self-governance

Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission's Treaty Rights/National Forest MOU

Year

The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC), a tribally chartered intertribal agency, negotiated a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the US Forest Service that both recognizes and implements treaty-guaranteed hunting, fishing, and gathering rights under tribal regulations and establishes a consultation process for National Forest management decisions that affect treaty rights. Under the MOU’s government-to-government process, there is increased communication, consultation, and integration of the tribes into National Forest decision-making on issues such as sugar bush management and timber harvesting. The MOU establishes standards and processes by which the Forest Service and the Tribes will act consistently across the four National Forests located within areas ceded by the Chippewa in the Treaties of 1836, 1837, and 1842. The MOU provides a model for other tribes seeking to exercise tribal self-governance and to protect treaty resources through a negotiated agreement with a partnering agency from another jurisdiction.

Resource Type
Citation

"Treaty Rights/National Forest Management Memorandum of Understanding". Honoring Nations: 2000 Honoree. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2001. Report.

Permissions

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

Citizen Potawatomi Nation Constitutional Reform

Year

Tribal governments across the United States work tirelessly to provide their citizens with effective systems of governance. After years of failed assimilation attempts, the federal government imposed blanket political systems upon almost all tribes regardless of those systems’ effectiveness or cultural suitability. Given such misdirection, it is little wonder that many tribal governments find it difficult to meet the demands of the 21st century now that they have greater business dealings, substantial legal jurisdiction, more control over service delivery to tribal citizens, and increasingly mobile populations. In response to these pressures, the Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma began a radical constitutional reform process designed to make its government more responsive, stable, and predictable. The task was daunting. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the following decades saw the nation’s citizens scatter to all parts of the United States. The desire to reach out to and involve every citizen has now created a unique tribal legislature, with simulcast meetings and participation from across the country. These political changes are vitally linked to strengthening the nation’s identity, developing the nation’s economy, and celebrating the nation’s culture.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

"Citizen Potawatomi Nation Constitutional Reform." Honoring Nations: 2010 Honoree. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2011. Report.

Akwesasne Freedom School

Year

In 1979, the Akwesasne Freedom School took form out of the Mohawk struggle for self-determination and self-government. It is characterized by a deep commitment to the maintenance of Mohawk identity. Students in this pre-kindergarten through 8th-grade language immersion school begin and end each school day reciting the Ohen:on Kariwahtekwen or Thanksgiving Address. The teachings embedded in these words express the Mohawk worldview and form the basis of the school’s curriculum. Founded by parents and supported by the Nation’s traditional and elected governments, the School offers a unique cultural and experiential education for young Mohawk citizens. It also creates new generations of Mohawks who know and live in two societies and can bridge the gap between them.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

"Akwesasne Freedom School." Honoring Nations: 2005 Honoree. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2006. Report.

Permissions

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

The Concept of Governance and its Implications for First Nations

Year

What is governance? What is government? What does each do? And what distinguishes good governance - or good government - from bad? Why is the quality of governance important to the success of human societies? And what is the significance and meaning of self-governance? And What does effective self-governance involve and how can self-governing systems be built?

This paper explores these questions and their implications for First Nations, drawing in particular on a large body of research on governance and development among indigenous nations in the United States and Canada. However, the topic of governance is an enormous one, and we can only begin to address those questions here. 

Native Nations
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

Cornell, Stephen, Catherine Curtis, Miriam Jorgensen. "The Concept of Governance and Its Implications for First Nations". Joint Occasional Papers on Native Affairs No. 2004-02. The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. 2004. JOPNA.

Sophie Pierre: Governance the Ktunaxa Nation Way

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Sophie Pierre is a respected native leader that has been at the forefront of building key components and infrastructure for modern self-governance in the Ktunaxa Nation. Her tenure as Chief Commission for the BC Treaty Commission appointed by governments of Canada and British Columbia and the First Nations Summit positioned her as a leading advocate and trusted representative for Ktunaxa people asserting sovereignty.  Her experiences reveal a broad and thorough effort within the Ktunaxa Nation to create a solid foundation that protects their indigenous rights and supports the well being of Ktunaxa people.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Pierre, Sophie, "Governance the Ktunaxa Nation way," Interview, Leading Native Nations interview series, Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ,  April 04, 2015.

Veronica Hirsch:

“Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I’m your host, Veronica Hirsch. On today’s program we are honored to have with us Sophie Pierre. Sophie is a citizen of the Ktunaxa Nation and as of April 1, 2015, completed her tenure as the Chief Commissioner for the BC Treaty Commission after being appointed in April 2009 by agreement of the governments of Canada and British Columbia and the First Nations Summit. Sophie served the St. Mary’s Indian Band for 30 years, 26 years as elected chief, and was the administrator of the Ktunaxa Kinbasket Tribal Council for 25 years. She also served as the Tribal Chair of the Ktunaxa Nation council, Chairperson of the First Nations Finance Authority, President of St. Eugene Mission Holdings Limited and is Co-Chair of the International Advisory Council to the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the University of Arizona. Sophie, welcome.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Thank you.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“It’s good to have you with us today. I’ve shared a little bit about who you are but why don’t you start by telling us a bit more about yourself?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, first of all, thank you very much for the invitation to participate in this initiative. Well, I’m Ktunaxa grandmother of, it’s going to be four in July. But I have myself and my husband, we have three children and going on four grandchildren now. And I just recently retired, and I’m not sure yet quite what that means. I think it’s going to mean that I kind of get to do what I really want to do instead of what I need to do which will be nice.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“It’ll be a nice transition I’m sure.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Very good. Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing with us a bit about your own personal life, and it sounds who inspires you, whom you love. That’s always important in any of the work that we do. And I do want to transition though to some of the work that you’ve done in the past and would really appreciate your reflections upon that experience. I’d like to begin by asking you, how was the Ktunaxa Nation Council formed?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, the Ktunaxa Nation Council as it is today as the corporate entity, it was formed in the early ‘70s and it was really as a result of the Canadian government policy at the time, Department of Indian Affairs policy. Previous to that as I think most people know, in the late 1890s the Canadian government formed Indian reservations, Indian reserves across Canada called Indian Bands and governed under the Indian Act. And there started to be a real change, a resurgence that went on through the ‘60s and ‘70s, as it did here in the United States. I think a lot of what happened in Canada kind of was as a result of the change that was happening here in the United States in Indian Country. And so the federal government until then had only recognized the individual Indian Bands. So in British Columbia there are 200 Indian Bands. But in terms of nations, of people, there are very, much smaller number closer to about the 30 number within British Columbia. Well, with our Ktunaxa Nation we have five Indian Bands in British Columbia in the southeast corner of British Columbia in the Rocky Mountain Trench that are part of the Ktunaxa Nation. We also have community in Idaho and also in Montana because the Ktunaxa Nation was one of those along the 49th Parallel where our nation was divided into Canada and the United States. And because we are a nomadic people, well we still are. We were a nomadic people, maybe not as much nomadic now as, but we certainly still travel a lot. Because we’re a nomadic people, those that happened to be at that point in time in the northern part of our territory became Canadians and in some instances like whole families were divided in half where part of the family would have been in Canada, the other part was in the United States either in Montana or Idaho when they put in the 49th Parallel and then created the communities. So it was through the ‘70s and ‘80s when just that whole Indian nationhood and understanding and going back to our roots and all of that when that was developing that we really came together strong as the Ktunaxa Nation and reconnecting. The connections between our people in Canada and the United States had never been really broken but they weren’t as strong and they have really become a lot stronger since. So that’s how, at that same time the Canadian government was now recognizing collectives of Indian Bands as a tribal council. So we started out as a tribal council and that evolved into the recognition of us as the Ktunaxa Nation.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you for explaining how the Ktunaxa communities that comprise the Ktunaxa Nation are and always have been one nation. Regardless of this 49th Parallel.”

Sophie Pierre:

“That’s right, yes. Absolutely, yes.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“But I do want to focus specifically on the Ktunaxa communities that are now located within the Canadian geographical boundaries and ask you what Ktunaxa communities comprise the Ktunaxa Nation Council?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Right now there are, four of the five are part of the Ktunaxa Nation Council. We have Tobacco Plains and I’ll also give the Ktunaxa names for the places. Tobacco Plains is Ê”akinkÌ“umÇ‚asnuqÇ‚iÊ”it. We have Ê”akisqÌ“nuk, which is in the north. We have Ê”aqÌ“am, which is St. Mary’s. And we have yaqan nuykiy, which is also Lower Kootenay or Creston. So those are the four that comprise the existing Ktunaxa Nation Council as its corporate entity. But we also have another community there, the Shuswap Indian Band that is a small Indian Band that the Ktunaxa people when Indian reserves were being created had made allowances for people who had come over from west of our traditional territory over the mountains into our traditional territory. They’d actually come for really for political asylum as it were, protection from their own people and they ended up staying and becoming a part of us. But right now they are not part of the corporate entity although they have been in the past.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. Do the communities comprising the Ktunaxa Nation Council have their own governance?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes. Each of the, and it’s a spillover right now of the Indian Act and being Indian Bands. Under the Indian Act each Indian Band has the ability to elect a chief and council members and as you mentioned in my introduction, I was on council for 30 years and 26 as elected chief. So each of the communities have that, we’re in the stage of transition between still being Indian Bands and eventually reaching and implementing a negotiated treaty and then our governing structure will change a little bit.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you for that. Thank you for explaining that change may be eminent. Whether that is soon or a little bit later.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. How do the communities comprising the Ktunaxa Nation Council define nationhood and citizenship?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, I think that with our, with the four communities and actually with many of the members of the fifth community, because the Shuswap Indian Band is, like half of the people there are of Ktunaxa ancestry so they also participate when we talk about our larger nation question as opposed to just what’s happening individually in the communities or at the Indian Band level. So how we’ve defined nationhood is that it goes back to citizenship and really it goes back to your roots.

