National Congress of American Indians (NCAI)

Why culture and institutions matter to developing a tribal workforce

Year

In its multi-year project examining tribal workforce development approaches across the country, NCAI’s Partnership for Tribal Governance (PTG) worked to identify and document key foundational strategies that are empowering tribal innovation and, in turn, workforce development success. Distilling lessons learned from that endeavor, PTG identified 15 strategic considerations that tribal leaders, workforce development practitioners, and other decision-makers must tackle as they craft workforce development approaches capable of achieving their definition of what “success” looks like for tribal citizens and the nation as a whole.

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Topics
Citation

NCAI’s Partnership for Tribal Governance. 2018. "Why culture and institutions matter to developing a tribal workforce." Indian Country Today. August 13, 2018. https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/opinion/why-culture-and-institu… 

Why leadership and funding matter to developing a tribal workforce

Year

Distilling lessons learned from that endeavor, PTG identified 15 strategic considerations that tribal leaders, workforce development practitioners, and other decision-makers must tackle as they craft workforce development approaches capable of achieving their definition of what “success” looks like for tribal citizens and the nation as a whole. These mission critical aspects of workforce development have a direct bearing on the ability of tribal workforce development approaches to make a transformative, sustainable difference. The following explores two of those considerations: leadership and funding.

Resource Type
Citation

National Congress of American Indians. 2018. "Why leadership and funding matter to developing a tribal workforce." Indian Country Today. August 20, 2018. https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/opinion/ncai-ptg-in-its-multi-y…

Tribal workforce development: Success starts with governance

Year

A movement is sweeping across Indian Country. Over the past several decades, a growing number of tribal nations have reclaimed their right to govern their own affairs, and are slowly but surely charting brighter futures of their own making. Wrestling primary-decision making authority away from the federal government, they are “addressing severe social problems, building sustainable economies, and reinvigorating their cultures, languages, and ways of life.” In the process, they are affirming what Native peoples have always known – that tribal self-determination and self-governance is the only policy capable of improving their lives and the quality of life in their communities.

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Topics
Citation

Indian Country Today. 2018. "Tribal workforce development: Success starts with governance." July 30, 2018. https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/opinion/tribal-workforce-develo… 

NCAI Task Force on Violence Against Women

Year

Recognizing and acting upon the belief that safety for Native women rests at the heart of sovereignty, leadership from Native nations joined with grassroots coalitions and organizations to create an ongoing national movement educating Congress on the need for enhancing the safety of Native women. The coordinated efforts led to the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act to include more financial resources and protection for Native women. Now, tribal governments are better situated to combat the scourge of domestic violence present in Indian Country.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

"Task Force on Violence Against Women". Honoring Nations: 2006 Honoree. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2007. Report. 

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

NNI Indigenous Leadership Fellow: Frank Ettawageshik (Part 2)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Frank Ettawageshik, former chairman of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians (LTBBO), discusses the critical role that intergovernmental relationship building plays in the practical exercise of sovereignty and the rebuilding of Native nations. He shares several compelling examples of how LTBBO built such relationships in order to achieve their strategic priorities.

Resource Type
Citation

Ettawageshik, Frank. "NNI Indigenous Leadership Fellow (Part 2)." Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 13, 2010. Interview.

Ian Record:

"So we're back with Frank Ettawageshik. This is a continuation of the interview from April 6th. Today is April 13th and we're going to pick up where we left off, which was talking about constitutions. And I want to essentially go back to the very beginning on this topic and ask you for your definition of what a constitution is."

Frank Ettawageshik:

"The constitution is the method by which the people inform their government how they want the government to serve them and the government is a tool of the people to achieve what they need to achieve in terms of relations to other governments, in terms of relation to how things are going to work internally. The people themselves maintain the complete power. And then they can either give or take back certain powers to the government through the constitution. The constitution also establishes the mechanism for how the tribal government, the tribal nation will deal with other nations. It sets up the parameters for how you are going to do that, "˜which branch of government has which authority?' and all of those types of things. To me the constitution is a tool of the people for how they are going to manage their government."

Ian Record:

"What key ingredients do you feel constitutions need to have in order to be effective?"

Frank Ettawageshik:

"Well, constitutions...to me, there's a legislative function, there's a judicial function, and an executive function, and these need to be acknowledged and then the interplay between them is what the constitution does. Some tribal nations have constitutions where all of those powers are wrapped up into one body. Others have clear separations of powers, but even ones that have separation of powers the balance of those changes from one to another. So really those are important functions, I think another thing needs to be clearly you have to have an amendment clause on how you are going to amend it. You need to have some basic statements. I believe that it is extremely important to have like a bill of rights built into it. I think that's very important because those things need to be part of what our people come to expect in terms of how they are going to relate with their government. And when the people are telling the government how it's going to function they need to reserve for themselves certain rights, certain ways to protect themselves. I look at a constitution in a way as the people trying to protect themselves from their own government and I think that not only does it say how it's going to function, but it also limits how it's going to function, and guides it so that it will...constitutions that are poorly conceived or poorly written or ones that the community, the tribal nation has grown beyond, they can hamper how things will function. They can be difficult. For instance, constitutions do not require, nor does federal law require that they be adopted by secretarial election. Nor do they require that amendments be done by secretarial election, yet many constitutions throughout Indian Country require secretarial election by their own words, and so I think an important function there would be to not have that in your constitution. To me, you are either sovereign or you aren't, you are not part sovereign. And as a nation, tribal nations, sovereign tribal nations are constantly negotiating the exercise of that sovereignty with the other sovereigns around them. We may be with another tribe, another tribal nation close by, having some disputes about whose territories is whose or what...in economic development, there's room for competition and some issues. There could even be citizen issues regarding membership or citizenship. And we need to...the documents need to sort of deal with those things that are coming up."

Ian Record:

"I wanted to follow up on something you said. You talked about a number of Native nations growing beyond their constitutions. We hear that sort of refrain, particularly in the discussions of tribes who have Indian Reorganization Act systems of government that were adopted in the 1930s. They had a very different conception of the scope of self-governance, if you will. Is that something you've seen in your line of work, working with tribes both as chairman and now as executive director of the United Tribes of Michigan?"

Frank Ettawageshik:

"Every tribe has its own constitution or its own, either written or not written, in terms of how the government's going to function. Most of the tribes I've worked with have written constitutions and they're all different and they have...there are clearly times when you move beyond something. The United States has amended its constitution a number of times, and not always successfully. Witness Prohibition for instance, and the fact that there's one amendment that brings it in and another one that takes it out. So the fact that a government might need to amend its constitution is not unusual. Some amendments may be more far ranging than others. Some amendments are a sentence here, or two. Other amendments might be more drastic than that, but I would think that, think of it rather that the constitution is an organic document that is evolving as the nation evolves."

Ian Record:

"I wanted to pick up on a specific aspect of the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians' constitution, which was adopted in 2005, and it gets at this issue that you mentioned in the outset when defining constitutions, which is international or diplomatic relations. And explicit in your constitution is an acknowledgment of other sovereign nations and their inherent powers presuming that those sovereign nations, in turn, recognize and respect the sovereignty of your nation. Can you summarize what that clause says and give an overview of perhaps why your tribe felt it necessary to include that?"

Frank Ettawageshik:

"Well, when you, like I said, when you acknowledge that sovereignty in yourself and in others then you have to exercise or negotiate that sovereignty with your neighbors. So what I think is here is that you're constantly working with those other sovereigns, but you need to figure out how to decide who you are dealing with and who you aren't. And so the most basic way of that is that if somebody else acknowledges you, well you can acknowledge them, but you have to have some sort of a process for that. What this clause in our constitution does is it establishes a basis for some office, or staff person, or somebody that would be akin to a state department for instance, where there's an international relations office that deals with negotiations with other sovereigns and those types of things. Those negotiations, those other sovereigns might well be the United States and the laws that they are passing could have an effect on the way we exercise our sovereignty, but the fact that, for the most part, what we have done in Indian country is that we have federally recognized tribes deal with federally recognized tribes and I think what that does is that sort of...we're letting the United States decide who we're going to have diplomatic relations with, and I don't think that is a good idea. But we have the right to make that decision ourselves, but then along with that right comes the responsibility to do it in a way that you are doing it reasonably. So then what do we do? Do we have a whole acknowledgement process, each one of us? How do we go about doing that if we're not going to sort of let someone else vet the potential list of people with whom we'll have relations. I think the whole federal acknowledgement process doesn't grant sovereignty to those tribes that make it through, instead it acknowledges that they have it and that's what it's all about. So what that means is that the non-recognized tribes also are sovereign, and the state recognized tribes are sovereign, and the federally recognized tribes are sovereign. Tribal governments have inherent sovereignty and no one gives it to them. They have it because it comes through being in this creation. Well, you still have the responsibility to do it, to do it wisely because not everyone who claims to be a tribe is a tribe and that's the difficult thing. There are examples of people who have formed...recently, there have been some prosecutions here across the United States of people who have had various money, get-rich schemes, that involve pretending to be a tribe and issuing cards and charging people for it. Those are things we have to look out for, but then that's the responsibility of a sovereign nation is to not just look inward, but look outward because threats come from outside as well as potential good things come from outside and we have to be able to recognize them and deal with them."

Ian Record:

"You mentioned or we've been discussing the constitutional mandate within your tribe's constitution to essentially engage in international relations. It places a high value on that process. Since the 1980s, there's been an incredible growth in intergovernmental relations between Native nations and various other governments and I'm curious to learn from you, what do you think is driving this growth?"

Frank Ettawageshik:

"A recognition that we need to look outside ourselves and work together. I mean if you look at what has happened across the world in this time, the European Union is formed and variety of very nationalistic individualistic nations realized the value of working together. While they still have their independence and unique in their own countries, at the same time, they have a centralized currency and other things that make for a good sense. Tribes have the same kind of thing. We know that there is strength in numbers and as a matter of fact back there in the revolutionary time here in the United States, many of our leaders spoke to the Continental Congress and to the early [U.S.] Congress about the strength of working together. As a matter of fact, there is a famous speech about 13 fires being stronger than one that was given and these are the kinds of things that come from us and our understanding and we often formed alliances of some sorts with us coming together, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy for instance is one, the Three Fires Confederacy is another, and there are others all across the country where different tribes have worked together. So what kind of things have we done?

One of the examples of working together is the formation of the National Congress of American Indians back in the '40s. It was formed to combat the national trend towards not recognizing the tribes, tribal governments or saying, "˜alright the tribal governments have progressed far enough, now we can terminate our relationship with them.' And so the whole Termination era came through and NCAI, that was one of the big pushes for NCAI. One of the things that we found as we were doing some studying and I still have more to do on this, but not only was there the non-profit corporation created that is the National Congress of American Indians, but at the same time there was also a treaty written and was signed by a number of the nations that acknowledged each others' sovereignty. I mean, it's a very...it showed and demonstrated in writing, the understanding of the tribal nations that they were and still are independent sovereigns and no matter what other people may think about it. And so, I think that that was one example, NCAI.

Other examples of working together I'm going to put up, more recently, we in the Great Lakes signed an agreement called the Tribal and First Nation Great Lakes Water Accord. This was done because the states and provinces were working on the issues of bulk ground water and diversion of water from the Great Lakes and how are they going to work together to deal with those issues as they came up and there had been a succession of agreements, finally one where they would agree and create binding agreements and then it was in the creation of these binding agreements that they started work and we got wind of the things. They talked to us a little, but they always talked to us as stakeholders and we felt that that wasn't correct. They needed to talk to us as sovereign governments within the region because we had court-adjudicated rights within that region. We were the only government with government-to-government relationship through treaties and that was important that we be apart of it, so when we weren't part of it and they did treat us as stakeholders we went out and called a meeting of all of the tribes and first nations in the Great Lakes Basin. There is about 185, some are together and some are not, and so when I say about there is a couple different ways of looking at it, but it's over 180 tribes and First Nations in the Great Lakes. We ended up having representatives -- either individually or either through consortia -- we ended up with representatives of 120 tribes and First Nations at a meeting with just a few weeks notice, which we negotiated and signed this water accord. Within one day, we were at the table, invited to the table to negotiate with the states and the provinces and what they planned on signing at about a month, it took actually almost a year before it was ready to go and we managed to strengthen those documents in a way that they will help protect the environment and the waters because we plugged holes that were there that were wide open because tribes and First Nations weren't there. We also took offending language out; they managed to negotiate language to come out of these documents that didn't acknowledge tribal property rights or tribal treaty rights. So in the end there's an interstate compact that's agreed [to] by all of the governors signed it with the tribes had to agree. And then the governors all had to get the state legislature in each of eight states to pass the identical wording which was no easy trick and they got that done and it went to the U.S. Congress where there was a lobby to push this through. If the interstate compact is approved by Congress it becomes law of the land and it's a provision within the U.S. Constitution that allows it.

So this interstate compact, there was a strong lobby trying to fight it because they thought it didn't go far enough. One of the key things it didn't do is it didn't bottle water in containers, 5 gallons and less is considered a consumptive use as opposed to a diversion. A lot of people felt that it should have been a diversion if that water was bottled and shipped outside of the Great Lakes aquifers. And so nevertheless it ended up passing at the U.S. Congress and it became law, then it was an international agreement that was signed between the eight states and the two Canadian provinces, Ontario and Quebec. With parallel language, but the two provinces weren't able to sign onto the interstate compact so they created this other document that has that in it. It at least deals with issues when there is a permit for a withdrawal of a lot of water from the ground that will be vetted through a process. The tribes and First Nations agreed that we would have a parallel process to the states, rather that all be a part of one process. So we are still working on how that is going to be set up, but nevertheless we've all agreed to it. Since that was signed there have been another 30 nations sign on, tribal nations and we now have about 150-160 that have signed out of the 185. So that is an example of an international agreement working between the tribes and working across what the United States calls an international border between it and Canada. And there are others, League of Indigenous Nations is another way we're working with, not only First Nations and tribes, but also with the Maori and the Aborigines, potentially with the Indigenous folks throughout Mexico and Latin America and other places. So we're looking at what kind of things are there that we all have in common. And Indigenous intellectual property rights, our medicines and stories for instance...issues of climate change and there's substantial things that we all have in common, trade relations with each other, the ability to trade not just in goods perhaps, but to trade in ideas and thoughts. Those are things that are important."

Ian Record:

"You've been discussing international relations primarily between tribal peoples, between tribal nations. Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians has also been very active in the arena of intergovernmental relations between your band and other local governments, state governments and that sort of thing. I'm wondering if you could discuss in what areas is your nation currently engaged in that arena? I know, for instance, you have cross-deputization agreements with two counties. Maybe talk a little bit more about what your tribe is doing in that area."

Frank Ettawageshik:

"And we've come a long way from the point...quite a long time ago as the chair, I received a letter from a local prosecutor who indicated that our police were impersonating police officers and they couldn't be on the roads with their lights and they couldn't have car with emblems and most importantly they couldn't have radios with those little chips in them that allowed them to pick up police frequencies and that I had 10 days to deliver them to them. So we wrote them a letter back and said "˜You know where those cars are, you are welcome to takes those anytime you want, but as soon as you do be prepared for a visit from the U.S. Attorney.' So we called the U.S. Attorney and had a nice chat and that same person ended up signing off on a limited deputization agreement within about a year and a half after that and then we have full deputization that has been signed since then with two different counties. We worked on trying to have seamless public safety within the community. We didn't want to be a haven for people who were breaking the law on one side of a line and then crossing the other and then thumbing their nose at the police or things like that. So we worked hard to make sure that when there's a search and rescue for instance that is going on, our officers are trained and a part of the team and can help. And the public safety of the community is enhanced because they have this additional training. In addition to that, we have crowd control issues. Our officers have worked on part of the security detail for the governor when the government does the Mackinac Bridge Walk every year. And every year it's a five-mile span. Every year on Labor Day we walk the bridge. It's a huge crowd and frankly, they pull in different local people and our officers as well. We also work closely with the county and state police. One of the stories from this inter-cooperative agreement kind of thing that we've been able to do: we had the U.S. attorney general come to visit at Little Traverse. And we had all kinds of security things and there's all kind of things you have to do. We, of course, had to have a bomb dog to sweep the whole building and they have this and that and all kind of things. And as he was leaving after this meeting, and he was meeting with all the tribes in Michigan, and after he was leaving, he pulled out from our grounds and drove by Little Bear Cave and saw that there was a state trooper, country sheriff, a city policeman, and tribal police all standing together chatting right there. And we got a call from the FBI in the car with him. He got a question, 'How did we do that?' But that was part of what we tried to do, we tried to build that relationship. We also, if they come on our territory unannounced, we're not against making sure that they know that they're not supposed to do it. So if we had an investigation going on and they forgot to call us or something, we'd let them know. But likewise, if we did something that they didn't like, they'd let us know, so we developed, what we did is we built in safety valves in our relationships so that they were there if there was an issue, we had a way to deal with it right away. And so it's been a cooperative venture when the sheriff of both counties and his deputies show up and they stood before me as the tribal chairman and took an oath to uphold the tribal constitution and all of our laws, that was a pretty big step."

