a Christian Mohawk, then you were something of a lower class. My duty and responsibility was not only to be a good leader, but to change that whole image and that whole attitude of what makes for a good Mohawk person.

So two years later...they've only got two-year terms; we had another election. In that time, I looked at our elected governance, chief and council, the way they conducted their business. They didn't have any public meetings, they didn't show the community any of the minutes of their meetings so they know how much education dollars, how much housing dollars and welfare and house...so it was all like a big mystery. And usually it's a favorite; some people get catered to. If you elect a person and you represent so many of a large family, you're looked after. If they didn't think that you were supporting particular people on council, you didn't kind of work your way up the ladder.

So it was that kind of governance I wasn't really used to. So I started taking minutes of our meetings and I would show them around. Finally I did a small newspaper, I would ship them out into the community. I became very well versed on information that had to get into the community. So I took it upon myself -- because that was my tradition -- to take this information and provide it to the community. Now for some reason, the community liked having this information even though I was traditional and the next year they wanted me to become the Grand Chief of the reservation.

Now I'm going to go back a little bit. The first time I went for elections and I was put up, our traditional people don't vote. So I had to get elected by the other side. I still don't know how that happened, but it did and I got in. So the second time around when I competed for the Grand Chief position, a Grand Chief is elected among the general populace. A District Chief is elected from his own area. So I thought I was safe there. And to jump in that short time was a little difficult...and it was rough for somebody that came from the traditional side of the community. I got beat up going to work. The office that I had was occupied by protestors who didn't believe that the Grand Chief should be traditional. My life was threatened. And so it didn't kind of work out at the beginning, but if you have a thing in your mind that you want to try to govern, I had to mix my upbringing into my politics. So I found different avenues, different venues where I would get information to the community, "˜This is our situation.' And as I'm trying to fight off my opponents, I also had to fight off the governments on the outside. So I got together with the chiefs and we had some sessions, normally like you would anywhere else where you decide to get everything out in the open. And I convinced them that we're here for the same reasons -- to have effective governance.

Don't forget about the Indian Act that I told you, because not that long ago in our community the Indian agent ran everything. He controlled the chief and council, told them how to vote, what is the important issues and how they should govern, how they should make decisions. When I was coming out of high school was the last few days of the Indian agent was around in our reservation but the effects, government policy, everything was decided in Ottawa. If the chief and council made a decision about something, whether it's a school or a health facility, anything that would benefit the community, you had to ask for permission through the Department of Indian Affairs and they would let you know if you could do it. I was very much opposed to not having the community be the ones who decide on issues and I advocated that the people had to get involved.

Now we live on a reservation as I told you that's half in Canada, half in the States. For me to come from Cornwall Island, Ontario, I have to cross through the customs to the American side of the reservation to get to St. Regis, Quebec. If I have to go to Snye, I have to go back to the American side and get back into Quebec. So every day I'm going through borders. And when we had problems crossing borders, I convinced the community that we should stand up for ourselves. After a few meetings we got people worked up, we shut down the international bridge; fifty of us went to jail. But that was the first time in "˜70s that in Canada people started, Native people started organizing themselves, speaking up for themselves, and that was the time that changes started to happen. Then we started getting in touch with our brothers on the American side.

One of the things that happened, we affected government policy. I convinced Ottawa to allow us to hire our own people because they had non-Native coming on the reservation to be our education director, to take notes in terms of social programs, to take health information back and statistics that they kept and nobody really was comfortable with that kind of relationship. In the space of two years, I was able to convince the governments on the outside to allow young people who were coming out of colleges and universities to come home and work for us, stay home. They became our administrators, they became our teachers, they became our police people, our conservation, environment...we had jobs of all kinds, but they weren't really our people that were working there. So that was the changes that came about in the "˜80s. As the changes started to happen, confidence came back to our people, that confidence and tradition.

There's something important I left out, an event that happened in 1984, which was just as I was starting my second term, my first term as Grand Chief. The Pope came to Canada and he had asked the bishops that... he was tired of the churches in U.S. and Canada every time a figure like that would come around they would dress up the Indians, put the war bonnets on and put them on horses just the way you see them in cowboy and Indian movies. That was the perception. So as easterners we were not very much aware of the prairie Indians, they still would put western headdresses on our elders and parade them around. Well, the Pope that we had passed away just a few years ago, Pope John Paul. He didn't want that. He said, "˜I want to see real people. I want to see them how they do their spiritual practices, I want to experience it.' So the priests on my reservation wrote to them and said, "˜We just elected a pagan over here so I'll send his name up.' And I got a call from the Vatican and they said, "˜Would you be interested in putting a ceremony on for the Pope?' And I agreed. I went back to the Long House and I told them what had been requested and in their wisdom they said, "˜Maybe it would make for better relations because as long as they don't understand they've got hatred in their hearts.' And so we put together a small group. We went to Midland, Ontario to do this ceremony for the Pope.