In Ktunaxa our ancestors or our relations, our grandparents, our ancestors, are called, In our Ktunaxa language our ancestors, our, we refer to them as [Ktunaxa language] and when you take that word apart [Ktunaxa language] is a root. So really what you’re saying is that our ancestors are our roots and if you can trace your roots back to the Ktunaxa Nation, then you are Ktunaxa. You’re accepted as Ktunaxa because you are, you have [Ktunaxa language]. And what I’ve just said is your ancestors are Ktunaxa. And as a nation that’s how we’ve determined our citizenship and that’s how we determine our nationhood is by those, by everyone that can trace their ancestry.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“You mentioned this aspect of tracing ancestry and I would venture, please correct me if this is not an appropriate comparison, within the United States this terminology of lineal descent. Is that, is what you’ve just described of tracing one’s Ktunaxa ancestry distinct from lineal descent.”

Sophie Pierre:

“I’m not really sure just how lineal descent is defined but I know that one of the things that we do not, we do not uphold as I know happens in the United States is this blood quantum. Yeah, so is lineal,  If that’s what you mean by lineal descent, no we don’t have that. We say that if you can trace your roots then that is proof enough of being a citizen of the Ktunaxa Nation.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“At times, depending on what native nation in the United States we’re talking about may employ lineal descent criteria and in fact blood quantum may come into play whereas other nations within the United States have used a type of document and very often it has been a written record, perhaps not a written record that’s been drafted by the community itself but rather by an appointed U.S. Indian agent for instance. And using that as an example where a community might say, ‘We are going to use a specific document regardless of whether or not we had any real agency in its authorship to trace our “lineal descent”.’ The reason I ask that question is, is one’s ability to trace his or her Ktunaxa ancestry, is it dependent upon a written record, can it be a type of unwritten record?”

Sophie Pierre:

“It can, well, it’s really dependent on both. Obviously if you have the written record and in Canada we have what’s called the status Indians so that there’s the list of the Indians that the government recognized. But then for a whole lot of reasons, some of which were legal reasons, that people lost their status as Indians so we may have and in fact we have had, we do have Ktunaxa who are not considered status. Well, that doesn’t, the status, the idea of status or non-status does not matter to us. That’s not important, that’s not what’s important here. What’s important is that you have, if it’s a written record or you have your oral history and people know who they are. If you’re born Ktunaxa, you’re not going to change into a German. You’re always going to be Ktunaxa.

Veronica Hirsch:

“This idea or as you’ve express I should say of Ktunaxa identity and Ktunaxa citizenship is that, that applies at the nation level not at the specific community level. Am I understanding that?”

Sophie Pierre:

“No, it does apply also at the community level but we’re, as I mentioned before, we’re in transition. The communities right now are governed still through the Indian Act so the federal government still has a fair amount of influence on that and for example the federal government will provide money say for education. But they only provide it for those people who are considered to be status Indians. Now for the community, there, you find quite often, I know at St. Mary’s we did this all the time and probably still do where if we’ve got people that we know are our people but they’re not considered status, there are ways of finding ways that you can help them but they’re not going to be on that status roll where we get money from the government for them. And that really is the only difference. What we’re working towards once we implement a treaty is that we’re going to have the communities, we’ll still have a community governance level that will look after the internal affairs of that community but it will be more at a recognizing citizens as opposed to status Indians and also recognizing that they have certain responsibilities within their community but they also have responsibilities within the overall Ktunaxa territory, traditional territory.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. What is the Ktunaxa Nation citizenship code and is this code unwritten or written?”

Sophie Pierre:

“At the time, it’s being written. We don’t,  It’s written but it’s not to the sense where you can say that it’s been adopted because eventually it will have to be voted on by the people as will everything else that is going to be part of our treaty. And the same thing applies to the constitution. We are also, because citizenship of course will be part of our constitution and all of that is coming as a, it’s what we’re working on through the treaty process and will come as part of the ratification process as we start ratifying our treaty.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Realizing that the Ktunaxa Nation citizenship code is in process, who helped define and draft the code, who is helping to do that?”

Sophie Pierre:

“We’ve got staff of course with the treaty office that have been working on that over the years and they’ve been working in the community but we also have what we call TKL which is traditional language and culture group and they’re particularly elders. Unfortunately we’re like a lot of Indian nations where we’re losing many of our elders. In fact I think I’ve become one of them so it’s not like me talking about somebody else being an elder that’s bringing this knowledge forward. It’s now time for people of my generation that we need to step up and provide that direction, that leadership so that’s where all of that would be coming. Everything will be vetted through the TKL.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Are Ktunaxa defined nationhood and citizenship definitions and criteria distinct from band membership and status/non-status designations assigned by the Canadian government?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes. They will be different. Right now we are using both as I said because we are still under the Indian Act as Indian Act Bands so we still have those certain requirements that we have with the federal government but that is,  The whole point of being in treaty negotiations is as we say ‘to get out from under the Indian Act and to become self-governing.’ So of course citizenship and nationhood, all of that will be quite different from being an Indian Act Band under the Indian, yeah, under the Indian Affairs Department.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Realizing that citizenship as you mentioned will be different once the treaty process is complete, is finalized and as part of that drafting, completing the draft of the citizenship code, completing a constitution which would outline provisions for citizenship, is there any discussion among those individuals who as I believe you said TKL were part of that body. Is there any discussion of if it would be appropriate and if it is appropriate to let’s say restore the for lack of a better word status of current Ktunaxa community members who do not have that status Indian designation?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, the, there will be no status Indian designation once we are self-governing. We will be Ktunaxa citizens. Anyone who’s got [Ktunaxa language] that are Ktunaxa will be Ktunaxa citizens. No more status/non-status.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“That’s very empowering.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes, it is. Yes. And I think that it really is, that’s really what nation rebuilding is all about is reclaiming something so fundamental as your citizenship.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“And being able to define it on your own terms.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Absolutely, yes.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“In ways that underscore one’s Ktunaxa identity.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Exactly. Yes. That I think is one of the, really the powerful parts about us being in this and pursuing treaty negotiations is to regain that.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“You mentioned how the treaty negotiation process is helping facilitate the actual drafting of a constitution.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“And the eventual ratification and implementation of same. At the current time, do Ktunaxa Nation council member communities themselves have unwritten or written constitutions?”

Sophie Pierre:

“No. None of the communities, none of the Indian Bands have written constitutions. They’re just Indian Bands. They’re pretty much under the Indian Act.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. What process did the Ktunaxa Nation Council use to identify and articulate the four pillars that comprise its national vision and how long did this process take?”

Sophie Pierre:

“The entire process probably took about five years. But just in terms of coming to an understanding of what our vision statement would be, that took definitely two years of going into the communities, going, sitting at the kitchen table, having Band meetings, having suppers, having just our AGM talking about it so that eventually we agreed on the wording of our vision and it covers those four pillars which are our people, our land, our language and culture and our governing process. And at the center of that with the spokes going out, at the center of it would be the administration of that governance.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“In the conversations you mentioned, sometimes even at the, a particular family’s kitchen table, were all age ranges included in articulating that four pillars statement?”

Sophie Pierre:

“That was the intent. I don’t know if it was always possible to have like the very young people, the teenagers. They certainly had an opportunity but usually teenagers are more interested in other things and find that kind of discussion boring but when they were at the kitchen table, I think that that’s probably when you had more involvement from the younger generation. They don’t really have much use for going to Band meetings and expressing their opinions there. They’d rather be out playing basketball or whatever. But yeah, the intent and I know that certainly the effort was there to get the input from all ages.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Why was it important to get input from all age ranges?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, of course the knowledge of our ways from the elders and then pass it down through the generations but really to, it’s always important to have as much involvement as possible from the younger generation ‘cause they are the ones really that are going to live with it and I think that that’s really how, and you’ve got to get that message across and have people understanding that and recognizing that yeah if,  They can choose not to participate but it means that whatever the rest of the people come up with is what they’re going to have to live with.”

Sophie Pierre:

“I think that what we are doing at home is using the social media because that’s such a big part of young people’s lives. I don’t really understand it. I think that it would get really kind of tiring to be talking so much chatter all the time but that really is the environment that our young people are in today and they thrive on that. So that is one of the tasks of the Treaty Nation Office is to get as much as possible on social media and to have that kind of chatter going on. We had a really good exercise in our community at Ê”aqÌ“am, at St. Mary’s. It was more about community development. We were talking about our Indian reserve lands and how we’re going to be developing it ‘cause we have an opportunity for commercial development but it has to go to a referendum for all the community members to decide if this land is going to be set aside for commercial development. So we had a very young woman, Denny, she was probably about 22 or 23 at the time and she went and she led this and so she was able to get all age groups to be involved including the teenagers and like very young, young people and it was just because she’s young herself and she was able to connect with them. And the community development plan that we ended up with, I’m really quite proud of at St. Mary’s. It depicts a teepee and each of the poles is something that goes on in the community. There’s a pole that represents education and a pole that represents housing and child and family services so all of these, health and everything. So when all the poles are together and they’re tied tight, of course you’ve got a nice sturdy structure to protect you but if one of the poles gets loose or one of the poles breaks, you start having trouble. So we’re always talking about how we’ve got to strengthen the poles within the teepee of our community. And so it’s that kind of example that we have in terms of just finding ways of encouraging the young people to participate.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. I’d like to transition a bit and ask how leadership is identified and specifically how are Ktunaxa Nation Council leaders chosen?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Right now because we are still under the Indian Act we do that by election and it’s all of our communities are on five year terms. I’m sorry, four year terms. Four year terms. In all of our communities those terms are staggered so that you never have a year where you’d have a total new council. And the,  When you’re elected, the council has five members and each of them would hold one of the pillars, would be responsible for one of the pillars in our vision statement, the four major pillars and then of course the overall administration.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Who is eligible then to vote for the Ktunaxa Nation Council leadership? You mentioned that the communities comprising the Ktunaxa Nation are eligible to vote. Could you explain maybe some of that voting eligibility criteria?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, again it’s through the Indian Act and so it would be those “status” Indians who are registered members of, I’ll use my community for example. So they’re status members of St. Mary’s Indian Reserve and so we have that anybody who is a status member over the age of 18 is eligible to vote. Now we have our own election code within our community and it determines who is eligible to vote, who is eligible to run. There’s concern that if you have,  We have people that can,  They can live anywhere. They don’t have to live on reserve to vote. So even if they lived in Montana, they’re eligible to vote at St. Mary’s because they are a “status” member of our community. However, they would not be eligible to run for office ‘cause it’s... It just makes common sense. You need people who are going to be in your governing structure to be people who are living in the community primarily. But even if they just, if they live in Cranbrook that’s not a problem, you can still run for council.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Do Ktunaxa communities define voting criteria and determine voting eligibility individually?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes. Under the Indian Act there’s, we’re all, we all have the ability to develop what I just called our election code so each of the communities has that.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“And among the communities and regarding their election codes, are there any voting eligibility differences?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, yeah. I think there may be in terms of whether or not the person has to actually live say within the Ktunaxa traditional territory or they can live anywhere in the world and vote ‘cause with, I think with one of our communities it’s more that you had to live within the territory which still isn’t a real problem. Like I said in terms of anybody living in Montana in our traditional territory they’d still be able to vote. But yeah there was, and it was a result of a court case that the Canadian law says now that if someone’s living in Vancouver or Toronto, they’re still a Band member and they’re, so they’re eligible to vote. So you can have that in your own election code but if you don’t, so long as you have your election code developed, then that supersedes what is in the Indian Act.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. The reason I asked that is if there were any type of voting eligibility differences among the various Ktunaxa communities, if that had ever internally for the Ktunaxa Nation caused any type of discussion or concern over our criteria or our election code somewhat differs from our relative.”