Ian Record:

"This case is interesting because it calls to mind this perspective or mindset you used to see more in Indian Country than you do now, but the idea that, well if you enter an agreement or develop a formal relationship with a local municipality just off the reservation, or a county or a township or something like that, you're somehow relinquishing your sovereignty because those are minor-league governments and we're sovereign nations. That -- from what I can gather -- that perspective is being replaced gradually by the perspective that when a tribe chooses to engage those other governments, in whatever way they see fit, that it's actually an exercise of sovereignty. How do you see what your tribe's been doing in that area?"

Frank Ettawageshik:

"Well, that's exactly the way I'd put it, it is an exercise of sovereignty. An example of an exercise of sovereignty working locally is if you have someone slip and fall at your casino and they hurt themselves and they sue you, of course you've got the insurance company, but if the insurance company turns around and claims sovereign immunity every time somebody sues what are you paying the insurance for? So an exercise of sovereignty, one that helps us protect us and our customers would be [what we did] is to waive our sovereign immunity up to the limits of our insurance policy so that someone could sue and be taken care of if they needed to be, therefore getting what we were paying for when we bought our insurance. Well, that's an example of an exercise of sovereignty that works well. And governments waive sovereignty on a regular basis for things. I mean they waive their immunity but never waive sovereignty, let me correct myself there. And that exercising your sovereignty through a waiver of immunity is a responsible thing for a government to do towards its own citizens and towards the citizens of other nations with which we deal: our customers at the casino, our guests at the gas station, the customers coming by, and we have a hotel and we have conferences there, we have lots of people coming through. We have to deal with the issues of...I mean, one of the issues we ran into was within Indian Country it was illegal for anyone to carry a firearm unless there was some law that was passed that allowed it. So in the absence of it, it's illegal to have it. Well we had guests; we had the outdoor writers coming as an association. They were coming to our hotel and one of the things they were going to do was a rabbit hunt and they had all brought their guns and it was going to be illegal for them to have them in their room, to have them in their car in the parking lot, and so we had to pass a law that allowed how this set up, how this was going to happen. It was one of those responsibilities of being a sovereign that it became important to work on."

Ian Record:

"And so what you're saying is it's not just international relations, it's not just a sovereign challenge involving other governments, but involving individuals who are citizens of those governments, individuals like these sports writers and the casino patrons and so forth."

Frank Ettawageshik:

"Well, ultimately it actually is dealing with the other sovereign, it's just that the other sovereign has citizens. And so as you interact with those citizens, you're interacting with that other sovereign government and you have to figure out how that's going to be done. So those are just some examples of things that we had to do that I felt are important. And ultimately, these things were things that our tribal council passed as laws and our tribal courts have worked to enforce and for the police and the courts to go through this. And so this is our tribal government at work in the process of making laws, being responsible, and exercising sovereignty."

Ian Record:

"I wanted to follow up a little bit more on intergovernmental relations. And obviously the water accord that your nation participated in is one example of many that your tribe's been engaged in developing over the course of the last several decades. And I'm curious to get your thoughts about taking collectively all those relationships that you developed, all those formal agreements you forged, how do those collectively work to advance your nation's rebuilding efforts."

Frank Ettawageshik:

"Well, the prior administration to me, actually it was a four-year time period when I was not in office and during that time period, our tribe was one of the tribes that worked with the governor of the state in a tribal-state accord in which the State of Michigan acknowledged sovereignty of the tribes, pledged to work together and establish certain things that they would do. We...I came back in office, we were preparing to have, I think one of the first meetings where we'd all get together following that. And as we were preparing for that meeting, I just don't like to go to meetings where the outcome of the meeting is, "˜Well, we'll have another meeting.' I'd really like to actually have a product from the meeting. And I spoke about that and wanted to do that, other people agreed, and as a collective we developed a water accord with the State of Michigan. So this was how the tribes and the state would deal with the collective, our collective interest in the waters of the state. And the accord itself was one that's right about...it's on the heels of our tribal and First Nations water accord and it's all this, this time period is all sort of involved in the same effort. But with this one, instead of the tribes pledging to work together, we pledged to work together with the state and establish twice-yearly meetings, staff-level meetings, not elected-level, but staff-level meetings where we would deal with the issues of what came up relative to water. And of course water is part of the environment, so certain environmental things started coming in. Subsequent to that, we came up with another agreement that we put together creating an accord on economic development. And then we came up with an addendum to that, creating, establishing an agreement to do and economic development fellows program that would say, half state, half tribal –- state folks and tribal folks –- that would work say, over a couple-year period to get a cohort of participants on the same page relative to the issues of economic development in Indian Country. Well this has been a little slower to take, but it's been one that's been brewing and we have a meeting coming up in just a couple weeks from the day we're doing this interview that, where we're going to be furthering some of those issues with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

Well, those are some of the things that we did and then, we also have signed a climate action, climate accord, dealing with climate change issues, also establishing twice-yearly meetings. I served on the Michigan Climate Action Council. I was appointed by the governor to be part of that council that helped create the plan for the reduction of the emission of greenhouse gasses and all the different issues surround climate change. And we turned in a report to the governor, and part of that report recommended that the tribe, that the state negotiate and sign with the tribes a climate accord. And the reason for that is because tribes are not political subdivisions of the state and it made, it would've been really difficult to incorporate us into the state's plan, but part of the state's plan was to sign an accord with us to work out common issues. And also part of the state's plan was to work with tribal organizations to further the issues. So for instance, they send a rep to the National Congress of American Indians' meetings relative to climate change, and to NTEC, the National Tribal Environmental Council, other meetings to make sure that they're, the state is sort of on sync with those things. So that's part of how we do with that accord. So when you look at each one of these accords, you put all this together, the tribal-state accord and the water, the economic development, the climate accord, you put all that together in terms of how we've related to the state, we've...I guess I should mention a couple of other things.

We also signed a tax agreement with the state. The state realized that we probably could go to court, which other tribes had done and that it was going to cost both of us millions of dollars and the outcome was uncertain. The uncertainty was there enough for the state that they felt that it was worthwhile trying to find a way to negotiate. So we ended up with a tribal-state tax agreement that is negotiated as a whole, then signed individually with the tribes and there's slight variations in each of them, but they're all pretty much set up...the system and then that also establishes an annual meeting where we get together to talk about the issues related to the taxes in the state. And sometimes our meetings, we've actually had a couple meetings that were over in 20 minutes. We had the meeting, we all got there, and we said, "˜Boy, it's really nice not to have anything to talk about.' So we chat with each other a little bit, reacquaint ourselves and eat a donut or two and we're done. Other times, we are actually in very long discussions and I've been in both of those kind [of meetings]. But the tax agreement was basically how the state is not going to collect taxes that it can't collect and what the mechanism is going to be for that. Well, these are other things that helped establish things. So we did this without having to go to court over the issue. And we believe that we got things that we wouldn't have gotten had we gone to court, but we also perhaps didn't get some things we might have gotten. So the question is, the state, both of us benefitted and we think that it furthered our interest by doing this."

Ian Record:

"I mean, I guess overall, overall from what you're saying, is that by consistently, continuously engaging in these sorts of efforts, you send a very clear message to the outside world -- whether it's the feds, the states, local neighboring communities to the reservation -- that, "˜We're big league governments. We're sovereign nations for real.' And then there's the message that you send to your own citizens. Isn't there a strong message that these sort of actions can send to your own people?"

Frank Ettawageshik:

"Yeah. Well they, I think that and one of the other agreements that we did was we settled U.S. v. Michigan fishing rights case and as we worked on that the original case had been filed years ago and then it was bifurcated. The inland portion was sort of put on idle and the Great Lakes portion proceeded through court and we won the right in court and there have been a 15-year and then a 20-year consent decree that have been negotiated on how we are going to exercise that right on the Great Lakes and so we continue to work with the five tribes in the state that are involved in that. Well, the inland portion eventually got to the point where it eventually where it was heating up and looked like it was getting ready to go to trial and we actually hired our witnesses and expert witnesses and we had done depositions and we were moving towards court, but we at the same time worked and a couple opportunities came up and we moved ahead in some negotiations and we thought we try to negotiate. We successfully negotiated a settlement in the inland portion of the U.S. v. Michigan fishing, hunting and gathering rights case. Unprecedented. I believe it's an exceptional agreement in that the tribes gave up things that we surely would have won had gone to court, but those are things that we already were not likely to want to exercise ourselves and one of them was commercialization of inland harvest and also putting gillnets in inland streams and rivers. Both of those were things that we didn't think were too wise, but we could have won those rights and probably would have if gone to court.

However, the state stipulated without going to trial that our treaty right existed perpetually. It's a permanent consent decree and so this was a big deal to us. The second thing was is that they ended up agreeing that we could exercise that right on property that the tribe owned whether they had just purchased it or whether it had been purchased years before and or whether it was a part of the reservation, whatever. They also agreed to do this on private lands with permission and this is way more than we would have won had we gone to court. So we think that we got a lot of things that are very important to us and gave up things, while they are important, they also were worth it in the deal and this is without spending millions of dollars and continuing to spend. It would have been appealed; it would have been a 10-year case by the time it went on. This was a success.

Well, what did that do in the end? At the end when we got this agreement, together we had the state DNR [Departemtn of Natural Resources] touting the agreement and holding classes and seminars around the state to let their citizens know about this agreement and to say why it was such a great idea and we had tribes doing the same thing, but on top of that we also had the various sportsmen associations and the lake owners' associations that had been advising the state on the case and had been working with the state and they called it, the term was "˜litigating amicae,' which I understand is a term that the judge may have made up, I don't know at the time, but they were parties to the case and to that extent -- not parties, but they were amicae. Well, we had these groups, the Michigan United Conservation Club, the lake owners' association, and they were all promoting this so that instead of...result of this and in other states have had to call out the National Guard when they were dealing with this issue when they have really potential dangerous things going on and in Michigan when we got this settlement, everybody realized that it was going to protect the resources and it worked with minor exceptions here and there. I mean there were some tribal members that were upset and there were others. I mean we had some folks just as soon die on the sword, they would just as soon fight and lose rather than negotiate. There was more honor in that. And to me, I look at it, I wasn't worried about my honor or I was worried about that, what I was worried about is the long term. What are our great-great grandchildren going to be doing? And now in Michigan, they're going to be exercising treaty rights."

Ian Record:

"That's a great story and we're seeing more and more of those kind of stories across Indian Country because, I guess, this realization that negotiation, if done right and if done for the right reasons, can bring you much greater outcomes in both in the present and in the future than litigation. Because litigation, even if you win the case, there's this issue of enforcement can be very costly and then there's this issue of litigation begets more litigation. And then, on the flipside though, I mean you have negotiation where it sounds to me like this served as a springboard from improving relations between traditional adversaries, improving relations or perhaps dampening hostilities that had long been there. And, I mean, do you foresee this consent decree as perhaps serving as a springboard for other forms of cooperation in other areas."

Frank Ettawageshik:

"Well, it's important that we sort of keep it alive. One of the things there is from this is there's an annual meeting, executive council, where all of the parties come together to deal with issues. And we have issues; we have issues. We'll have members who push things a little bit. We'll have state game wardens push things the wrong way a little bit and then we'll have to, we have to work through all those things. We'll have disputes about what actually was meant by a sentence and there will be differing views on that and those are things that have to be worked out. But in the process of doing that, we have regular relations; we worked hard and we developed a level of respect for each other and trust that we could achieve, that we were working together on an issue. It wasn't just working against each other. There are times, believe me, out of these...these were tough negotiations, these were not easy. I mean every one of us at the table, every one of the tribes, the state, I mean everybody at the table at some point or another was the one who walked away, and then came back, but everybody got upset. You don't have forty-some people negotiating every three or four or five weeks or two or three days at a time...that takes a long time. So some of those days were long days. We had some 10-12 hour days we were doing this. And so it was tough, but in the end we got something good, and these kind of agreements, building these relationships help because our tribal citizens...I'm a member of Farm Bureau for instance and I look at...we have other people that are members of Trout Unlimited and all the other groups. We have people, lake front owners that are part of lake owners' associations. So our citizens are actually a part of all these other groups with whom we were dealing and we need to strengthen those things. We need to let people know. So now when we do a fish assessments, it's just as common to have the tribes and the state out working doing the assessment fishing on a lake all together because the state's in a budget crunch and so are we, we have our equipment, when we all work together we have enough to do a big job, but just by ourselves none of us really could do that big job all by ourselves. So when we're doing the shock boat and the fish assessing and trying to explain to people that we're not killing the fish, the mortality rate is less than one percent with a shock boat that we have, those are good things and it's good to be working together on this stuff. In the end, what we're doing is we're all working toward similar goals. We aren't always going to agree, but then that's part of governance. In fact, if everybody agreed, that's a little dangerous. You need to have that, a little bit of tension in there to make sure you're doing things right."

Ian Record:

"So you mentioned the hard work that's involved with establishing, cultivating and maintaining these relationships. I'm curious, based upon your extensive experience in this area, what advice would you give to Native nations and leaders for how to build effective, sustainable governmental relationships?"

Frank Ettawageshik:

"Patience. One of the, probably the biggest thing I learned and one of the things that guided me is that eventually, eventually comes and that you need to work towards things. You need to be willing to work a little piece at a time. You need to have a sort of longer-term vision about where things are. I was out walking the other day on a path, and I was, I was looking up at the mountains and to my detriment, I tripped on something right in front of me. But if you look in front of you all the time, you never see the mountains, you never see the other things around you because you're paying so much attention right in front of you. You have to -- without endangering yourself -- have to be looking up as well as in front of you. I think that that's a part of the whole thing about this patience. You have to have a longer-term vision and the government itself needs to work through and think about those longer-term visions."

Ian Record:

"And doesn't that involve educating citizens because leaders? As you've often said, leaders are transitory, they come and go, and some of these efforts are multi-year, if not multi-decade to get the outcome that you've been seeking at the beginning and doesn't that require, I guess, a certain level of understanding and approval by your own people that this is a priority of the nation?"

