self-sufficiency

Kayenta Township Tax Initiative for Economic Development

Year

In 1997, Kayenta became the first township on the Navajo Nation to take advantage of new opportunities for local governmental authority by implementing a 2.5% retail tax that brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. This revenue has enabled the Township to build a solid waste transfer station, obtain leveraged financing for economic development projects, and support a local government office that oversees business and homesite leases and creates local laws and ordinances. As the only self-sufficient "township" located on an Indian reservation in the United States, the Kayenta Township demonstrates how local empowerment and governance can foster self-determined, self-sustaining economic development that addresses community-specific needs.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

"Tax Initiative Economic Development". Honoring Nations: 1999 Honoree. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2000. 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.

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."

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

Producer
Native American Student Affairs
Year

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

Resource Type
Citation

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

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

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

Aresta La Russo:

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

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

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

Walter Phelps:

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

LuAnn Leonard:

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

Stephen Roe Lewis:

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

Aresta La Russo:

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

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

Stephen Roe Lewis:

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

Aresta La Russo:

"Thank you."

LuAnn Leonard:

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

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

Aresta La Russo:

"Thank you. Walter Phelps."

Walter Phelps:

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

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

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

Aresta La Russo:

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

Stephen Roe Lewis:

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

LuAnn Leonard:

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

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

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

Walter Phelps:

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

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

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

Aresta La Russo:

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

Stephen Roe Lewis:

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

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

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

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

LuAnn Leonard:

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

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

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

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

Walter Phelps:

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

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

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

Aresta La Russo:

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

Stephen Roe Lewis:

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

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

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

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

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

LuAnn Leonard:

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

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

Aresta La Russo:

"Thank you."

Walter Phelps:

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

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

Aresta La Russo:

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

Stephen Roe Lewis:

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

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

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

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

LuAnn Leonard:

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

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

Walter Phelps:

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

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

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

Aresta La Russo:

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

Stephen Roe Lewis:

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

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

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

Luann Leonard:

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

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

Walter Phelps:

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

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

Peterson Zah: Native Nation Building: The Place of Education

Producer
American Indian Studies Program
Year

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

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

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

Peterson Zah:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Manley Begay:

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

Audience member:

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

Peterson Zah:

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

Audience member:

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

Peterson Zah:

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

Manley Begay:

“We were there, the two of us.”

Peterson Zah:

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

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

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

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

Manley Begay:

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

Audience member:

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

Peterson Zah:

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

Manley Begay:

“One more question.”

Audience member:

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

Peterson Zah:

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

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

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

Paulette Jordan and Arlene Templer: Engaging the Nation's Citizens and Effecting Change (Q&A)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Paulette Jordan and Arlene Templer field questions from the audience, offering more details about how they mobilized their fellow tribal citizens to buy into the community development initiatives they were advancing. 

Resource Type
Citation

Jordan, Paulette. "Engaging the Nation's Citizens and Effecting Change (Q&A)." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. November 7, 2013. Q&A session.

Templer, Arlene. "Engaging the Nation's Citizens and Effecting Change (Q&A)." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. November 7, 2013. Q&A session.

Herminia Frias:

"Well, thank you, Paulette and Arlene. We're going to open it up for questions, but I just wanted to make a comment from both of these stories is that these are really good stories about engaging the community and the citizenship about their responsibilities and the whole effective change and the process that it takes. None of this stuff happened overnight and what they did require that vision, that vision and that communication and going back and just keep on moving one at a time. And a lot of times when we work with tribal leaders it just seems like everything is so urgent and everything is so crisis-driven that sometimes it helps to take a step back and see how other tribes have done things and that it didn't happen overnight and as long as you continue to focus on that vision, you'll get there, just like they did. You'll get there and when you look back, you'll look at the process and think, "˜Wow, we did a lot.' And again, nations are not always good at giving themselves credit for the wonderful work that you do and that's one of the neat things that we get to do in our role is to be able to identify and look at that and meet people like Paulette and Arlene and say, "˜You've got to share your story because more people need to know about the process that you went through so that it inspires them to say we can do it, too.' So questions?"