Sophie Pierre:

“No, that has not, that has never really been an issue because I think that the fact that we’re all still considered to be Indian Bands right now and so there’s a certain fundamental like level of responsibility that comes directly from the Indian Act that is always going to be there as, determining.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“And it sounds like if there were any differences that those will and are in the process of being resolved once the Ktunaxa Nation Council defines, completes defining its voting eligibility criteria at that national level.”

Sophie Pierre:

“That’s right, at that citizenship level. And so that of course then becomes all part of our constitution because we’ll have the governors of the nation which is our entire traditional territory and then we will have people who will still be in a community governance ‘cause the communities will continue to have their own responsibilities for their community and their members but it’s that overall, that larger government that we’re developing. I think that that’s the bigger step that we’re taking right now.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“With regard to that explanation of the larger overall governing structure which would be embodied by the Ktunaxa Nation Council and then the community level structure among the various communities, St. Mary’s for instance, Tobacco Plains and the other communities that you’ve already mentioned, is that structure of having this larger umbrella so to speak and then more localized governments, does that speak to traditional governance structures that Ktunaxa citizens themselves pursued as a means of self-organization?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, I think that it’s the modern if you will, it’s the evolving way of expressing our traditional governance because traditionally, as I said, our people were nomadic people and so there, within the group, within the family group that are in a particular area at a time, at a particular time say at Lower Kootenay and they’re there, either north at what’s called Creston now or just like five miles south at Bonner’s Ferry, those are all the same families really and so within that particular family grouping there would have been certain leadership positions and that was always the way that it was. And then when you have people come together, then there would be a recognized leader, I don’t know what you want to, like a chief of the, of Ktunaxa if they’re dealing with another nation, the Blackfeet or the U.S. government.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“And I asked that question because as we notice nations, for instance Ktunaxa Nation Council define for itself who comprises us, who we are, that many native nations are looking at their traditional governance structures and asking, ‘Are elements of our traditional governance structures, do they still exist in some form or fashion simply are they translated or can they be translated to a contemporary context? Is that translation appropriate? Can we really make the successful argument for our current or I should say our contemporary structure that in fact it does arise from former contexts where we operated solely according to our own traditional governance systems?’”

Sophie Pierre:

“What we did as we’re doing the developmental work many, 20 years ago within our nation doing the developmental work for our treaty, we, there was a lot of work that was done around how traditional leadership roles would have been determined and so there was, like in all of our stories we have for example the Duck chief. So that was a person that was responsible for knowing when you go out duck hunting and how you do it and how you share so that person had that certain leadership responsibility. So to be similar today for someone to be in like an economic development kind of role. In all of our stories there’s always reference to like the Duck chief, the Deer chief and then there was their religious, they had a person that was responsible for spirituality. So there would be the head person who would be for that, I don’t know what other term to use other than the geographer who said, ‘Okay, well, folks, we’re going to have to move in three months time and we’re going to move over here.’ So there was those kind of, always those kind of roles and responsibilities and so we’ve taken that, those kind of stories and translated them into the types of positions we need today. So we need people who are responsible for lands and resources, we need people who are responsible for traditional language and culture. We need people who are responsible for government, for the overall governance. We need people who are responsible for child and family services, all of our social services.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. As you mentioned the geographer I thought, ‘A contemporary term we might say is an eco-manager.’”

Sophie Pierre:

“An eco-manager, sure. Yes. Yeah, ‘cause you don’t want to overuse an area. It’s time to move, yeah.”

Sophie Pierre:

“The ones who do choose to participate such as the Ktunaxa Nation, it is our desire to be self-governing, to be away, to be out from under the Indian Act and to have, to have things, to have certainty for our people so that we have certainty in terms of land that will be treaty lands and those are lands where we have complete jurisdiction and I think that it’s that whole jurisdiction and governance area that’s really, really important here. And then we would have areas where we have co-management, we have shared decision making and then we have some areas where we would, we actually give up having any kind of decision making. We don’t have it now to begin with but it’s more that it’s recognized, that we recognize and that we give up that. I don’t think that Ktunaxa people will ever really have decision making in certain municipalities unless you happen to live there. Just like I wouldn’t want the municipality of Cranbrook to have decision making over St. Mary’s then neither should St. Mary’s have decision making over Cranbrook except where it comes to this overall shared decision making of the area if they wanted to put a nuclear plant which I don’t think they would want to anyway. But if that’s what they wanted to do, then we would have a say in that just like anybody else who lives in the region.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. In your opinion is perhaps a particular community’s or First Nation’s reluctance to participate in the BC Treaty Commission process, is it for concern that in doing so that that community could sacrifice certain aspects or certain access to let’s say government services for instance that they currently possess?”

Sophie Pierre:

“I don’t think it’s so much the access to government services. I think that those First Nations who’ve made a very knowledge based decision not to participate in the treaty process do for some very fundamental reasons. Number one is that the federal government up ‘til very recently has always been and actually they haven’t really changed their policy in terms of they come in with a deniability of the existence of Aboriginal title, Aboriginal rights. That’s where they start with and then you’ve got to prove it as you go through your negotiations. Tsilhqot’in decision last summer Supreme Court of Canada says very differently that yes, Aboriginal people do have Aboriginal title. But the criteria for determining your Aboriginal title is quite strict with, if you just look at the Supreme Court decision that’s there. So there are those First Nations that say, ‘No, we are, ’ like I guess, I don’t think they’re actually saying, ‘We want to stay as an Indian Band,’ but what they’re saying is that, ‘We don’t feel that it’s the right decision for us to accept extinguishment of Aboriginal title, ‘which is where the Canadian government used to come in on. That position has changed drastically over the last 20 years but 20 years ago when this process started that definitely was where they were coming from. So it was always the elimination if you will of Aboriginal, but you had to accept that in order to get into the treaty process. So a lot of First Nations they said, ‘No, we’re not starting from that position.’ There were other First Nations that said, ‘We’re interested in having treaty negotiations,’ and they came into the process for a while but they were not happy with the level of mandate that they felt the federal government had was much too narrow for them and so they have pulled back and aren’t in negotiations. Their names are still listed because they’re intent to negotiate was actually registered. So until they say, ‘We want to pull our name from that,’ they would still be listed as having an intent to negotiate. But they’re very concerned with the limited mandate that federal and provincial governments have for their negotiation mandates.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Regarding those First Nations who as you mentioned 20 years ago were very concerned about the extinguishment of Aboriginal title perhaps as the reason, a very deliberate and knowledge based reason for choosing not to engage in the process, is there opportunity for any one of those nations to now engage in the process?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes, there is. There continues to be. The maiden BC treaty negotiation process that I was fortunate enough to be Chief Commissioner of for the BC Treaty Commission for the last six years, that process is there and it’s, hopefully it’s going to go through some changes so that the Treaty Commission really will be in a stronger position in terms of facilitating the negotiations and ensuring that the federal and provincial governments like keep their feet to the fire to get these negotiations through. But I think that there, the mandate and that hard line position about extinguishment, that definitely has softened over the years and it’s not that anybody ever went into it thinking that yes, we’re going to extinguish our rights. That was never the position of the First Nations who entered the treaty process. No, they’ve always said, ‘We’re not going to extinguish our rights. We’re here to negotiate.’ And so if you come in with a position of extinguishment, you’re not coming in to negotiate ‘cause you negotiate interests. It’s very, very difficult to negotiate positions.”

Veronica Hirsch: 

“Good point. How many First Nations treaties have been negotiated to date? You mentioned that some are in process and are listed as such. If you had to provide an estimate, do you have an estimate for how many have been let’s say finalized?”

Sophie Pierre:

“No, I know for sure. We’ve had, two days after I started as Chief Commissioner we enacted our first treaty so I always took credit for that saying, ‘I’m pretty good. I got a treaty in two days.’ But of course that took 20 years before that. So Tsawwassen Treaty has been enacted since 2009 and then in 2010 we had the Maa-nulth Treaty which were five communities that had come together very similar to our where they come together and negotiated together but they ended up with their own individual treaties, each of those communities whereas the Ktunaxa Nation we will have one treaty for the Ktunaxa Nation and we will have the four and hopefully five communities that will participate from the benefits of that treaty.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Do you have an estimate for how many nations are in process, not ones that have let’s say finalized a treaty but are at some stage, maybe close to finalization?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes. We’ve got and actually a good source for this is always the website for the BC Treaty Commission. Our annual report, we have every year since the creation of this process the Treaty Commission has always put in a status report that shows,  There are six stages to negotiations so then they’ll show, we show the First Nations that are implementing treaties and then we show those First Nations that have a final agreement but not yet an enactment date. Well, they haven’t implemented their treaty but they have a final agreement and so they’re going from final agreement stage to actual implementation and right now we have four tables that are at that and that doesn’t mean four Indian Bands ‘cause a couple of them will have more than one community that’s working with them. And then we have another group of about eight that are in advanced agreement and principle stage which is Stage 4 and then another 10 or so that are less advanced but they’re also in agreement and principle and then we have a couple more that would be in the framework. So it starts out you put in a statement of intent then there’s a readiness criteria that would be Stage 2 so I think we have one or two that are in readiness. And then you go into framework, agreement and principle, final agreement and implementation. Those are the six stages. But for numbers, it’s best to get it off our website. They’re right there.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. You mentioned the Ktunaxa Nation Council’s decision, it sounds like it was a measured decision, to engage in the BC Treaty Commission process and I’d like to ask you, in your opinion, what impacts has the Ktunaxa Nation Council’s involvement in this process, what impacts have there been?”