Frank Ettawageshik:

"Yes. I mean, it's really important for people to understand what...like I said in the beginning when we looked at the constitution and I said the constitution is the method by which the people inform their government how they want it to work. The people need to always be aware of and remember that that is what that is and that they...so they need to understand where those things are when you have a constitution that has a focus on international relations. They need to...when you have your budget hearings, there need to be...someone needs to stand up and speak up and support that budget line item that's going to involve some international travel, some travel that needs to be done. When you have...you have to have...people need to be aware of how things work to know how to allocate resources and how to support that or detriment. One of the issues that I see across Indian Country that I think is...it's a big issue and that is that leaders who do a lot of this international work with other tribes or that are working in a basis across the country often are away from home a fair amount and that needs to be supported. But too often people think that those of us who are traveling are wasting tribal resources, that we are out having a good time, that we're enjoying things at the tribe's expense and that there is no need to be doing this anyway. And so when people are traveling often there is quite a pressure or a candidate becomes vulnerable because of being gone and traveling. So you have to balance that domestic program within your nation with the international program and you have to find out how to balance that, but with the people themselves, there needs to be an acceptance. I was recently -- after I had left the chairmanship -- I attended a conference and elected leaders were taking it on the chin pretty high at the conference over the days because most of them...there were very few elected leaders at this conference. It was almost all other folks: individual activists and former elected leaders, but lots of people were very involved in working on environmental issues, but...and so I, towards the end of the conference I got up and set my regular program aside and I said, 'Listen. You've been...you're sort of upset because elected leaders aren't here.' I said, "˜When's the last time you ever thanked your leader for attending a national meeting like this. When the last time you went to a budget hearing and demanded they put more money in there in the line item for travel so that the leaders could afford to go? When's the last time you wrote a letter or stood up and supported this outside external activity at a community meeting or in conversations in your family or things? You need constantly, if you want leaders to do those things, you can't complain because they don't. You need to actually support them when you do, that way it becomes a priority and if that's really the priority for our nations to make sure that we have this balance between domestic programs and international programs.' We have to have a populace that actually understands and supports why that is necessary, and it becomes necessary. Going to Washington, D.C. is critical for leaders because the U.S. Congress passes laws that effect...while they can't, their laws don't limit our tribal sovereignty, they certainly can limit how we exercise our sovereignty. They limit how Health and Human Services can deal with us. They can limit how the justice system deals with us. And so because of that, it's important for us to pay attention to those laws and it's important for us to know what's going on and to have the relationships necessary there that when we speak, we're not going just to build a relationship. We're going and we already are known so that we can carry through on the issues that support us. And there are plenty of people that are going there on a regular basis who are detractors of tribal sovereignty and don't support tribal sovereignty and who want to do everything they can to do away with it or limit it or whatever. And so we have to constantly be on target and work on these things and that's a very important part of that international because we're dealing with tribal nations to the United States, that's an international arrangement. We have to be very careful on how it works. So it's essential to do that kind of stuff. We also have to do that with our state government because a lot of the funding that tribes get comes from federal government, but it's funneled through the states, even though we'd like them to all have set-asides and deal directly with...so that the tribes deal directly with the feds on those things. There's a number of programs that go through the state and the manner in which the state chooses to set up its programs, how they choose to write their programs or write their proposals and their agreements with the feds can limit how they deal with tribes. So you're constantly having to pay attention to that. And you have people who, once again, would be supporters and other people who wouldn't, but for the most part you also have people that just don't know. And so it's constantly our responsibility to make sure that they do. And whatever mechanism, whether it's the tribal leader going or whether there's an ambassador, I think that we could... I think there's a time coming as we're evolving our tribal governments that we're going to actually have people that ambassadorial function may well be through an ambassador at large. Some of the tribes already have these. And I believe that this relationship with the other governments with whom we deal, we need to have staff people that can deal with that. I use an example, the recent arms treaty signed, where the presidents of Russia and the United States were together to sign the treaty. You know that the two of them did not sit down and hammer that treaty out. They had staff that were working for years on this to work together how to deal with it and may have met a couple times to iron out a point or two, but for the most part, their major thing was to have the photo op of them signing it and shaking hands to sign the treaty and that was the top of the executive functions there. And then of course it's got to be ratified, yet. Well, these are...our governments function in the same way. We have those same kind of interplay of things and...but we need to make sure that we have built in the ability to deal with other governments and that it's a very important role for our tribal nations."

Ian Record:

"I wanted to switch gears, one last question before we wrap up this interview, to tribal justice systems and specifically ask you a question about the Odawa Youth Health to Wellness Court, which your tribe established several years ago, which by all accounts has proven quite successful. I'm curious to learn more about why did the tribe establish this program? How is it structured? And how has it benefitted your community?"

Frank Ettawageshik:

"Well, we clearly have a problem that other communities have, other tribal nations have. As to why we have it, I guess that's another whole other story, but the fact that we actually have this problem with drugs and we have problem with the youth and there are individuals who just don't seem to be able to respond to parental controls and/or other societal controls and end up being in the court system; and the court system is basically a win/lose kind of system. We've tried to develop other systems that are options and this is an option and can be chosen by someone who is before the court, by the youth and this particular thing is based around that wrap around concept where we have staff from a lot of different departments. I think there's 10 different departments, but they are all working with one youth and their parents and all focused on one case. There's responsibilities on all their parts by bringing a multi-disciplinary approach to this wrap around concept we're able to see success with individuals we had not been able to see success with other programs. This has gotten so successful that we have actually had offenders that are before the local county court who they've offered the option of coming to our program and actually people who they didn't have to assign to the program at all, the local judges have sent people to our program and has been because they recognize the success of it. So this is another way of building an intergovernmental relationship, building community relations with various institutions with whom you have to deal in the community."

Ian Record:

"And this, from what I understand, this health to wellness court is not so much focused on punishment, but on restoring health and harmony not only to the individual defender, but also to their family, to their community at large. Is that true?"

Frank Ettawageshik:

"Yes. And I think that that part of the approach, restoring balance is important. And I think that's true in a lot of our programs, that's one of the things we try to focus on. And we have, when you follow our traditional teachings, that whole thing of being in balance is your goal, it's the center, it's what you try to achieve, where you're not at any one extreme. No matter how that extreme may seem, as you move towards that, you're pulling away from being in balance and so something else gets out of balance. So the whole goal is to try to maintain that calm center in order to achieve that. In our traditional ways, that's one of the teachings. And so when we apply those teachings to, trying to apply them to court systems, trying to apply them to our various other social programs, frankly I'm working on how we apply the teachings of the medicine wheel to our budgets. How do we take a budget and determine whether that budget is in balance? And I think that the way we spend our money, the way we allocate our resources, can be just as out of balance as any other thing and it can be symptomatic of we might be having problems in our tribal community that are inexplicable to us. And it could be because the way we're choosing to allocate our resources is out of balance. And so, to me, this is something I'm working on and particularly now that I'm no longer the tribal chair, but I have time to reflect on these things. I want to work on that issue and try to see how that can be, that idea can be furthered."

Ian Record:

"Well Frank, I really appreciate your time today. I've learned quite a bit and I'm sure our listeners and viewers have as well."

Frank Ettawageshik:

"Thank you."

Ian Record:

"Well, that's it for today's program of Leading Native Nations. To learn more about Leading Native Nations, please visit the Native Nations Institute's website: nni.arizona.edu. Thank you for joining us."

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times: Mike Williams

Producer
Institute for Tribal Government
Year

Produced by the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University in 2004, the landmark “Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times” interview series presents the oral histories of contemporary leaders who have played instrumental roles in Native nations' struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights. The leadership themes presented in these unique videos provide a rich resource that can be used by present and future generations of Native nations, students in Native American studies programs, and other interested groups.

In this interview, conducted in November 2001, Yupiaq Nation Chief Mike Williams discusses his fervent commitment to his people's subsistence way of life and how he runs the Iditarod dog sled race every year to promote sobriety, healthy lifestyles, and education for Alaskan children.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Institute for Tribal Government.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Williams, Mike. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Spokane, Washington. November 2001. Interview. 

Kathryn Harrison:

"Hello. My name is Kathryn Harrison. I am presently the Chairperson of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I have served on my council for 21 years. Tribal leaders have influenced the history of this country since time immemorial. Their stories have been handed down from generation to generation. Their teaching is alive today in our great contemporary tribal leaders whose stories told in this series are an inspiration to all Americans both tribal and non-tribal. In particular it is my hope that Indian youth everywhere will recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by these great tribal leaders."

[Native music]

Narrator:

"Mike Williams is a Yupiaq Eskimo born in the small village of Akiak, Alaska, in 1952 to the late Tim Williams, Chief of the Tribal Government of Akiak and Helena Williams, the sister of the traditional Chief Joe Lomack. As a child, Mike went with his family from camp to camp during the year with subsistence hunting and fishing, gathering food for the family and also for the dog teams. It was very hard but a good life, he recalls. Everything in the village was taken care of by a tribal council. Mike Williams learned the geography, the names of the rivers and landmarks and how his people had existed in earlier times from his grandmother. He grew up speaking only the Yupiaq language. He had two sisters and six brothers. All his brothers died due to accidents in the river or falling through ice. Mike is dedicated to telling the local and global community that accidental deaths can be avoided and that an alcohol and drug free life can be realized by his people. After boarding school at Wrangell Institute in southeast Alaska he attended high school at Chemawa Indian School in Oregon where he excelled in athletics, football, track and field and basketball. But sports alone did not satisfy him. He ran for and was elected student body president. A lifelong interest in politics and the rights of tribes was sparked at Chemawa where he was able also to build friendships with young people from many different tribes. One of his advisers, a Rosebud Sioux, saw his leadership potential and sent him to a summer leadership training institute. After high school Mike was drafted into the U.S. Army and served in South Korea. Returning to Alaska, he worked as a mental health counselor in Bethel and continued his education in Behavioral Science at Kuskokwin Community College. Mike Williams is a dedicated public servant of more than 30 years working with both Native and non-Native organizations. Today he is chairman of the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council. He has been vice chairman of the Alaska State Board of Education and held offices with the National Congress of American Indians, the Alaska Humanities Forum and the Native American Rights Fund. He has served as the Director of the Alaska State Governor's Alcohol and Substance Abuse Advisory Board. Mike has been honored with the Most Inspirational Award in the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. Among the other honors he has received are Alaska State Legislature Award of Honor for Sobriety Advocacy and the Citizen of the Year Award of the National Social Worker's Association, Alaska Chapter. He is passionate about protecting tribal governments, the rights of tribes and building economic self-sufficiency for Alaska Natives. Dog mushing is his culture and it is his tradition. He runs the Iditarod Dog Sled Race to promote sobriety, healthy lifestyles and quality education for his people. Mike married his wife Maggie in 1976 and they have five children. His wife and family have always supported his mushing career. Without their full hearted support he maintains he could not lead the busy life of an advocate for tribes, mental health counselor and runner for sobriety. He also continues subsistence hunting and fishing and enjoys reading and karate. The Institute for Tribal Government interviewed Mike Williams in Spokane, Washington, November, 2001."

The several worlds of Mike William's childhood

Mike Williams:

"Well, when I was a little child my role model was my father of course and he was an avid dog musher and also a subsistence hunter and fisher and a good one. And I wanted to be the greatest hunter and fisherman that ever lived in our lands and to provide for my family, to provide a good home and to manage our resources. So in terms of wanting to do something for the community, I think my parents were really advocates for learning the White man ways and the words as much as we can and that was very important for them. For my dad to tell me that I have to learn as much as I can of the words of the White man and that I would need that western education to protect our resources. So I think that...he did a good job in terms of keeping my identity intact while sacrificing me to this new education and I think he wanted me to know both worlds and I think he did a very good job."

On keeping the Yupiaq language intact, different approaches of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the missionaries

Mike Williams:

"Well, I think the missionaries came to us and the Moravian Church at that time. They came and they advocated for us to keep our language intact and I think it was the BIA schools, the Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, that discouraged speaking of our language in the classes and they are the ones that washed my dad's mouth with soap and my mother's mouth with soap for speaking in our own language in our schools. But the missionaries for some odd reason advocated that our language should be intact and that our culture and the dance should be intact and it was our own people that did it to ourselves with our Yupiaq dance. Missionaries for the most part wanted us to keep our way of life intact. One of the missionaries by the name of John Kilbuck was a Delaware Indian and he came from the Delaware Tribe and came up to us as a missionary to our community in Akiak. And he's the one that spoke to our people about establishing reservations for people and to keep our language intact and to keep our culture intact and he, I think, was a big influence to the missionaries that came to our communities. And he was a big advocate for to claim our land. And in the long run I think the missionaries tried to help as much as they can in keeping our culture and our languages alive. And they have done a lot of translating of the Bible to our language and we have a written language. And they have done a very good job of...my grandfather and my grandmother were involved in translating the Word and they translated the whole New Testament from English to Yupiaq so they did a very good job of that. And right now they're translating the whole Old Testament from English to Yupiaq, word for word. So they're doing a very good job. But all in all I think for the most part the federal government or the Bureau of Indian Affairs tried to assimilate us into who we aren't and to the melting pot of the American society and that our way of life can be better and that our way of life can be better in terms of our living conditions and our ways of doing things. So I think for the most part the education program tried to change us into who we aren't."

As a child and teen, boarding schools contrasted with the traditional life Williams had known

Mike Williams:

"My older brothers were the first ones to go to boarding schools in Chemawa, Oregon, and some of them ended up in Chilocco Indian School and Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka. So at age 14 I was removed and put in a dormitory and all the rules and regulations and the haircuts. It was a very tough change from living in Akiak with loving parents and community and no running water and no electricity and no television and going into Wrangell Institute was a big change when there was television and there were phones. And I remember this guy, one of the teachers, teaching us how to use telephones. ‘And this is a telephone and this is how you dial.' That was a very big change. We never thought about watching television, we never grew up watching television and there we watched, the first time I seen a football game and other programs as TV shows as well. nd that was a big change and having to live with rules and regulations and with others. It was a big change and we were homesick and we wanted to go home because it was a very strange environment. I just questioned why my parents allowed this to happen. We would go home in the summers and then Chemawa Indian School came around and again our parents sacrificed us saying that, ‘education is very important, you need to learn the White man ways and get Western education.' So off we went to Chemawa Indian School. Again it was a very big change from going to Wrangell Institute to high school. And I think that was one of the best parts of going to an Indian school is I have made many friends from all over Alaska and other tribes and all over northwest and in the Navajo country. It was a hard adjustment from a loving family into a dorm life and at a very young age. But again, I think our parents keep telling us or keep writing to us that, ‘education is very important, that we need for you to learn as much as you can so... there are going to be some issues coming up with our lands and our resources that you need to fight on.' So encouragement by our parents to go on and the sacrifice they made for the children to go on was very difficult for us but I think it was... they felt it was necessary and they knew our language was intact and our culture was intact but they felt that we needed to learn the other ways as well. I think that was a very tough experience but I think it was a very good experience in terms of establishing contacts with the people in the northwest and the Navajo country and to see tribal governments in operation at first hand and getting involved in school politics as well. So I think that was a very good experience in terms of playing sports as well. We've seen some football games on TV but we wanted to play. A lot of us Eskimos came down and we've never put on uniforms to play football and we just seen excerpts of football games when we were going to Wrangell Institute. And I never dreamed that I would be playing football and there was several of us Eskimos that put on the equipment. And one memorable experience that I've seen was the hip pads that came along with the equipment. We were discussing the Inupiat and Yupiaq people and the coaches didn't tell us how to put on the equipment but we had to figure that out. And we put on our shoulder pads and the hip pads were very, the hardest one to figure out because of the tailbone or tail guard that we were wondering what we needed that for. But we put on the hip pads and we figured that it was to protect our private parts. So we Eskimos, we turned it around and we thought that tail guard was for protection of our private parts. But that was the most uncomfortable feeling after putting the pants on and a lot of us were running outside to practice but it was very uncomfortable in running and we were wondering why the coaches didn't tell us what those protections were for. That was for tail bone protection. So we reversed it and that was a little more comfortable. But I think with all those changes, those were very interesting and learning experiences for us. It was a big change, a major change from living in a small community and the school was four times big as my community. It was, I think the transition was pretty rapid but again we were homesick, we wanted to go home and hunt and fish and to live that life in the wilderness. I really missed hunting and fishing and that was the hardest part."

Learning politics and leadership at Chemawa Indian School

Mike Williams:

"I've had three years of sports but politics sort of interested me. I need to do something different, I need to try politics so I ran for student body president and I didn't know...I organized my campaign and had a campaign manager, which I picked out a popular guy in our school and he eventually delivered but I didn't know anything about Robert's Rules of Order and how to run meetings period. I was very green in terms of running meetings and politics and budgeting and setting policy with our schools. I didn't know what I was getting into. I think that was the best move that I've ever made in terms of establishing myself and leadership skills into the future. Of course sports were there but I seen myself not becoming a professional sports person, playing football or basketball. I wasn't tall enough to play college basketball or become a professional athlete. So I seen the opportunity with politics and that was the first time I was prepared for leadership positions where I had a real good adviser that was from Rosebud and he's a Sioux and he was a very knowledgeable adviser. He pointed me in the right direction and went to summer leadership institute and getting me away from fishing. And I went to St. Louis, Missouri for the summer to learn about how to become a leader and that was an institute for student body presidents, which all the presidents, the majority of presidents were from all over the schools in the country, from New York, from Florida, from all over. I think it was a very good experience for me and I learned how to run meetings and to know about Robert's Rules of Order and how to conduct meetings and to provide, how to provide leadership. It opened my eyes during that one summer when I would go there and participate with other leaders or school student body presidents. And it was a good learning experience on how to be a leader."

Alaska becomes the 49th state in 1959

Mike Williams:

"I was seven years old when Alaska became a state and I was 17 years old when Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was passed in 1971. At that time many of our people were out hunting and fishing and gathering and many of our people did not participate in the statehood movement and I think there was only one Alaska Native in that first constitutional convention that they gathered. Our people for the most part weren't involved in the shaping of our state constitution and it was for the most part people from the outside that established the State of Alaska and our people for the most part did not participate in that because of the remoteness of our communities. But there was news in 1959 that Alaska became a state and without any consultation or without any input by our Native people. And after that I think the state keep selecting lands or taking lands and people keep getting land and that's when I think Morris Udall said, ‘Gee whiz, people are keeping taking land here and there. We need to have a land freeze.' And the oil was discovered in the North Slope and that I think prompted the land to be settled and without any settlement. The pipeline couldn't be built from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez and everybody knew there was oil. And again our people during that time were not fully participating and there was no consent by the tribal governments at that time."