Ian Record:

"Minnie, if you wouldn't mind, I'm going to actually ask the first question of Arlene. I've actually been very fortunate in sitting down with her and chewing the fat with her about the work that her department has done. And actually we recorded an interview with her that at some point it's going to be on the [Indigenous Governance] Database website...which I'll share a little bit more with you about later. Arlene, I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about the messages that you were conveying to your citizens as you transformed the way that you delivered social services to them and the incentives that -- and disincentives -- the new sets of kind of incentives and disincentives that you, that were laid in that new approach. And also how important it was for you to know that, 'I've got the tribal leadership at my back, they fully support this new approach we're taking where we're really about self-sufficiency and everything we do is geared towards enhancing the self-sufficiency of our people.'"

Arlene Templer:

"It was hard at first. Like I said, we had that entitlement mentality; people wanted to sit back and just draw the government jack or just draw GA [General Assistance] or TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] [money]. And what we got them to see is that when we set up these work placements, when they went out there and actually did that, they seen how it changed family stability. They had checks coming in, they felt better about themselves, the domestic violence dropped, the alcoholism took a backseat, and people began to change. The entire system -- all the employees, all of the people -- all of a sudden you were on the outside. You weren't looking at the jobs or being part of the movement that was happening and the work experience, and it wouldn't have happened if it didn't come from the tribal council, because the council had to say, "˜Enough of the turf, all your programs are going together and you have one goal.' And they gave us just that much of a light and then we took it from there and developed how we would do that. A lot of people said, "˜Well, you're too hard on the people. You're doing this pushing of driver's licenses and drug tests and making their kids go to school.' When they got to a place that they had that first job or they had that driver's license, just the change and the light went on. I don't have to drag them along anymore, they're dragging the others. So it changed, they changed themselves for that. You just open the door, you just give them the hand and it works."

Herminia Frias:

"We have Renee and Ian back there with the microphones. Anyone else? I'll ask a question while you're thinking about it and this is to Paulette. Paulette, what process did you go through to mobilize and create that momentum to get those people behind you and start moving on this and get people to care?"

Paulette Jordan:

"I think easier said than done, but like you said before, it takes credibility. Over the years, especially after the last election it just seems like it...you can't just be someone out of the blue and decide to do this. I think I've always been the outspoken one and said...and I really don't waste myself about issues. I don't just get out there and I guess jump behind every single project that there is. If there's something like a great cause that I know would benefit everybody, you'll see me part of it and wanting to help benefit or lead in some way. So at this point with this particular function, for me to get people rolling with that, I guess I was really heated in the beginning. I was really upset and I don't show emotion. I'm not an emotional person, but to me, being upset is speaking with direct conviction and telling people, "˜You need to be involved.' We had very few tribal people in the beginning who wanted to be involved. There was a lot of non-tribal, mostly teachers, and then the superintendent and so I said, "˜Hey, wait a minute. This is not just your issue, this is all of our issue.' So I started trying to recruit Native people who I felt would work with me and then follow through and show up to these meetings or who were also good at communicating and then getting out there to push this message. So it's...you know, you really have to know your community. I couldn't do this if I were in just any other...in another random community. I think I'd really have to know the people. You have to know who you can work with, who you can trust, who will listen to you and respect you in some way or form because you have to...to be in a leadership position, people have to be able to trust you so you have to have that credibility is what I'm saying. But that's really what I think helped move folks to be involved. And then the students, the students were easy. They were just...students are always willing to learn and they always want to be part of something fun and great so they were just like, "˜Okay, great, let's do this. What do I need to do?' And so for three months straight they just were always at my doorstop just saying, "˜Okay, what do we need to do next. What do we got to do?' And so it was really fun just to work with them. But it wasn't just about being upset and mad. It was just about saying, "˜We need to make a difference,' and I think that goes with anything we have within our tribes, whether it's a drug issue...like right now we were facing a big drug issue so we were just saying, "˜Okay, let's get our community rallied together,' and sometimes that takes food, sometimes that takes the proper people. You would never want someone who was or is a drug dealer or using drugs to be leading that group discussion. You want someone who's credible and who you can trust and rely upon. So you need those qualities and I'm sure all of you have those here. So just get out and do it. "˜Just do it,' as they say."

Herminia Frias:

"Any other questions? Yes."