Sophie Pierre:

“I think the impacts are incalculable. We have rebuilt our nation. The level of governance that is at the community and at the nation level is, it’s way better organized and it’s much stronger and it has more credibility first and foremost among our own people but the credibility that we as a governing nation, as the Ktunaxa Nation have, with government, both Canadian and provincial governments, with industry—really, really important. There was a time when I was first elected chief that the local mining or forest companies wouldn’t even think of calling the Indian reserve or the Indian chief if they were going to do anything. Now they wouldn’t even think of starting anything without first consulting with us and seeking our consent. So it has really been, well, it’s a game changer for us. It has been a game changer for us.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“And how has it been a game changer? You mentioned the ways in which Ktunaxa Nation has been able to really assert itself as a body politic and I wanted to ask is it because individual members of the Ktunaxa Nation chose to engage in dialogue that somehow inspired a sense of ability to create a platform where Ktunaxa citizens could come together and identify their own priorities and then articulate those priorities to for instance the BC Treaty Commission?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, that’s certainly a part of it but I think that it’s even more fundamental than that. It was the regrowth or the rebirth if you will of who we are as a people, that we’re not just [Ktunaxa language] which is like St. Mary’s or [Ktunaxa language], that we are in fact all Ktunaxa and that our relatives in Montana and Idaho we are all part of Ktunaxa [Ktunaxa language] and we’re all the same people and we have the very same land responsibilities to protect. And so it’s been that kind of, I think that that’s really where it’s had the most fundamental impact. And because of that, because of that re-strengthening of us as a nation, as we accepted that responsibility ourselves, it was then very difficult for government and industry to ignore that because we just wouldn’t allow that to happen. It’s very different if you’re just working as an individual Indian Band. You don’t have that kind of authority, you don’t have that kind of credibility. But as a nation, you can’t do anything in our territory without getting the consent of the Ktunaxa Nation.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. How do First Nations and the BC Treaty Commission address overlapping claims regarding traditional territory?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Now that is the $60 billion question I guess, bringing it up to date, not $60 million. Overlapping claims and shared territory are going to continue to be one of the biggest challenges I think for First Nations and a lot of it stems from this whole, the creation of Indian reserves and where you have a number of Indian reserves acting independently within a group of people who are all the same culture, language and where they don’t come together as a nation such as we’ve done in Ktunaxa. I totally understand where you have such a large geographic space or many, many communities that is very difficult to do that but this is going to be a really tough question. And as a treaty commission what we’ve done is that we’ve created an environment so that people can be encouraged to start finding their own solutions and we continue to provide resources so that First Nations can come together and talk, particularly those First Nations who are in treaty and their neighboring First Nation is not in treaty and they have an overlapping claim or they have a shared territory and that needs to really have some resolution before a final treaty can be implemented. In some instances there’s absolutely no incentive for the First Nation who’s not in treaty. They can just say, ‘Forget it. We’re not, we don’t want to talk to you. We haven’t talked to you for the last 50 years and we’re not going to talk to you now.’ We really have those kind of situations. It’s just, it’s unfortunate and these are people who are related, who are of the same language group, they’re the same culture, they’re the same people but they’re fighting with each other over their shared territory. Yeah, it’s going to be a tough one.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“What resources specifically have First Nations who are engaged in trying to address this overlapping traditional territory situation, what resources have those nations specified that this is one of our most pressing needs and we would appreciate help in this specific area?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, it’s particular for those First Nations that are in, they’re reaching the end of agreement and principle or they’re in final agreement and they really need to have some solution for their shared territory with their neighboring, either their neighboring families or in some instances it’s actually a different nation altogether. For example with the Ktunaxa, we have shared territory issues with Okanagans and with Shuswaps and so as a Ktunaxa Nation we have a responsibility to enter into some solution whether it’s going to be a protocol or I don’t know what we’ll end up with but some solution how we’re going to continue to share that territory into the future. And right now it’s just a matter of our neighbors saying, ‘Well, no, we don’t want to talk to you. That’s our land, it’s not yours and we’re not going to talk about it.’ That doesn’t help. That doesn’t help anybody. It doesn’t, because right now the government continues to use it,  industry continues to use and we’re both losing so that’s why we need to sit down and we really need to talk about not so much how we divide the territory amongst each other but how we share and protect the territory for all future generations. I think that’s really where we’ve got to put our minds to.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Would it be possible in certain instances for let’s say neighboring nations who are not of the same linguistic group for instance but for as long as anyone can remember have always lived side by side, is there any possibility in your opinion for nations that have always lived, coexisted side by side to perhaps look at some of their shared history and maybe some of the traditional governance approaches to using shared territory to inform perhaps a protocol that you mentioned?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yeah. And we’ve got examples of that. We just,  I still say we as if I’m part of the BC Treaty Commission. It’s going to take me a while to get over that. But the BC Treaty Commission just hosted a forum in the middle of March and on the last day of the three day forum we talked specifically about overlapping claims and shared territory and we had a film clip that was shared with us between two very distinct nations and this was when Nisga’a were going for their final agreement, their treaty, and it was with one of their neighboring nations where they came together and,  It was long and hard work for them to reach this protocol but they did it in a traditional way and they celebrated the protocol in a traditional way like in a, it was a big gymnasium but it would have been like a long house kind of way where they were brought in, the leaders were brought in with the declaration, with the drums and with ceremony. And I think that that’s really where our strength lies is in our ceremony and once we realize that, once we reaccept that I think that we’re going to be able to reach resolution a lot easier. And that’s always been my position that we have,  We’ve shared this territory for thousands upon thousands of years and other than having straight out warfare which of course we did but eliminating that, there are other ways that traditionally we were always able to share that territory and it was never that there was a line drawn and this is where I’m so,  I’m just so afraid of us getting sucked into that where we divide the land between us as opposed to agreeing on how we continue to share it and protect it because if we divide it between us, we’re not protecting it.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. I’d like to return a bit to how communities comprising the Ktunaxa Nation function really on a day to day basis and wanted to know if you could speak to how a community, if a community I should say as it functions on a day to day basis, to what extent do those communities make autonomous decisions and in what areas?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, autonomous to the extent of being an Indian Band where you still have the minister has the ability to change his mind at the end of the day. The communities, they’re responsible for the services and the community development like that is within their community and so they’re autonomous in that way. But I don’t think that it, it certainly isn’t true self-governance and it can’t be so long as it’s on Indian reserve lands determined by the Indian Act.

Veronica Hirsch:

 ”Returning to the structure of the Ktunaxa Nation Council, would the council potentially ever determine whether certain decisions made at the member community level are appropriate, whether they are in line, in support of the Ktunaxa Nation constitution for instance, at what point might the overall structure of the Ktunaxa Nation Council either step in or not when it comes to the day to day function at the community level?”

Sophie Pierre:

“I don’t think that there’s really anticipated that there would be a role for the overall governing body to step in and have a say at the individual community level. I suppose there might be some instances of that but I can’t think of anything right now on where we,  ‘Cause really what we’re more interested in is that the overall governing body,  Well, no, actually there is a way here. We have like a Department of Finance if you will, Ministry of Finance. So money that is raised off our traditional lands, the larger traditional lands, not the individual Indian Bands but the larger traditional territories, monies that are raised there go into the treasury for the communities and at the nation level decisions are made about what that, how that money will be distributed. A portion of it will remain at the nation level and it will remain there for certain purposes, then portions of it will go into the community and when it goes into the community it will go into the community specifically for like education or housing or economic development. So there’s I guess in that sense there might be some level of governance from the nation body but the autonomy really of the individual community for maintaining its own services and responsibilities, that will remain.”

Sophie Pierre:

“We have had this, the difficulty of having the Shuswap Indian Band be in part of our Ktunaxa Nation Council. They were not, they did not agree with some of the decisions that were made and we always go by, we try to go by consensus but if you can’t get straight out consensus then you go by the majority and so they were not happy with a couple of decisions made and that’s why they, the leadership at that time decided to pull out. Whether or not they will continue to be out of it, the nation council is a question for the future. But I think that that was a way of where we could not really meet the requirements of that one particular community that wanted to do things so different than what everybody else did where it was not necessary to accommodate the type of leadership that was coming from that community was so different from what was going on in the others so they just chose to pull out.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Regarding First Nations economic development efforts, why should Canadian citizens, provincial and federal agencies and their associated personnel, replace in a quality focused mindset in favor of one that focuses upon nation driven solutions?”

Sophie Pierre:

“I have a very straightforward answer to that and it’s this. When a First Nation benefits economically, the whole region benefits. It’s not true the other way around. That’s why in a very resource rich country, both Canada and the United States, why it’s possible that you have resource extraction where the larger community is doing very well but sitting smack dab in the middle of it is a poverty stricken Aboriginal or Indian community. Why is that? If you turn the tables on that and that First Nation, that Aboriginal community becomes economically viable, the whole region benefits and St. Eugene Resort is a perfect example of that. We turned a former Indian residential school into a resort. At the height of the season it hires 260 people. The majority of those are from the surrounding region. Maybe 50, 40 people are from our nation. Everybody else is from the region. And the success of our resort brings people into the area that spend their money everywhere else too, not just at the resort. So when we became economically viable, when we became successful, everybody benefited. But for 60 years we had a lead and zinc mine just 10 miles up the road from my reserve, in fact I’m convinced because our elders told me, that they dug under our reserve to take out the lead and zinc. We never benefited a cent from that. So that’s my response to that.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“What factors define and contribute to a successful nation driven solution?”