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act passed by Congress in 1971 eliminated 90 percent of Alaska Native land claims in exchange for guarantees of 44 million acres and a cash settlement

Mike Williams:

"And I was in Chemawa Indian School in 1969, '70, '71 and '72 and graduated in '72. But in 1969, '70 and '71 we took the land claims class and we studied the land claims and we were wondering why Alaska Natives were giving away our rights. Our aboriginal title was hereby extinguished; our hunting and fishing rights were hereby extinguished by the act. And all these extinguishments, we were wondering why Alaska Natives are agreeing to this. And being a junior in 1971 after studying the land claims with my peers we disagreed with the act and we felt that it was in the way terminating our rights, our lands and that we rightfully have and especially our aboriginal title to the land that people agreed to. Again we didn't have any say so being a very naí¯ve and very young person but I had strong feelings and my position was that Alaska Native people, our people should not agree to this bill or this land claims bill that diminishes our existence as people and that way we felt that it was a termination process for our people. And we tried to voice those concerns to our representatives and to people in Congress but it fell to deaf ears and we know it was crafted by the lobbyists that had interest in oil development and also by Congress. Congress convinced the Alaska Natives that we had a better deal of 44 million acres and $1 billion that was going to be going to our people to settle the land and that we would finally have land, our land. But I think we lost a lot in that, the land claims."

After military service Williams decides to train himself to be an educator and a politician

Mike Williams:

"After high school, I always wanted to be a coach and to involve myself into politics. And my thoughts were to become a teacher and to involve myself in making my people stronger in terms of getting ready for land claims and the land settlement. And also the problems that I've seen in the Native community that I wanted to do something further with our young people. And that is one of the reasons why I have been focusing on educational programs in Alaska. My brother and I were the last ones to be drafted into the United States Army. And I know I could have gotten deferment but we were the last ones to be drafted in the draft era and my brother ended up in Vietnam and he was there prior to my entry to the U.S. Army. And they couldn't send us both to Vietnam so I ended up in South Korea. And while he was serving in Vietnam I was serving in South Korea in the Army. That was one of the best experiences that I had in terms of learning more about discipline and about the protection of our country and the importance of services and being in the service. And my thinking at that point, ‘Well, I'll go along with the draft and further take advantage of the GI bill.' After my service in South Korea I became disabled and lost one eye and got out on a disability and decided to come back home. My brother and I came back home at the same time and he came back from Vietnam alive and I came home the next day. So we had a real good reunion at home. And we were finally, the family was finally together. But unfortunately after three months of stay by my older brother he overdosed on alcohol. And he survived the bullets in Vietnam but he didn't survive alcohol at our home. And that, I just felt, why [did] that happened? But I think he really had a hard time adjusting from the Vietnam experience into Akiak where he was not comfortable and he went through Post Traumatic Syndrome. And we had to deal with that in the three months that we were home and we had to deal with that and the only way that he could numb some of that terrible experience that he's gone through in Vietnam that the only way he could numb himself is through the use of alcohol and other drugs as well."

He begins advocacy for sobriety in the mid 1970s

Mike Williams:

"I decided to get back into the education where I wanted people to change or to avoid the terrible effects of alcohol. And I think that was the beginning of my advocacy for sobriety. And that was a terrible experience that we've gone through and we decided to advocate for sobriety. My dad was one of the first people that advocated for sobriety. So I decided to advocate for mental health programs and also substance abuse programs for treatment of people with problems."

Williams and his wife decide to raise their children in Akiak. He becomes active in the movement for tribal sovereignty.

Mike Williams:

"I was working full time and going to school full time for the two years and started mental health programs throughout Alaska and also substance abuse programs and saying that, ‘we need to take this problem to our own hands and deal with it.' And from there I think that my advocacy for running our programs started in terms of developing our own programs the way I think will work for our people. And at that time I took classes and kept going to school. That is when I met my wife and I decided to, after establishing mental health programs and my college education in Bethel that, and we got married and decided to raise our children back in Akiak, back in our village. And she had gone to school and taken business courses and became a bookkeeper for a very big corporation there in Bethel. So we decided to go back after getting married and raise our children in the village and that was our choice. There I became involved with our tribal government and to reassert our sovereign status and that was...well, when I began the tribal sovereignty movement in our communities and eventually I got elected to the tribal council and as a young man I have been involved with the tribal councils ever since and became, eventually became the chief of the village and of our tribal council. We began the movement at that time that we need to retake our programs and we needed to assert our rights as sovereign governments and despite the Native corporations, both regional corporations and village corporations under the Native Claims Settlement Act and that we need to keep our sovereign rights alive despite the efforts to terminate our rights in Alaska."

Based on the powerful grassroots actions of tribes Congress passes the National Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978

Mike Williams:

"And one of the major issues that we took on at that time, there was the tribal child that was removed by a state social worker and at that time we said, ‘We're tired of seeing many of our children being removed by the state social workers and put them into non-Native homes.' And at that time in 1975, '76, when that child was being removed that we objected to that permanently removing that child from a Native mother to a non-Native family. So we put a stop to that and it was Indian Child Welfare Act at that time and we got this lawyer guy by the name of Bert Terse from New York. and we knew that he was a lawyer from going to meetings, attending NCI meetings and other meetings that go around in the country and we began talking to Bert. We asked who would be a good Indian lawyer that would help us in our community to get that child back and we were very successful. Eventually that child came back to our community. I think that was a significant move by our tribe and that our children will never be removed without our consent or without the agreement of the tribal council, that we really wanted to keep our families together and keep our children in our communities. And I think that was one of the first major work that started in Alaska and we were the major players in asserting our tribal government's rights or keeping our children within the families or relatives in our communities. So that was significant work that we started up there and eventually this kid grew up in Akiak and went to high school in Akiak and during his high school years he became a heavyweight state champion. So I think I love to tell that story where one of our children we protected that eventually became a successful heavyweight champion of the state and he beat the guy by the name of Superman, his last name is Superman. So I think I like to tell that story because it was one of the success stories that we've seen and the significant victory that we had as tribal council in the state. And right now I think the majority of the policies in Alaska before children are being removed that they have a real good working relationship with the tribal governments with the state social service system. So I think that was significant and we also established a Yupiaq Nation where we are sovereign tribes and we want to tell the whole world that we haven't given up our rights and we started the Yupiaq Nation, which we, that despite the land claims and our other rights that were eroded or being extinguished that despite all that we want to keep our rights intact that we still have jurisdiction over our land and we still have jurisdiction over our members and we still have jurisdiction of our resources, which are the moose, the caribou, the fish and everything. And I think under that Yupiaq Nation charter we keep our rights intact."

In 1975 Congress passes the Indian Self Determination Act giving tribal governments more control over their tribal affairs and funds for education assistance

Mike Williams:

"And another significant issue that we took on was the education, the BIA program. And in 1980-85 we decided to contract those educational services to our K-8 program. And we used the Self Determination Act to contract with BIA. When we first started that, BIA said, ‘No, you can't do the contract, you can't do that because you've never ran the education program before and you're not qualified to do that.' We said, ‘Well, according to the Indian Self Determination Act we could do that and despite your objections we're going to do that. Here's the resolution.' And low and behold the Bureau of Indian Affairs said, ‘Okay, let's negotiate. Let's get the budget going.' And so from 1980-1985 we contracted the education program within our community and we hired and fired our administrators and our teachers at will. And that was the first time that we ever had total control over our educational program. And that was significant in a way that after the BIA told us that we could not operate that we went ahead and did that. So those are the two significant movements or efforts that we made at our tribal government level is the protection of our children and also education of our children."

How to prepare for difficult and adversarial situations

Mike Williams:

"Well, I think you have to do your homework and I think with...you have to do a lot of reading and preparing yourselves to really answer the questions that may arise beforehand. And I think with that effort, with the establishment of mental health programs, I think I did a lot of convincing to Indian Health Service and the negotiations. And we ran those programs and we convinced Indian Health Service that we could do that. We convinced that our kids can be protected and we did our homework with that. And also with the establishment of our educational programs, we also did our homework in convincing the passing of the resolution and establishing the school board and then getting the curriculum going and hiring our teachers. I think it takes a lot of planning and it takes a lot of meetings with our community members and we have engaged our tribal members in that process and whatever they mandated us to do we went ahead and did that. So when there is a mandate and when there is a charge for us to carry out something I think we need to be really prepared and have that blessing from the community to do that. And I think for the most part you need to have help from people that have done it before. During the Indian Child Welfare issues that we dealt with we collaborated with the south 48 tribes and we weren't the only ones that were dong that in terms of protecting our kids and there were other tribes from throughout the country that expressed some of those concerns that they had in terms of removal of Indian children from the parents and putting them into non-Indian homes. So we had collaboration going with that as well as the education programs. There were contract schools going on throughout the Indian Country from south 48 so we were collaborating with the Indian tribes that were doing contract work with the educational program. And I think you need to really collaborate with the other people that have done many of those things already so that's what we did and getting the best Indian lawyers we can find and the best people or finding people who've done it before."

Urban and rural issues and conflicts in Alaska

Mike Williams:

"For the most part I think the urban Native and the rural Native in terms of subsistence resources are together. Regardless of where the Alaska Native lives, we feel that that person has all those rights still intact that they can hunt and fish and survive the way they have done for thousands of years. We support that. But in terms of oil development I think that is the real, another real tough issue where the Inupiat people want to have oil development in the Anwar and the Quechan Indians wanting to protect the porcupine caribou who herd in that Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to protect from that development to occur."

Tribal governments, regional Native corporations and nonprofits make a complicated environment for getting things done

Mike Williams:

"We have 229 federally recognized tribes in Alaska and we have 12 nonprofit corporations within each region and we have of course 12 regional corporations and a 13th regional corporation outside of Alaska so it is very unique situation that we are in Alaska and I think in dealing with all those other organizations it makes it more complex. If we had one Indian Country and no corporations it would make life a lot easier in Alaska and do away with Native corporations and nonprofits and just have tribal governments. That would make life a lot simpler and we could do economic development, still run our casinos like the lower 48 and the land and trust issues and healthcare programs and BIA education programs. I think it would make life a lot easier if we had one organization."

Alaska Native subsistence fishing rights were upheld in the Katie John case

Mike Williams:

"For the most part I am a hunter and a fisherman. I am a subsistence hunter and fisherman. I depend on the fishing and hunting to survive and I practice what I preach. And that I will always have and that I will always practice and that I will always do that. Just before coming to NCI I had to really quickly get some fish and I'm trapping fish underneath the ice and I have to fish during the summer and put away and live as I did, as I described growing up in earlier years of my life and the way I was taught and I'm going to live that wonderful way of life that I still enjoy today and having dogs and everything that I need to survive. But the Katie John case, I think the issue has been with us for over 10 years and Katie John is a very good friend and the grandmother of all of the tribes in Alaska as we have gotten to know her and her lawsuit to keep her fishing rights intact where she has always done in Batzulnetas where she always had that fish wheel. She was told that she could not do that where she always filled so she was told that she's got to go way down to the river to get her fish not where her family always have done in Batzulnetas. I think over the years that we've been in court we've become, she has become well known in Alaska and I think the decision for Governor Knowles not to appeal the case was one of the most significant decisions that the governor did in not appealing this case to the United States Supreme Court and that was the major victory by Katie John and that State of Alaska was no longer going to fight her in court and that there was too much risk going in to the Supreme Court that the state might lose and Katie John might, it might become a lose-lose situation instead of a win-win situation for all of Alaska. And I think the governor did the right thing in not appealing the case to the Supreme Court."

Williams service commitment includes work for tribes on the local, regional and national levels

Mike Williams:

I'm currently the Chairman of the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, which we enthusiastically organized in 1992-93. And I think we did the right thing in organizing the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, which we have 187 tribal governments membership just on tribal governments and we just have that membership. And I've been involved ever since in 1970s, 1980 tribal sovereignty movements and organizing of the United Tribes of Alaska and Alaska Native Coalition and then eventually the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council. And currently I'm chairman of that for; I think I'm on my third year now. It's been never a dull moment in that organization and also our involvement with the National Congress of American Indians and I just have been serving my first term as Juneau area vice president for NCAI and I think that is a very important organization that supports tribal sovereignty throughout Indian Country at the national level. I'm in my last term with the Native American Rights Fund Board of Directors. I'm on the executive board right now and I'm on my last year and my last term and I've served for five years and it has been a wonderful experience working with John Echohawk and with the tribal sovereignty issues that we are dealing with throughout Indian Country. I think there's a lot more work to be done in the future with the protection of tribal governments or tribal sovereignty initiatives that we are working on right now. And I think with all that time commitment that is necessary and resources, sometimes I wonder where I'm finding all the time to do all that plus running the Iditarod and that takes more time and seems to...I don't know how I've done it before with full time work. I decided not to work full time anymore because I don't have the time to hold down a job but with the public service commitments that I've made I think that's one of the things that my dad taught me to do is if you believe in public service then do it. And with the support of my family and with the support of my tribe that I'm able to do the statewide organizations that I'm in and national organizations that I'm doing. My tribe has allowed me to do those things as well as my wife and children. So they strongly believe that in order to make a difference you need full support of the tribe and especially your family. So I'm fortunate to have a wife that really supports in what I do and she really believes that what we're doing is because of our future and because of our children. And I think that is what they see as what Chief Joseph did and see what the other warriors did to protect and do things for our future. So I think that's what I'm doing and I feel like I'm doing and I feel like I'm committed to do what is best for my children and for my future. And I have two grandchildren that I think need to be protected. For many years that I've been involved I have seen erosion of tribal sovereignty at the Supreme Court level and I've seen a lot of wars or I've read about all the wars that I've seen in the Indian Country ever since, for the last over 500 years and I feel that those issues are very important right now and we need to continue that battle."

Social, environmental and political dangers that Alaskan tribes face

Mike Williams:

"Well, I think the greatest danger that we face is again, like I've said, is the alcohol and substance abuse that are killing our people up there and suicides that I'm seeing at a very high level and the health programs or the health problems that we are seeing; cancer and diabetes and health problems that are deriving from the mineral development or environmental problems that we are seeing. I think that is the greatest threat I see is our people dying from all the diseases that were brought from the first contact. We had great deaths from influenza, tuberculosis, small pox and other health problems but the industries that develop our resources also has affected environmental problems as well as the changes that are made very quickly with the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, especially our people changing real fast and changing overnight from being hunter/gatherer into the society where we're depending on cash and that transition problem going too fast. And then our people committing themselves, hanging themselves and shooting themselves and especially our young men. Also the erosion of our rights, the hunting and fishing rights and the erosion of tribal sovereignty in Alaska and the threat of being terminated completely as tribes and as Native people there. For many years the State of Alaska under its constitution and its statement that tribes do not exist in Alaska, there was no tribes in Alaska until the last time or this past year that the governor of Alaska finally recognized that there... tribes exist in Alaska. And also selling, the individual Native allotment owners selling their land to the highest bidder or the person that wants to buy it and that has... that's one of the biggest threats is of the loss of our lands and the control over our lands in Alaska."

Education and the protection of tribal self-governance will be Mike Williams' call for years to come

Mike Williams:

"We are intact and we need to make sure that that is protected and regardless of any administration both in federal level or the state level that we keep our tribal sovereignty intact and our sovereign rights intact at the statewide level. And I think we need to continuously educate the public, the organizations, our own Native corporations, our own people, our own backyard where we continuously educate the new people that are coming up from the lower 48 to Alaska and to continuously educate them about our issues and the importance of subsistence hunting and fishing rights and the importance of protection of our lands and protection of our resources. There are a lot of the industries; the oil companies, the mining companies and everybody that wants to take all the trees and everybody wants to come and develop and make the fast buck and go away and leave all the mess to us. That we don't want to see and that we as tribes benefit from that as well. We live in the richest state in the Union but we still live in the third world conditions and we're still trying to get funding from the Department of the Interior for a program to run our programs but we are so rich in our land but we are so poor. We still live in the third world conditions and we need to improve that."