When I got there, just imagine what it must have been in Woodstock when they had this great big celebration over there, change it around, the Pope was the main attraction but there were about I'd say 70,000, 80,000 people in these foothills, cameras, everything was broadcast worldwide. And this event that he was trying to pursue was one that he was pushing for all religions to have greater tolerance and understanding of each other. And this one mission that he had in North America was to understand the Native spiritual practices better. And so I worked with the Ojibwes and the Crees in Canada with the Mohawks to put together this ceremony. And we put together a healing ceremony that consisted of smudging, sweet grass, sage and tobacco, the three main things that we use to conduct our ceremonies. I'm a singer. I sang with a group of other young guys. And so the whole event was televised and when it come up to putting the words to him and singing and putting him through the ceremonies, the Pope started to have tears come down. And when we got done and everything was translated to him what we were saying, I knew that it had a profound effect on him.

So when it was over, and by the way about 500 perhaps maybe more than that of the same people that called us down and called us pagans were in the audience out there somewhere. I know because I put buses on to get them there and I paid for their gas as chief so I know somewhere they're out there. And it was slightly uncomfortable because they said, "˜Well, now that we've got a pagan chief we know we have to go out there. The previous chief would have given us money.' Well, I did give them money and I put buses on and I helped them get there so I knew somewhere they were in the audience.

But what happened that day was, the speech that he gave at the end of the ceremony where he said, "˜The European people that came across the salt waters, the religious, the churches that came across believed that the Native Americans in this country were godless, soulless people and ever since then we have advocated to everyone that the only one way they would be human beings if they became Christians.' Then he put down his papers and he looked right at them and he said, "˜That was wrong. For I have experienced a religious experience from these people that I want to talk about.' He proceeded to lay everything out for them saying, "˜The churches have been wrong. The White man has been wrong,' he says, "˜to even have thinking that you've got to be like us.' Then he talked about the residential schools, talked about the education systems. By the time he got done, he offered an apology on behalf of the Church. And then he told everybody, he said, "˜I know there were ways that you have shown the distaste of your own practices. I'm going to ask you to go home, incorporate your traditional teachings in the Church.' And from that time on for me life became easier because the protest, the occupations, the beating have stopped and I was given a chance to govern.

We went to the churches, me for the first time, to give talks like this about peace and brotherhood, because for me in my upbringing we also had a spiritual leader. He had a name, referred to as [Mohawk language] but we only refer to him as the Peacemaker because with him he came to our people like close to a thousand years ago at a time when there was warfare going on between nations. And he advocated the great peace, the Great Law of Peace where people would put away their weapons and always find a way in whatever you do advocate a more peaceful way to live. Now you also had in the Great Law of Peace the constitution and that constitution advocated fairness in representation, fairness in governance. The people were the ones who made decisions and put their leaders up more to be like servants and so [Mohawk language], a chief was really a person who followed the wishes of his Nation. And this is when I was telling about women wound up being the ones who elected their leaders. Very interesting concept: five nations in unity governing on the basis of peace on the law that was known as the Great Law of Peace.

This was the meetings that Benjamin Franklin sat in and he brought his people along to say, "˜Look at these people making decisions and look at the way they govern and the way they advocate their governance, is that they would find a way to speak, counsel, make decisions all on the basis of peace.' And so they influenced the Constitution of the United States. I offer you these tidbits of information because I know you're going to go back and check, where did this all occur. Well, today it's pretty well a foregone conclusion that these events did happen and that there were these early influences, but with us when governments met and they came to a decision, nations would have to all unanimously agree. That's something that Benjamin Franklin said, "˜My people cannot ever do.' So they opted out for majority decision. So that was the difference in our lifestyle back home in governance.