Sophie Pierre:

“It’s got to be owned by the nation. If it hasn’t been, if it’s something that some bureaucrat has dreamt up as the kind of flavor of the month solution for Indian problems, it ain’t going to work. Simple as that.”

Sophie Pierre:

“My whole, my focus always in the time that I’ve been in a leadership position is that succession planning and involving the youth,  You’d asked that question earlier and I really didn’t talk about this how it’s been a practice of mine that I always want to transfer the knowledge that I have gained to as many young people as possible as quickly as possible. And so with, like even with the experiences that I’ve had with NNI, in the past whenever I had the opportunity brought a young person from my nation to participate in that. And then when I became Chief Commissioner of the Treaty Commission I did the same thing there and brought Sarah Robinson to come to a meeting that we had, that NNI had hosted with New Zealand and Australian people and the United States and Canada, the Common Roots, Common Future. And now she’s heading up, she is the Implementation Coordinator of one of the Maa-Nulth treaties. So she’s just grown and I’ve, there’s nothing better than seeing and watching a young person develop and step into the leadership role that they are perfectly capable of doing so that’s something that I always encourage and especially as I get older encourage even more strongly that we do as much as possible to pass on the knowledge that we have been lucky enough to acquire within our own lifetime. My mother always taught me that knowledge that’s kept inside and not shared is knowledge that ends up with no power so you have to share it in order for it to have the power.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you, Sophie. That’s all the time we have on today’s episode of Leading Native Nations produced by the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy and Arizona Public Media at the University of Arizona. To learn more about Leading Native Nations, please visit NNI’s Indigenous Governance Database website which can be found at igovdatabase.com. Thank you for joining us.”

Sophie Pierre:

“God bless. Thank you."

Good Native Governance: Lunchtime Keynote Address

Producer
UCLA School of Law
Year

UCLA School of Law "Good Native Governance" conference lunchtime keynote speaker, Joseph P. Kalt discusses research in the areas of good Native governance. 

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Kalt, Joseph P. "Lunchtime Keynote Address." Good Native Governance: Innovative Research in Law, Education, and Economic Development Conference. University of California Los Angeles School of Law, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, March 7, 2014. Presentation.

Good Native Governance Plenary 1: Innovations in Law

Producer
UCLA School of Law
Year

UCLA School of Law "Good Native Governance" conference presenters, panelists and participants Carole E. Goldberg, Matthew L.M. Fletcher, and Kristen A. Carpenter discuss law and the issues that Native nations deal with. Goldberg explains the recommendations of the Indian Law and Order Commission and the implications for good Native governance. Matthew talks about tribal disruption in the United States as a good thing. Discussing her work with Angela Riley, Carpenter presents on international human rights and the indigenous rights movement. 

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Goldberg, Carole. "Innovations in Law." Good Native Governance: Innovative Research in Law, Education, and Economic Development Conference. University of California Los Angeles School of Law, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, March 7, 2014. Presentation.  

Fletcher, Matthew. "Innovations in Law." Good Native Governance: Innovative Research in Law, Education, and Economic Development Conference. University of California Los Angeles School of Law, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, March 7, 2014. Presentation.

Carpenter, Kristen A. "Innovations in Law." Good Native Governance: Innovative Research in Law, Education, and Economic Development Conference. University of California Los Angeles School of Law, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, March 7, 2014. Presentation.

Good Native Governance: Keynote Address

Producer
UCLA School of Law
Year

UCLA School of Law "Good Native Governance" conference keynote speaker, Kevin Washburn, Assistant Secretary — Indian Affairs for the U.S. Department of the Interior, examines how Native nations are engaging so well in self-determination through good governance. 

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Washburn, Kevin K. "Keynote Address." Good Native Governance: Innovative Research in Law, Education, and Economic Development Conference. University of California Los Angeles School of Law, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, March 7, 2014. Presentation.

Justin Beaulieu: The Red Lake Nation's Approach to Constitutional Reform

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Justin Beaulieu (Red Lake Nation), coordinator of the Red lake Nation Constitution Reform Initiative, provides a detailed overview of how the Red Lake Nation's constitution reform committee has designed and is implementing a methodical, strategic, comprehensive approach to reviewing and reforming the nation's constitution that puts primary emphasis on full, meaningful participation by the Red Lake people in the process.

Resource Type
Citation

Beaulieu, Justin. "The Red Lake Nation's Approach to Constitutional Reform." Leading Native Nations interview series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Walker, Minnesota. July 9, 2014. Interview.

Ian Record:

"Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I'm your host, Ian Record. On today's program, we are honored to have with us Justin Beaulieu, a citizen of the Red Lake Nation in Minnesota. Justin currently serves as Coordinator of the Red Lake Constitutional Reform Initiative and earlier this year he was chosen by the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development to serve as one of three members of the inaugural Cohort in its Honoring Nations Leadership Program. Justin, welcome and good to have you with us today."

Justin Beaulieu:

"Thank you, Ian. It's a pleasure."

Ian Record:

"So I've shared a little bit about who you are, but why don't you start off and just tell us a little bit more about yourself?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Well, I'm a father of two beautiful children with my wife Anne and pretty much my job and my kids are my life. I spend a lot of time in the outdoors. I like to hunt, fish, trap, do a lot of the cultural activities, go ricing and maple syruping. It's...just kind of live the old way and I learned from my grandpa and my dad."

Ian Record:

"That's great. The reason I wanted to sit down and have a chat with you today is because of your involvement in Red Lake's constitutional reform effort, which is still very much early in its development and we'll talk about that, but I wanted to start at the beginning. And based upon your knowledge as a citizen of the nation and obviously your involvement as coordinator of the actual reform initiative, what in your view prompted Red Lake to go down the reform road to begin with?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"I think -- and this conversation's been going on for a long time -- we had a discussion with Chairman [Darrell] Seki, our new elected chairman, the other day and he was talking about how his grandfather and grandma used to talk with other elders in the tribe and this was probably in the late 20s, 30s and they were talking about how our constitution then, the 1918 constitution, it didn't align with our cultural values or who we are or what we're about to what we felt was important as a people. So then as a nation, I think that has been passed along from parents to children to grandchildren to great grandchildren and finally we did a GANN [Governance Analysis for Native Nations session] in 2010 with Native Nations Institute and I think that was one of the catalysts that kind of drove that conversation into the forefront that said, ‘Okay, we can do this now. We've been talking about it for a long time, let's go ahead and do it.'"

Ian Record:

"So I should mention a GANN is a Governance Analysis for Native Nations session. It's a tool that nations use to assess their current governance systems and constitutions being part of that. When I first met you, you were a member of Cohort 2 of the Bush Native Nation Rebuilders Program and at that time you were working for Mille Lacs Band."

Justin Beaulieu:

"Yes."

Ian Record:

"And you've since returned to your own nation, Red Lake, and I'm curious, how did you become...how did you come to serve as coordinator of this constitutional reform initiative, and maybe shed a little bit of light on what your role is within this effort?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Sure. Okay, we'll start at the beginning. Sam Strong, he went to Cohort 1 and he was part of the participation that did the GANN analysis and he was part of the team that brought me back to Red Lake. He had made a phone call, we had met through the Rebuilders. I didn't know Sam from anybody. He grew up in North Carolina and he went to school out east so we didn't have any previous history. So we met through the program and he called me and he said, ‘Would you mind coming home to work?' And I said, ‘Yeah, I'd love to. I've been planning on trying to find something.' I'd actually applied for three other jobs and the way it worked out I didn't get those...I didn't even get interviews for most of them because they would just fill them with whoever they wanted to at the time. So when he said, ‘Do you want to come back home,' I said, ‘Yes, I would love to.' And then he told me what it was for and I was really excited because with the conversations with my dad, with my relatives and with other people, we identified that the constitution is the first step in reassessing our governance and restructuring it to what we need as a nation to move us into the next generations. So that was kind of how I got involved in the process.

And my job as the coordinator is, we have a committee of 13 members who are...they're identified into each individual group. We have Redby, Red Lake, Little Rock and Ponemah. We have two from each one of those districts and they're the representatives that represent those people there. So they're the liaison between the people and their voice and then the committee. And then we also have a chairperson and we have a cultural advisor and we have a legal advisor. So those people are all citizen-members of Red Lake and my job is to help them to engage the community, is to get out there and do the grassroots, hit the ground running, try to figure out what they want.

But initially when I first came on, I was hoping everybody would be at the same level of education that I was with...and that wasn't the case. So we did probably like six to eight months of just real intensive training on what is a constitution, what is our constitution, researching our history, how did we get those constitutions, what was the relationships between the tribes and the governments, whether it be the state or federal during those times and what was...what were the catalysts of why they wanted to make an actual constitution in the way they did. So we did a lot of research and we put a lot of time and effort into figuring our what other tribes have done, what our tribe did in the past, how they made decisions and it was really an enlightening and learning experience for the whole committee.

So from there then I get to connect them with the community. So I coordinate community events, I coordinate... we do like powwows or celebration feasts. We also do just small group meetings. We do an advisory meeting. So my job is to make sure all of those go well, get all the people there, do all the coordination, get all the food. So it's a really intensive job, but I'm pretty good at it so I hope I'm doing a good job so far."

Ian Record:

"So you mentioned when the group first got together and you guys were trying to wrestle with, ‘How do we tackle this and this challenge that's before us and how do we develop a process,' that there was some internal learning that needed to take place and it started with developing a constitutional history of Red Lake. How important is that and what is the constitutional history of Red Lake? Where is your current...I guess first and foremost, how did Red Lake come to have its first written constitution and how did it come to have the current constitution that it governs by?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Okay. So in 1918 we created a constitution and that constitution, it's basically identified a chieftain system, which we had the clan systems before then so it was similar to the same kind of system. But we needed to identify people to go to to make decisions about resources, about...because the government wanted trees, the lumber barons were there, the railroad was trying to come through. so there was a lot of people that needed to get access to those and also needed resources to go in and out of what we had as the current...the reservation. So when...they didn't have...they didn't know who to go to like, ‘Well, what clan deals with this or what clan deals...?' Instead they just created the constitution so they knew, ‘Okay, this is who we go to when we need to make a decision based on do we need to...require X amount of land or we want to get these trees from here so who do we talk to?' So that was one of the ways to limit the confusion between the federal government and also the businesses that were trying to do business with the tribe.

