self-determination

From the Rebuilding Native Nations Course Series: "What Do We Mean When We Say 'Constitutions'?"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development Co-Director Joseph P. Kalt provides a definition of 'constitutions' in the context of nation building.

Native Nations
Citation

Kalt, Joseph P. "Constitutions: Critical Components of Native Nation Building." Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy. University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. 2012. Lecture.

“One of the points, I’ll say it a couple of times I’m sure -- this word ‘constitution’ is kind of a quintessential sort of western European idea. I learned about it in high school here in Tucson, Arizona in high school civics. I learned all about the constitution. Right? But many nations in the world don’t even have written constitutions, and yet they have constitutions: fundamental systems of organizing ourselves, or any community, for making those community decisions that allow us hopefully to move toward shared goals. And so I’m going to talk about constitutions in a quite broad way. I’m not talking about it just in the form of my high school civics textbook, but rather much more broadly about the fundamental systems of governing that people adopt. I was teaching last week a session very much like this in El Paso with the Tigua tribe in El Paso, Texas -- Ysleta del Sur [Pueblo]. And they’re one of the traditional Pueblos. They don’t have a written constitution. And I posed the question to them, ‘Do you have a constitution?’ And this is all the tribal council and city managers, and they got in a big argument. ‘No, we don't have a constitution!’ ‘Yes, we do have a constitution!’ And what it was it about, well they eventually said, ‘We do have a constitution. We have a very fundamental law in our nation about how we're going to run things. We’ve never had to write it down because everybody knows it. But we know how we select people who are going to lead.’ And many nations in the world don’t have written constitutions. Very successful places. Israel doesn't have a written constitution. Great Britain doesn’t have a written constitution. Navajo Nation doesn’t have a written constitution. Fundamental laws are in place, but nothing you would hold up as the constitution. So when I’m talking constitutions today, I want you to really recognize we’re talking about -- whether written down, whether embedded in deep traditional culture, whether sitting on somebody’s computer, or just in ceremony -- what we’re talking about is the fundamental systems of organizing and governing a self-determined community.” 

From the Rebuilding Native Nations Course Series: "Defining Sovereignty"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Native leaders offer their definitions of what sovereignty is and what it means for Native nations in the 21st century.

Native Nations
Citation

Barrett, John "Rocky". Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 28, 2009. Interview.

Fullmer, Jamie. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. June 17, 2008. Interview.

Harjo, Suzan. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. September 11, 2008. Interview.

Jourdain, Floyd "Buck." Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Red Lake, Minnesota. July 2008. Interview.

Mankiller, Wilma. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. September 29, 2008. Interview.

Ninham-Hoeft, Patricia. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 26, 2009. Interview.

Pierre, Sophie. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Phoenix, Arizona. October 21, 2008. Interview.

Pierre, Sophie. "What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office." Emerging Leaders Seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 25, 2008. Presentation.

Sophie Pierre:

"We have a choice! We have a choice. We can continue to go down that self-pitying kind of road, blaming everybody else for our problems, or we can take control of it. We chose to take control of it."

Wilma Mankiller:

"The definition of sovereignty is to have control over your own lands, and resources, and assets, and to have control over your own vision for the future, and to be able to absolutely determine your own destiny."

Jamie Fullmer:

"Sovereignty is an unwritten rule. It's there. You express it by what you do to grow and, within that though, what you claim is based on the structures that you develop. So, in the modern sense, as the nation moves forward, the process and the ideal of sovereignty is: we are here; we express ourselves; we accept the challenge and responsibility of governing and seeing our own path forward."

Suzan Harjo:

"Sovereignty is the act of sovereignty. We, as Native nations, are inherently sovereign and whatever we do to act sovereign is the definition of sovereignty. When something is inherent, it's inherent. You are who you are from the inside out and it's not something that is over-layered, either in law or in policy, and it's not something that the Europeans brought from Europe. It is your language -- speaking your language is an act of sovereignty."

John "Rocky" Barrett:

"A government without law, and the willingness to enforce that law, isn't really a government. That's the ultimate act of sovereignty -- not only enforcing a law, but being willing, as a people, to put themselves under the rule of law, is the ultimate act of sovereignty."

Floyd Jourdain:

"With tribal sovereignty, a lot of the time you see in the media, you see in the public, the term sovereignty come when tribes are on a defensive. We shouldn't have to protect our tribal sovereignty. We should be out there using our tribal sovereignty in a good way to advance our interests, to bring more resources to our communities, and not wait around until every two and four years (when the state and the federal elections come along) and all of a sudden we have to defend ourselves against interest groups, against sporting organizations, and those types of things. No, we need to use our tribal sovereignty in a good way -- proactively -- to use it to advance the interest of our tribal nations."

Patricia Ninham-Hoeft:

"I think too often people think sovereignty is when you can pound on your chest and proclaim that the things that you are doing are because you can do it, because you're a sovereign. But in today's world we have so many different relationships and so many different communities that we interact with that we don't live in isolation anymore. We have to work together, we're interdependent with places -- not just in our own backyard but around the globe -- so sovereignty, if you exercise it effectively, starts with understanding that it's a tool to building a community. It's not the end result. Because I hear that so often from tribal leaders: 'The goal for our tribe is to make sure that our sovereignty is strong.' And I think, 'that's not the end result. The end result is, how do you use your sovereignty to build a strong community?'"

Jamie Fullmer:

"Sovereignty, I believe, is best expressed when we ask not what we can do, but why can't we do it? The question we can ask is: why can't we do it? We're not asking: can we do that? We're asking: why can't we do that? You know, have others prove us wrong and not have to prove ourselves wrong first."

Sophie Pierre:

"I think what it really means was explained by a chief who has since left us. His name was Joe Mathias. He was chief of Suquamish. And he always said that exercising sovereignty was that, "˜the people who were going to live with the results of a decision, are the people who make the decision.' And to me, that's what sovereignty has always meant. We are responsible for our own lives, we make our own decisions, and we're the people that suffer the consequences of those decisions."

From the Rebuilding Native Nations Course Series: "What is Nation Building?"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Native leaders define what nation building means to them, and what it entails for Native nations who are working to reclaim control over their own affairs and build vibrant futures of their own design.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

Ettawageshik, Frank. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 6, 2010. Interview.

Frias, Herminia. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. May 14, 2007. Interview.

Marquez, Deron. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 26, 2009. Interview.

Pierre, Sophie. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. October 21, 2008. Interview.

Pinkham, Jaime. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 26, 2009. Interview.

Sampsel, Roy. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. August 31, 2010. Interview.

Shendo, Jr., Benny. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. May 14, 2007. Interview.

Vizenor, Erma. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 25, 2010. Interview.

Benny Shendo, Jr.:

"It's not necessarily about nation building, but its about re-building because if you look at our communities historically, we were very powerful nations and all that changed. I believe that we still have the, at least, the values and those things that are important to us as Indian people to re-build our nations. But it's going to take some time because this whole re-building is really going to -- I believe -- take us down this surge of who we are to re-establish that identity again."

Herminia Frias:

"In a practical way, nation building is: building strong governments, transparency in governments, fairness in governments, equity among tribal members, creating an economy for our membership and for the tribe in general for the future."

Jaime Pinkham:

"I think nation building is having the freedom to determine the destiny for your community, and to be able to put together the institutions, the forms of laws and conduct that is necessary to meet the services for your community. And it's the freedom to chose who your partners are going to be, freedom to chose what your court systems will look like, but it also takes -- I feel -- a great deal of wisdom to practice nation building at a very deliberative approach."

Deron Marquez:

"We always called it re-building because I think, one of the things -- from the community's standpoint -- is that the community, through time, just simply forgot. And so, in our opinion, it was a matter of getting the community to remember the vibrance that was once ours and took place in our communities. We were a nomadic group and we moved around a lot, but nonetheless we had a lot of -- by today's standards -- success. We had a lot of wealth, in the sense of culture, in the sense of the abilities to function as a society within our own sphere of societies. I think it's just a process by which you need to get your community to re-focus back to what is meaningful to them, again, and make them remember. And once you're able to accomplish that type of connection where they start to think and feel and believe in more of an authentic disposition, the process of re-building your nation becomes easier."

Frank Ettawageshik:

"It has a lot of different parts to it. Some people think it's the constitution. Some people think it’s economic development. And those are components of it clearly, and are very important and maybe some of the more visible parts, but nation building to me is building the capacity of the citizenry of your nation to deal with change and to deal with the issues that come before it."

Sophie Pierre:

"What it looks like [is] a room that is full of people from every generation, from every community, speaking about issues that are important, looking at a huge map of our traditional territory, and talking about which areas need to be protected, which areas we could actually use ourselves for development, and which areas we're simply going to have an advisory capacity, and those decisions being made not by educated individuals from somewhere else, but from all of these people that are in this room that are all related, and that have a stake at what is being decided here."