Poverty and tragedy in Native communities and the need for the federal government's response

Mike Williams:

"In our Native corporations I've seen $20 in thirty years out of my Native corporations and that's how much we've seen as shareholders -- $20. Not everyone benefited from that and a lot of small Native, village Native corporations are on the verge of bankruptcy. So we haven't really seen any of the benefits and we still live in the third world conditions. And despite the oil development and despite the dividend program, despite the pipeline and those tribal communities within the pipeline, still haven't seen a dime and we still live in the third world conditions despite all the billions and billions of dollars that we generate. We still haven't really seen the benefits. With the issue of the September 11th disaster, I think our people have gone through that and personally I went through that in my own family in losing six brothers and more of my uncles and my relatives dying of diseases and dying of cancer and dying of what has been brought to our communities. And with the issue of that disaster on September 11th people need to realize what we as Native Americans have gone through or Alaska Natives and we were highly populated once but there were great deaths and that affected by people from the outside bringing in diseases to our communities and loss of our lands through these settlements. We've lost so much and people think that these health programs and education programs and these other programs think it's a free program. No, we paid for it big time already through the loss of our lands and through the people that have died along in the process. So we've had our own disasters here. And when the airline industries are in trouble the federal government just, $5 billion right there and... What about the housing issues and what about the healthcare problems and highest...? We have lowest per capita income in the country. It just...when we keep asking for by resolutions about more funding and better housing, water, educational program, healthcare program, all we hear is budget cuts. And that I think, here our people are dying, what are you going to do? Are you going to give us relief? And we haven't seen that. I wish the government would treat us as they treated the airline industry or the savings and loan scandal, when the banks are in trouble then the federal government comes in, ‘Here, we'll bail you out,' and I think we need that kind of treatment instead of having the lowest bottom of the totem pole getting that kind of money for tribal programs. So I think if we're going to be treated as governments and here we have our problems, we need to have that government to government relationship intact and people need to know that so we can have the American dream that everyone has in this country. A lot of our people still dream of that, the American dream where we live in the richest state of the Union and they can make, the government can make all kinds of weapons but what about our people. When we ask for improvement in the healthcare, improvement of our life and prevention of health problems that, why don't they give us the full resources and instead of fighting our tribal sovereignty which we always had and we have always had that inherent tribal sovereignty ever since, even before the contact, even before Columbus landed on this continent, we had our tribal governments intact and we took care of that. And I think this country owes us a lot and we just don't, we shouldn't be in a way fighting for every red cent to run our programs. We should have the full funding and full assistance from this very rich country."

Running the Iditarod for the health and future of his people

Mike Williams:

"Ever since the deaths of my six brothers, I decided to become proactive and take the story to the community. And of course I've been involved in the sobriety movement in Alaska for this past decade and ever since the last... My first brother died in 1973. So upon coming back from Vietnam and then right after that my brothers keep dying from accidental deaths and I keep advocating for sobriety and, ‘hey, let's prevent these from happening,' but in that process my brothers keep dying. At the end even though I was advocating I keep advocating for sobriety they keep dying. But I've been involved with the sobriety movement in Alaska and running the Iditarod and mid distance races to raise the awareness that we don't need this alcohol, we don't need these drugs and that we need to live a good life. And my message has been that once we are sober and educated we can do anything we want to do. We can protect our resources, we can protect tribal sovereignty, we can protect healthcare, we can improve healthcare programs and we can improve our education program and we can become really involved in making a healthy community for ourselves once again, as I have seen when I was growing up. So running the Iditarod has, it's a 1200-mile race through Alaska and what I've been doing is promoting sobriety movement and getting pledges over the years. And so far I have garnered over 60,000 sobriety pledges that people have said they're going to be sober for a year. And I think if 50 percent of those 60,000 pledges have succeeded then that next generation will succeed and it has a small snowball effect. And I've been trying to raise funds for advocacy programs and have been very successful in raising funding. But I have not been very successful personally in terms of raising funds to keep doing the Iditarod and I'd love to keep doing what I'm doing but I need some help. But I've raised enough funding for other programs and getting the awareness to the level that it has gone but personally I still need help to keep running that program."

The Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times series and accompanying curricula are for the educational programs of tribes, schools and colleges. For usage authorization, to place an order or for further information, call or write Institute for Tribal Government – PA, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon, 97207-0751. Telephone: 503-725-9000. Email: tribalgov@pdx.edu.

[Native music]

The Institute for Tribal Government is directed by a Policy Board of 23 tribal leaders,
Hon. Kathryn Harrison (Grand Ronde) leads the Great Tribal Leaders project and is assisted by former Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse, Director and Kay Reid, Oral Historian

Videotaping and Video Assistance
Chuck Hudson, Jeremy Fivecrows and John Platt of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

Editing
Green Fire Productions

Photo Credit:
Bill Hess – Photographer, Wassila, Alaska
Mike and Maggie Williams

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times is also supported by the non-profit Tribal Leadership Forum, and by grants from:
Spirit Mountain Community Fund
Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, Chickasaw Nation
Coeur d'Alene Tribe
Delaware Nation of Oklahoma
Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe
Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians
Jayne Fawcett, Ambassador
Mohegan Tribal Council
And other tribal governments

Support has also been received from:
Portland State University
Qwest Foundation
Pendleton Woolen Mills
The U.S. Dept. of Education
The Administration for Native Americans
Bonneville Power Administration
And the U.S. Dept. of Defense

This program is not to be reproduced without the express written permission of the Institute for Tribal Government

© 2004 The Institute for Tribal Government

Honoring Nations: Sarah Hicks: NCAI and the Partnership for Tribal Governance

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Former NCAI Policy Research Center Director Sarah Hicks discusses the growth of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) and specifically its recent initiatives to support the nation-building and advocacy efforts of Native nations.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Hicks, Sarah. "NCAI and the Partnership for Tribal Governance." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economics, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 18, 2009. Presentation.

"I want to start by just thanking you for allowing me to be here with you. On behalf of NCAI's executive board, our advisory council for the Policy Research Center, and our executive director Jacqueline Johnson Pata, we really appreciate the time that you've given us here today to talk about our work at the National Congress of American Indians, the work of the Policy Research Center, and in particular, a new initiative that I think is very closely related to the work that you're doing here and that I hope there will be some significant opportunity for collaboration on. So that's essentially what I'm going to talk about this afternoon. I've offered to try to shorten my remarks a bit so that I hope we can really get to the interaction. My hope is to present a bit of background information to you, and then to really have a rich discussion about how we might work together to accomplish this goal of our new initiative. So I'll talk a little bit about NCAI, about our Policy Center, and then about the Partnership for Tribal Governance, a new initiative that we're launching.

I know many of you are familiar with NCAI, but for those of you for whom it's new, I thought I would just give a quick thumbnail sketch. The National Congress of American Indians is the oldest, largest and most representative national Indian organization serving the broad interests of American Indian and Alaska Native tribal governments. We were established after a national conference in Denver, Colorado in 1944 to serve as a representative congress of Indian nations -- a kind of United Nations of Indian tribes if you will. So we serve as a forum for consensus-based policy making, a place where tribes can come together for discussion and develop an opinion about what's in their best interest. We are the collective voice of Indian tribes. NCAI has a committee structure and we have staff that have expertise in various policy areas and we address a huge range of issues. Our agenda is large -- really everything that tribal leaders prioritize from health, education and child welfare to cultural preservation, natural resources management, economic development -- you name it, we work on it. In our small organization of about 25 people we do a lot of different kinds of work. We advocate on behalf of tribes with the U.S. Congress and administration, we conduct legal and policy analysis, we do research, we develop policy, we educate the public and media and we build tribal capacity through trainings and technical assistance.

Next I'm going to tell you a little bit about the Policy Research Center within NCAI, the center that I direct. But first I wanted to share with you a few quotes that really underscore the reason that our policy center was established. So the first quote is from a former councilman Eddie Tullis, from the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. And he says, 'Outsiders have researched us to death and the research doesn't even benefit us.' A quote from Dr. Stephen Cornell, our friend, director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona, 'Data is political.' And finally, Chairman Ron Allen, from the Jamestown S'Klallam tribe in Washington State, says, 'Tribes need data to support their own self-determined agendas.'

So our Policy Research Center was established through the wisdom of our leadership at NCAI. At around the time of our 60th anniversary as a national organization, our leadership reflected on the challenges that they faced in making policy that really benefits Indian people. And they realized that they needed a new resource, a center that would focus on anticipating hot policy issues, that would impact tribes, work with tribes to prioritize those opportunities, and develop the information and data that tribes would need to make informed decisions on behalf of their communities. So our center was established in 2003 as a national tribal policy research center that would focus only on issues facing tribal communities. Our focus is on forward thinking, deliberate, proactive Indian policy development opportunities and the development of timely, credible information to equip tribal leaders to make good decisions for their communities.

When I tell this story about the history of our center, I think about the discussions that our leadership had as they deliberated about this. And it was really striking to hear these powerful leaders, some of whom have been serving their communities for decades, who are talking about the position that they're in to be good stewards of their community, to make good decisions on behalf of their community but without the adequate information to do so. And to hear the stories of people saying, 'We're making these incremental decisions because we're not sure what the impact will be and we're crossing our fingers, or we're praying, that whatever we're doing isn't going to have too bad of an impact.' It was really striking to hear the compelling rationale, the stories, their practical experience about not having the data and information they needed to make those good decisions on behalf of their community -- so feeling that heavy weight, that responsibility of being a steward of protecting your community, of doing things that benefit your community but without the appropriate resources, without the appropriate information and data to do so. So that was really the impetus for our center. The reason for our establishment was to help the tribal leaders to forecast those opportunities for policy development, to gather together the data and information in a credible and timely way, to inform tribal leader decision making, to really equip tribal leaders to make good decisions.

The vision of our Policy Research Center is to support Indian Country in shaping its own future. So we're a tribally driven research center, we have a tribally driven agenda. And we've taken seriously the need to forecast those opportunities for policy development, to get ahead of the curve, if you will, to help tribal leaders to think about the issues that are coming down the road in three years, in five years, to frame them in appropriate ways, to help think about scenarios and to inform their decision making with data.

Six years ago, our national advisory council directed us to take on four areas of work. We call them 'buckets of work' because the lines between these activities aren't always clear, sometimes they overlap. And I'm from Alaska so we like to use bucket analogies, but sometimes what's in buckets sloshes out, so it's not always neat and clean, but there are kind of four basic buckets of work that we think about. The first bucket of work is a clearinghouse and this is really about how we organize information, how we make it accessible. So we look at publicly available data, information that's already out there in the public domain, and how we can organize it in ways that allow tribal leaders to access it. So if you're going to testify on the [Capitol] Hill, you're going to a hearing -- there's a hearing next Wednesday about the impact of the 'silent depression' on communities of color. And so our executive director, Jackie Johnson Pata is going to go testify, on behalf of Indian Country. And so we're writing testimony about the impact of the recession -- we need to know about foreclosure rates, we need to know about the impact on small businesses. So where do we go to find this data? How can we put together the data that's kind of out there in the world, together in one place and organize it in a way that's most useful for tribal leaders, that allows them to access the information they need to make decisions locally, about their community on the ground, as well as about national policy? So we do work around this clearinghouse function. We have a web-based clearinghouse now and we're working to expand it continuously. So the intention really, is to make data more accessible.

The second bucket of work is about research support. And this is really support for the design of research and for analysis, for interpretation of data. And so we play a role -- sometimes with mainstream universities, sometimes with tribal colleges, sometimes with various other organizations, sometimes with tribes and tribal organizations -- but to really help support a function around research design and analysis. So to the extent that you have a research question, what are the best ways to answer that question given all kinds of constraints, time and budget and things like that? And once data is gathered, how do we aggregate, how do we analyze, how do we interpret data? So we play a role in research support.

Our third bucket is about tribal capacity building. And this is a really explicit part of what we do. We spend a lot of time at the beginning of research projects thinking about, what is it that we're going to leave in the community when we go? We're invited to a community, we come there to help with a particular project, but from the very beginning we're deliberate in thinking about what kind of skills, what kind of expertise, what kind of equipment, what kind of data and knowledge are we going to leave in the community once we go. So this is really about building the skills, the experience and the infrastructure to help tribes collect and analyze data in whatever ways they think are appropriate.

And then our last core bucket of work is something that we call a 'think tank' -- and I'm not sure that we're entirely happy with the terminology here yet, I think it's kind of confusing -- but the basic idea behind this, as our executive director says, is that we have the conversations that no one else will. And what we mean by that is that we serve as a forum for small groups of tribal leaders to come together to talk about politically sensitive issues that we know have the potential to have a dramatic impact on our communities. So we could think about a number of them right now. We could talk about citizenship. We could talk about per capita distribution policies. We could talk about off reservation gaming. We could talk about genetics research. There are a whole variety of issues that are significant to Indian Country and that tribes may have varying opinions about, varying experiences with, but we don't often have a forum to come together to talk about these sensitive issues in a real way -- to talk with one another intimately about our experiences, about the potential impacts of those issues and about options, policy options for dealing with them in our communities -- because there are many issues where if we don't deal with them ourselves, we know that the federal government will intervene -- where there's a perceived vacuum around policy making, the federal government will intervene to develop policy. And so, if we aren't developing our own policies, if we aren't making sure that county and state and federal governments know about the policies that we're developing, there's a real danger there. So how can we bring people together in a comfortable setting, in a way to have real conversations about these issues that could dramatically impact us, to really think about policy options? So those are the four buckets of work for our Policy Research Center.

Now I'm going to turn to the initiative that I mentioned earlier, our Partnership for Tribal Governance. I want to give you a little bit of detail about this, I'm going to spend a little bit more time on it, but I'm hopeful that at the end of my talk that this is where we can really focus our attention -- that we can have some discussion about this. And in particular, just to kind of give you a warning, I'm really interested in your thoughts, in your sense of how you might be involved in this work. Before I came here, I thought about who was going to be in this room. And I was really thinking, these are people who are on the cutting edge, these are the thought leaders in Indian Country, these are people who are engaged in their community, who are trying new things, who are learning from their experiences. And the question really is, how can this body of work that we're proposing support you, support your efforts? And how can you, in turn, contribute to this?

So Sherry Salway Black is here somewhere. Thank you. Okay, in this front table here, thanks. So I want to acknowledge her. The work that I'm going to talk about is some work that initially came out of our Policy Research Center -- some research that we did in partnership with the Native Nations Institute -- but Sherry is leading this work now. So I'm going to talk a little bit about it and then in time for our discussion, Sherry will come up here and join me so that we can have a fuller conversation about this. So let me tell you a little bit about the history of the project.

The Kellogg Foundation gave us a grant in 2006 to engage tribes by region to talk about their ideas and experiences with governance. And this interest from the Foundation, grew out of their own reflections about the effectiveness of their grant making and desire to know more about the appropriateness of investing in governance -- this foundation, this basis governance -- as opposed to investing in specific programs, various programs at the tribal level. They were really trying to understand the impact of their grant making and think about where they could have the greatest impact, how they could best support tribes. And NCAI, from our perspective, we were really interested in this conversation and were ultimately willing to take on the project because we were simultaneously receiving a groundswell of questions and resources, requests for information from tribal leaders about strategies for strengthening institutions of governance. So it was really this confluence of events. On the one hand, there's this foundation, asking us for information and asking us for our opinion, asking what we think about their grant making focus. And on the other hand we're receiving this demand for information from tribal leaders, who are very interested in what's going on in other communities and how they can learn from it, and what technical assistance providers are out there, what kind of resources are available. So it was really the confluence of these events that led us down this path. And so we took on this project with the goal to visit the various regions of Indian Country and to convene people to have a conversation about a couple of key questions. And the questions that we ultimately chose to talk to people about were these. What does tribal governance mean to you? How is tribal governance different today than it was historically? What do you want institutions of tribal governance in your community to look like in 30 years? And what resources are necessary to support the vision that you have?

So once we'd thought about this large project and began to plan for this work, our first step was really to recruit good partners. And that led us straight to the Native Nations Institute and our colleagues Dr. Stephen Cornell and Miriam Jorgensen -- who are really natural partners for a number of reasons. They have a long history of responsive and responsible research with Native communities, they have a prestigious international advisory council that is actively reflecting about governance challenges, and then also, of course, they have experience convening tribal leaders to talk comparatively about governance and about governance reform. So they were certainly natural partners for us.

(I'm thinking about what I'm going to cut back. So, I was going to tell you a little bit about how we set up the conversations. I think I'll just jump to some of our findings.)

So between September and November of 2006 -- the Policy Research Center, NNI and regional partners -- we partnered with regional intertribal organizations, convened 11 forums to gather information from elected tribal leaders, professional tribal staff, intertribal organizations, elders, youth and native citizens. So it was really a broad audience, broad stakeholder group, that we were trying to bring together. And in total almost 300 people, almost half of which were elected tribal leaders, participated in our forums that we entitled 'Strengthening Tribal Governance.' So as I mentioned, we sought regional perspectives. We were really interested in regional differences. In addition to the regional focus we also focused two sessions specifically on youth. One session was held with our NCAI Youth Commission and there was another session that was held at Arizona State University with college students there.