And then ultimately in 1958 we created a new constitution. This was a boilerplate IRA [Indian Reorganization Act] constitution and, that's essentially what it was, but they had been proposing since 1937, 1938 to get that constitution in place, but the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] was dragging their feet and saying, ‘No, the way it's going right now with Red Lake, we like it. We like the way it's going.' They did a big land grab with us. They got 11 million acres and we got to keep our tribe intact. We fought the Dawes Act so there's no allotment. Red Lake is one whole parcel, which I think that the foresight that our ancestors had for that was amazing. But in retrospect, looking back at it, the BIA had their hands in a lot of things for Red Lake, but Red Lake was a champion of sovereignty so they were pushing back and so they didn't want...’No, we don't want to implement this constitution because then there's democratic rule, then there's going to be some...we like the way the chief system works so we can just go, ‘Hey, we need this,'' and it was easy to work. So ultimately in 1958 they finally pushed it through and they adopted the revised constitution for Red Lake and that has been what we have been governed by since then."

Ian Record:

"So it sounds from talking with others that are involved in the Red Lake reform effort that there's a sentiment among many in the community -- including, as you mentioned, some of your own relatives -- that this current document that we govern by, it's not a product of us, it's not reflective of who we are. How much of that is driving this current movement for reform?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"I think a lot of that is. We look at our culture and our values that we hold to high esteem and none of those things are involved in that constitution. There is nothing that talks about our children, there's nothing that talks about our elders, there's nothing that talks about our language, our culture, the ways that we made decisions in the past. It's essentially a business model constitution on how to run like say for example a board of directors like Target Corporation. So it takes into account nothing that we hold near and dear to us and talks about our culture, none talks about our land. Our lake is one of the things that we're very much proponents for and stewards of and even that isn't included in there and unfortunately because of that we have lost a portion of Upper Red Lake due to mismanagement of how they did the survey and nobody was held accountable because nothing said in our constitution that ‘We are going to protect our lake in its entirety,' in the whole thing and that's going to be first and foremost. So ultimately we lost because of that."

Ian Record:

"I wanted to go back to the initiative in terms of how it was established. Can you briefly give us an overview of what this initiative looks like, how is it structured and why was it structured in the way it was and what is its I guess ultimate charge?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Sure. Our charge is in the committee and that's who I help, is they're responsible for getting information to the people to give them a reason to kind of respond to stimulus. So if we want them to talk about something like land and natural resources, we put out a survey and ask them for information and then they respond back. And then based off that information we can kind of mine down the next questions to make them...to get kind of a smaller scope of how we're going to detail parts of the constitution and that's worked out well for us. We're separated completely from the tribal government, we're insulated in the fact that they signed off saying that they're going to be hands off for the committee and we also have contracts with each one of the committee members that states that they can't have a direct...somebody in their direct family that's either on the council or is going to serve on the council. So if like say somebody gets voted into office in our upcoming election, we have the runoff, then that means that if they were on our committee they have to step down then because that's in their contract. So that I think is...the way that is structured is good in the sense that it gives the people in the...the citizens, your average every day citizen, it gives them that sense of ‘Okay, this isn't the tribal council's idea. This is ours. This is our document, this is something that we can get behind, this is something that we can put our fingerprints on so to speak and it'll be ours.'

So it's, I think...we learned that from a couple other tribes who have done it differently and it didn't work out so well for them. It either...they either extended their time period that they...some of them even got basically...for lack of better words got their throat cut. They couldn't do constitutional reform anymore so we wanted to make sure when we set it up initially, that was one of my first questions to Sam when he asked me I said, ‘Is the tribal council going to be involved?' and he said, ‘No.' Then I said, ‘Okay, then perfect.' And I think that's the same...I don't think that I'm alone in that. I think a lot of the community members also have that kind of mistrust and it's not to say that our leaders are bad, it's just been over the years things have happened here, things have happened there and that trust has been broken and trust is very hard to build. So then to limit that, kind of the naysayers, or whatnot, we decided that we're going to keep the tribal council out of it and they're going to just allow the people to have this thing and it'll be ours."

Ian Record:

"And how important is that to send that clear message to the citizens who you're trying to engage, you're trying to get them interested in this discussion about reform and get them to offer their input, how important is it to send the message then that this is bigger than any one single elected leader or this is bigger than any current crop of leaders? It's got not just an independent nature to it, but it's got a larger, longer term nature to it, it's got a longer-term purpose to it than just who are the holders of the power right now."

Justin Beaulieu:

"I think the legacy of our forefathers -- like I talked about -- fighting the Dawes Act and that kind of shines through. And then when you tell them, ‘Hey, this is about us,' then they don't feel...they feel safer to share their ideas. They don't feel like there can be repercussions or, ‘My husband or my brother might lose their job or whatnot,' because that has happened in tribes over history that if you start political turmoil then things can happen to your...you can lose your spot on a housing list, you can lose some resources, you can get fired from your job. So making sure that there's that insulated barrier there, people will feel a lot more free to share their ideas and that fear isn't there and then that's where you get that real raw feedback and emotional response to some of these things. Where we talked about our children who are not enrolled because of our own standards of membership to the tribe, they are not covered under the Indian Child Welfare Act. So if something happens to like say myself and when my kids, they're not enrolled right now because they're 1/100th of a percent off of blood. They have enough Native blood to be enrolled in other tribes, but not just in Red Lake. They're not covered under that. They can be taken and then given to...anywhere. They can be sent anywhere in the states or whatnot and that's something that a lot of them it resounded with them like, ‘We need to protect our kids and we need to protect our land and we need to protect our people.' But none of that is covered in our current constitution. It just essentially talks about building a tribal government, a makeshift tribal government and how the resources can be divvied up then."

Ian Record:

"So I've been to the website for the constitutional reform initiative; very impressive. And I know some of your colleagues on the committee are doing a lot of...developing a lot of educational materials that will enrich that site moving forward, but I want to talk a bit about the vision statement because something in there struck me that explicit in that vision statement is this idea of strengthening ideas of self-governance in the constitution. Can you provide perspective on that and what is the nature of the conversation around strengthening this idea of self-governance? Because if you read that the implication is that, ‘Our current constitution doesn't fully enact our sense of what self-governance means.'"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Well, self-governance, deciding what we're going to do and where we're going as a nation is important. And one of the things that we suffer from is the fact that we have to chase grant money and federal dollars and things like...we always have to jump through other people's hoops. So we're not really governing ourselves. We're governing by dollars or governing to whatever extent that a grant source wants us to do to get some money funneled and to try to help alleviate some of the hardships that the citizens face. So self-governance is taking that accountability, creating our own government, creating our own future, creating what we're going to do for economic development, what we're going to do to create better institutions and governing structure, how do we align our schools with our tribal government and how do we align our schools to be able to help our citizens become entrepreneurs if they want. It's creating a place where our tribal leaders can actually worry about what we're going to do in five years, 10 years rather than worry about who's going to get a job tomorrow or who's going to get a raise next week. Those are the things that...the decisions that they're making on a constant basis, and those are management-level decisions that should be made by the directors and managers. Those are not governance issues. Those are things that I believe and a lot of other citizens believe that those should be dealt with on those managerial levels, not necessarily on a council level. So they're dealing with every day, ‘Who's going to get their lights on,' those kind of things, when they should be worrying about, ‘What are we doing strategically to move ourselves into the next 10 years, next 20 years?'"

Ian Record:

"So you've touched a bit about...you touched on a bit already about some of the things that you guys are doing, some of the activities that the reform initiative and the committee members in particular are engaged in. Can you talk about some of the strategies you and the committee are taking to engage the people and sort of hook them in and then keep them engaged throughout what could be a multi-year process? From everything I've heard from you and others, you're going into this knowing that this is going to take a few years to get done if we want to do it right."

Justin Beaulieu:

"Yes. So we started off and once we got the information that we thought was going to be relevant to us to start the process, we started off by doing an initial survey. We did some excerpts in the papers, we did some kind of op-eds and discussing what we're doing, what the project looks like, what the timeline is so people could get an idea of, ‘Okay, if you ask us some questions, we're not going to expect you to give us a new constitution in two weeks or in a month, something like that.' So they understood the process and the timeline. And then we also first initially started talking about things that are near and dear to people's hearts. So we talked about language and culture, which is very important to us, to our tribe, to our nation and we also talked about our natural resources, which is another thing that we hold very dear. So that was the thing that we could get everybody to rally behind. So it wasn't a polarizing thing, it wasn't like talking to them about membership or something like that where you've got people on extreme opposites of that continuum. It was easy for us to transition everybody into getting behind the project and see what it is and then give them feedback on that level. We also met people where they were so if they couldn't come to a meeting, we offered the website, we got a Facebook page, we got a YouTube site that we up materials on. So if we have something that we think is really important, we'll put it out on those mediums so that they can see it on the phone when they're in the car or at their house. If we've got elders that can't make it into a meeting, we can bring them a DVD of what we did. So it's really important that we find out who needs to be at the table and then find out how to get them there or find out how to bring that table then to them."

Ian Record:

"You've talked about some of the strategy you guys are employing to get and then keep people engaged and I'm curious, what are some of the challenges that you've encountered thus far? I know it's early, I know you guys are in terms of full-bore implementation of this reform process you're about a year in or so, but what are some of the challenges you've encountered and how are you working to overcome those?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"I think life is the biggest challenge. People have lives, people have things that they're concerned about. They're concerned about keeping food on their table, their lights on. Those are real-world issues and we're not a rich tribe. We don't have money coming in from casinos, and so we're just trying to combat what the I guess side effects are of that, then try to keep people engaged in that. And it's hard when you're looking at something that's a grandiose idea like a constitution versus, ‘How am I going to get food in my fridge for my kids.' And then also get them to say, ‘Okay, now I need to stop what I'm doing over here and invest some time into this.' So it was hard to initially capture their attention, but then keeping them engaged is something that's been very difficult. I think being transparent and continuing to kind of not so much bombard them but keep them up to date with information has been the easiest way. Posting things on Facebook, questions, throwing ideas out there. If somebody comes by my office and they have a really great idea, I'll put that out on Facebook and put it on our website and say, ‘What do you guys think of this?' And it gives people an opportunity to weigh in and then those things get shared by a bunch of people and pretty soon it's kind of like this landslide of things coming in. So it's easy in that sense where if using a tool, a technology like Facebook that something can happen like this and next thing you know 10,000 people have seen it. So just kind of capitalizing on those things has been an easy way to try to alleviate the issues of life happening.