Roy Sampsel:

"Tribal governments, tribal communities, tribal nations had always had the capacity to manage themselves and had over a whole series of time frames. What we have now is the understanding that recapturing that capacity to be self-governance [sic], self-directed is extremely important. And what you end up with now in this sort of, if you will, rebirth of the building of these nations is what are some of the contemporary pieces that you're going to put in place so that that happens within the context of the world in which we find ourselves, but founded on the very essential premises that the culture and the history is a driving force? So, the rebuilding of nations is really sort of the incorporation of a broader set of circumstances, than may have existed when the nations were exercising their sovereignty, their ability to govern and manage themselves within their own environment, literally centuries ago."

Erma Vizenor:

"When we strengthen our own governments, institutionally, culturally and with the human resources, the human assets and capital we have then we will be nation building, we will have, we will be strong nations."

David Wilkins: Patterns in American Indian Constitutions

Producer
Archibald Bush Foundation and the Native Nations Institute
Year

University of Minnesota American Indian Studies Professor David Wilkins provides a comprehensive overview of the resiliency of traditional governance systems among Native nations in the period leading up to the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), and shares some data about the types of constitutions and governance systems that Native nations possess today.

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

Resource Type
Citation

Wilkins, David. "Patterns in American Indian Constitutions." Remaking Indigenous Governance Systems seminar. Archibald Bush Foundation and the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Prior Lake, Minnesota. May 2, 2011. Presentation.

"I'm really, I'm pleased to be here. I've been having conversations with June [Noronha] and Jaime [Pinkham] and Steve [Cornell] and some other folks for several years, when Bush sort of partnered up with the Native Nations Institute. My interest in Indigenous governance goes back a long ways as well, and I'll share some of that with you. The work that I do, I focus a lot on constitutions, but I'm more interested in, more broadly, in patterns and structures of Indigenous governance more broadly defined, which is why I was really glad to hear the gentleman from Cochiti earlier today. And I'll share with you some figures and some recent data that I've collected trying to sort of tease out exactly how many of our Nations operate under constitutions. I finally got what I think is fairly definitive numbers on that, which is interesting especially when you compare that to the historical dimension.

I'm happy to be on the lands of the Shakopee Mdewakanton people. I just live right up here in Burnsville, just a few miles down the road. I really...when we originally moved up here in '99, I had wanted to find a home in Savage. I wanted to say that I lived in Savage, for all the obvious reasons, but my wife couldn't find us a home in Savage. So I wasn't able to say that I'm a true Savage. That broke my heart. But as Steve was saying, my background is in political science. I did my Ph.D. in UNC [University of North Carolina] Chapel Hill. I did my master's under Vine Deloria, the leading Indigenous scholar in poli sci as well, at the University of Arizona back in '82. And I've long been interested in issues of how we governed ourselves, how we comported ourselves, both historically and today. I belong to the Lumbee people of North Carolina; we exist in that sort of quasi-recognized status. I say we're recognized because Congress recognized us in '56 but the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] refused to provide any services to us. So I tell my students I'm only quasi-real.

But this semester I'm teaching two courses that directly tie in with this conference. My first course is one on American Indian tribal government and politics, and we've been studying a lot of what you're talking about here and working on in your day-to-day lives. And then the other course is one on the Supreme Court, the one branch of the federal government that has been particularly impactful on our nation's rights and resources. And so I've heard the word self-determination used several times today. And we hear that all the time and we hear tribal sovereignty all the time. And that's absolutely true; we've made significant strides in exercising our self-determination since the late '50s, early '60s and continue to do things that for the previous century had not been allowed broadly. But at the same time, and as Mr. [Regis] Pecos also pointed out, there are still profound constraints on our nations. And in fact I coined an acronym for that. I call it the 'DPT syndrome.' That is we suffer under the Doctrine of the Discovery, the Doctrine of Plenary Power and the Trust Doctrine. And those three doctrines, combined together, create and allow for the federal government to do pretty much what it wants, vis-í -vis our peoples, our resources, our lands. So even while they're saying they support our self-determination, they still claim under these three important doctrines that they can overpower any aspect of our lives. And we all know that to be true, don't we? And so there is an interesting and confounding ad mixture there, of our being self-determined and yet still being subject to DPT. And so I talk to my students a lot about that and how that is and how that continues to coexist today.

And as I say I'm from North Carolina originally, and I just got back from Tempe at a conference down there. Those two states, the sun occasionally shines in those two states actually. I haven't seen the sun here in this state for quite awhile. I just thought I'd mention that since I saw snowflakes this morning driving over here.

My talk today is culled really from research that I've gathered over the years and two books that I recently edited. The first was a study by Felix Cohen who many consider the grandfather of the area of federal Indian law. It was a lengthy memorandum that he wrote in 1934 that was never published. In fact it was never officially accepted by the BIA as an official document, but it's a very important document. And I learned about it through some work that Elmer Rusco had done on the IRA [Indian Reorganization Act]. I tracked it down from the Yale [University] library, read it and convinced Oklahoma to publish it. Then I wrote an introduction about Felix Cohen. I'll talk a little bit more about that later on, but it contains a lot of information that I think debunks a lot of the myths and stereotypes about IRA constitutions.

That study was followed up by another edited work that I completed last year called Documents of Native American Political Development from the 1500s to 1933. This is a collection that I've been unwittingly working on for a very long time dating back to the late 1970s, when I was a budding archival researcher in the North Carolina archives. At the time I was researching my own people's history, the Lumbee and the Coharie tribe of North Carolina, as our nations were gearing up for their latest push to try to get federal recognition. But I left that position to work on my M.A. with Vine Deloria in political science and federal Indian policy at the U of A [University of Arizona], and there my interests and research desires just expounded exponentially because when you worked with Vine, he exposed you to a wide world. He wasn't limited to just law or just politics or just theology or just culture or anthropology. He combined multiple fields of research and analysis in his effort to understand who we are, how we came to be, our relationship to the other governments in our midst and so on.

And since 1982 really and forward, and even before that, two broad questions have really sort of dominated most of my research. First, I've always wanted to understand how and why the colonial state and federal governments adopted the treaties and statutes, judicial rulings and policies they did with regards to our nations. And why they've always maintained a schizophrenic position and attitude toward us, sometimes saying they support our right to be self-governing and sovereign and so on, while at the same time maintaining that they have the power to terminate us, to eclipse us, to dominate us, to confiscate, to do whatever they want. And they've always been schizophrenic towards us. And Clarence Thomas, no good friend of mine, even said in the Lara decision, federal Indian policy and law is schizophrenic. He's the first Justice to actually use that term. And so I applaud Clarence for that; the only thing I've ever applauded him for. And second, I've always wanted to understand how our peoples were politically and legally and culturally organized and how the arrival of Europeans and others affected our self-governing capabilities, particularly before John Collier, Felix Cohen and Nathan Margold -- the New Deal triumvirate -- came on the scene in 1933. My earlier works have focused largely on question one, but in the last several years I've been intent -- I've been hell bent -- on understanding historical governing structures, values and patterns and have been especially keen on learning what kinds of political, cultural and institutional adaptations we made once we had sustained contact with the foreign polities that intruded and settled upon our lands.

We know quite a bit about the Iroquois Confederacy and their important Great Law -- the Gayanashagowa -- and nearly as much about the constitutional development that occurred among the Five Civilized Tribes, but what about the rest of Indian Country? And that has been my charge in recent years. Vine Deloria, as many of you know, always stressed the importance of understanding culture, history, law and politics and many other subjects as well, and the status and structures of our societies, as well as the way we were impacted by our intense interactions with non-Native governments and their peoples. So when he encouraged me to read Felix Cohen's original Handbook of Federal Indian law -- and I would encourage you to read the original before you read the later editions, it's still the best one of the lot -- when I first arrived in Tucson in 1980, one specific sentence struck me from that book. Cohen wrote, Between the time of the adoption of the Constitution of the Five Nations -- that is the Iroquois -- and the adoption by more than 100 Indian tribes of written constitutions pursuant to the IRA, there was a fascinating history of political development that has never been pieced together.' And that was true when he wrote it in 1942 and it's still true today. And so I sort of, I clipped that comment out and I began to collect data wherever I could find it -- whether it was an early treaty or an early constitution or an early statute or some judicial ruling or whatever I could find -- and I began to keep a file of things, just as Deloria had encouraged me to do. And it was this quote that I've been responding to for a good number of years. How did we as Native nations politically cope with what was easily one of the most oppressive assimilation campaigns in world history and remained generally true to our ancestor's good values, as Mr. Pecos mentioned, while modifying to some extent the institutions themselves that carry out those values?

And so my anthology that was published last year explores that so-called fascinating history. But it is only a beginning because the field is so vast, our nations are so diverse, and the data -- both oral and recorded -- is not as available as one would like. Still, as I collected documents over these last 20 years that evidence our remarkably adaptive abilities, I was struck by how gifted we were at being able to positively respond to tremendously harsh situations by creating a bevy of governing arrangements that truly reflect how diverse, strategic and creative we were and still are. I struggled with how to organize all that data, but found that three broad categories were helpful to me as I began to sort of put together the anthology.