Steve Zawoysky:

"So I have a question for Paulette mainly about partnerships. Partnerships are like the preferable form of business or governmental relationships. But if you lived in a...or if you were in an environment where potential partner is not necessarily cooperative or don't have a lot in common, it can be challenging. So I'm curious, two questions, one after you got together and did the school thing, did you have better relations then with your non-Native neighbors who were affected by that decision?"

Paulette Jordan:

"Yeah, I'm one of the rare property owners that would be affected by that levy, but I think again it's always about pushing the envelope. And then being a local property owner myself and other property owners having issues in voting no against the levy, I said to them, "˜Well, someone at some point paid for your public education at one point of time.' I never went to the public school system. I was always tribal and then private school. So I've always paid for my own way.' But I said, "˜You on the other hand, you went through the public school system. The state paid for it.' meaning your neighbors and your community. So once people think about it that way, they go, "˜Oh, well, yeah, okay. I need to pay it forward as we say,' then the heart opened up a little bit. But building relationships, partnerships...people afterwards, after the levy passed, people were more happy and thankful about it passing. Really what we found out was the people who were voting 'no' and who kept winning that levy were people who were moving in or retired folks in the northern county who don't have children and just were worried about losing property value. And so it was always a selfish, I hate to say that word, but it's more of a selfish-based reason why they voted 'no.' So to me overall, though, it builds relationships with everybody, and to me it always comes down to race relations and how we can better understand one another because that's really what prevents us from developing businesses together or developing schools together or how we look at each other. I want people to smile at my children everyday and not look at them, or look down upon him because he's Indian and I want them to trust him at some point because maybe he'll run for president 30 years from now. We want people to trust us for the right reasons. Not because we can give them money because we have gaming and other enterprises, but because we are good, humble people, because again like my good mentors say, it's all about humanity and how we look at one another. So I think that this really helped us look at each other more as relatives rather than just next door neighbors."

Herminia Frias:

"Any other questions? All right. I'd like to thank both of the presenters. Thank you so much for sharing your stories." 

Arlene Templer: Engaging the Nation's Citizens and Effecting Change: The Salish and Kootenai Story

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Arlene Templer, Department of Human Resource Development Director for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT), discusses what prompted CSKT to develop the Department of Human Resource Development and how the department works to cultivate self-sufficiency in CSKT citizens and use CSKT's resources for social services more effectively and efficiently.

Resource Type
Citation

Templer, Arlene. "Engaging the Nation's Citizens and Effecting Change: The Salish and Kootenai Story." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. November 7, 2013. Presentation.

Herminia Frias:

"I'm very pleased to be here today to introduce our panelists and moderate this session. We are going to start with Arlene Templer, and Arlene Templer is the Director of Department of Human Resource Development for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. And last year, I had the opportunity to go out and visit their nation and just see all of the amazing things that they do in their nation. And Arlene came out and presented and told us about this project she's going to share with you and we just thought, ‘Wow! More people need to know about what they're doing.' So without further adieu, her bio is in the booklet so I won't go into all that information, plus we're already starting a little bit late. Arlene is going to be our first speaker."

Arlene Templer:

"Good afternoon. I've worked for the tribe for 33 years, so it's given me a lot of background, I've seen a lot, I've tried a lot, I've survived a couple of coups. It still seems like in the tribal world, we have that crab effect where the further we get up the more people want to pull you down. So it's by perseverance and the glory of God that I sit in front of you today. The Creator put me here for a reason.

The Flathead Reservation is different than most of your reservations out there. We are 80/20 non-member. So 80 percent of our reservation are non-members. So it puts us a minority on our own Indian reservation. It's a beautiful place in northwest Montana and we own half of Flathead Lake, so it's a very pretty place. Salish Kootenai likes to be first or likes to get out there in the forefront in applying for programs and taking over programs. We're one of the first Self-Governance tribes. We have our own tribal court. We have a fantastic Salish Kootenai College, which most...I think last year, we had over 450 tribes attending our college. We were one of the first in 4E and we've contracted most of the Bureau [of Indian Affairs] programs. We used to have the superintendent and a secretary, but we don't even have the superintendent anymore. So we've pretty much contracted everything that the Bureau has done.