In my time, I tried to cooperate a combination of our traditional cultural practices in a modern elected governance system. And that law called the Indian Act in Canada, I opted out of the provisions of that so that I could replace it with some strong, Mohawk-flavored governance models; giving the power back to the people. That's why in 1982, '84 I was asked by the elders to consider being a chief maybe for a term or two just so that they could turn things around and maybe politics would get a little better. And as I said a while ago, in 2006 the second time that I retired, people kept putting me back in office and they always said, "˜For one more term, until we can find and develop new leaders that will take your place.' And I began to find myself stuck to a position that I was only supposed to be there on a temporary basis. Now mind you, the excitement of governing, the challenge of representing and serving your people is a fire that is always going to be ignited inside you if you're a leader. And so I agreed to keep going.

Now I serve on the advisory board for the Native Nations Institute, but I also serve in advisory capacity to many other developments, both American and Canadian, Native American leaders. Offer them advice based on many years of experience. I wasn't...I'm not going to lie to you, it wasn't always a peaceful leadership style based on peace. When I talked about shutting down international roads and bridges, took over islands but just to get people involved in a non-violent way without guns, without clubs, but simply assert yourself. And so I started doing this across Canada and people rose and life is better when you can speak for yourself and nations can speak out. And that was a time for us that led up to 2006 when I finally made my decision to pursue a private life, more or less. Elections are coming around back home next year and they said, "˜You had enough rest. You should consider coming back.'

Well, presently I'm working on my book. Basically I made a very fast cut through of my experiences but in more greater detail of events that happened in the United States with Indian Country, events that happened in Canada, because I offer certain parallels that are very distinguishable. But my survival in politics led to my knowing my traditions and my culture and my language, taking the best of the non-Native world and combining it, pushed education a lot but the social conditions in our community has improved. But being on that border, we got famous for something else. I don't know if you can guess at it but whenever there's a border there, what's likely to happen? Anybody take a guess? Smuggling took place and in a big way because we've got 100 miles of the St. Lawrence River of islands and in the dark of night, our people know that territory inside out. And so it started with cigarettes. Canadian companies, cigarette manufacturers would reroute their cigarettes from Buffalo, New York to Pennsylvania to New Jersey to Boston and make a big circle and then would bring them back in and they were using our people to bring them across the border. It wasn't long before people caught on and they started doing their own smuggling. It's still going on. So I had that to contend with. Pretty soon motorcycle gangs called the Hells Angels in Montreal started, "˜Hey, there's a profit to be made here,' so they started enticing people to bring drugs across. And then when that started, some of that drug stayed in the community. So for us it was always an ongoing battle.

When 9/11 happened, and if some of you have a good memory CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC all had giant screens with a map of Akwesasne saying, "˜Those terrorists came through that Indian reservation.' For two weeks that was going on. They were reporting that it had to be this complicated, unique Native community where they might have come through. The more they talked about it, the more they convinced themselves that that in fact happened. It wasn't until maybe two, three weeks later that they found out they didn't come through there, that they were in fact in the country. I was Grand Chief at the time and you will not know your gut, the heart, what it felt like thinking they crossed and killed so many people because of this border. And it's a border that much unlike...I went to visit the Tohono O'odham Nation here. Their reservation is the same way. Part of it is in the United States, part of it is in Mexico and they've got 85 miles of nation territory they have to watch over. People are coming over, but not to the extreme or as dangerous as people coming from Canada into the States because they have one thing in mind, smuggle something over. So now our concerns is explosives, guns, terrorism types, finding a way through our reservation.

So that became the greatest concern. So we made up our own border patrol program. We added to our police force. Now we work with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the U.S. Border Patrol, the U.S. Customs, State Troopers and it's a program called IBET [Integrated Border Enforcement Teams], integrated policing. And that's becoming another big part of our reputation, coincide with the smuggling concern.

But all in all, you advocate to your young people, "˜Go to school, get an education, seek something out that you want to be but come back home.' And that thing that started in the 1980s is still going on today. And so I've just given you a very fast run-through of what life is like for where I come from. I don't know how much of it you can digest in a short time, but you invited me here to talk a little bit about where you're from and what you do or what you were doing and that's the story of Akwesasne. By the way, Akwesasne in Mohawk means "˜land where the partridge drums,' and at the earliest times along the St. Lawrence you still see quite a few, I guess you call them grouse, partridges, from that family, very prevalent on the St. Lawrence. And they call our place the home of the partridges. Anyway, that's my story."

Ian Record:

"I've got a question about...you mentioned just now the jurisdictional agreements you have around law enforcement to try to control the smuggling and all that. I've had conversations with you before where you talked about the kind of early origins of when Akwesasne started really asserting their jurisdiction back over their own territory and I wonder if you could talk about that, because at least originally Canada and the provinces and even the states weren't too approving of that, were they?"