First, the broad span of nations who continue to operate under what we can call -- for lack of a better term --traditional or organic forms of governance, and this despite the heavy hand of federal officials intent on obliterating or at least profoundly diminishing any semblance of those structures and values. And again, hearing from Cochiti this morning reminded me of how effective and how well the various Pueblo nations have been at doing just that. Second, the wide range of Native nations who adopted constitutional, that is formal written constitutions, and this long before we heard of John Collier or Felix Cohen. According to the data that I've gathered over the years, there were approximately, somewhere between 55-60 formal written constitutions before the IRA was adopted in 1934; so 55-60 out of 560 Native nations, small percentage but an important segment of the population. And third, the creation of what I call transitional institutional arrangements that many of our nations adopted, or that were at least proposed for adoption by our communities, as a means of coping with the unprecedented swiftness of cultural and religious and demographic and territorial loss that we endured.

In some cases, transitional structures were developed or suggested by our nations in response to corrosive Euro-American policies. In other cases our ancestors proactively and preemptively generated changes to their own historic institutions in an effort to better situate themselves politically, economically, culturally, legally. And of course there's a fourth category, right? A combination category really that would include those Native nations -- probably all of us -- whose community members exhibited elements of more than one of these three prior sets of responses. And there's ample evidence that within many tribal nations depending on leadership, retention of structures and other factors, one might see one segment writing a constitution, while another segment was striving to perpetuate traditional forms of governance, while another segment would be aspiring to meld into the local citizenry. And so our communities very early on were segmented. I don't like the word divided or fragmented but that applies, too. We know that.

And so prior to 1934, we have already a startling diversity and it had only become even more intense as a result of all these pressures that we were feeling both internally and externally. From confederacies of hunting groups to the Iroquois Confederacy to small fishing villages to the small gated communities of North Carolina and South Carolina to the pueblos, to the towns of the Creek, to the villages of the Northwest coast, I mean, the diversity is startling and quite amazing when you think about it. And so that diversity along with the value systems that underlay that amount of diversity indicates that our ancestors were more than willing to embrace new political and legal traditions and institutions in an effort to adjust. They had to adjust, didn't they, to the shifting political, economic, legal and cultural terrain that they were now confronted by? And at the same time varying segments of many Native nations strove to maintain pre-contact socio-cultural norms, institutions, values and traditions to distinguish themselves then and today as much as they can from other Native nations and the inexorable tide of intruding powers that was not going to be kept at bay.

And so this is where I want to introduce the first handout that I brought, if I can get Steve's help here. This is a little table that with the help of my colleague Heidi Stark -- who actually created the table for me -- it lays out for you some of the diversity that was evident in Indian Country in 1929. Let me pause for a moment and let that work its way around to you. We know that by the 1920s, of course, allotment and coercive assimilation, boarding schools and other forces had worked a mighty toll on our communities. And so in 1929 Charles Burke, the commissioner of Indian Affairs, said he wanted to know what kind of governing mechanisms were in place in Indian Country. And so he created a circular that he sent out to all 120 Indian superintendents in Indian Country and he specifically asked about what kind of business councils or other governing arrangements were in place on the reservations under those superintendents charge. And that was a specific question: "˜What kind of business council or other governing arrangements?' And so he sent that circular to all 120 superintendents. Seventy-eight superintendents responded in writing to Commissioner Burke's circular. I don't know what the rest of them are doing. They might have all been vacationing somewhere where the sun shines. But at least we have some data that lets us know, it gives us some firsthand snapshot of what kind of governing arrangements were in place. (It's working it's way kind of slowly, but it's coming. That's alright.)

But what you'll see when you do get it -- and again I apologize for the darkness of the top font -- of the 78 superintendents who wrote written responses, 33 of them said, on our reservation are business councils. And frequently those business councils, they identified the names of each and other one of the council members. And 16 of those 35 business councils, the members served lifelong terms. So even though they had adopted a formal Western system of governance, although it was business-oriented, 16 of them held lifelong positions. They were life tenured. So that is a clear connection to some historic traditional way of governing. Twenty-eight of the superintendents said that there within the reservation were traditional arrangements that was still in evidence. And there you see the Pueblos figure very prominently. All the Pueblos were listed as being specifically traditional in their form of governance and several of the agents were quite ticked off about that. They complained that they couldn't rid of these old-time traditional Pueblos and they had lost the ability to try and control them. And they had basically thrown up their hands because they realized that the Pueblos were going to retain those values and those structures that had held them in good stead throughout history. Fifteen other superintendents said that the Indians under their charge had no business council whatsoever to speak of and had no other formal tribal arrangement. Does that mean that there was no tribal governance on that reservation? I don't think so, but the agent just simply couldn't see it or opted to say that he couldn't reference any of that. In fact the Choctaw agent made that point. The Colorado River agent said, "˜There is no governing arrangement on my reservation.' The Colville agent said the same thing. And we know that our peoples continued to govern themselves, didn't they? So it just goes to show that agents weren't always on top of things. Twelve tribes were identified as operating under written constitutions by their agents, but then you had a series of other types of arrangements: general councils, committees, farm chapters, chapters in Navajo country, welfare associations and there were several broad intertribal organizations as well.

And so this is just one set of responses from 78 superintendents, and so we still don't have the broader comprehensive view of the rest of Indian Country. But just within this small body of agents we see a fair amount of diversity. Interestingly enough, 10 of the tribal governments had elected women identified as being on their council: the Crow Nation, who we heard from today; Fort Berthold; Fort Hall; the Kaw; the Potawatomi; Quapaw; Sac and Fox; Siletz; Snohomish, Quinault. So our women were being elected to governing positions long before white women were allowed to vote in this country. I think that's an important fact to be reminded of. So this descriptive assessment of the 78 responses reveals an extensive range of governing business and customary institutions in Indian Country, some of which still broadly resemble pre-contact structures that had persisted. Because, as we've heard and as we've always known, we are the most resilient peoples in the world. And understandably there had been of necessity many changes because of the devastating impacts of nearly six decades of federal, church and societal pressures, death and depopulation, etc. In other words, by the time John Collier arrives on the scene in 1933, the remarkable persistence of many of our traditional albeit modified governing mechanisms provided them with a foundation on which they could then begin to build a new set of institutions, but that really weren't that new, because we already knew what constitutions were and we knew that many of us didn't need to rely on constitutions, either because we had many ways of governing ourselves because we are all different nations.

So after I had gathered all this data and read through these various materials, I organized the book. It has 86 documents ranging from the Iroquois Great Law of Peace all the way up to several pre-IRA constitutions. And I put them in eight broad categories: constitutions developed by Native peoples for themselves; constitutions developed by or heavily influenced by non-Natives, like the Laguna Pueblo; laws, charters, legal codes developed by us; the same developed by the United States; documents written by federal Indian agents, like the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and other federal officials; U.S. congressional documents that describe Indigenous governance; there were several international organizations out of Oklahoma that talked about themselves as an international body; confederated arrangements; and finally, Indigenous narratives on politics and governance. And those documents -- dating like I said over a three century period of time -- while certainly not anywhere nearly exhaustive, demonstrate how a wide cross-section of Native nations continue to exist, to continue to exercise a significant if variable measure of self-governance long after it was presumed that we had lost, surrendered or been physically deprived of that power. And I think it's remarkable when you look at how broadly and how widely we govern ourselves and how much traditional governance was still in place in 1929. Many people talk about the period from 1880 to the 1920s as the rise of plenary power and the absolute devastation and domination of our nations. And politically that was certainly true. And yet within that, we still were maintaining forms of governance that were still connected to our ancestors. And that's no small feat.

I'd now like to shift to a brief discussion of the important work that Felix Cohen did on tribal constitutions in an attempt to dispel some of the many lingering myths about the IRA process. Cohen, as many of you know, had been hired expressly in 1933 to draft the legislation that would culminate in the IRA. And many scholarly analyses have been written about that important piece of legislation, hailed as the most important law of the 20th century and rightly so. And unlike Collier, who had spent considerable time among Native nations prior to his appointment to the commissionership, Cohen lacked any kind of substantial knowledge about Native peoples and their governance before he was hired to work at the BIA. But he was a quick learner and he soon immersed himself in examination of our peoples and our cultures and became a very fast friend of Indigenous peoples and Indigenous governance.

In the 1940s, he and his wife bought and built a cabin in the Adirondack Mountains and they were neighbors with Ray Fadden, who was a prominent Mohawk traditional person. And Cohen began to learn from Ray Fadden about the Iroquois and the Great Law of Peace and that fantastic Confederated government that they had that dates back to the early 1500s. And so I find that a fascinating sort of friendship that built there. And if you read the lengthy memorandum that he wrote and that had been published by Oklahoma Press, you see Cohen mentioning the Iroquois Great Law of Peace multiple times throughout the book as one guide, as one model, as one form of governance that Native peoples operated under and he held it as a remarkable institutional arrangement.

Cohen and his colleagues were convinced, especially at the beginning of the process, that tribal organization via written constitutions, charters and by-laws, were the most appropriate means for our nations to protect and exercise our basic right of political and economic self-determination. But why tribal constitutions? What were these documents to contain? How would tribes adopting constitutions relate to the BIA, state governments, the federal government? And if tribes had retained any traditional institutions, how would the adoption of a constitution affect those continuing traditions? And was there to be a "˜model' constitution that tribes should be expected to follow?