What I want to do today is give you kind of a practical implementation. What the tribe did in 1998 was looked around and looked at services. We were sitting at 41 percent unemployment. In Montana, you had to be 50 percent unemployment to not have the limitation on you, the five-year [limitation] on TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families]. And the tribe was applying to take over TANF at that time and applying for 477. So they created a new department and it was Department of Human Resource Development. Not a personnel department, it was human resource development. How were we going to develop our membership so that we're ready for jobs, we're ready for that home run industry that might step...come to the reservation and we're ready to stabilize families and make them self-sufficient? So they started taking programs from all other different departments. Our reservation is 1.25 million acres so we had maybe social services in St. Ignatius and we had housing up in Pablo and we had tribal health in Ronan. So we were...when people come in for services, it was, ‘Oh, you've got to go to St. Ignatius or you're got to go up to Polson or you've got to do this, you've got to do that.' We were running people all over the reservation to get services so the tribe said, ‘No, let's do an ease of service for people.' So they created the first tribal one-stop. We call it a 'one-stop' program and we were doing that before the state started doing one-stop programs. We didn't seek out their accreditation or their certification. We were already doing it. We have a tribal one-stop program.

In that one-stop, we have TANF and we run our TANF different because the tribe said, ‘We want stable families and we want self-sufficient families.' So in TANF, you have to get your driver's license, your kids have to go to school -- school participation is a must -- you have to attend mentoring. Mentoring is a 40-hour-a-week class. You come at 8:00 in the morning, you get a half-an-hour lunch and you go home at 4:30 at night. It's just like a regular job to teach people how to work. We also do drug tests. We don't base the eligibility on the drug test, but you have to do the drug test. If you fail it, it's put in your IFP, individual family plan, and you work on it. You go get an assessment and you follow the assessment rules. We have work placements. We have a problem with soft skills. We have generations of welfare, we have generations of poverty, and people don't know how to work. So we are trying to address those in the TANF. Transportation was an issue. A lot of the membership was losing their TANF eligibility because they couldn't make it to their appointments, they couldn't make it to their job seeking, they couldn't make it up to the county to make it to see their case worker. They would get up there and most of the people were hitchhiking and walk in the door and if they were five minutes late, the door was shut in front of their face. So the council said, ‘No. We're going to take the welfare from the county.' So we took the welfare and what we did was we bought two vans, started out with two little vans from TANF and we started transporting people to get to your work placements, to do your work requirements, to do the things you needed to do. And we also did assessments on those people. We found that 40 percent of the people on TANF that we brought from the county had disabilities, language disabilities, physical disabilities -- you name it, they had disabilities. Voc rehab was one of the programs we took in to DHRD [Department of Human Resource Development].

We also are very good at grant writing. I know grant writing has been a little bit negative in this workshop overall, but grant writing has set up our department. And what we did when we were grant writing is looking at grants that would enhance and train the membership. We applied for Fatherhood. We had the first Fatherhood program. It was five years and then we applied again for another three years. We've been successful both times. In the Fatherhood [program], we targeted soft skills. We have people go into work sites, we ask people not to fire them, they're called work experience placements and we work with whatever the issue is. We have a lot of our families that work in crisis. As soon as the babysitter calls and says, ‘I can't babysit today,' then they don't go to work. The refrigerator goes down, they don't go to work. The car breaks down, they don't go to work. So we're trying to work through all of those issues to make people self-sufficient. We also have LEAP [Low-Income Energy Assistance], commodities and food stamps. Food stamps, we invited the county to come down and have an office within our department, so instead of our people having to go to the county to apply for food stamps, it's in our one-stop. We gave them an office to come down and sit and have their own office in ours. So they don't have to go to the county for services anymore.

We have OCS, that's Office of Community Services, and we have all of the elder programs. And the tribe gave us a pot of money called 'Dire Need.' ‘When there's no federal dollars, there's no other dollars, there's no state dollars, we're going to give you this pot of money so that you can help the membership out.' So we've been given free reign on $100,000, it started out at $125,000, and it's to help people in emergency situations. So the council has been good to us for that. When they took all of these programs from all these other departments, it eliminated all the turf issues immediately. We still get in those little turf, ‘This is my budget, this is my money and I'm going to run it how I'm going to.' We don't have that anymore. You have one director, you have all the budgets under that person, and it eliminates all of the secretarial support for all of those different departments. It eliminates all of the support services, so we're able to save a lot of money in doing that.