So our findings from this work -- At the end of our data gathering phase we were really surprised, I would have to say, about the strikingly consistent themes that we heard all over the country. When we traveled to Alaska and talked to folks from rural villages there; when we were in the Great Plains talking to non-profit leaders; when we talked to youth, middle school and high school students at NCAI conferences; it was amazing that the same themes continued to emerge. And there were four primary themes that came out of this work, four areas of focus, if you will, on future activities, so I'll just mention them briefly. There's a strong interest in governing systems reform. And what we mean by this is constitutional reform, code development, court strengthening, those kinds of activities. There's a real interest in citizen engagement, both how do governments engage citizens as well as how citizens approach government. There's a theme around leadership development, both building the skill set of current leaders. So how do we help our current leaders to acquire new skills as well as thinking about our future generations and how we build the capacity for leadership there? And finally there was a theme that, unlike these three first themes -- which are kind of internally focused, things the tribe itself could do -- there was a fourth theme which was complimentary but external to the tribe. There was a strong theme around public education and media education. And so there was a strong sense among tribes that no matter what we're doing in these other three areas internally -- We can be doing really great work, but if the public, if the media aren't educated about tribes' governance, then we're still losing ground on some fronts. So how do we use that intervention point to help strengthen our own work?

So with my three remaining minutes, I'm going to tell you quickly about some of the work that we hope to do in the future, because again I really want to hear from you how you can imagine working with us in this framework. So just to summarize the work of the Partnership for Tribal Governance going forward, I would say that there are three main aspects. The first is something we called investing in the movement. So we see this work to strengthen governance as a movement. We see, it's happening in pockets all over the place, there's more and more enthusiasm, there's more interest in this. So we really are seeing kind of the building of a movement to strengthen governance. And so, when we talk about investing in the movement, we're thinking about financial investments, technical assistance investments, training investments, in tribes themselves, as well as thinking about the array of technical assistance resources necessary to support them. So what role might regional intertribal organizations play? What role might experts like the Native Nations Institute and the Harvard Project, who've been doing this work for years -- who have a lot of resources already that tribes would benefit from, having more readily available -- [play]? How might we think about the array of resources that we know of, that are already part of our network, as well as reach out to other resources that we may not even necessarily know about yet? So how might we build that field by investing in the movement? The next area of work combines a few components that are really about bringing together policy makers, practitioners, researchers who are focused on aggregating what we already know -- making sense of all the data and information that's already out there -- prioritizing what we still need to know -- so a policy research agenda -- and then building the infrastructure to expand this work.

So I mentioned there are certainly people who are already doing this work. We don't think that we're new to the game here and that we wrote the book on this and this is the be all and end all. Really a lot of this work is about organizing what's already out there, helping tribes to make sense of it, helping them to navigate it, helping them to make good decisions about resources that can really be beneficial to their communities. So we really think about how do we enhance, how do we organize, how do we expand the infrastructure for this work around strengthening tribal governance? And so this would include things like knowledge management, technology platforms and applications, communication, education and training -- so a whole variety of components you can imagine there. And then I'll just mention briefly the learning and evaluation partnership.

So in addition to supporting work on the ground, we are very interested in a more systematic way of gathering information, and making sense of information, about what's really happening. So we've been working with NNI and others to develop, what we call, an action framework. We were strongly advised -- maybe I could say -- not to call it a theory of change, but to call it an action framework. So now we talk about action framework. But we've developed this action framework, which is really a backdrop for a series of tools. We've talked about developing some assessment tools, we've talked about planning tools, and we've talked ultimately about evaluation tools, and we're talking about real time evaluation here. So as tribes are taking steps, as they're implementing pieces of this work, how is it that they're getting feedback about how things are working? How is it they're processing this information, deciding about other appropriate strategies to try? And at the regional and national level, how do we aggregate these experiences in ways that make it easier for other tribes to decide what will work for them and to try to take some of the same steps?

So I think that learning and evaluation partnership is really critical. And so maybe I'll just end with that. I think my time is up so I'll just say [thank you] for having me here. And I'd really love to hear your thoughts and certainly, further questions about what I've shared. I'd invite Sherry to come up here with me in case they're really tough questions. And thank you for your time."

Honoring Nations: Juana Majel-Dixon: The Violence Against Women Task Force

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Juana Majel-Dixon, Chair of NCAI's Task Force on Violence Against Women, reflects on the work of the Task Force on Violence Against Women and their efforts to push for passage of the Violence Against Women Act in Congress.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Majel-Dixon, Juana. "The Violence Against Women Task Force." 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:

"This is Juana Majel-Dixon, who is Chair of the Violence Against Women's Task Force, a 2006 honoree. So we'll see how far we can get with Juana before she has to dart out of here. I want to again say my, send out my deepest appreciations to all of you here in the room, and especially Amy [Besaw Medford] and all of the staff that have worked so hard to pull this together. It's been a great experience and I will see you in another year or two. With that, Juana."

Juana Majel-Dixon:

"Thank you. [Luiseño language]. I just told you I was a tropical chick from California. I can't resist that. They always think I'm Samoan or something when I'm over there. And when I go to Hawaii, they think I'm Hawaiian. I went to Tahiti, they thought I was from Tahiti. When I was in New Zealand, they thought I was Maori. But they didn't think I was Aborigine when I was in the bush in Australia, but that's where I was heading to. What I did say to you, in our traditional manner, I greeted you in the language of my people, the [Luiseño language] people, means ‘western' people. My clan group; I come from the [Luiseño language] family and my language is [Luiseño language]; it means 'dove clan.' As well as the matriarchy of our system is [Luiseño language], which is the bear; so I have the peacemaker and the protector. And in traditional concepts it's little wonder why I do what I do, ay? I also ask you to acknowledge the strong-hearted women of our nations. [Luiseño language] means ‘acknowledging the good of the strong-hearted women of our nations. I also asked you in my language that the words that I speak be of a clear mind and a clean heart. And I also reminded myself that when I give breath to the words, they no longer belong to me, they belong to the people.

I am a traditional appointed leader. Back many years ago, I guess in the old style of youth groups, I was given a provisional license to drive my mother in daylight hours to tribal gatherings and she drove home at sunset because I was too little to drive. And I can remember looking through those big steering wheels. And I would sleep in the back of the car and I would sleep at the meetings. But little did I know, I now have almost 35 years with the National Congress of American Indians. They call me an NCAI baby. I don't know what to think about that. But when the leaders start saying baby to me, I think it's mighty fine. Us Indians we've got good humor. And they don't care what shape our Indian women are in; they just love us. I like that about our guys. I don't care what shape they're in, I just love them. Maybe it's just an Indian thing. Or we're small in number. That's just wonderful about our nations.

I've come to learn so much as a leader. As an appointee I was 19, and I'm going to be 57. I think I'm going to have to die in my leadership position [because] it's a traditional position. There are five us from our five clans, one from each clan. And we're waiting for the next three. Three, of my generation, have died and there are only two of us left. So I've been a traditional councilwoman --legislative council, predominately -- to the tribe for 28 years, 28-plus years, I guess. I stopped doing the math so I figure at 30 I'll leave it at that. As a result, my role with the tribe has a great longevity and I'm a professor for 25 years now, actually 26 years this month at the University for U.S. Policy. I teach U.S. Policy and Federal Indian Law, which is probably why I do some of the things that I do.

But I'm here to share you the impact leadership has had. And I was at the senate, I wanted to be with you. I have a certain part of me that ached for not being with you for the last couple days. But I got to witness something that -- I commend the women of our nations, our community grassroots people who are part of this whole honoring system. They selected people to speak before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee [U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs] and they chose our women. Isn't that great? Isn't that incredible? That is powerful. And these weren't women who were leaders in the sense of tradition or election, you know those things that happen, but they had done such grassroots work that they became the voices of all our nations and of all our women about the violence against Native women. It was not an easy testimony 'cause we also had to deal with [???] in the room, which is a very gentle, big gorilla in the room, but we love them. They're just not of our clan, you know. I'm just kidding. No, I'm not. They're good people, but I just think that they got in after we did all the work, and I think you know what that is -- and what you have taught me in order to even sit at this table with you that it had to be something, that she so eloquently said, can be done with that particular person left out and be sustainable. And to witness that and to sit behind them as a leader, told me, yeah, this worked and that the Senate heard them and that was so powerful. You can get on CNN and dial it up or however you do it on the Internet and you can see them. Tammy Young from [Sitka, Alaska] and Karen Artichoker from Sinte Gleska [University], Pine Ridge I think, Kyle [South Dakota] area; very, very, very powerful speakers.

But then what followed that, was a series, a barrage of meetings with senators, and then ending that evening with the Indian -- No ending, actually, the evening with NAHASDA [Native American Housing Assistance and Self Determination Act of 1996] and HUD [Department of Housing and Urban Development]. But just before that, we finished with the Senate Indian Affairs staffers. And there are things that have happened, and the leadership in the room who have attended some of our gatherings with NCAI and the consultations that followed -- We even created a new Blue Book in case you wanted to know what some of the money went towards. As we left you in Sacramento, we got hit very aggressively by the Adam Walsh Act -- it was the sexual assault registry. And to me I think that's a very talented, very clever example of your researchers that are out there and people who might get the ‘ah ha' when you see a flag go up. Where was Adam Walsh sitting all those years? It was what, 20-plus years before John [Walsh] got his -- It's his son that was killed, Adam, who was brutally murdered and harmed -- It took 20-plus years for that act to follow, but it came right after VAWA [Violence Against Women Act], because inside of that we had a national sexual assault registry.

And one of the things that we accomplished with the women of our grassroots area and our leadership coming together -- I just wish there was a way to capture on film this incredible year, since we last saw each other, of the leadership, listening to your own people, and the people speaking. When we were at this last consultation, they certainly called the woman, Mary Beth Buchanan, to task, but it was -- for me, you see, I'm a California Indian girl. We've always had this standing joke with our Pueblo governors, because we have a lot of female leadership in California and they don't have a whole lot of female leadership in Pueblo country, in the same manner as elected leaders or that kind of a thing. So they tease us mercilessly and tell us how we should be in their areas doing these kinds of duties. And we take the ribbing with great heart and great respect. But I have to tell you, the leadership of the Pueblo councils, of the governors in that room, that set the precedent of the day, was phenomenal. And they even had, there was four designees, Nambe had someone, their judge, and Santo Domingo and I can't remember all -- but they had designated women in their communities that were doing this grassroots effort. And I knew that was at a great of respect but also the recognition of their expertise. That's another transferrable, sustainable evolution of the work that was done and it was humbling and honorable to watch them cause it was their nation that we were in. And so setting the tone, to hear those governors speak and then to be so passionate and understanding of what was going on and how hard it is to implement this law within our own nations. But we're going to take that journey together.

But one of the most powerful things that came out of there -- well, there's going to be a lot of powerful things, so let's just say that everything that we did was powerful. It blows you out of the water, and I'm going to make sure that all of you get this book. And I'll give it to Amy [Besaw Medford] who can give me a list of people. Just give me the number and we'll send it to you. But we got -- in the midst of Adam Walsh, we got our national sexual assault registry funded for $1 million per year for the next two years. Does that make any sense? And out of the clear blue -- now we need to talk to Jim Casey about this. It just so happens that the exact amount that he pulled out of JOM [Johnson O'Malley] is the money that Adam Walsh has. So it's a leadership thing. You follow that stuff. But we need to talk to him. And my leaders are in the room, please make note of that 'cause he kind of squirms a little when you bring it up. My sisters over there, we know nothing. Oh, yeah, Jim Cason. What did I say, Casey? Well, that's probably why. It's just me slipping. Get the right guy, okay? Cason, okay.

We get this book going and we then get another $500,000 for the next two years for the cost of injury study on violence against Native women. That's in the title. We get $1 million for the next two years for the national baseline study. No, it's not $2 million for the tribal sexual offender order of protection registry. We get $1 million per year for the next five years so that's $5 million. And so here Adam Walsh is coming up and -- then they're making it a competitive application, by the way, for the leadership. They did Op 10.

But I wanted to tell you -- oh, three minutes does that mean something? I'm sorry. It's not your fault. We out white the Whites sometimes. It's not a bad thing, but I understand that but it doesn't make sense to me right now. I'll hurry.

One of things I realized in doing this journey is that -- I need you to read the book because then there are the things that we need to do follow up with VAWA [Violence Against Women Act] for the leadership of the community. But I sat in a meeting yesterday following this with the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and, as you know, Dorgan's doing the Omnibus Crimes Bill, which is unheard of. This statute has done so many things. And I got this three pages -- and I let Heather have a look-see, Joanne looked at it, and it's like, wow. There are sections -- one is alcohol substance abuse, reauthorization to amend, to address methamphetamine. They want to amend the Indian Alcohol Substance Abuse Act. That's amazing. The section on Indian Law Enforcement Act; the big one there is the mandated declination reports and data collection. The current law authorizes but does not require FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation], BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs], U.S. attorneys to report to the tribe's tribal law enforcement when they decline to investigate or prosecute a case. That's amazing.

But who's sitting with me when this is being done? These women from the grassroots community to help affect this change. So it's a combination of the leadership and some incredible journey. We've looked at the violence against our women, which we know we will have to look at the fact that it is happening also from our own men. But we went back and asked our elder women, how far back can you go? And different nations we went to, and I can probably get a list of the nations, but the consistent answer, after World War II. So at least we have something to work with and our men of our nations have something to work with, [because] we as strong women support them. They can affect the greatest change amongst their own selves as men. And we're looking at ways to acknowledge -- This law is about reasserting and re-acknowledging and increasing tribal authority to protect its women. So it's a powerful law.

But we've also been hit, just been hit, by the strongest arms of this nation that they have come up with the Adam Walsh -- We are reauthorizing FVPSA, the Family Violence Protection Service Act. There's great things involved; but we've come together to create this tribal core group that was mirroring now the original core group that helped move VAWA and they're wanting to do the same with FVPSA. So it's like, just when we settle down, something else to happen. And then they have Tribal Law Enforcement Arrest Authority, Law Enforcement Information Sharing, Law Enforcement Training; reauthorize/require DOJ [Department of Justice] to appoint tribal prosecutors as special U.S. attorneys to Indian Country; Indian Child Protection Act, Tribal Justice Support Act; reauthorize consultation and institutionalize this U.S. tribal liaison; also, domestic violence pilot project, establish a pilot project; authorize non-Indians to voluntarily enter into drug courts, tribal drug courts; establish federal crime for violation or tribal court protection; reaffirm tribal authority to enforce jurisdiction protection orders. And they're talking about doing it over non-Indians.

And as we have talked, my brothers and sisters that are leaders in the room, of the MOUs [Memorandum of Understanding] that we must do, with all that intermarrying we did with our relocation and boarding schools, and through a few other wasicus and Spaniards -- and they're okay. But the stuff we've done, we now have to take some responsibility and authority for. And then I also have urged our leadership; with this work with women who have influenced me greatly, is that I must enter into a full faith and credit relationship with you, my nation to your nation. And I think that is one of the most powerful things that we have done, reacquire this great nation of America to do that with us and at the least we can do it to each other.

Okay, I'm going to wrap it up. I have more to say but I really missed a lot out here. Maybe I'll write it down and you can read it. I shared a joke with Regina Schofield yesterday, because it was her last day yesterday. And they have created several task forces, which will be federally mandated, which is the VAWA Task Force, the Adam Walsh Task Force, the DOJ Tribal Leadership Task Force and SAMSA [the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration] is doing a task force, which is coming from this work. But I said to Regina Schofield, ‘Okay, now that you're out of DOJ, you don't have to worry about the party line and being bushwhacked later.' If you're in Indian Country and you saw Mr. and Mrs. Big Left Hand over there and they come to you because they're stealing in the tribal store, they're elders. And she asked them, ‘So, Mr. Big Left Hand, why are you stealing?' They just kind of look at you as elders do, volumes are said, but you don't get to ask much more 'cause they usually have a sign that says, ‘When did you say you were leaving?' I said, ‘All right, Regina.' I said, ‘You ask that guy, Mr. Big Left Hand, what did you steal?' ‘A can of peaches.' ‘How many peaches were in there?' ‘Seven.' ‘Well, Mr. Big Left Hand, you've got to do seven days in the tribal jail.' A little hand goes up. Mrs. Big Left Hand is up and Regina looks at her. I said, ‘Now Regina, pay attention. This is Indian Country. Yes, Mrs. Big Left Hand.' ‘He stole a can of peas, too.' So I thank you for having me."

Frank Ettawageshik: Reforming the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Constitution: What We Did and Why

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Frank Ettawageshik, Former Chairman of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians (LTBBO), discusses how LTBBO came to develop a new constitution and system of government, the key components of the LTBBO constitution, and how the new LTBBO constitution differs in fundamental ways from the old one.