If you read Cohen's earlier analysis and description -- this is before he begins to venture into Indian Country -- at the earliest stages of his drafting of the IRA, you could see that he really had no clue about Indigenous governance. In fact his original idea, his original model for tribal IRA constitutions was municipal or town government. I went through all of his papers at the Yale Library as I was preparing to put his book together and he writes at one point, Tribal constitutional governments were to be like town governments except that they would have federal protection and their special rights.' And that's what he thought. And in fact, in his papers, I found a lengthy nine-page bibliography that contained references to municipal or town structural arrangements. And that was Cohen's original model and that was what he originally thought tribal constitutions should look like, should resemble. But as I said, as he began to venture out, as he convinced Collier to hold these series of congresses around Indian Country, he began to learn more about how we had always governed ourselves and he began to incorporate that knowledge into his own research, into his own writing and into his own thinking. And the IRA that finally worked its way through the congressional channels reflected some of that. I'm going to just sort of summarize a few things for you here.

At the time the IRA was adopted in 1934, there were 55 recognized tribal constitutions in operation in Indian Country -- and I have that from Cohen's own papers. Within the first six years of the IRA's enactment, 195 tribes adopted the IRA; 77 tribes rejected it. And by 1940, 133 Native nations had adopted formal written constitutions, 33 of those came out of the Alaska, which was brought in under 1936, 17 came out of Oklahoma under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act, the rest of them were IRA communities within the U.S. (I've just been told to shut my mouth and I'm going to do that.) But very quickly let me tell you that as of today, as of 2010, there are 173 IRA constitutions recognized by the Department of Interior. There are another 74 IRA/ANA constitutions -- that is, Administration for Native Americans. There are 25 Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act constitutions, 46 non-IRA constitutions, one non-Oklahoma Indian Welfare constitution, one non-IRA/ANA constitution, the Tlingit people up in Alaska, there's a Navajo code. So in total, there are 330 tribal constitutions of these various categories; 245 of our nations do not operate under constitutions. So we need comprehensive studies, ladies and gentlemen, of all these different types of constitutions, and we need to know how these other 245 Native nations continue to operate, because under the BIA's categories those 245 communities are identified as traditional/other governments. So I think that's a fascinating reality. Thank you very much. One last thing, I made a copy of the so-called model constitution that I found in Felix Cohen's papers and that will be or has been distributed to you. So you can take that, look at this and compare that. If you operate under an IRA constitution, see if yours comports, because the fact is only a handful of tribes ever received this model constitution because Cohen himself insisted that it not be sent out because he wanted tribal Nations to develop their own from within their own value system. Thank you very much."

Honoring Nations: Joseph P. Kalt: A New Era of Governmental Relations

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development Co-Director Joseph Kalt stresses that the only policy that has ever created and sustained community and economic development in Native communities is self-determination. He also introduces Jodi Gillette, Senior Policy Advisor for Native American Affairs for the Obama Administration.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Kalt, Joseph P. "A New Era of Governmental Relations." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 17, 2009. Presentation.

"...That is in reference to the fact that we are very fearful of a lawsuit against the Harvard Project [because] every single employee of the Harvard Project is female. Well, thank you Megan very much, and welcome to all of you.

As many of you know, this effort, the Harvard Project, the Native Nations Institute, have this tremendous focus on tribal governance. Why tribal governance? The focus here arises because in our early days, more than 20 years ago, the nerdy professors kept turning up the result that the only policy that was turning things around in Indian Country, the only policy that was bettering peoples' lives -- not only economically but socially, culturally, families, everything -- were policies of self-determination. I once was testifying before the [U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs] and I made that point that the only policy that's ever worked is a policy of self-determination. And one of the skeptical senators looked at me. And I said, 'Senator, you know, if I came up here as an economist...' I admit it. I'm an economist. You remember from college? Good with numbers and computers, not enough personality to be an accountant. Oh, I just insulted the accountants here -- I apologize. 'Senator,' I said, 'if I came up here as an economist and I told you, when we look across eastern Europe, we can't find a single case of sustained economic development, social improvement, cultural strengthening where some outsider was making the decisions for a nation, you wouldn't be surprised. Why would you be surprised about Indian Country?'

The lessons that you teach are that self-determination works. It works economically, socially, culturally, in every dimension of life. But it's also, as was indicated it's also a challenge. I had a very good friend of mine, a retired chairwoman of Muckleshoot, Virginia Cross -- some of you may know her -- one time say to me, 'This self-determination is sort of the two-edged sword.' She said, 'It used to be when anything went wrong we could blame the feds. Now when something goes wrong, they blame me.' And then she said, very wisely, 'And that's the way it should be, because the challenge of leadership is a challenge of service, is a challenge of accountability and what helps and what is improving things is answering that call.'

A cornerstone, an absolute cornerstone of self-determination as a Nation is self-governance. If you look -- many of you know this from friends, relatives or perhaps your own communities -- if you look at the history of termination of tribes in the United States, the termination of the powers of self-government, the termination of the status of nationhood made everything fall apart. Governance is a lot about bureaucracy; it's a lot about technical numbers and so forth. But without it, it is so incredibly difficult to hold together a community, to hold together the identities of people. This is true, as Steve [Cornell] said, not only Native peoples, it's true all over the world. So that the challenge of self-government is truly the challenge not only of nation building but of community building. A cornerstone of that is intergovernmental relations with your neighbors, of intergovernmental relations -- in our case in the United States -- with the federal government.

And we hope that a new era has been marked with a new administration, with the appointment of a high level advisor in the White House on Indian affairs. And we are pleased today, and it is my honor to introduce, the Deputy Associate Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, Jodi Gillette. Jodi now resides, if you will, in the White House. I don't think you get to sleep there though, do you Jodi? But obviously, [she] represents more than the symbolism but a commitment to true intergovernmental relations, because she's in the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs; there's not only symbolism, but meat in that. Jodi is a graduate of the outstanding program at Dartmouth. Among a number of other people in the room here, Jodi is also a Bush Fellow. And we have a very close relationship with the Bush Foundation in St. Paul. [She] received her Masters in Public Administration from Minnesota. Prior to joining the Obama administration she was the Director of the Native American Training Institute and is a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation. So it's with great honor that we welcome Jodi to Honoring Nations. Thank you." 

Honoring Nations: Stephen Cornell: The Growth of Honoring Nations

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

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

Native Nations
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

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

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

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

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

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

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

Honoring Nations: Sovereignty Today: Q&A

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

The 2007 Honoring Nations symposium "Sovereignty Today" panel presenters as well as members of the Honoring Nations Board of Governors field questions from the audience and offer their thoughts on the state of tribal sovereignty today and the challenges that lie ahead.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

"Sovereignty Today: Q&A." 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.

Ethel Branch:

"Hi. Thank you all for speaking. It was really inspiring to hear all of your words. I guess my question is -- My name's Ethel Branch. I'm a student at the law school. I'm Navajo from Arizona. My question is, Indian policy, federal Indian policy has always suffered vicissitudes going back and forth from an era of termination, extermination, whatever, and switching to an era of revitalization, empowerment of tribes. We've been in self-determination for now over 30 years. Do you see a shift in the tide? What direction do you think the next era is going to go? If you could give insight on that, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you."

Floyd "Buck" Jourdain:

"Geez, I feel like Billy Madison up here. Anybody who's seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about.

Self-governance. We're a self-governance tribe and we no longer have a BIA agent and all that, we deal directly with our appropriations through the tribe. And it's [an] experimental thing that several tribes took on, but we feel it's working to our advantage; we're using it in a good way. And one of the things that we notice with the non, the tribes that are still under the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] -- they do get preference over us, so we have to really fight and arm wrestle every year; appropriations, negotiations, hearings. And it's almost like sometimes there's a safety net there that we need to grow away from. Self-governance is a good thing if it's used in a good way, and it's used correctly, and you have good leadership, and people are really on top of it. I think we just need to pry away from that old era and get away from that. And if it doesn't happen, then you'll see tribes, kind of, falling back into that, which is a dangerous thing.

Like I talked about today, the climate. You talk about the energy push in America, George Bush and the big oil companies. One of the things that -- our tribal treasurer goes to D.C. and brings back these horror stories about, 'There's going to be another huge cut. The [Department of the] Interior and BIA is going to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.' And you have all these issues in your Indian community. You have methamphetamine, you have homelessness, you have poverty but, 'Hey, here's the answer to all your solutions! Let us come in and build a power plant on your lakeside and that will really help you guys out and get you out of this state.' So right now it's been rights of ways issues, those are huge -- people wanting to build power lines and roads across our land so they can -- tourism can explode and those types of things.

So I think that tribes need to really grasp it, emphasize self-governance, and really use it in a good way, and be aggressive with it. And I think that if more of them start moving in that direction you're going to see a lot of self-sufficient tribes out there doing some pretty good things."