After 15 years of running the department, we just now have people reaching their five-year limitation, so after 15 years. I've got an awesome TANF director. What we do is get people into work-experience placements, we get them working, we help create jobs. Up on the reservation they can do firewood, they can do post and pole, they can do Christmas treeing. Also we get per capita. We just got a recent large per capita, it was the Salazar payout of $10,000. Well, she worked with those people and said, ‘Get off the program for six months. Get off the program for the next year. Save your eligibility, you might need it.' So she has worked with people for the last 15 years doing that, so we just now have people reaching that limit. After 15 years, we're down at 24 to 29 percent unemployment depending on who you ask. So we've almost dropped that in half by putting the services into the people and making a work-first mentality. We fought a lot of mentalities. There was the government owes us, per capita, the tribe will pay for it. It was hard getting third-generation families that have never worked or third-generation families that have been caught up in alcoholism and drugs to work. We had people make that decision to be poorer. They decided, ‘No, I'm not jumping all your hoops.' What we have done is leave the door open so that when we do school clothes for kids or we do the school backpacks, we invite those kids in. We make sure that we cover all of those things.

I am the second department head. There's only been two department heads in 15 years. The first department head kept pretty much central control over all of the budgets, but she was there for probably 60 to 70 hours a week. I decided coming in that I didn't want to do that. What I did is develop nine divisions and we developed those people as division managers to run their own departments. I gave them their budgets, gave them their staff and said, ‘Okay, you guys all need to run your budgets.' The first couple of years it wasn't good. People don't know how to do budgets. People had a hard time supervising staff. But today they are all supervising, they are all doing a fantastic job.

The transportation was a tough issue. We started out with two vans and we'd seen with work-related work placements that we needed to develop a transportation system. So we applied for grants. We applied for the state grants, they have the 5311, they have JARC, they have all of their different kind of initials. We were very successful in getting those. We also got the tribal transportation grant. And then most of those state grants have these huge matches. So we were always going to the council saying, ‘I can get the grants, but you need to match them.' And second year, third year I was getting tired of going and begging for that money from the council. So I said, ‘How about if you guys let me buy the gas station?' There was a gas station that was right on our complex. ‘And I'll use the money, the revenues from the gas station, for revenues to the transportation department.' And they said, ‘Hmm.' So I wrote a couple earmarks and I was successful getting them. Senator [Max] Baucus, I wrote them to him -- both of them from him. We were able to purchase the gas station as a transportation hub. The second earmark I was able to build mechanical bays on the store. So then I was taking federal money and making it a revenue for the tribe. One of the gentlemen had asked, ‘How do you do that?' So now we are making money as a business and using the revenues to support the transportation system. Works well for us.

We also do a lot of training. I have a WIA [Workforce Investment Act] grant that does training. I have a BIA grant that does training. I have, let's see what else do I have...? Fatherhood does a lot of training. And I wrote another grant that allows us to CDL [Commercial Driver's License] training. I developed a bus system. I got 20 buses now. I need people that have CDLs. So did Forestry. They didn't have any people to take up their buses during firefighting. So did the school districts. So we wrote another grant and we will have 60 CDLs by the end of next year. We had 30 this summer. So what we do with grant writing is find the need and then go look for the grant. We're not just writing for anything that's out there. We actually say, ‘Hey, we could target that. We could bring that home and it could do this for us.' So we've been able to do that.

Lessons learned. I ran into a very strong, loud tribal member in my youth starting out. His name was 'Bearhead' Swaney. I don't know if any of you know him. He taught me very early that we are only one rung from our clients. He said, ‘In 90 days, anyone of you...' he was looking at all of us managers, ‘...would be in the same place as your clients. We're here to give them a hand up. We're here to all be successful.' And that has stuck with me from day one. That's how I work, that's how I operate, is in 90 days I could be in the same position. So help out your neighbor.

Credibility, relationships that you develop: I, over the 33 years, have developed very strong relationships with the state; I get grants from them, the federal government, the congressmen, other department heads. Senator Baucus asked me if I would come out and talk to the Senate Finance Committee on how meth is affecting tribal members on the reservation. I ran right out there and did it for him. Good things come out of relationships. I told you I got those two earmarks right up doing that as well. So make those relationships. What happens on our reservation is the tribal council is fighting with the state people over fish and game, water rights, gaming, so that there's this fight going on over the top of us and water rights right now is huge on our reservation. But us as leaders down below and the department head, I'm still reaching across the aisle to the state people, to the fed people, the people that I need to so that we can work. I'm finding those people that we can still get our job done, I can still get the grants I need, I can still bring that money home to our reservation and still allow the tribal council to do their job. So I see us once removed to be able to do that.