Michael K. Mitchell:

"That's right. On the Canadian side the Mounties enforce...Royal Canadian Mounted Police enforce the federal law and the Provincial Police, Ontario Provincial Police and the Quebec Provincial Police enforce the provincial laws. That was on the river and on the mainland. And they enforced the Criminal Code of Canada. And so as complicated as our territory is there was no room...we had a Native police force but they weren't giving them any respect. As a matter of fact there's a term I still remember. They called them "˜window dressing cops.' If they won't let you do anything but they were still complaining that they weren't arresting our people on driving intoxicated or speeding. They didn't keep up their quota so they had a very narrow definition of what makes for a good peacekeeper. And when I became chief, I wanted to see that change. But I found nowhere where that would happen. They had everything cornered off.

As a matter of fact, the time that I became chief our people were being arrested on the river for fishing, traditional fishing whenever they would net and have enough for their families, put away... The laws on the outside said, "˜You can't do that anymore.' So they started taking the boats, the motors, the nets, confiscating, making seizures. So when I became chief, our people came to me and said, "˜What has changed so much that we can't practice our traditions any longer?'

Well, I went to see the person who was the...the officer who was making these seizures on the river, in the middle of the river. I stopped him with a few other boats that were traveling with me, let's put it that way, and as nicely as I was talking to him asking him, "˜We don't need provincial, federal license to fish. It's in our treaties.' He says, "˜That's in the past. From now on you will learn to get a provincial license.' So I says, "˜But we don't have to.' And I was diplomatically I was trying to be...he was just squashing, didn't care about it. So I took it to the next level and I said, "˜Look, sir, if you don't tell us where the boats are that I can go get them, I might have to take your boat.' He just laughed. As soon as I give the signal, our guys are waiting, they shut the motor off and took his equipment out, tied a rope and we towed his boat back to St. Regis to the police station and we seized the conservation officer's boat.

When I got back, then I phoned Toronto, the main office of the Ministry of Natural Resources and told them what I had done and actually they said, "˜This could be an international situation, crisis of sorts so what can we do?' I said, "˜I guess we have to negotiate the release of our boats, half a dozen of them.' They just had elections in Ontario so there was new people there and they said, "˜Well, that man, the officer, is he a hostage, are you holding him in a hostage situation?' I said, "˜No. I'm holding his boat hostage.' "˜Well, is he allowed to go home?' I said, "˜Yep. If he can walk or swim, he can get back across the river, but the current is very strong, so he's going to stay here until we get our boat back.' So pretty well half the night we're negotiating back and forth. The Premiere gets on the phone, he says, "˜I want to put an end to this. I know you don't need fishing licenses to fish in your traditional territories. I'm well aware of that.' He says, "˜So I've got people looking for your boat.' As it wound up it was in Toronto. So he says, "˜We'll have them back by 9:00 in the morning.' So they returned all the boats. Naturally it helped my leadership because I was able to resolve the situation without any violence of sorts. And the same man that made these seizures was the same man that was made to bring them back the next day.

I wanted to see our own people become Conservation Officers so I went back to Quebec federal government in Ontario. "˜Nobody,' he says, "˜We never heard of that before.' Being an international community I picked up the phone, I phoned Albany, New York. They had a state troopers, conservation police training. I said, "˜Can I send some people down to be trained to become Conservation Officers?' They called back and said, "˜I don't see why not. These are dual citizens, you can do that.' So I sent two. Six months later they got home. They had the state trooper Stetson hats, 'Dirty Harry'-type .9 mm pistols, everything that's totally legally in Canada that's...they came back and they're certified police force and they hit the waters to start patrolling.

By that time we had set up our Mohawk Justice Court, we had laws that I had registered with the nation council and they started executing. And that raised in the community a perception that we could take care of ourselves, that we could have law and order and it could be done with our own people. And the attitude on the outside changed too. We didn't always have to be fighting each other. The right people came and the relationship led to us having more police under our jurisdiction, having our own justice, having our own courts and because I was able to diplomatically negotiate these things, it became a much better environment for us, on the river and on land.