Resource Type
Citation

Ettawageshik, Frank. "Reforming the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Constitution: What We Did and Why." Tribal Constitutions seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. May 1, 2012. Presentation.

"I'm Frank Ettawageshik, and I am from the tip of the lower peninsula of Michigan. Our tribe, the Waganakising Odawak, we're the Ottawa at the Crooked Tree Place, and we have many relatives, Odawa relatives, that are all the way from Canada clear to Oklahoma. Our experience -- and I'll get right into the slides -- we were not on the list of federally recognized tribes for many years, and we always maintained that we were not an unrecognized tribe but that we were, that in our case we were -- the government had just made a mistake as far as it went, because we knew that we were inherently sovereign and that we had always acted as a government and for some reason we weren't on their list. And so while our sovereignty as inherent sovereignty was something that we certainly could work with, it made it a lot easier to assert that sovereignty, to exercise it, if it was recognized by the United States. And so we went through a 120-year legal process that culminated in 1994 with the signing of Public Law 103-324, which reaffirmed our federal status. It did not grant us recognition and it did not restore recognition, but it reaffirmed that we'd always had it. And at the time that we did this we had a constitution that had been put together, but it was largely based on the Indian Reorganization Act model...So we decided that we needed to do some changes -- and I don't want to get ahead of myself in the presentation -- but the reform in our constitution was initiated with the signing in the fall of 1994 of that reaffirmation act by President Clinton. It was a long process, and our constitution -- which as Steve [Cornell] pointed out, I do carry in my pocket all the time, and it's a handy reference. As a chairman, I carried not only our constitution but I also carried the United States Constitution. And this was approved in a secretarial election on February 1st, 2005, and this constitution went into effect on September 11th of 2005, when all of the officers that had been under the new constitution, that they'd all been elected, so that we didn't have a new constitution that called for one form of officers and have old officers trying to govern under it. So it didn't go into effect until all the new officers were sworn in.

We have a picture of course of the constitution and also the U.S. and our constitution. When I'd go to Washington on many of the trips, the congressmen would hand me one of the U.S. constitutions, and I decided that it was important that I be able to reciprocate. So we had ours printed in the same size, same general colors and the whole thing put together so that when we went in we could -- not only were we being told that the U.S. has a constitution but we were showing how we had chosen to govern ourselves, and that we were a constitutional government. This size is also real handy because it works well for all of the tribal citizens to have as a reference.

Why did we want to change? What were the things that we felt [in] the previous constitution was inadequate? The first thing was is that all the authority began within the constitution instead of originating from the tribal citizens. We felt that as an inherent sovereign that the people, our citizens, were the ones that maintained that authority, but our constitution didn't reflect that. And all of the power was within a seven-member tribal council. The chairman and all the council members were on that, and there were no checks and balances. If you didn't like what the council and wanted to go to complain to somebody, you went back to the council. Well, that doesn't really give much [of a] way for people to get redress of their issues. And then if you wanted to go to court, well, we had a tribal court, but it was created because the council passed a statute that created the court. So although we never did this, some tribes have done this, and that is they would-- if the council disagreed with what the court had to say on a particular case -- they'd abolish he court, create a new one, try again. And I know of at least one instance where this happened at least three times until the council got a ruling that they liked. Well, this really doesn't give much faith in the government for people's ability to deal with the questions that they have. And the other one that we had in here was the constitution that we had looked primarily to domestic issues, to internal issues. It didn't really focus a lot on the external activities or external look of the tribe.

So what are the changes? What are the changes that we did that were the most important changes? Of course we did a lot. There was a fundamental difference in the constitutions. But the first change that we made is that we put guarantees protecting traditional cultural practices, language and tribal heritage in the development of laws and the operation of the government. As Steve pointed out, that was one of the things that we felt was really important that we needed to have. The next one is that we have a separation of powers allowing checks and balances to protect the tribal citizens' access to their governmental processes. We also wanted to make sure we had an independent court, one that was, that couldn't be influenced too strongly by the other branches of government. And the last one is we put provisions in for a foreign policy dealing with foreign policy issues as well as domestic issues.

So what do these changes look like? Well, the first one guarantees protecting traditional cultural practices, language and tribal heritage. We had in the preamble to the constitution, right at the very top, it says, ‘In the ways of our ancestors, to perpetuate our way of life for future generations, we the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, called in our own language the Waganakising Odawak, a sovereign self-governing people who follow the Anishinaabe traditions, heritage and cultural values, set forth within this constitution the foundation of our governance.' This is just the beginning of the preamble but it says we assert that we have these rights and responsibilities and -- as was pointed out as Steve talked about -- the directive principles. We wanted to make sure that there is -- we wanted to be sure that there's a lens through which the government would have to look at its actions because when we did this we were delegating to the government certain authority. The people maintained the authority, but they would give some of it to the government and they could take it away or they could add to it. But in doing so, what we wanted is whenever the government exercised the authorities that we were giving to it, we wanted them to look through this lens, to look through this way of thinking about things, and that is number one, promote the preservation and revitalization of Anishinaabemowin, which is our language, and Anishinaabe culture, so that we wouldn't, we didn't want the government to be drifting too far away, and we wanted to give it parameters, and -- as Steve mentioned -- be adhering to a higher law, that it wasn't just this document, it wasn't just the powers of the council, but there was a higher law that we all had to adhere to. It goes on to talk about, ‘promote with special care the health, educational and economic interests of all the people, especially our children and elders,' and ‘shall protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation.' We built into the teachings, our seven grandfather teachings -- we built those concepts into these directives that would then be, they would go to the government. There's more of this and if you're interested, at the end of this presentation there's a link that I put in here for finding a copy of the constitution if you'd like to read the various parts that I'm speaking of.

So the next part here is continuing, what do the changes look like? Well, we have the separation of powers and in this case separation of powers allowing checks and balances to protect the tribal citizens' access to their government processes, including an independent court. We wanted to figure how this was going to work, and so the separation of powers is something that keeps any one part of the government from acquiring and building too much authority and getting too much power, so that there are ways for -- all of this slows the government process down, but it also gives access to that process cause it doesn't happen in the blink of an eye. It takes a while for it to happen, and in so doing it gives people time to be thinking about it. And so in this case, through the delegation of authority, our tribal membership authorized the tribal council to be the legislative body with duties of lawmaking and appropriation of funds. The executive branch [is] to administer the funds and force the constitution and implement the policies and procedures that are approved by the council. And the judicial branch [is] to interpret the constitution and apply the laws that the tribe had made. And so we wanted to have this, this is a way that we dealt with that idea of giving more access to our tribal citizens and having a more open process and also to keep, put a check on runaway governments where you have too much authority within a single person.

So we then go to more things about what are the changes that we implemented look like, and in this case, provisions made for foreign policy. Well, too often we think just, we just give a slight nod to this idea of foreign policy, but foreign policy, it isn't just dealing with say France or dealing with Japan or dealing with the Indigenous people of Australia, but foreign policy is dealing with the other tribe that's just down the road. Foreign policy is dealing -- it's an international policy, which means that it's dealing with all of the other nations that we deal with. We knew that this was -- we wanted to make this quite a broad statement so this is, ‘We, the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, speak through this document to assert that we are a distinct Nation of Anishinaabeg of North America that possess the right to self determination, freely determine our political status, freely pursue our economic, social, religious and cultural development and determine our membership without external interference. These same rights and principles of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians acknowledge to be inherent among other peoples, nations and governments throughout the world. We recognize their sovereignty and pledge to maintain relations with those peoples, nations and governments who acknowledge those same fundamental rights and principles and who recognize the sovereignty of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians.' This essentially is the authorization for what amounts to what the activities of a state department [are] for instance, but one of the things that we've talked about often has been the idea that too often we rely on, and we've come to do this as tribes, we rely on the United States government to decide who's going to be in the club. In other words, there's federal recognition and we'll join organizations [where] every member of that organization has to be a member of a federally recognized tribe. And so what we do is we allow the federal government to choose who's going to be in the club, and then after that, that's who we talk to. And if there's another tribe out there that we may know quite well but is not yet federally recognized or hasn't chosen to do that, we somehow think of them as a lesser entity, and yet what we're doing is we're giving up the sovereign right to decide with whom we will have diplomatic relations. And it's not just a right, it's a responsibility for us to decide who we feel comfortable with, who actually acknowledges our sovereignty as well as us acknowledging theirs. And that's a responsibility of a nation. And through this particular point we were able to move into some areas, one of which is this. You're not going to be able to read this. It's really fine print. But it's the United League of Indigenous Nations Treaty. Our tribe was one of the ones that helped negotiate this treaty, and last fall [2011] the 90th nation signed this treaty. These nations are from the areas of the world today called Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States so far. Forty of those 90 are in New Zealand. They're Māori. And this is one example of that international or foreign policy relations.

Other examples are a treaty that, it's the Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Mutual Aid. It was done in 1947, and it was done by the members of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). It [NCAI] was only a few years old at that time. And this treaty acknowledged each others' sovereignty, acknowledged each other, and agreed to set aside differences and to work together for common goals. And this is another example of the kind of treaty that's out there when people are thinking, looking outside in the foreign policy, not just a domestic policy dealing with internal issues.

So what we found as we were going through in understanding is that the adoption of a new constitution is only the beginning. The constitution is a living document that reflects the historic strengths and the evolving culture of the citizens who adopt it and use it to govern themselves. So [as] an example, we adopted our constitution on February 1st, 2005. It was implemented in September of that year. We've had a number of elections. We've had a recall. We had a chairman who was unpopular for a number of reasons, and under our old constitution we only had removal and removal had to be for cause and the person had to break a law in order to be removed. Under the new constitution we put in recall, which means that if the population decides that they choose to recall that person, they can for whatever reason. Well, we've gone through a recall, and not only that but we've had a smooth transition of power to the vice chair when the chair was removed. What this ended up doing is showing that the constitution provided tools for our community to peacefully settle issues of leadership and dispute without the blink of an eye in terms of the delivery of services to the community and in terms of the long-term work that we were doing for our future generations. And so when you work on changes like this, you need to realize that having the document is just, it's a tool, it's a living tool, and it's something that we need to, you need to think through. And some people say, ‘Oh, boy, we got the constitution, now we're all done.' Well, that isn't it at all, and I know that from lots of experience that that...but it gives you the right tools if you think it through, and if the community has really been working on it and is behind those changes that would do it. So we have contact information. I didn't get my PowerPoint [presentation] in time in to be put in the booklets but...I'm certain that it can be distributed if people would choose to get a copy. Also the copy of the Little Traverse Constitution can be found at the tribal website and in what we call the Odawa Register, which contains all of the laws, the constitution, the regulations and posting of proposed laws so that we do all that posting on the web, we require that it be done for so many days, I think it's 27 days before it can be acted on by the council, so that there's time for people to make comments on proposed legislation. And with that, I thank you and that'll be it for right now. Thanks.

Native Nation Building TV: "Intergovernmental and Intertribal Relations"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Guests Jaime Pinkham and Sarah Hicks focus on Native nations’ efforts to enhance their relationships with other governments as a way to advance their nation-building objectives. It details how some Native nations are forging mutually beneficial intergovernmental agreements, and chronicles the many advantages to forging similar intertribal arrangements.

Citation

Native Nations Institute. "Intergovernmental and Intertribal Relations" (Episode 8). Native Nation Building television/radio series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy and the UA Channel, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. 2006. Television program. 

Mark St. Pierre: "Hello, friends. I'm your host, Mark St. Pierre and welcome to Native Nation Building. Contemporary Native Nations face many challenges including building effective governments, developing strong economies that fit their culture and circumstances, solving difficult social problems and balancing cultural integrity in change. Native Nation Building explores these often complex challenges in the ways Native Nations are working to overcome them as they seek to make community and economic development a reality. Don't miss Native Nation Building next."

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[music]

Mark St. Pierre: "Today's show explores the importance of intertribal and intergovernmental relationships and the innovative approaches that many Native Nations are taking as they forge ahead with Nation building goals. With us today to examine these relationships are Jaime Pinkham and Sarah Hicks. Sarah Hicks, a citizen of the Native village of Ouzinkie in Alaska, is a doctoral candidate at Washington University. She also directs the National Congress of American Indians Policy Research Center where she works on a joint project with the National Conference of State Legislatures. Jaime Pinkham, a citizen of the Nez Perce Tribe, is Watershed Program Manager with the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission and Intertribal Fisheries Organization. Welcome to both of you and thanks for being with us." 

Jaime Pinkham: "Thank you."

Sarah Hicks: "Thanks."

Mark St. Pierre: "Jaime, when we talk about intergovernmental and intertribal relationships among Native Nations, what are we really talking about?"

Jaime Pinkham: "Well, Mark, I feel we're talking about creating a platform that respects the individual autonomy of the tribes or the governmental agencies that sit at the table and it's a relationship that's built upon trust and mutual respect and provides our ability to provide collective talent and wisdom and resources to overcome conflicts or to move forward on areas of mutual concern."

Mark St. Pierre: "Would you like to respond to that?"

Sarah Hicks: "Yeah, I think we're really talking about deliberate relationships between sovereign governments who are coming to the table as equals. We're looking at relationships that are across various issue areas, we're looking at relationships that are between different levels of government, different kinds of governments and even different branches of government."

Mark St. Pierre: "Sarah, what role do these relationships play in building a Native nation?"

Sarah Hicks: "Well, these kinds of relationships really provide a way for tribal governments to extend their influence beyond their boundaries. It's really a way for tribal governments to leverage their influence, to bring their voice to the table with other governments to influence the policy making that's going on outside of their boundaries."

Mark St. Pierre: "Just as a follow up, is there a concern that tribes who work with, say, state or county agencies are surrendering some sovereignty, or how does that work out?"

Sarah Hicks: "Historically, because of the government-to-government relationship between the federal government and tribal governments, that there's been a great deal of attention to this very critical important relationship. But on the other hand, as we've seen devolution, or the federal government passing resources and authority to lower levels of government, to state government, to county government, in some cases to tribal government, that I think tribes are becoming less concerned about what they're giving up, and I think they see many more opportunities to cooperate on issues of mutual concern. So they're really looking to their neighboring governments as potential partners to accomplish some of these really important jobs that local governments perform."

Mark St. Pierre: "Jaime, you seem like you want to jump in there."

Jaime Pinkham: "I don't see it as an erosion of sovereignty when we reach to other governments, and I think we're seeing more and more -- because of the capacity that tribes are building -- is we see these other governments reaching out to us. We've built the institutional capacity on resource programs, education and health care, and the other thing is that the tribes have unique access to federal resources, for example highway trust funds, which we can help rebuild or maintain infrastructures, especially in rural communities, that county governments and local municipalities depend upon, too. So I see them reaching out to us as well."

Mark St. Pierre: "You've both seen a shift in how Native nations view these relationships and their potential benefits. Historically, what began that shift in emphasis?"

Sarah Hicks: "Well, I think much of it was devolution as I was just mentioning earlier. Really in the late 1980s, we started to see more and more federal programs, environmental programs, some human service programs, community development programs that are being moved to more local levels of government, and over time the pace of devolution has increased. So throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, we've seen more and more resources really being directed at more local levels of government, and this just increases the incentive for tribal governments and state and county governments to look for these issues of mutual concern, to really bring to bear their limited resources on both sides to address issues that all governments care about."

Jaime Pinkham: "I also see the follow up on that is some courtroom fatigue where too often we're trying to resolve our differences in the court room and when you go to court you have one winner, one loser but when you come together in exploring these relationships you try to harmonize your efforts, and while litigation and negotiations are both difficult paths to take, the difference is the outcome and the outcome is the mutual benefits. The other thing is I've really witnessed over the past 10 to 15 years this elevation of both state and federal governments in formalizing tribal policies. It's an expression of tribal relationships, so we see the cabinet levels in the state legislatures and representatives of the governor's office now reaching out and creating new relationships with Indian tribes."

Mark St. Pierre: "In regions where tribes are really a small minority of the local or general population, have these relationships in fact increased the power of tribes in regional and local politics?"

Sarah Hicks: "I would argue yes. I think that this is a vehicle for tribes to come together on the one hand in intertribal organizations. We've seen an increased growth in regional intertribal organizations, and I would say an increased strength in those organizations as well over the past couple of years. So on the one hand, tribes being able to come together to voice their collective concerns, to share their resources that they have has definitely made a difference, but I also think that on the state and county level, neighboring governments are starting to see tribes as bigger political players. Tribes are getting on the map. They're starting to realize that there are a lot of common interests with tribal governments."