How do you keep the membership involved? I do this in a lot of ways. I do public hearings for a lot of my programs. I invite the public to come in and talk to me about LEAP, how could we do things different? Childcare, TANF, you name it. We have...we set a place across the reservation, we bring in cookies, we bring in drinks and we say, ‘Tell us what we could do differently.' We try to listen to the people. When we developed the Child Support Enforcement Forum, we sent out a survey. I didn't think that survey would work. The girls said, ‘Well, let's put $10 gas voucher on it, let's see how many we get.' So we did a $10 gas voucher, 500 people responded to that survey. So we really had a good idea what the people wanted. We also go to the culture committees. Boy, that can be a tough place to go. We have two culture committees. We have the Salish and then we have the Kootenai and the Kootenai is a tough place. You're going to be grilled and you're going to learn everything you probably didn't want to know about your past. We went there five times. Five times before we got that Child Support Enforcement stuff done, but we were doing code development, we were hearing what they wanted us to do and it worked for us because once we got to the council arena then, we didn't have people coming in saying, ‘No, don't do it.' I had a survey, I had a wheel showing 87 percent of the people on the reservation want this. They supported us. They were happy to do it.

The other thing that I do is allow education in my staff. I allow them... we have the college right next door, we have this beautiful bridge actually that just walks across the street to the college. There's a four million dollar bridge and it's absolutely beautiful and you walk right across and go to school anytime you want. So I encourage people, ‘Get your degrees. Continue your education.' I give them time off to do that. I say, ‘Go to school. I'm extending that hand, go get it done.' I've told my staff, ‘I've got five years left, guys. There's a couple of you in here, you can finish your degrees, you can mentor, you can do a lot of things. Get ready. Get ready.' The other thing I do is surround myself with people smarter than I am. I have a problem with writing, so I surround myself with people that know...have very good writing skills. I lack culture. I'm one of those people that grew up in a very domestic violence and alcohol home and culture wasn't passed down to us, so I surround myself with those cultural people that I need.

The questions they wanted me to answer are: What roles do tribal citizens play in rebuilding the nation? I believe that we're all there together and all we need to do is a hand up to each other to build our nations. We role model. We need to role model. I'm there at every morning at 7:00. I don't go out the door until 5:30. I don't think there's anybody in the office that can outwork me. I model every day what I expect out of my workers and I don't see anything less. I had one of my division managers come in and complain and complain and complain about a worker and I said, ‘She's just doing what you're doing.' What you model is what you're going to get out of your employees. I also try to express membership responsibility. We talk to a lot of TANF, a lot of welfare, a lot of people just beginning and I try to teach and model what you do affects us all.

Based on your experience what are some of the challenges? Some of the challenges I see are the crab effect, the pulling down of each other. I have survived two coups myself within the tribe, people wanting to take over, people wanting you out of the office, people going after you. I think with credibility and resilience and persistence and people see what kind of work you do and the grants and the funding that you can bring in, you survive.

What are the benefits to engaged citizens? If you're teaching through your programs the responsibilities, they're going to see the goals and the visions of the tribe. Also you're showing, you're demonstrating the norms for leaders. And also when I go to council, if I've done my work, if I've done due diligence, I don't have to worry about a group of people showing up and demonstrating or not wanting us to get through or wanting us to take through something touchy like Child Support Enforcement. I don't have to worry about that. I think that's all I have. Thank you."

Herminia Frias:

"Thank you. [applause] One of the things that I also remember when I went out to visit Arlene's nation was the number of people that they had employed in their top positions -- in directors, program managers -- were their own citizens and that was really impressive. Their own citizens that had the credentials, the experience to do the job, and I thought, ‘Wow, that is really good to see that they're fostering it within their nation and it's not let's bring outsiders in and have them do it because they can do it better.' It was good to see. Yeah, it's their own people that are there and we had all these people presenting and they're all..."