James Ransom:

"I wanted to stand up. I know some of the people over here can't see us over here. I just had two comments on the question.

A trend that I see happening and which is real obvious is one, stay out of court. That cannot be overemphasized right now. Anything that gets to the Supreme Court is going to be an erosion of sovereignty. You can almost be guaranteed that.

What that tells us though is we need to refine our diplomacy skills and we need to negotiate solutions to issues on the local level, on a state level, on the federal level but in a way that is protective of our communities. And again, that talks about responsibility. We need to work on that and bring that back.

I think that's going to be the key to the future is exercising our responsibilities in ways that non-Natives -- the larger society -- can understand and appreciate."

Michael Thomas:

"I can only agree first of all with what's been said in terms of our own responsibilities and how we should not allow a perpetual federal trust responsibility to us to foster dependency. And frankly, the 30 years of the [Indian] Self-Determination Era has, in my mind, fostered as much dependency as self-determination. And frankly, I think that self-determination can be an excuse for modern governments to avoid their trust responsibility to each and every one of the people in our tribal communities. And so it's a balancing act. I think that we will see the lip service toward self-determination continue, but I think that you'll see the pendulum swing back and forth between whether these people are walking the walk or simply talking the talk.

As you watch the composition of our Supreme Court change, the advice about staying out of court becomes more and more relevant. And that is the kind of long-term pendulum swing that we as Indian people can appreciate but the average American cannot. The reality is, unless you are subject to those swings in constitutional interpretation, and Supreme Court composition, and federal Indian policy, and all the other things that create the storm of politics within which we must live, you're not going to get consistent outcomes.

And so that responsibility that both other tribal leaders here have emphasized is critical. Because it's a different approach to say 'They will never fully meet this trust responsibility, therefore we must...' than it is to simply cry over and over and over, 'Meet your trust responsibility, meet your trust...' We end up putting our people in a victim's position, when the reality is that we have all we need to protect and advance our people even in the absence of that fulfilled trust responsibility. I think an increasing recognition of this by tribal leaders can only lead us to good places."

Ben Nuvamsa:

"I'm very humbled to be here among you leaders. Thank you for your teachings and validation of what I also believe in. Chief Ransom, as you spoke, I feel like you were talking about us.

At Hopi, we're going through a tremendous change. I agree with you, wholeheartedly, that along with sovereignty comes responsibility and accountability, and if we can exercise that in the correct way -- hopefully we don't get to the point where somebody tells us what sovereignty means to us, like the Supreme Court. Our constitutions that we have adopted, the IRA constitution -- at Hopi we're very different because of our traditional ceremonies that we are very still actively involved in, in that -- and our values are much different than what an IRA constitution puts forth. And that really creates some problems for us, that we have two different cultures always conflicting with how we operate. And I think that in the situation that we're in, we need to go out and we need to re-evaluate that constitution. And many tribes have done that. I guess what I'm trying to say is that good, bad, or indifferent, however our constitutions are, we need to interpret those in our Hopi ways, in our tribal ways, what does that mean to us in our local customary practices. That's what's going to sustain us forever. I think that's where we're at.

I'm also very humbled to be with a group of our representatives here that are very knowledgeable in our tribal government. Mr. Kuwaninvaya has been on the council for a long time and I look to him for guidance. He's very astute about when we get into a debate at the council -- and he has this unique knack to put things in proper perspective, and he brings our traditional values, our knowledge, and interprets that debate into how we are supposed to be. And it seems like it really clarifies the whole debate. It's very simple. Go back to what Hopi is. Go back to what our beliefs are. And I think that's what sovereignty means to us is who we are as a people, and what our beliefs are, what our customs are. And we speak our language; our language is what sets us apart also. That is our sovereignty.

And so I just want to thank you for the thoughts. We also have certain principles that you talked about. Sumi'nangwa. Nami'nangwa. Kyavtsi. Respect for one another, coming together as one people, putting our heads together and working together. Those are principles and kind of visions that we have, high bars that we have to achieve. But I think that's the kind of a process that we're in right now and we'll need to get to that point. And I just want to thank you for your words of wisdom all of you."

Regis Pecos:

"Thank you for that, what I think is a really profound question. If we go back into the past and reflect upon that time of federal policies dealing with extermination, and where that moved to assimilation, and where that moved to termination, and then the more recent federal policy that defines this time as the era of self-determination, we really are at a critical juncture to be asking some very critical questions with regard to, 'What are we doing differently now, when we are in control, from those times when we weren't and we were critical of that subjection to those federal policies?' Because if we're not careful, I think that we potentially become our own worst enemies at this particular time and juncture in our journey through life.

I really think that this next wave, to answer your question, really is going to be a return to the core values. And that the definition of sovereignty is really going to come back to be defined, redefined, internally and outwardly. And I think part of the celebration, with something as profound as what we've heard all of today, are the incredible redefining of approaches that is coming from and dictated by our return to those principles and core values. I think in this next wave it's going to be part of a process and an evolution that is using the core values to redefine the strength of tribal governments, and the sovereignty and the power of our peoples to define, outwardly, the interrelations of intergovernmental relations, if you will, but defined for our purposes. So that, as we take a circle, and in it are the core values of our land, our language, our way of life, our people, our resources, our water, our air that sustains that spirit of living, to examine the way in which we either are making decisions with governance and our jurisprudence that moves us away from the core values or reinforces the core values; and where decisions are made that's moving us away, how we're contributing to make fragile that institutional framework that otherwise creates for an operation from a position of strength. And if all we're doing in this time of self-determination is simply replicating programs with no conscious thought about how the replication of programs is moving us further away from those core values or reinforcing core values, or the way in which economic development is viewed, to either be supportive and compatible with the core values or moving us away from the core values, and something as critical as education -- If we see education as the means and the process that was never intended for us, but how we find that to be necessary in developing our skills to deal with their external forces, to protect the internal workings of our nations, it becomes critical at this very point to really look at ways in which we strike a balance. And as our young people and our trust for the future are being schooled in the formal education institutions, we really have to be mindful in terms of what we're doing consciously in redefining our own blueprint for the teachings, from a cultural perspective, so that in the kind of challenges from this point forward, we really must operate from that position of strength, that is, articulating our relationships with other governments from those fundamental principles encompassed and defined by those core values.

So I think in this next wave, it's going to be about our redefining relationships with other governments based upon the articulation and the full utilization of the core values moving from within, outwardly, as it's never been done before. And if we're not approaching it in that way, the gaps are going to become greater and wider. And if language and culture is not the focus of what we do in creating the next generation of leaders, ask ourselves, 'Will they have any opportunity to argue the spirit of sovereignty from any other context or perspective?' Because when that happens we're going to be reduced to everything we don't want to be reduced to, as simply political subdivisions of someone else's sovereign governmental framework, different than what we want to do -- to come from within that context that sustains that spirit, that is defined by everything the Creator gave us and blessed us with, that sustains that spirit of living from a totally different perspective, which means that we have to create our own institutions. So that for all of us who've gone through the experience of a formal education, it doesn't take us to move back through a process of being reeducated in the principles of those core values.

So I think in this next wave, we have to be conscious about creating our own opportunities and institutions to strike the kind of balance that results in the kind of training that is necessary for young people to have that kind of balanced perspective, moving the core values as we define the way in which we're going to preserve that sustained spirit of living using those core values."

Michael Thomas:

"Definitely very well said. I would only add one piece, to what frankly, I don't think any of us could say better, which is that one of those core values we have to emphasize, in addition to that which separates us...is our foundation, our language, our culture, our values, the history, this dirt that we are from and of -- the interconnectedness value that we were all given as well is horribly underplayed. As important as all of those things that make us distinct tribal communities are, equally important are the things that bind us from one to the other, the interconnectedness value that every last one of us was taught by our elders is one that we don't walk often enough. It's an area where the way I say it to our council, it's an area where we are not matching our lips with our moccasins. It sounds wonderful, but to really emphasize the interconnectedness means that we would fight less within each of these tribal communities.

And frankly, I've never been to a tribal community, and I've visited several hundred in my life, that is startlingly different from another. As a matter of fact, when people come to Mashantucket, I tell them, 'Don't be confused by the cars and the houses. This is the res.' It might be a little bigger or a little prettier -- same issues, frankly. Wealth has intensified some of those community, social, cultural issues that we face. We're thankful to have the means to deal with those things, finally, but we've got to emphasize connectedness, because all of the other things bring us into our own individual boxes. And everything in this American culture is so individualized and so disconnected from anything, that what that value of 'the connectedness of all things' is one of the most important traditional values we should keep in mind and turn into the action that Regis articulated as well as anyone could. Thank you."