Another thing that's recently happened is we went through...we lost our chairman. We lost 'Buck' Jourdain and that's not to say that the new Chairman Darrell Seki isn't going to do a good job, but he [Jourdain] was a big supporter of constitutional reform, which isn't bad or good; Darrell Seki is also a big constitutional reform proponent. And so he comes along and says, in his statement he says, ‘I'm going to support this fully.' But there's other people that are on the council that may not like the idea of losing kind of the way things are...change is a hard process for anybody, it's hard for me. So then if you go in and somebody identifies, ‘Uh oh, this might change the way we do things.' ‘Well, we've been doing this...I've been on council for 15, 20 years. What are we going to do? I won't know what I'm doing.' So that's kind of scary for them. So it's easier for them to kind of sit back and not help us with it and in the same sense we did tell them to kind of stay out, but those have been two of the things that have been kind of the hardest to keep people engaged because of the idea that once you...when you have an election, it is a polarizing thing. Families start fighting and people who are husband and wife start fighting. It gets down to that molecular, granular level that we have to try to keep these people focused on the big picture and not just the here and now."

Ian Record:

"So keeping them focused on the big picture; and you mentioned people have real issues in their lives, people are busy, in many tribal communities there's a lot of poverty, there's a lot of social ills that people are wrestling with, it's very time consuming, it distracts their attention from these sorts of things. Isn't part of the way to combat that though is instructing people on the role the constitution plays in their lives currently and then how a stronger constitution could benefit their lives, enhance their lives, enhance the lives of their children, that sort of thing? Is that part of the argument and the education that you guys are sharing with citizens in these community meetings and through other ways to say, ‘Look, the constitution matters. You may not see it operating in your lives every day, but it matters and on many levels'?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Well, when we first started, probably about 85, 90 percent of the people had never even read the constitution, didn't really know what it meant and didn't know how it applied to their life. And that was one of the questions, like you said, we got was, ‘Why does this matter to me?' So then finding out that tie between where we're at now and some of the problems that have stemmed from us not having a constitution that matches our culture and then identifying with them some places that have changed their constitution and look at the things that they've been able to do now. They've been able to grow as a nation, they've been able to implement new procedures that helped them get new economic opportunities, that helped them revitalize some of their language where they were losing it, get some more fluent speakers. These are things that people really, really want and these are things that our current constitution isn't going to allow to happen. So that aligning their ideas of what they want in their own lives with what the big picture is that'll help the tribe is something that we've done as a committee and is part of my job, yes. And it's been very important on keeping people engaged and also identifying with some people who were the ones sitting on the back like, ‘Oh, I don't think that I really want to get involved in this.' ‘This matters to you.' ‘Why does it matter to me?' ‘Are your kids enrolled?' ‘Yes.' ‘Are your grandkids enrolled?' ‘Well, no.' ‘Aren't they part of your family?' ‘Yeah.' ‘Are they part of this tribe? Well, I guess not. So let's talk about that. How can we figure this out, because these are problems that a lot of people face? You're not alone in this.' So then they're like, ‘Oh, that's...okay, so the constitution can do that?' ‘Yeah, the constitution covers our government and how it...how we as a people want that government to function.'"

Ian Record:

"One of the issues that Red Lake has been focusing on and discussing in the early stages of the reform effort is whether and how to remove the Secretary of Interior approval clause from its constitution. Why the attention to that specific issue?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Well, historically Red Lake has been a champion of sovereignty and also pushing the limits of what the government thought was okay and not okay and that's one of the things...if you look back to the Roger Jourdain era, he was going to D.C., he was a very vocal person, he was the "squeaky wheel" that pushed a lot of these issues that other tribes also face into the laps of Congress to say, ‘What are you going to do about this?' So then looking at that, Red Lake has not necessarily asked anybody what to do. They've decided what to do for themselves, but somehow they included that we have to ask for the Secretary of Interior to approve our constitution, our changes to it, our membership stuff. So those are things that people have said, ‘Well, why do we even have that? We ran the BIA out of here a long time ago.' Well, we wrote that into our own constitution, we asked for that to happen.' So they're, ‘Well, why don't we just take it out?' ‘Okay, let's talk about that.'

They decided to do that, they put it up for referendum vote back in 1990...I think 1998 and it lost by over 600 votes and so that was concerning to me. I was asking -- at the time Bobby White Feather was the chairman -- and so I went and asked him, I said, ‘What was going on during that time? Like why were people...why were they not...they were okay with kicking the BIA out, but they were okay with keeping this language in here that says we've got to ask them for approval to do things. Why were there...' And he said he thinks that it was -- and I'm kind of paraphrasing here -- he thought it was because of the mistrust that [people had of] the tribal government had at the time. They had just gone through an era in 1979-1980 where there was turmoil in our tribal government. There was shootouts going on, there was buildings being burned down, a lot of our history was actually lost because our tribal council building at the time was burned to the ground. So we look at, that's where our archives were, that's where a lot of our important documents were.

So the people were like, ‘No, we think the government should be involved in this because we want them to watch.' But they didn't really know that the government's not really caring what the tribe does, they just...’You put that in there in 1930, they cared back then. 1980, 1990, 2000s, they don't really care what you're doing. Look at some of the Supreme Court cases,' they said. ‘You figure out your membership. You figure out what you're going to do with your people. You figure out what you're going to do with your resources. You now have the ability to do your own self-governance stuff so we're not going to have our BIA people in there anymore.' So they kind of cut those parental ties so to speak, but we still have that in there because we thought we had Big Brother watch so ‘The tribal council can't screw us over,' or something to that effect is kind of what I got out of it. And there wasn't a whole lot of education done with it. They didn't go out and say, ‘This is what's going on with this. This is why it's important that we take ownership back of our constitution.' So I think that if they'd have done a little more education behind that and a little more transparency, I think that probably would have passed back in the ‘90s and we wouldn't be worrying about it right now."

Ian Record:

"I know, being a student of a lot of different tribes' constitutional reform efforts, I know that this is a common topic, common issue of concern, and I know that some tribes have approached this as they engage in sort of comprehensive reform to say, ‘We're going to go ahead and take this...we're going to do this as round one. We're going to get rid of this approval clause.' Laguna Pueblo is a good example of that. Back in 2012 they just said, ‘We know one thing that everybody can...we've gotten everybody to agree on, let's get rid of this language. Because we then want to engage in a discussion about what sort of constitution we want for ourselves without any sort of secondary or perhaps even primary consideration of what the feds are going to think.' Where's your nation right now? I know it's early, but is there a consensus yet on, ‘Is this going to be part of the overall package that we ultimately get the people to vote on or are we going to break this out as a separate amendment again?'"

Justin Beaulieu:

"That's the big question. We've been posing that to the community and one of the things we did is we actually wrote to the Secretary of Interior and asked them, ‘Can we just take this out and you guys will approve it?' He said, ‘Of course. Definitely take it out. We encourage you to take it out because we don't necessarily want to be meddling in your business.' So they wrote us a one-page letter that's going to be good for helping us to educate our own people like, ‘Look, this is something that can benefit us. This is some...we don't need somebody else approving any of our documents, approving what our government is and how it works. That's up to the people.' So that was one of the first steps we took. We also polled them. We did a survey, ‘What do you guys think of the Secretary of Interior? What does it mean to you? How do you think that it applies to us as a nation?' So that was enlightening too to kind of get those different responses and kind of get a feel for where everybody's at in the process. That way we can tailor our message to whatever individuals we have to to try to get the education part of it out so they can make a decision, an informed decision on their own versus, ‘I don't know what that means so I'm going to vote no because I know how things go when it is in there.'"

Ian Record:

"You've made...you've discussed...you've touched on some of the issues that have sort of been coming out in some of these meetings: culture, language, obviously the Secretary of Interior approval issue, membership as you mentioned is a big issue. What are some of the issues that have been bubbling to the surface as you've guys begin to engage the community and get their thoughts on constitutional reform?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"It's a lot of the buzz words like the transparency of the government. ‘Why don't they come and tell us in the individual communities what they've been talking about, what they're doing, what they're working on?' A lot of the people, they find out after the fact like one day all of a sudden there's this building going up. ‘Well, what is this? Why didn't anybody tell us there was a...why didn't anybody ask us what was going on?' So transparency is a huge thing. They want the tribal government to be transparent. They also want them to be accountable. They want them to be accountable to the people and to themselves. So that means...I guess it would mean some sort of job description they've been talking about like, ‘What does...what is the secretary-treasurer, what is their job? What are they supposed to do?' Because how can you hold anybody accountable if you have no idea what they're really supposed to do. So it's looking into some of those things.

Also they want to talk about our economic development not just trying to get casinos, but also working with the tribal members to kind of make it where the tribal government will allow the citizen entrepreneurs to actually have their businesses versus making them get a license, making them jump through this hoop, making them do this, making them do that, which is I think was important to them in the past to be able to kind of control what was going on in the communities, but now there's people who are very well educated. There are some very, very smart people in Red Lake that want to start their own businesses, want a culture that has a bank that they can go to. There's no bank, there's no banking system. So a lot of those things that would be extended to you in an outside world or an outside community is not available there so they want to talk about that.