Jaime Pinkham: "And I agree. I think we're seeing many cases where local governments would like to ride upon the coattails of tribal governments because of the capacity that they have at dealing with the variety of levels of issues from very local to national in nature."

Mark St. Pierre: "Just on a personal level, on a human-to-human level, do you see these relationships strengthening communication and relationships between literal neighbors of the reservations?"

Jaime Pinkham: "I think we do, because as the tribes get more active in local politics, especially you start seeing members of the tribal communities becoming on school boards and county governments and city governments, and that helps really soothe and create and foster some positive relationships. What concerns me is we see the growth of these anti-Indian, anti-sovereignty organizations, but if we could work better and have these positive examples, we can try to teach these places where this fear exists of tribal sovereignty that really there's nothing to fear but really there's an opportunity, a partnership that can really help all communities prosper and grow."

Mark St. Pierre: "That kind of leads to a logical question I guess then. How have tribes or Native Nations avoided litigation, avoided conflict in dealing with other governments?"

Sarah Hicks: "Well, I think tribes and neighboring governments have really looked to local agreements as a way to avoid litigation. As Jaime was mentioning earlier, litigation is frequently extremely time-consuming, extremely expensive, and often results in an outcome that nobody's happy with, so to the extent that tribes and states or tribes and counties or tribes and other tribes can come to the table together to negotiate agreements that work better for everybody down on the ground, that's a win-win situation. We've seen a number of examples. If you look to motor fuel taxation and tobacco taxation, there have been some great agreements in Nevada, in Nebraska, in Oklahoma, in Arizona. There have been agreements around natural resource issues, around protection of cultural issues, around human service delivery. So I think we're seeing a proliferation of these kinds of relationships across a whole range of different topic areas."

Mark St. Pierre: "Is it in the best interest of federal, state and municipal governments to cross these traditional divides and work together with Native nations?"

Jaime Pinkham: "I believe it is. If you look out west, where that sense of individuality is treasured, but as long as we remain isolated, anonymous and faceless, we will never be able to come over some of those very difficult issues out west and a lot of those issues will deal in terms of the environment, the return of wolves or the recovery of salmon, where we see divisiveness in our communities. So the best way really is to start as local as you can. It's the politics of place in crafting those relationships very locally and using that to build up the ladder to state, federal governments. Who better to resolve local issues than those of us who live there? And to take those outcomes to where we really need action passed, and whether it's at Congress or at the state legislative level."

Sarah Hicks: "I guess I just wanted to make a related point, which is that I think not only are we seeing these relationships grow in all different kinds of topic areas and really in all different places across the country, but I think we're also seeing relationships that are being built across different branches of government. So increasingly, we're seeing relationships not only with the executive branch but with the legislative branch or in some cases they're relationships with the judiciary, with training of judges around some particularly important issues to tribal communities. So I think the trend is just growing and I think increasingly we're seeing that we have so many common issues where all neighboring governments are concerned about finite resources, about protecting our environment, about serving our citizens, making sure they have the essential governmental services they need. So I think increasingly we're just seeing more opportunities for governments to come together to solve these issues at the local level."

Mark St. Pierre: "Has this caused a shift in how these governments view Native Nations they work with? In other words, the State of Washington for instance, has it created a shift positive or negative in how they view the tribes in Washington?"

Jaime Pinkham: "Well, I can't speak for Washington, but in Idaho when I was on Tribal Council with Nez Perce, we did sense a shift, but unfortunately the shift was going two directions. One is where we were working collectively with a local county government and a city government to provide services to the reservation, but by us being there having access to economic development funds we were able to improve the infrastructure of the City of Lewiston. On the other hand, we saw these other governments riding on this wave of concern about what sovereignty will do to a community, and so we were faced with an alliance of 22 entities from school districts to city governments to county governments who feared tribal sovereignty and what it could do, the concerns about regulation and courts and they feared this word called 'sovereignty.' Sovereignty is something that really is an expression of the health of a community. So we worked hard to try to overcome the misconception that some of these communities had and the way to do it is to try to show the positive relationships we had with other neighboring communities."

Mark St. Pierre: "In South Dakota, I think there's a tremendous fear that in negotiating with the state, for instance, about anything, you're in a sense violating your treaty, because your treaty is between the tribe and the federal government. Do you want to respond to that concern 'cause it's a powerful concern."

Sarah Hicks: "Well, and I think part of this comes from a sense or a fear that many of these protections can be eroded, that the resources, the federal trust responsibility to American Indian tribal governments can be eroded. And so out of the fear to sort of protect what we have, there's been in some cases a real resistance to developing these kinds of relationships. But I think that nationally, we've started to move in a bit of a different direction. We've started to hear in national forums, tribal leaders articulating, 'We need to make sure that the federal trust responsibility is protected. We need assurances from the federal government that increasingly tribal self determination and tribal self-governance efforts, that increasingly, intergovernmental relationships aren't in anyway affecting the federal trust responsibility.' So I think on the one hand, tribes are concerned about that and I think they are looking to ensure that those protections are in place, but on the other hand, because of again the many, many common concerns and because of the increasing resources and opportunities for collaboration at the local level, I think we're seeing tribes move in that direction."

Jaime Pinkham: "And no doubt, I sense there still is some concern in Indian Country, because you have the federal government and then tribal government, state governments and the lower governments, and there's the concern that if we work with governments below us from the states down to city governments, that it's an erosion of our treaty rights and an erosion of our sovereignty. But the thing to keep in mind is we have the sovereign choice to work with those governments only if we choose."

Sarah Hicks: "Right. And I think we are. I think Jaime's right. We're talking about deliberate relationships between sovereign governments. It's governments coming together at the same table as equals to determine the type of relationship they want to have and what that relationship will encompass. So with tribes at the driver seat, I think this is really just underscoring that this really is about tribes as governments, tribes behaving as governments."

Mark St. Pierre: "I certainly think that sends a powerful idea to those tribes that are very nervous about these kinds of things, to hear that there are tribal groups working on positive relationships with local governments. Let's turn to a totally different thing here and look at intertribal relationships. Why are a growing number of Native Nations developing relationships and ties with other tribes in their region or nationally?"

Jaime Pinkham: "I think it's built on longstanding alliances and relationships that we've always had. In the Columbia River it was the salmon that always brought us together. The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, we're focused around the salmon, so we've always had the traditional alliances. The other thing, too, is recognizing the diversity of the landscape of Indian Country with our forms of government, our languages and our economies, it's important that we begin to share our talent and also to share knowledge and wisdom. When you look at parts of the U.S. where maybe we don't have the economic strength or we don't have the political strength and we're going to rely upon our neighboring tribes, and so I think these alliances are pretty fundamental to helping to elevate the tribal voice in places like Washington, D.C."

Sarah Hicks: "Part of it's strength in numbers, the sheer fact that tribes can come together, that we do have consensus on a great many issues and that we have a stronger voice if we work together. I also think that Jaime's right, a lot of this is really just formalizing relationships that have always been there."

Mark St. Pierre: "The tribes that work together, is it important that they kind of have their own internal tribal ducks in a row, that they have an effective government?"

Jaime Pinkham: "Yeah. Again, getting back to all politics is local, yeah, you have to be well-grounded and have strong, stable political leadership and use that as the basis and build up from there."

Sarah Hicks: "There's no doubt that it's important to have a message straight from the top that says, 'These relationships are important, that we're going to do what we can to work collaboratively on issues that we can.' This isn't to say that neighboring governments can always find common ground and can always agree on solutions to joint problems, but it is to say that it's important to have a message from the leadership that articulates very clearly the intention of cooperative relationships. On the other hand, I also think it's really important that the technical folks, that the staff, that the program directors are also on board for this. In some sense, you need the message from the top, the general policy that says, 'We're going to work together.' But on the other hand, it's the technical staff, it's those folks that are actually doing the work who really have to take to heart what it means to work collaboratively, to look for those opportunities to invite the other governments to the table."

Mark St. Pierre: "This question's for Jaime. In your capacity with the Nez Perce Tribe, you've been involved in a number of intergovernmental relationships. How did that process start? Tell us how that began and what it led to."

Jaime Pinkham: "Well, let me use an example, it's a recent example. We were involved in one of the largest water adjudications in the nation, the Snake River Basin, the Snake River Basin Adjudication, and actually we had two tracks going. We had the litigation track in court, but through the McCarran Amendment we're stuck in state court. And that's not the most comfortable place for a tribe to have their issues resolved. The other option we took was to try to find a negotiated settlement and both processes were going on track. And so the Tribe decided that we needed to keep both options open and we aggressively pursued a negotiated settlement working with the State of Idaho as well as representatives of the federal government. And believe me, it took us almost eight years to get this thing through and it took a lot of hard work. And like I said earlier, both paths are difficult but the only difference is the outcome. So we were able to resolve our differences and we had to be prepared to give a little and to gain a little bit. But in the end we avoided court, we avoided a court that may have ruled against our sovereignty, a court that could have ruled against some of our treaty-reserved rights. We preserved that. Those are the core values of our community and through negotiation we were able to preserve them."

Mark St. Pierre: "For those of us that aren't familiar with the actual issue, give us a framework for what brought the conflict to be."

Jaime Pinkham: "Actually, it started when the state went after securing their reserved water rights out of the Snake River Basin and they filed claims with the federal government. Well, the tribe couldn't stand back. We had to submit our claims and our claims were based on really two fundamental principles. One is in-stream flow to protect fisheries and the second one was the consumptive uses on reservation, whether it be for residential or industrial uses. And so we went through a long process to establish our tribal water rights claims."

Mark St. Pierre: "You now work for the Columbia River Intertribal fish Commission and I understand that's an award-winning intertribal organization. How has that commission empowered its member tribes, the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakama?"

Jaime Pinkham: "Actually, I see it the other way -- that they've empowered us as a real function of tribal government. We provide technical expertise, legal expertise and assistance in intergovernmental affairs, but really when you look, the real strength of our organization rests in the tribes and the capacity they've built on the fisheries front in the four tribes in the Pacific Northwest that have treaty rights on the Columbia River. So really they empower us and we act and respond to whatever directions that they want us to go to. It's a wonderful organization and I would say that we're on the cutting edge of salmon recovery in very contentious times, the fate of the salmon and subsequent fate of the four lower Snake River dams. It is a difficult issue to be dealing with, but fortunately we have four strong tribal governments that have empowered us to act on their behalf."

Mark St. Pierre: "I guess one of the things that I'm looking at, the salmon recovery, is something that has broad economic implications for the region doesn't it?"

Jaime Pinkham: "Oh, it does. The irony is that when the settlers first came out west they had the timber, the agriculture, and the salmon economies, so salmon helped get a foothold. But today you hear them speak only passionately about protecting the timber economy or the agriculture economy and we need to once again elevate the significance that the salmon economy played, not just for Indian people but for the region. And a strong salmon economy also means a strong, healthy environment."

Mark St. Pierre: "Sarah, in your work with the National Congress of American Indians, you've been exposed to many mechanisms available to develop these types of partnerships. Can you talk about how that came about and what some of those methods are?"

Sarah Hicks: "Sure. First, I think just the National Congress of American Indians is an interesting model. Our organization was founded in 1944, actually in response to attempts by the federal government to terminate American Indian tribes. So the very impetus for our organization was that tribes needed to gather together collectively to advocate against the federal policy toward termination. So the whole purpose of our organization was to bring tribes together and to represent their interests to the federal government. So that's just one model of intertribal organizations. But then I think what you're speaking more directly to is a project that the National Congress of American Indians has had with the National Conference of State Legislatures, a national organization that serves the legislators of every state in the United States so actually they serve a little over 7,000 state legislators. And in this work that NCAI has done with NCSL, we've been funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation for about six years now to start to provide some targeted technical assistance to states and tribes who are interested in finding new ways to work together. So some of the models that we've looked at and shared broadly include the establishment of Indian Affairs commissions, so these are usually executive-branch offices within the state government that try to coordinate the affairs of the executive branch in relationship to tribes. Then, of course, there are a number of legislative committees. I believe there are 14 states that have 17 different legislative committees that deal specifically with tribal issues. Some deal broadly with state tribal relationships where as others deal with particular issues around the relationships so perhaps repatriation, perhaps gaming, things like that. But there certainly are quite a number of models out there where states and tribes are finding new ways to work together developing new mechanisms and developing new agreements that will sort of chart the circumstances under which these relationships should continue."

Mark St. Pierre: "What I understand, it seems to me from what you're saying that the general climate is improving for the positive. Would that be your..."

Sarah Hicks: "I think so. If you look at some of the work that NCAI has done over the past year, we've been working up in Alaska with the previous administration there to sign a government-to-government agreement with the tribes in Alaska. That was the Millennium Agreement. We've seen similar types of agreements in a variety of other states. We've seen an increased number of Native legislators. I think that's a big sign that Native people think it's worth investing in the state system. We've seen increased number of bills that address tribal issues in state legislatures. So I think across the board we're seeing various indicators that tribes are moving in this direction. And again, not that this is a panacea. We don't think this is the be-all-and-end-all, that this is the solution for everything. Certainly tribal governments and neighboring governments will have very different views on some things in large part because of tribal cultures and tribal values may differ substantially from other governments. But on the other hand, it makes a lot of sense to look at issues that we can agree on and I think we are definitely moving in that direction."

Mark St. Pierre: "Let's turn now to some success stories. I know both of you have tremendous involvement in a wide range of these kinds of relationship building and conflict resolution. Give us some ideas of some of the successes in the country that are based on this new energy."

Jaime Pinkham: "Some of the things that we've worked on back home in Nez Perce country and looking at issues that were once conflict that had now come into a cooperative relationship, and one was when we were looking at protecting our traditional foods and medicines and the federal government had a plan to spray herbicides and it was to take out noxious weeds. And then we protested that so in turn the federal government and the state worked with us to develop a new method of controlling noxious weeds that would safeguard our traditional foods and medicines. So we started a bio-control center, so I think that was one where we took conflict and turned it into something that was positive and actually is providing resources, non-pesticide options to control noxious weeds in the Pacific Northwest."

Mark St. Pierre: "Sarah?"

Sarah Hicks: "I guess there are a couple that I can think of. One is that in 1998, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation signed an agreement with the Narragansett Tribe that would actually allow for tribal members to be hired by the state department of transportation to monitor some of the progress that was being made on developing highways, to be there when human remains or cultural artifacts were found so that there would be tribal members on site to try to make sure that those things were protected and they were addressed in a way that was appropriate to the tribe. So there are some examples like that. There are examples around federal subsidies to tribes to deal with foster care and adoption. Right now the federal funding flow is only to states, but we've seen some progress such that there are 71 tribal state agreements in 13 different states that allow these federal funds that are so urgently needed to deal with child welfare issues in tribal communities, to allow these funds to flow through the state to the tribes and in many cases there are other administrative funds and there are training funds that go with these so we are seeing I think...Jaime's pointing out some examples, and I'm talking about a couple others, and we're seeing that really this isn't relegated to just one domain, that we're actually seeing these kinds of efforts in a variety of different topic areas."

Mark St. Pierre: "I know in the fishing industry in the northwest that there have been arguments about water flow in terms of the revitalization of salmon in those rivers and they've required very complicated agreements. Can you tell us a bit about some of those?"

Jaime Pinkham: "Well, yeah, some of them are complex agreements where we have to work with a variety of people. If you look at the river system, it's a river of life. Not just human life, but an economic life, and a wonderful example is where the Confederate Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation have reached beyond...we can talk about [intergovernmental] relationships and intertribal relationships, but also there's the importance of creating private sector relationships, and the Umatilla Tribe has a wonderful example of that where they were concerned that the irrigators were pulling water out of the life-giving river as they were trying to return salmon to the Umatilla River. So they worked with the local irrigators to do a water exchange to keep water within the river system. So they took what were traditional adversaries and now they've become allies in salmon recovery. So we see those kinds of agreements at play. And I'm hoping we'll see more and more of those. The salmon issue is not going to be resolved overnight and you've got so many players in the game from utilities to irrigation to recreation interests and the long-seated tribal interest that is there, and we need to continue to reach out and build more of these relationships. And you see the tribes who are taking the lead on running fish hatcheries and working with federal government on land restoration to kind of restore the habitat that is important to these species, so the relationships are really building out in the northwest."

Mark St. Pierre: "We want to give a heartfelt thanks to Sarah Hicks and Jaime Pinkham for appearing on today's edition of Native Nation Building, a program of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the University of Arizona. To learn more about Native Nation building and the issues discussed here today, please visit the Native Nations Institute's website at www.nni.arizona.edu/nativetv. Thank you for joining us and please tune in for the next edition of Native Nation Building."