David Gipp:

"Regis, I think you summed up quite a few things today, at least from our perspective and from the tribal perspective, and where we're going hopefully. Let me jump to the next question. And it's a question for you, and other leaders, and everyone here, I think. And that's the question that our Assistant Secretary is posing and he's talking about modernizing the BIA. I don't know if you heard his remarks this morning. And I thought some of them made very good sense as compared to what I heard you say out in...which was the introduction of that thought. And I know you're running around the country trying to get ideas of what that means as well, at least that's what I hear. Comes that question, and that's part of what you have raised is, where are we going to go with this? And how are we going to deal with this? Because the immediate question is, now we have a new trust office that's been put in place, and it's supposedly doing all of these wonderful things for us in terms of managing our trust resources, and being accountable, and somebody mentioned the word transparency, and perhaps we'll see this someday from the U.S. government and truly see what they've been up to all these centuries. But the other issue is, what happens with the rest of the functions within the Bureau of Indian Affairs? Particularly as our tribal nations assume more of these, I'll just say, jurisdictional issues and more of the issues that relate to sovereignty and who and what we're all about. What happens to the government in the meantime, and the U.S. government? And what role does it play? And how will it play that role? And where do we put it in its place, if you will, as we talk about this new, if you will, evolution that's beginning to take place? And I think that's a very real question, because the government can surely be, as we know, stand in the way and create even more problems than it has in the past. Or it can be, indeed, potentially a partner, if we make it a partner. And how do we do that?"

Oren Lyons:

"Sovereignty is the act thereof. No more. No less. And it's a French word. It talks about kings. It talks about absolute monarchal power, absolute. That's what sovereignty comes from. But we came to understand it to mean control of your own future. When we talked this morning about the landing of our brothers here, and not too far away from right here, and they saw the Indian come standing out of the forest. And they looked at him and the word was, 'We'll never tame that man.' And all they ever saw was a free person. That's what they were looking at, was a free person. And that's what we all were at one time. And it's absolutely [certain] that we have to go back to our original teachings to move into the future because they're fundamental, they don't change. Principles don't change. Everything else changes, but principles do not. So as we move forward, we've changed as well. I would imagine that if we were to talk to our counterparts 200 years ago, if they walked in here, they wouldn't know who we were. They'd say, 'Well, whatever happened to our people?' We change. And 100 years or 200 years from now, we'd look at what's in the future and we'd say, 'Well, whatever happened to them?' But if you keep your principles, the main core principles, you can change all you want and nothing changes.

And so I think that it's true that there's going to be outside forces, this global warming is no joke. It's going to break economies. It's going to break world economies. They're just not going to be able to stand it. They're not going to be able to be spending all their money on wars and fighting because they're just going to be talking about survival. So commonality comes back. The discussion is about water, it's about land, it's about resources. When you talk about sovereignty in a contemporary sense, you're talking about jurisdiction. Who has jurisdiction on your land? And that will tell you how sovereign you are. And so jurisdiction is a very important discussion. How do you maintain that?

The courts have always been unfair but they're extremely unfair these days. I agree with you, it's a very difficult time. There's not been fairness in this country to us, there never has been. Racism is still here, it's still rampant, doesn't take much for it to come up. It does not take much for it to pop right up and look you in the face. So we're in a time, I guess, where we're going to see momentous changes. And so the spiritual strength that comes from our elders and comes from our nations and our old people, they always talk about the old people. I always remember Thomas Banyacya saying, 'Well, the old people said...' I always liked it when he said that because he was talking about our elders and how they instructed us and how they always looked after us. It was never a question about leadership then.

The problem with today's leadership in Indian Country is the system that doesn't allow you any continuity. You're there for two years, and then you have an election, and you fight each other for two years, and then you start again, and two years later you're -- it keeps you off balance. The traditional system, the old system, where the chiefs were there for life, I'm one of them. I've got 40 years on the bench, so to speak. I've seen a lot, talked to a lot of leaders (Nixon), most of them one time or another. Bob Bennett, I knew Bob. All of them actually -- how they had a short time, problematic time, but meantime back home, back home where we live, things remain kind of constant. You do what you can do, but I think the core values are just what we're going to depend on and we have to just get back to that. The ceremonies that Jim [James Ransom] was talking about as a guideline -- ceremony is what kept us going, ceremony is what makes us unique, it makes us different from everybody. If you were to ask who we are, we're the people who give thanks to the earth. That's who we are. And we do it all the time. And we still do it. It's important and we were told as long as you're doing it, you're going to survive. When you give it up, you won't. Simple as that.

So we're coming into times, hard times. We've had changes. On September 13th [2007] the United Nations adopted the Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And for the first time in the history of this world they recognized us as peoples with an "s." We fought 30 years for that. Up to that point, we were populations. Populations don't have human rights. Peoples do. That's why we had such a problem. Well, 143 countries voted for us, four voted against us. We know who they were. But the question is why? The question is why? And you have to really inspect that for a reason. We know each other. We've been sometimes allies, sometimes antagonists, but we know each other very well, especially the Haudenosaunee. Those 13 colonies were about as close to Indian as you're ever going to get, Grand Council, the whole works, instructions from our chiefs, democracy. Democracy is from here. It didn't come from overseas. It was here all the time. We were all democratic.

And so we're coming to a crux and it's a tough one. We're involved in it because we're people; peoples, I should say. That was really a benchmark. Now the problems that we had in that final document, we'll be battling in the next 30 years I suppose, if we have 30 years. That's the question. This global warming is extremely fast, it's coming and it's coming faster than you will think. In 2000, we gave a speech at the UN and we warned them then. We warned them then. The ice is melting. It took them seven years to respond to that, but seven years lost. Time's a factor now. We really don't have the luxury of another 100 years. We're going to see stuff very quickly and we best be ready, as leaders, as responsible people. It's coming now. You can't be red, you can't be white, you can't be yellow, you can't be black. You're people, you're a species and the species is in dire trouble as a species. There's nobody in charge of our fate except ourselves. Human beings have their own fate in their hands and how they act is how it's going to be. So they're looking for instructions and right now the long-term thinking is coming forward and the values are coming forward -- our values. And I say that collectively, because I know we all have the same -- I know that. I've traveled into ceremonies all over the place. It's all the same. It doesn't matter what language. It's the same. That's going to come back again. Now whether we can survive, collectively, is going to be up to us. It's just going to be up to us. That's all. So leadership is now coming forward and I think Indian nations have that opportunity. And the stuff that we're doing right here is kind of what you would call getting in shape. You're getting in shape, flexing yourself, getting back to where we used to be, getting in shape for the big one.

And I'm just really pleased and honored for this collection of humanity: common people, common cause, and we have to work together for survival. That's the way it's going to be. Unity -- that's what the peacemaker said. Your strength is in unity. One arrow you can break, arrows bound together in a tight bundle is strength. That's what we're doing. We're binding the arrows, getting ready. We've got to take care of each other and help our brother. He's in a lot of trouble and when he's in trouble so are we. There's no way to run. You have only one Mother and when you make her mad you're in trouble. And that's where she is right now. You can't make war against your Mother and that's what's going on in this world, and not without a consequence. So I know next year, when we have the meeting again, there'll be more examples of our abilities and our strength and who we are. It's coming forward and I'm pleased to see that.

I just want to say one more thing about sovereignty. In May [2007], in Halifax, Canada, they played the World Games Box Lacrosse Championships, world championships. And Iroquois Nationals won all through the week and came into the semi-finals and we defeated the United States 14 to 4. And we moved in to play for the gold on a Sunday and we were defeated by Canada by one goal in overtime. And I would say bad call from the ref in there, too. But it was our flag, it was our anthem, and our nation and our boys and they did do well. [Thank you]."

Megan Hill:

"Thank you, Chief. I've been honored and humbled to have been in this room with so much wisdom."

Honoring Nations: Brian Cladoosby: Sovereignty Today

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby offers his perspective on what tribal sovereignty means today. He argues that the long-term sustainability of Native nations hinges on their right and ability to decide their own affairs and determine their own futures, and stresses the importance of educating federal, state and other non-Native decision-makers that tribal sovereignty is the only proven policy.

Resource Type
Topics
Citation

Cladoosby, Brian. "Sovereignty Today." 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.

Megan Hill:

"We're going to move ahead to Chairman Brian Cladoosby. He is Chairman of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. The Swinomish Cooperative Land Use Program is a 2000 honoree, and Swinomish has also been a partner for several honorees."

Brian Cladoosby:

"Good afternoon. I'm that tribal leader that needs to rush to catch a plane at six o'clock tonight so pray that traffic is good and I get there on time. My Indian name is Spee-pots. Spee-pots. It means, in our language, 'little bear' or 'cub.' My non-Indian name is Brian Cladoosby. I'm the Chairman of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. I've been on the Tribal Senate for 23 years now, and I've been the Chairman for 11 years. And I've been married to the most beautiful woman in the world -- it'll be thirty years coming in March. I truly believe in commitment. People say, ‘What were you, 13, when you got married?' Yeah, it was prearranged between the Lummi Tribe and the Swinomish Tribe.

I just want to thank the [John F.] Kennedy School [of Government] for all the work they do in Indian Country, the staff that put this all together, just all the hard work getting us here -- it's just awesome. And I especially want to thank the Kennedy School for educating two of my directors that work at Swinomish, two graduates of the Kennedy School: Charlie O'Hara who's here, he runs my Planning Department; and John Petrich, he runs my Housing and Utility Department. And I will not hold the current quality of their work product against the Kennedy School. And I pray that they both paid all their tuitions in full before they left.