I like being, talking about being a good strong advocate, a good leader, but some funny things happened along the way. Those two conservation officers that returned home, within that same week they were on patrol, they got a call from the island I was from and an incident had taken place. I'm in the main village with elders. We were talking about how we could build a new seniors' home for them and they walk in. So all the elders made a big fuss over them. "˜These are the people we've heard about. They've trained and now they're out there on the river, they're looking after our people and are giving out licenses for non-Natives and they're making them buy licenses from us. What a change! And they give them cookies and milk and everything.' They said, "˜We're really here to talk to the grand chief.' So I went over and said, "˜What's up?' He said, "˜Sir, there's been a murder on the island where you're from. We've investigated and found out that somebody in your family is involved and we need to talk to you outside.'

Geez, when you get news like that the first thing you do is boom, it hits you right here. Did somebody die in my family? Did something happen? Did somebody in my family do something? I went outside and he said, "˜There's a farmer up there who called us. We got there and found out that his pig had been killed. And the pig had piglets, six of them. They were all killed too.' And he said, "˜Chief, it was your dog that killed them. You're under arrest.' I said, "˜What?!' The first person on the reservation when they got back from training that was arrested was me and I tried to dispute it. I said, "˜Well, you got no evidence.' They had pictures. There was a trail of piglet parts down to my house, to my farm. Around the house, where he had dug up, there were piglet parts. I was raising an Alaskan malamute. So he was laying there, he had blood on his face; he had blood on his chest. They took pictures, a very thorough investigation. I had nothing I could say but the whole reservation was laughing up and down. "˜There's your conservation officers.' So they marched me across the street to the Justice and charged me and I had to go back for my hearing two weeks later.

In those two weeks, there was a lot of commotion, a lot of discussion "˜cause all I had to do was say, "˜Drop it,' or the elders would say, "˜Don't go there because how hard he's worked to get this program this far.' And people were either for or against. I went to court, I paid the fine and it was done. I said, "˜We have a very efficient peacekeeper and we all have to follow the law regardless who it is.' So that's how the law and order picked up in our community.

I just don't like telling this story but he heard it once and he always asks me about it. Anyway, thank you very much." 

Honoring Nations: Devin Redbird: The Gila River Youth Council

Author
Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Devin Redbird discusses the importance of the Gila River youth council as a source of education and development for the next generation of tribal leaders, while stressing the impact youth councils could have across Native nations.

Resource Type
Citation

Redbird, Devin. "The Gila River Youth Council," Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 27-28, 2007. Presentation.

Heather Kendall-Miller:

"Our next speaker is -- this is going to be fun to listen to -- Mr. Devin Redbird, who is currently a councilman of the Gila River, and he was previously a council rep with the Gila River Youth Council, which was one of our honorees in 2002. So he comes to us now as a council member, no longer a council rep for the Youth Council. So let's welcome Devin."

Devin Redbird:

"Good afternoon. I got short notice, just about maybe half an hour ago, that I was going to speak, so this is going to be interesting. I just want to say good afternoon and I'd like to thank you for letting me speak here today. I just want to touch on the Youth Council program. How many of you in your communities have an active youth council or a youth organization in your community? And if so, can you raise your hand? I just want to see how many of us are out there in the nation. Okay. That's good. And those of you who don't, I encourage you to start a youth council program. It's really -- it makes a really good cause for the youth. It gives them something to strive for and to understand your tribal government; because as many of you have heard, the youth are the future, and you need to encourage them anyway you can and that is a positive way. I myself, yes, I did serve on the Youth Council. We are Gila River Indian Community located in Phoenix, Arizona, just south. We border Phoenix major metropolitan areas. With the Youth Council I served, I come from -- I'm Maricopa. Our tribe is comprised of two tribes, Pima and Maricopa. My district is only Maricopa community within the Gila River.

So, serving on the Youth Council, we received a letter from the [John F.] Kennedy School of Law at Harvard. They were interested in our program, they wanted some more feedback, and that was my last term on the Youth Council, and we gave them everything that we did and not knowing that how, I guess, successful that our program was within our community. We're part of a national -- Youth Council is a part of national -- UNITY [United National Indian Tribal Youth]. And we would go there, and other tribes would come and visit our community, and we'd help them, [because] that's what we're taught, to help other communities. Regardless of who you are, we're going to help you. If you want to start a program, by any means we'll go do a visit. And so we submitted all the material, and I got off of Youth Council at that time [because] my term expired, and to hear a year later that we got honored in 2002, that was a great accomplishment and achievement for the council. But then we talked about change, where a new youth council came on and they need to understand where we are as a community and youth.