What is economic development for the tribe? What does it mean for our people? Also, what does it mean for our government to get involved in the economic development versus we're doing it on our own or is it a separate entity, setting up tribal businesses like we have right now in Red Lake, Inc. Is it that? We have Red Lake, Inc. and we've had them for quite a few years now, almost four years, and our businesses are turning profits now. They never did before in the past. Not to say that any one person or any one thing is responsible, but to give that back to people who went to school for business, who know how businesses run, who now how to do budgets and who know how to do just anything that has to do with business. It was good for our tribe because we're making money on those businesses where we were just kind of pouring money into them and trying to get them to work before. So it's how do we separate all those different silos and then how do we then created a government that's going to be looking at what's more important for our future, what's more important for our children, dealing with the issues that we have rather than putting Band-Aids on things."

Ian Record:

"You mentioned this early on about how you, in structuring the reform initiative, 'I'm trying to figure out what's a proven strategy that will work for us,' that you looked at some other nations. Can you talk a little bit more about how you're learning from the constitutional reform experiences of other tribes? And perhaps on the flip side, yes, it's early on but what could other nations that are perhaps just discussing reform right now and when they start reform, what could they learn from Red Lake?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Sure. I don't know for a fact what they can learn from us, but I can talk about what we've learned from other tribes. We've learned from some experiences that White Earth [Nation] had, that the Blackfeet [Tribe] have had, that Gila River [Indian Community]  have had, that the Cherokee [Nation] have had and just looking at kind of dissecting and mining through what they've done and how they got their process going, how they worked it. Did they have a committee, did they just have like a quorum of people that came together? How did they identify those people? How did...so it was kind of a learning experience for us to first initially set up like, ‘How are we going to do this that's going to be a good way, that our people can get behind and respond to?' And what we came up with is a committee of people who are from each individual community so that they felt represented. Sometimes in our communities, and it's a funny thing, the divide-and-conquer mentality. We have four communities and people identify with those communities more than they identify with the nation as a whole. So we decided, ‘Okay, that's how they identify, that's how we're going to work it. We're going to give them two representatives from each one of their separate districts and then those people will be the ones who they go to or can be a liaison for the committee to bring back the information, to bring back the ideas, also to share them forward. So they're like a conduit for each individual district.

And then like I touched on, we needed to figure out how to engage the community because we looked at, let's say White Earth for example, they got together I think it was about 40 people and they did some sessions where they would kind of hammer out all these details. And they did it with good hearts I'm sure and good intentions, but I looked at the videos of the people in the communities and they were really upset. ‘Why didn't you come to us? Why didn't you ask us what we thought? Why weren't we involved in these conversations?' And that's something we didn't want to answer in the future so we thought, ‘We better get them involved first in the process and then figure it out,' versus bringing it to them after the fact and saying, ‘Here this is good for you.' Because historically that's happened for Native peoples throughout history since first contact is, ‘Here, this is good for you, take this.' So we wanted to get them involved so that their DNA and their fingerprints and everything was on it. So their ideas were in it, it resounded with them, they can get behind it and say, ‘I had those ideas. I shared these ideas. These are now in our governing document. That's awesome!' So that was something that we learned from them.

Gila River, with Anthony Hill, he came in and he did a full meeting. We had about four hours. And so basically he came in and told us everything, how the whole process worked for them, how they started, how they got these road bumps along the way, how they worked past some of them. Then their regime change came and kind of put a kibosh to everything so they had to work really, really hard, but their documentation process was I think the thing that we learned the best from Gila River is they kept everything that they did and they kept record of everything they did so that way they could I guess regurgitate that at any time to anybody, ‘Why did you guys do this?' ‘Well, because we polled everybody in a survey or we had a community meeting and this is the results from what you guys said you wanted to see done.' So that was important for us so that we could, in the future, if somebody came along, even if somebody comes along in 50 years and they had no idea of how this constitution was here, they can go back and they can look through the whole process. We have it digitized, we have video, we have it in a lot of different forms. That way if some...one written form or something gets destroyed, it's always going to live on and it'll always be there so people can go back and say, ‘That's how they did that.'"

Ian Record:

"Isn't that critical also for interpreting the constitution because we hear a lot of attorneys, in particular tribal attorneys, talk to us about, the constitution's typically these short documents. They don't go into a whole lot of detail. They set up the basic parameters and judges say this too, ‘If I'm being asked to interpret the constitution, often it would be really helpful for me if I know the back story.' What was the motivation behind why this provision reads the way it does?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Anthony Hill came to me and I actually got to ride with him. I drove him back and forth from the city so he got a good 10 and a half hours in the car with me. So I was asking him and he said, ‘The biggest thing is legislative intent. When I'm sitting on my...I've got my judge hat on, I'm sitting there and I'm trying to figure out is this a constitutional issue, how did they make this decision, how do I apply this?' He said, ‘And so I thought, that's the best way to do that is to actually have that in there with our documentation inserts, this is why we decided this. So then when a judge picks that up they can say, ‘Oh, legislative intent -- this is why they did it so this is how we can apply it.' And then if it needs to be changed, then you know why that decision was made so you know how you can change it then ultimately."

Ian Record:

"So I'm curious, I know it's early but looking forward, if this process succeeds, it reaches its fruition, what will success look like when all's said and done?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Success I think for the committee and for myself, too, is that a new document ultimately gets written that's accepted by the people, but I think the real success is the implementation of that, is getting to that final product, is getting everybody onboard and I think that the way we're engaging the community now and getting their feedback and getting them involved in the process is going to help to expedite that process in the future because then when you sit down and you have a director of a program who's ultimately going to be their daily, day-to-day, basic stuff that they do is going to be impacted by this new constitution, that they're going to know why this stuff was done, how it was done because they are going to be part of the process. So then they can buy into it and everything can move, that transition can happen more quickly and also less painfully, the growing pains of trying to implement that. So I think that for us would be success is when that finished product is done and the implementation is done."

Ian Record:

"And isn't that really critical because when you think about it, when you ratify a new constitution, you're simply changing a document. You're changing paper and then you've got this much larger challenge I would argue of actually having to change the political culture of the community, not just of the elected leadership and those who work within government, but the citizens and how they interface with government, right?"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Yes."

Ian Record:

"It's an on...does that not require some sort of ongoing education, educational challenge to remind and instruct people, ‘This is why the constitution is set out the way it is. This is what we decided at the time and why and this is what it means for you, citizen, program director, council member, chairman.'"

Justin Beaulieu:

"Yes, for example, let's say I'm under a hardship and I need some help paying my light bill. Right now the process is they can go and just kind of ask one of the council members and say, ‘Hey, I need help. I need my lights paid.' And then they can then in turn pay that, but with the new...the way that the government will potentially kind of be set up it's going to have those checks and balances where if I don't do what I'm supposed to do and use my due diligence, then those...I'm going to have to go through the hoops of whatever we have for programs available to help me out rather than trying to just go right directly to one of my elected leaders and saying, ‘I need help. I want help.' So that's going to be a growing pain for some people because they're used to that. They've been doing that now for 10, 15, 20 years saying, ‘Hey, I need help with this. Hey, I need help with that.' So that is going to be very difficult for some people, but I think the overarching goals that we're going to have in place are going to kind of supersede any of those, the little...the intricate things that are going to have to get ironed out in the end. My hope is that that learning curve isn't so hard and it doesn't take as long, but I guess the people will ultimately be the ones to judge that and then the success will be based on how we adopt it and then implementation of it."

Ian Record:

"Well, Justin, we really appreciate you taking some time out of your busy schedule -- I know you've got a lot on your plate -- to share your thoughts and experience and wisdom with us."

Justin Beaulieu:

"Awesome. Thank you."

Ian Record:

"Well, that's all the time we have on today's program of Leading Native Nations. To learn more about Leading Native Nations, please visit the Native Nations Institute's website at nni.arizona.edu. Thank you for joining us. Copyright 2014 Arizona Board of Regents."

Stephen Cornell: Defining Constitutions (Presentation Highlight)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

In this highlight from the presentation "Defining Constitutions and the Movement to Remake Them," Stephen Cornell provides some basic definitions of what a constitution is and the role it fundamentally plays -- or should play in the life of Native nations.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

Cornell, Stephen. "Defining Constitutions (Presentation Highlight)." Tribal Constitutions seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 2, 2014. Presentation highlight.

"...What kind of future do you want for your people and how do you get there? That's what a constitution is. It's a tool. It's something that a nation uses to achieve its goals.

So let's start just thinking about what is a constitution and why does it matter. And I'm going to give you a definition here, it's just one definition. I think if you canvassed everyone in the room, you'd probably come up with a number of alternative definitions, but here is one version. 'A constitution articulates the most fundamental rules by which a nation and its people intend to work together to achieve their goals. The most fundamental rules by which a nation and its people intend to work together to achieve their goals.' A constitution lays out those rules. It's about who you are as a people, how you intend to make decisions, which relationships to the land, to the spirit world, to each other, to other nations are most important. What is it you're trying to protect, to defend, to sustain? What is it you're trying to change, make better, make different? A constitution is like a roadmap. It says, 'This is how we work together, this is how we get things done.'

It's about governing.  And if...you know, what you want to be...when you undertake the task of governing a nation, you have to think very carefully about, 'What are you governing for?' When you start to make a constitution, think of it as that tool, but what kind of house are you trying to build with that tool? What kind of future are you trying to build with that tool? Those are the sorts of things you need to think about when it comes to constitution making. Why are we doing this? What's that future we want for our grandchildren, for other generations yet to come? These are big issues, but you can't go into a constitution just thinking, 'Gee, we've got this crummy constitution that some bureaucrat in D.C. came up with and we need to fix pieces of it.' What you really want to do is say, 'Where are we trying to go? Do we have the tools that'll get us there? And let's think about what those tools should be.'

Another way to think about it, and this I put together just from the dictionary, 'To constitute, to compose.' We're composing ourselves as a nation or we're recognizing what we've already known for generations what kind of nation we are. Bring together pieces into a whole. Are people going off in different directions? There's conflict, families who don't talk to each other, a history of fragmentation because of the stomping that you were subjected to by the U.S. government, the Canadian government, some other government, some colonial system. How do we take those pieces and bring them back together, to constitute yourselves as a nation? 'To establish or create.' So, to constitute ourselves as a nation or community capable of organized action, we want to be able to act. We want to make our dreams a reality. Now we've got to think about what tools we need to do that."