My tribe is small. I consider it a small tribe -- 800 members, 10,000 acres of land. We live on an island about 60 miles north of Seattle. Our people have harvested salmon and shellfish in our tidelands for as long as we've existed. That is our staple. Anything that crawls in that ocean, we probably are going to bring it home, throw it in a pot, and eat it. And many of you have probably enjoyed some of the delicacies that we have up there in the Pacific Northwest.

Now I've been asked here to talk about what sovereignty means today. I'm intrigued by the title because it seems to ask whether sovereignty today is different than sovereignty was at some other point in time. I'll come back to that question later. I almost wonder whether it is a trick question. Later, I'll describe how this question has tripped up some other leaders. Based on what others had to say about the meaning of tribal sovereignty today, I have to conclude that it probably can't be understood by those in our society who have never experienced it.

Before I prove how tricky the question of what tribal sovereignty means, I want to make an observation in the form of a short story about how inventive we Indians can be. In a roundabout way, the story speaks to our topic at hand. The story reinforces the reality that if you give Indians the resources, the time, and the opportunity to solve any problem we face, there is nothing we as tribes cannot do. Time might be a big challenge. We tend to work on a different time schedule than some of the rest of you in case you haven't noticed. But we -- our educational institutions, our children, our governments, our elders, our communities -- will find the right answer for us if given the opportunity. We'll find creative solutions to problems that have stumped others. We'll do it with less money, with fewer staff, and with less fanfare. So I want to share with you a little story about how ingenious we Indians can be.

Three Indians and three white guys are traveling by train for a big meeting at Harvard. At the station the three white guys each bought their tickets and watched as the three Indians only bought a single ticket. ‘How are you three people only going to travel on only one ticket?' asked one of the white guys. ‘Watch and you'll see,' answered an Indian. They all boarded the train. The white guys take their respective seats, but all three Indians cram into a restroom and close the door behind them. Shortly [after] the train has departed, the conductor comes around collecting tickets. He knocks on the restroom door and says, ‘Ticket please!' The door opens, just a crack, and a single arm emerges with a ticket in hand. The conductor takes it and moves on. The white guys saw this transaction and agreed that it was quite a clever idea. So after the big meeting at Harvard, the white guys decide to copy the Indians on the return trip and save some money, and they know their accounting department will be very proud of them -- being clever with money and all. When they get to the station, the three white guys buy a single ticket for the return trip. To their astonishment, the Indians buy no ticket at all. They're scratching their heads. ‘Now how are you Indians going to travel without a ticket?' says a perplexed white guy. ‘Watch, and you'll see,' answers an Indian. When they board the train the three white guys cram into a restroom, and the three Indians cram into another restroom on the other side. The train departs. Shortly afterwards, one of the Indians leaves his restroom, walks over to the restroom where the white guys are hiding, he knocks on the door and says, ‘Ticket please!'

I'll repeat my observation from earlier. If you give Indians the resources, time, and opportunities to solve any problems we face, there is nothing we can't do. That's sovereignty. We need our non-Indian friends and institutions, but the best solutions to problems in Indian Country always come from Indian Country. That's sovereignty. We've been solving problems in Indian Country for thousands of years. That's sovereignty. We'll keep solving them if our friends live up to their promises and let us take care of our own future.

As part of my reflecting on the meaning of sovereignty, I thought I would take a look at some of our partners in the federal government and see what they had to say on the topic of sovereignty. It's either concerning to us or comical, depending on your perspective. For example, in 2004, President Bush had an exchange with Seattle's own award-winning Native American journalist Mark Trahant. Mark asked President Bush, ‘Most school kids learn about government in the context of city, county, state, and federal. And of course, tribal governments are not part of that at all. Mr. President, you have been a governor and a president, so you have unique experience looking at it from two directions. What do you think tribal sovereignty means in the 21st century? And how do we resolve conflicts between tribes and the federal and state governments?' Sounds like a very intelligent Indian with a very good question to ask the President of the United States. And I'm very proud of Mark. I know him, and I'm glad we have Indians working in major newspapers. His question sounds reasonable, and the leader of the free world should be able to hit a home run on this one. And here's what the President said: ‘Tribal sovereignty. That, uh, means...it's sovereign. You're a...You're a...You have been given sovereignty. And you're viewed as a sovereign entity.' Uh, okay? This guy is clearly lost and has no idea what tribal sovereignty means. Isn't there some kind of rule against using the word you're trying to define in the definition? He's just stalling for time until he can come up with an answer. Sadly he keeps digging. He continues, ‘...And therefore the relationship between the federal government and the tribes is one between sovereign entities. Now the federal government has got a responsibility on matters like education and security to help -- and health care. And it's a solemn duty from this perspective. We must continue to uphold that duty. I think that one of the most promising areas of all is to help with economic development. And that means helping people understand what it means to start a business. That's why the Small Business Administration has increased loans. It means obviously encouraging capital flows. But none of that will happen unless the education systems flourish and are strong. That's why I told you we spent $1.1 billion in reconstruction of Native American schools.' Any benefits here, beneficiaries? So he goes on to say that SBA loans are the key to the relationship between the federal and the tribal governments. And I think, ‘Now, he can't be serious?' But maybe I'm not being fair. Mr. Bush is known for being quick on his feet, but surely, the ‘great communicator,' President Reagan, has something worthwhile to say about tribal-federal relations.

In 1988, President Reagan spoke at a Moscow state university. Apparently, some Native leaders traveled to Russia because they heard he was going to be there. And here was a question that he faced in Russia. It says, ‘Mr. President, I've heard that a group of American Indians have come here because they couldn't meet you in the United States of America. If you fail to meet with them, will you be able to correct it and meet with them back in the United States?' The question was directly not about sovereignty, but President Reagan took the opportunity to talk about the status of Native Americans generally at that time. Here's what he said after indicating that he would be willing to meet with our tribal leaders. (And I've got five minutes.) President Reagan, he says, ‘Let me tell you a little something about the American Indian in our land. We have provided millions of acres of land for what we call preservations. And others are known by reservations I should say.' I hope it was just a slip of the tongue on Mr. Reagan, but I'm sure he recovered. And he went on to say, ‘They, from the beginning, announced that they wanted to maintain their way of life as they had always lived there in the desert and in the plains and so forth. And we set up these reservations so they could -- and have a Bureau of Indian Affairs to help take care of them. At the same time, we provide education for them -- schools on the reservations -- and they're also free to leave the reservations and be American citizens among the rest of us. And many do. Some still prefer, however, that way of life, the early way of life. And we've done everything we can to meet their demands on how they want to live.' I have no idea what he's talking about here. I don't know, maybe he's seen too many John Wayne movies up to that point or played in too many John Wayne movies -- I don't know. But I'm sure he was a little confused about Americans and Indians being citizens. He goes on to make another stunning admission: ‘Maybe we made a mistake. Maybe we should not have humored them in that wanting to stay in that kind of primitive lifestyle. Maybe we should have said, ‘No, come join us. Be citizens along with the rest of us.' As I say, many have, and many have been very successful.' This statement from President Reagan in '88 was quite interesting because we became citizens of the United States in 1924 after many of our elders served in World War I, like my grandfather who was gassed over there in Europe, and many of your grandfathers, great-grandfathers. So, clearly, we as leaders have a long way to go in educating the leaders of the federal government about who we are as tribal people and tribal governments, and what sovereignty means to us.

Sadly, one has to wonder after more than 500 years of showing these folks that Indian people are fully capable of governing themselves and their territories, whether they will ever get it. In the end, our sovereignty speaks for itself. We are sovereign because we are always and have been and always will be a sovereign. In conclusion, I want to add that, how could someone understand our sovereignty whose family is not buried all around them, whose land is not rich with history and culture with thousands of years of living where we've been for time immemorial, whose fishermen know where the fish go when the tide changes in the sea and push the river back, who haven't had to overcome 500 years of exposure to a culture so blind with greed that they couldn't even see the richness of our shellfish, our salmon, our carvings, and our songs? How can they begin to understand who we are and what our sovereignty means to us? I thank my Creator everyday. I thank the leaders who came before me. They were wise in their ways that the people with whom they negotiated our treaties couldn't begin to understand. Isaac Stevens, who negotiated our treaties for the United States in 1855, and my grandfather's grandfather got on a canoe in the Swinomish Channel in the middle of winter and the river -- it was so cold the upriver tribes couldn't get out to the sound because the rivers were frozen over. They couldn't wait until the spring thaw to get our land, and so hence in 1855 in the middle of winter, my grandfather's grandfather went down to negotiate this treaty with Isaac Stevens. And he didn't understand fully how much the salmon meant to us, how it would give us strength and wisdom we needed to preserve our rights to fish, that our salmon would give us the courage to protect our opportunities for economic development fueled by gaming, that our salmon would provide us the visions to plan for a future for our children free from the scourge of drugs and alcohol. Our ancestors preserved the great blessing of the salmon for us in the Northwest and the buffalo on the plains and the sweat lodges and the pipes and the kivas and the longhouses throughout Indian Country. Our sovereignty means today what it always has meant and always will mean. Indian people know what our people need to survive and thrive. As long as we know who we are, no one can touch our sovereignty. And sadly, very few do understand what it means. If we're lucky a couple will be able to speak to those folks in D.C. in ways they can hear. Maybe one or two will let them know we're just kidding when we take the only train ticket from their outstretched hands.