The youth program itself, I'll give you a little brief history, is -- our tribal council, back in, I think, 1988 -- our youth of the community didn't have a voice in our community. So the youth basically got together, and banded, and formed a coalition. And it grew so much, because Gila River Indian Community now, our population is 65 percent youth, and it seems to remain like that. So the youth does have a powerful voice. They went to the tribal council. They had their bylaws, resolutions, everything, code of ethics -- something that our own council didn't even have at that time, and remains to still be revised at this time. They came in with their plan of action. They knew what they were doing, they knew their goals, they knew their accomplishments and what to do. The council members tied right down the middle, 50 percent. The governor at that time was Mary V. Thomas and she broke that tie to establish the Youth Council. So the Youth Council was established and we are recognized. Youth Council is recognized as a form of government. Youth Council is a mirror of the council. And over the years it's grown.

When I first came onto the Youth Council, it is an excellent program. We get sworn in by our chief judge in front of a crowd as council does. We take the oath and we are elected in each year at our youth conference by our peers from our district. We go into a caucus and we basically run, usually six to seven people run, for a position to be on the Youth Council. And the former members that are going out have to explain the duty and responsibility [because] you have to give up Saturdays, you have to travel; it's a big responsibility. Plus, Youth Council requires you to hold a GPA still -- within in high school, because these are still high school students and you've got to manage your family at the same time. So this is a real mirror project of the council. Now that I can see that, I'm on the council, it is. It just prepared me for what I'm doing. My transition, personally, was very smooth because of the Youth Council program.

The tribal council also allowed the Youth Council, we have -- we go to D.C. annually and we meet with our [Arizona] senators, McCain and Kyl, and our state representatives, and we have a lobbying firm up there that the tribal council utilizes. So when the Youth Council goes up to D.C. to talk about the youth issues -- the recent one I was on was for Youth Council, which is Arizona, it was tribal gaming. And we went up there to speak the youth voice to the senators saying what positive impact it would have on youth programs and why we would support a proposition. And we would visit and we would lobby, meet the senators, network with other tribal youth from different areas.

Most recently, when I got onto the tribal council -- I wasn't even thinking about running. I was absent from the political scene for like four years. I was into our tribal gaming facility. I ran our slot department; I was slot manager for one of our casinos. Basically, what I did there was, certain shifts were in distress with leadership skills and I had certain qualities, I guess, to bring morale up on a specific shift. So we would engage them and bring up that shift. So I was transferred all over. That got kind of tiresome and so I decided I wanted to go to school, do something. I popped in one of our community meetings and when I left the community meeting I was executive chairperson. It was just -- it was a calling, I guess it was a sign. They knew -- when I was 18 on the Youth Council also, I promoted so many youth programs that the community still remembered the programs that we initiated. So I guess the impact that we had -- I was just doing my job as Youth Council and it just, the impact, I just left a mark on the community, like it needed to be done.

Another proud -- I didn't consider it an accomplishment, but just recently, in one of my meetings, one of our elderly veterans, he's not doing so well, but he says that -- we have a celebration every year, it's called Mustering In Day in my district, which is Native Americans, we were the first ones to get – basically, in Arizona we mustered in when the National Guard, they left to fight the Civil War, they initiated into the Maricopas and Pimas to protect Arizona at that time. So it's a big, it was a proclamation and it's a big celebration for our veterans. So that's what we utilize it for now. We have all the tribes in Arizona, usually we invite their veterans group down and we celebrate that. And in one of the meetings I said, "˜It would be nice to have a flyover. Way out there, who's going to do a flyover?' So we said, "˜Well, let's run with it. Let's go see how far we can go with it and let's do it. So what does it take?' So they said, "˜Why don't you try it?' I said, "˜Well, okay, I'll see...' So what do you do for a flyover? You call the military base, Luke Air Force base. Then they say, "˜Well, call the Pentagon.' Okay, [I] call the Pentagon. It's just a process in which you do things, if you want to get something accomplished. You just do it, right? But who would think to go call -- our staff, they were like -- this lady walked up, she had this real blank face and she was like, "˜The Pentagon's on the phone for you.' To me, I was like, "˜Okay.' And I ran in there. And everybody was just looking at me like, "˜Oh, my god, what's going on?' They just needed material. It's real simple -- you fill out a form, send it in, and if it gets approved or not, that's it. You can get a flyover. So they called me back and said, "˜Yes, you've got your flyover. What time do you want it?' Just follow the steps and just follow your work through, I guess, basically. The day came, nobody knew. Only our committee knew. We told the veterans; everybody came out. And we did the flag raising, we sang our songs, and then, lo and behold, here come these F14 jets roaring by.