To our friends at Harvard [University] and the Kennedy School, we need your partnership and collaboration for the solutions we devise to come to fruition. Thanks for standing with us. We'll help make sure that all your education doesn't get in the way of your understanding. Just give us the information we need, and we'll help chart the course. If we succeed, we'll all share in the blessing of knowing that we were part of something larger than ourselves that will reap lasting benefits for generations to come.

After this serious discussion, I'd like to leave you with a final thought: Always remember, you cannot leave footprints in the sands of life by sitting on your butt. And who wants to leave butt prints in the sands of life? God bless each and every one of you. Thank you!"

Honoring Nations: Hilda Faye Nickey: The Mississippi Choctaw Tribal Court System

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Mississippi Choctaw Chief Justice Hilda Faye Nickey discusses the Choctaw tribal court system, and provides an overview of Choctaw's youth court and how it works to educate Choctaw youth about Choctaw ethics and core values in order to set them on the right path.

Resource Type
Citation

Nickey, Hilda Faye. "The Mississippi Choctaw Tribal Court System." 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.

Duane Champagne:

"Our next presentation is the Choctaw Tribal Courts, again, which we were very impressed with. A very efficient court system, one that has a very strong emphasis on youth courts. And the presenter today is Hilda Faye Nickey; she's the Senior Youth Court Judge. So, Hilda, why don't you tell us the story?"

Hilda Faye Nickey:

"Good afternoon. [Choctaw greeting] from Choctaw. I was going to talk about Choctaw Tribal Youth Court. We were one of the programs that was awarded [in] 2006. And we presented a lot of programs that we were including in our court system and basically, they asked me to just bring an update of what's been going on and what we're doing so far. As introduced, I am a youth court judge and I deal directly with youth court, youth court program, youth court services and anything to do with youth court; juvenile offenders, child welfare cases, and everything with the children, family and youth.

First of all, I want to go back and kind of tell you a little history of our court system. Before 1997, our court system only consisted of one court, one small courtroom, one chief judge, two associate judges, part-time basis, and one special law trained judge. And we -- the chief judge and the two associates were the only ones handling all our cases. And then by 1997, with the growing population of the tribe, as well as advanced economic development on the reservation, the tribal council and the tribal government decided that they needed to reorganize the tribal court system. And when they reorganized, they really reorganized.

After the reorganization, we had from one chief judge to two associate judges and one special judge, we [wound] up with eight -- excuse me, four senior judges and four associates judges. And then later, in 2000, when they included the Supreme Court, we had one chief justice and two associate justices; so, a total of eleven judges [are] in the system now. And everybody has their own distinct court. And I also want to mention that when we were in Tulsa we were talking about our new state-of-the-art facility that we were hoping to move into. Well, we finally have and it's gorgeous. It's wonderful. Each court system [has] their own courtroom, a large courtroom, about this size here. And we have three courtrooms, civil, youth, and criminal, and the Supreme Court shares with the criminal court. But we are very proud of it. All the legal communities are within that building; the legal defense, the attorney general's office, as well as federal magistrate court judge office is there, as well as the attorney general or the state attorney general. We have our own established detention facilities, youth detention, and adult detention; and basically, we're just very proud of that facility. Whenever you're in Choctaw, please come by and look over our facility. And that's the little history of the Choctaw Tribal Court.

What I'm going to be talking about is the Youth Court. With Youth Court -- as I was saying that I work mainly with juvenile, and when you're working with kids you just have to stay ahead of them all the time, I found, and constantly thinking, and planning, and coming up with certain things to try to work with these juveniles.

Well, one time I was faced with a situation where I had this 14-year-old girl that kept coming to court over and over and over. I'd send her home, she'd spend a night in jail, I get her out, and then send her back to her parents, and then the following weekend, she would come back to court again; disobedience to lawful order of court. Well, anyway, it was just so frustrating; I didn't know what to do with this child. There was obviously something wrong at home, right? So I make referral to social service department or other service provider programs and they'd try to intervene, and they did intervene, but nothing worked. It wasn't the mom. The mom was willing to work with all these programs and was there for the child. It was just the child; the child just wasn't going to listen to authority, basically. So with that frustration and nobody, really, to help answer, or come to some sort of a solution to this problem -- so the only thing I could think of to do was to go to my elders in the community and seek advice of what is happening here; children are not listening to parents, they're not listening to officers, they're not listening to judges anymore.

Well, and then this one elder sat down and talked with me and went over what it used to be, how they were able to handle kids when they were being disruptive within the community outside the courtroom, generally. And I found other -- and I'm sure within your tribe you have some of these things that you utilize or had utilized in the past. Some of the things I found was, or ways, was a 'talking to.' I don't know if you're familiar with that but we call it [Choctaw language], or a 'talking to'. In our tribe, when a youth is being disruptive or is not listening or having bad behavior, usually the parent would -- and they're not listening to a parent, we all know that. We didn't listen to our own parent when they were telling us the right way of what to do and what not to do, right? So you know the kids doesn't listen to their own parents sometimes. Well, what I found out was that they refer to extended family members, like grandma or uncle, to do the talking to the child, 'talking to' to the child, to try to teach him what they were doing was not right, appropriate, and that they should be doing other things. And then upon 'talking to,' they also took the time to go, if it was boys, go hunting with, teach them how to fish, and other things that, just to keep them busy, and just to show them that there are other things to do rather than being a very delinquent child. And then the grandma would do that for the girl, if it was a girl that was having problems. But when we started, or I started using it in my court system, the [Choctaw language], and I called it the 'talking to' court, rather. And I've had a couple of cases that's come through my court system that I've utilized some of the stuff that I've learned from interviewing elders in the community. There are other things that they mentioned to me that I kind of disagree with, maybe not disagree but it's called [Choctaw language]. And [Choctaw language] is 'corporal punishment.' Whipping your children was a basic thing that most of the parents used. But we -- that got out of hand, so we try not to utilize that one.

And then there are other things that, doing the Indigenous law projects review survey research, we've learned a lot from our elders, at that point in time. And I agree with Ms. Theresa [Pouley] here that the important thing is, when you get them in court or anywhere else, education. We need to educate everybody, we need to educate, or re-educate, I come to find. Because a lot of these things, a lot of these ethics, values, we already know them. It's within us already; it's just that we don't practice them anymore. And if you don't practice them, like with the language, you lose it. And that's what's happening in our society, we found also that -- some of the basic concepts of respect, sharing. Sharing things, sharing food. When you have plenty of food left over, you give it to your neighbors, share it with your neighbors. If you borrow a car, if you borrow somebody's car, you make sure you take that car back full of gas and maybe washed, in perfect condition, or in the condition that you borrowed the car from. Those are some of the basic respect that we knew we're taught what to do.

I found out that our younger kids are not being taught that same ethics, the same values, and therefore I feel like the main reason why that they do not listen to parents as well as authority is because they have lost that values and ethics. And hopefully, with the Indigenous law project as we go through the process that -- and we have, we have come up with a poster. I can't tell you the exact size of this but it's about that size. A poster that reads, that tells the importance of the basic ethics and values of the community, of the tribe. And we take it to the school, to the classroom, to go over it with children, especially in first grade to the eighth grade. I asked them, 'Have you been told this before, grandma or mom or parent, did anybody tell you all this stuff before?' Out of 20 kids, we only had about, maybe, two to five that raised their hand and said they've heard it before, and the rest were not familiar with these basic values. That is our focus, for the time being, with the Indigenous law project, as well as the youth court, is to educate, to educate our youth, our children in the basic of respect, the basic respect, common respect of our ethics and values. I don't know if I have gotten to 10 minutes but that's all I have and I thank you. And it's nice seeing everybody."

Meeting Economic Development Challenge in Indian Country

Author
Year

Native American communities have taken great strides in developing their economies and raising the quality of life on tribal lands. However, as President Obama noted during his historic visit to Indian country in June, there are still wide disparities between Native Americans and the overall U.S. population.

On June 25, 2014, William “Mike” Lettig, Executive Vice President and National Executive of KeyBank’s Native American Financial Services segment, had the privilege to testify at a U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Hearing on the role that investment plays in encouraging economic development in Indian country. KeyBank has helped raise more than $3 billion in capital for Indian country in the past five years and is on track to assist in raising more than copy billion in 2014 alone, making Key a formidable expert on Indian country investment matters...

Resource Type
Citation

Lettig, Mike. "Meeting Economic Development Challenge in Indian Country." Indian Country Today Media Network. November 16, 2014. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/meeting-economic-development-challenge-in-indian-country, accessed July 14, 2023)