I guess just that, it's still -- you need to take initiative. I'm from, I guess like, another generation. Where I see things -- people talk about a lot of things. I used to go to the meetings with my mother and they would talk about building our new, like a new service center for us and I was like nine or ten years old. And I came back when I was 18 and they're still talking about that same thing. That just puzzles me. I don't know. I can understand it [because] even as, growing up I can understand like -- I had opportunity to go get a driver's license but I didn't want to go the DMV or MVD. You just put things off. But if you take one day out of there, you just do what you've got to do, you'll get a lot accomplished. That's just what I stress. That's what my grandfather always taught me. Do something. You can do it, do it right. And if you mess up, learn from it and try again [until] you get it right. So I went to the meeting, like I said, I became executive chairperson.

Youth Council -- it is a pristine program, it's recognized throughout Indian Country. The program works really well. In tribal council even, they still -- my colleagues still refer to me as Youth Council. They say, 'You know, we've got a Youth Council member sitting there.' And one of the other elder, been on the tribal council for a number of years, she pulled me aside and said, the other day she said, "˜Well, you kind of inspired me and made me think back of where I was when I was that young joining, because,' she said, "˜I lost my way of thinking when I first came on and what to accomplish,' she said. So -- and other tribal council -- and it makes me feel good and weird at the same time because it kind of, what were you doing all those years when you were up here?

It's a changing experience. There's two -- I came in with two other council people and we had a chance to go to Washington, D.C. to lobby on some issues and they didn't know what to expect. They didn't know where we were going. They were surprised we were going to a Senate building, we were going to meet McCain, we were going to meet Kyl. It just blew their minds of what we were going to do that day. Those three days, we were just going to go and work D.C. And for me it was just real natural [because], like I said, on Youth Council that's what we did. They also, they're like -- they were asking me what was expected. And I was telling them -- and it doesn't matter, always ask. If you don't know, ask. And they were asking, so I was telling them. It was a good learning experience, because it only builds us as a stronger team later on.

So the mentality of our tribal council is changing a lot. They spoke of per capita. When we were in D.C., our tribe voted for a per capita initiative. And we're 2,000 members strong and they want a strong distribution, and that's quarterly. So we're dealing with that change and we have a year time span for that. So we're ready for that. We are working diligently to that, regardless of the outcome of the vote, we still represent the people. And if they give us a task, we're going to do it regardless of what it is. And if we don't like it, then we don't -- that's not our place right there. What the people tell us to do, we're going to do. And another thing we're doing, we have a lot on our plate. We're doing a tribal re-government restructuring, meaning that we're downsizing our departments because we're top heavy. So that's a major project. And the last project that is also big is that we're revising our constitution. We're revising that program. So we've got three things plus we're dealing with all the local issues, with the mini governments here, just things coming day to day. We've got recall petitions coming in for one or two people, just regular type of politics we're dealing with. With those three initiatives we've got to keep strong and keep straight and that's just another daunting task that we have.

The Youth Council program, if you don't have it, just -- I strongly encourage you because every youth needs a model up there, a lot of directors that come report to us ask questions and they look at me like, "˜Well, why are you asking me?' But ultimately, as council, we are their boss and they're going to answer to us, regardless of our age, or not because we're put in this position. And that's why I think some people are scared because if you're young -- young or old, it doesn't matter your age. It shouldn't matter at all because you're leadership and you need to know what you're talking about. And if you don't know, ask. And that's one thing I wanted to stress a lot because, as Youth Council members -- I went to a youth conference just to go see the conference coordinator. I'm here with him today. I just went to go see [because] I haven't been to conference in four years. Those kids walk in real shy, they don't talk to each other. We do ice breakers, and we do team building, we learn how to let them speak in front of a crowd, [because] we have like 900 to a crowd with our conference. We teach them to lead that conference within a day. We teach that. We bring a trainer and we teach them everything they can. At the end of the conference they're talking, they're running up shaking each other's hands because why -- we're breaking that barrier that they shouldn't have because when you get in the outside world it's all about networking and talking and speaking and asking questions. And we're trying to break that [barrier] when they're 15 and 16 because when you get out there it's going to further, it's only going to enhance your perspectives when you grow up.

And I just -- I strongly encourage that program. If you want any information -- I think we just shared some information with our Navajo Nation friends there and we're going to help them start that if they would wish. Our door's always open. If you have any questions for us, we're always there to help. Or any kind of other youth programs you may have that we can utilize, it's all about sharing and networking. That's basically all I have to say, I think." 

Harvard Project Names Three Honoring Nations Leaders

Author
Producer
Indian Country Today
Year

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

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

Resource Type
Citation

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

Close Up Program Gives In Depth View of Tribal Government

Year

A group of young Community members from various local high schools participated in the Close Up program and received an in-depth view into the world of tribal government.

The Close Up program is a yearly endeavor that is designed to give students a thorough lesson on the inner mechanics and management of the Community. One student said that she learned new and fresh ideas about the branches of government. Another student walked away with a greater sense of empowerment. “As youth we can change the future of the Gila River reservation.”...

Resource Type
Citation

Jackson, Roberto A. "Close Up Program Gives In Depth View of Tribal Government." Gila River Indian News. May 23, 2011. Article. (http://www.gilariver.org/index.php/may-2011-grin/1878-close-up-program-g..., accessed December 11, 2013)

Educating Indian Country's Future Leaders

Author
Producer
Indian Country Today
Year

To grapple with the concept of good leaders and how to become one, 100 attendees–newly-elected and aspiring leaders from Native Nations–gathered in Tucson, Arizona November 6-7 for a specifically-developed Executive Education Seminar titled, "Emerging Leaders." Developed by the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, a dozen sessions on key governance topics were aimed at preparing participants to begin building personal blueprints for leadership success...

Resource Type
Citation

Allen, Lee. "Educating Indian Country’s Future Leaders." Indian Country Today Media Network. November 15, 2013. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/educating-indian-countrys-future-leaders, accessed April 11, 2023)

Youth Council Addresses Serious Problems in Michigan

Year

Sarah Schilling, of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, is one of five 2013 Champions for Change chosen by the Center for Native American Youth. The 18-year-old is a recent high school graduate from Charlevoix, Michigan who was inspired by her participation and the youth-based efforts at a National Congress of American Indians conference to create her tribes’ first youth council back in 2009.

To create the council, Schilling worked with the tribal council, her peers, and youth programs in the community to organize and create their own constitution, bylaws and a code of conduct. The youth council became affiliated with the United National Indian Tribal Youth (UNITY) organization.

Under Schilling’s leadership, the youth council has hosted youth retreats, talking circles and other events to address underage drinking prevention, anti-bullying and suicide prevention. As a junior advisor, she engages younger students and encourages them to make a positive transition into new leadership roles...

Resource Type
Citation

Schilling, Vincent. "Youth Council Addresses Serious Problems in Michigan." Indian Country Today Media Network. March 31, 2013. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/youth-council-addresses-serious-problems-in-michigan... accessed February 22, 2023)

The Best Practices in Rural Alberta Project

Producer
The Rural Alberta Project
Year

The Best Practices in Rural Alberta Project culminated in September 2012, after two and a half years of community engagement; research into the examination of leadership strengths and practices; incredible youth development; and video capture in preparation for a documentary film. This documentary profoundly captures the core essence and power of Indigenous economic development in Alberta...

Resource Type
Citation

The Rural Alberta Project. "The Best Practices in Rural Alberta Project." The Banff Centre. Banff, Alberta. September 2012. Documentary. (https://documentaryaddict.com/films/the-best-practices-in-rural-developm..., accessed September 20, 2016.)

Tradition and Governance: Georjann Moresseau

Producer
National Centre for First Nations Governance
Year

Councilor Georjann Morreseau of Fort William First Nation talks about the challenges of teaching Fort William youth about traditions and governance. 

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Moresseau, Georjann. "Tradition and Governance: Georjann Moresseau." National Centre for First Nations Governance. Canada. 2012. Film. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6blVZGGasI&feature=plcp, accessed September 17, 2012).

Tradition and Governance: Chief Richard Gamble

Producer
National Centre for First Nations Governance
Year

Chief Gamble of Beardy's and Okemasis First Nation says that tradition and spirituality are a way of life and might be captured in a constitution so that First Nations can develop laws that are based on traditional values. This would be a way to undo the Indian Act and make way for more traditional governance. 

Resource Type
Topics
Citation

Gamble, Richard. "Tradition and Governance: Chief Richard Gamble." National Centre for First Nations Governance. Canada. 2012. Film. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvmzVtZ-Hno&feature=plcp, accessed September 17, 2012).