Arlene Templer:

"We call them homegrown."

Herminia Frias:

"Homegrown?"

Arlene Templer:

"Yeah. We just start them out in WIA or Fatherhood or whatever and develop their skills, their credentials and then we hire them."

Native Leaders and Scholars: Citizens Versus Members: Some Food for Thought

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Native Leaders and scholars discuss the pervasive role that terminology plays in conceptions of Native nation sovereignty and citizenship, comparing and contrasting the terms "member" and "citizen" and discussing the origins of the term "member" in Native nations' definitions of who is to be considered part of them.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Goldberg, Carole. "Designing Tribal Citizenship." Tribal Constitutions seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 3, 2013. Presentation.

Tatum, Melissa L. "Constitutions and Constitutional Reform - Day 2 (Q&A)." Tribal Constitutions seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 4, 2013. Q&A session.

Timeche, Joan. "The Process of Constitutional Reform: Key Issues and Cases to Consider." Tribal Constitutions seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. May 2, 2012. Presentation.

Carole Goldberg:

“You’ve often seen the word 'membership' used in lieu of 'citizenship.' The term 'membership' harkens back to something that Chairman Rocky Barrett of Citizen Potawatomi said in one of the earlier presentations you saw here today. There was in the development of tribal constitutions through the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 a view of tribes as, in some respects, corporate entities that would have boards and members. There was also a view of tribes as something akin to private associations or even clubs that would have members. The terminology of 'citizenship' evokes sovereignty and nationhood. I think it’s become more common for Native nations to use the terminology of 'citizenship,' but any constitution has to have, as you heard earlier, the legitimacy and acceptance of the people whose government it is and the terminology will have to fit comfortably for whatever community that is.”

Melissa L. Tatum:

“Tribes need to consciously claim the language of sovereignty when they’re reforming their government, and that means using separation of powers if it’s appropriate, if it’s a cultural fit, adopting some other means of allocating responsibility and government functions depending on the tribe. But it also means being conscious of how certain words and phrases are viewed by other governments. For example, the three that I often use as examples are in the United States, tribes talk about 'membership' and who’s a 'member' of a tribe. But private clubs have memberships, country clubs have memberships, governments have 'citizens.' So we should be talking about citizenship and who are citizens of the government. One of the things that’s used a lot -- I work a lot with tribal courts -- there’s a movement to develop tribal common law, or it’s sometimes called ‘custom and tradition’ and then when lawyers, Anglo-American lawyers, hear this phrase ‘custom and tradition,’ they’re like, ‘Oh, how quaint. Custom and tradition.’ But yet if you look at the definition of Anglo-American 'common law,' it’s the norms of society. That’s what custom and tradition is. So simply instead of talking about custom and tradition, talking about common law triggers a different response in outsiders, even though it’s the same thing internally. But the other example I use, since I work a lot in the tribal courts and the criminal justice system, is in the United States there’s been some discussion in recent years about ‘banishment’ and about tribes using banishment. But every government on this planet has a method of removing people who misbehave from their society. It’s just usually called ‘deportation.’ And so we need to be conscious of the words we use and the labels we put on things, because words do have power and do have meaning and we need to be conscious not only of internal fit, but how those words are received by the outside world, too…One thing that I’m very concerned [about] from my perspective as an Indian law scholar is when the word ‘member,’ and ‘tribal member,’ started being used frequently in the U.S. Supreme Court opinions, that’s when the court started drastically reducing tribal authority over its own territory, and it’s the only time the Supreme Court has really started consistently reducing the authority of a government over its territory, is by introducing this word ‘member’ frequently into the dialogue, and so that’s one of my concerns, too.”

Joan Timeche:

“I was fortunate in that I was able to be raised in Hopi values that we’re to be self-sustaining, contributing members, citizens of our society and that we as individuals, we have responsibilities. Yes, we have rights, but with those rights come responsibilities. And I think that sometimes we take those things for granted, they’re not written, they’re taught to us by our parents, our elders, our grandparents and our societies that we may be part of. Those are all engrained in us and we don’t necessarily see it on paper, and we forget that it’s there because we’re bombarded by everything coming at us from all sides, and just the world as it’s changing, quickly changing every day. So I think that if you think about some of the message that Regis [Pecos] was sharing with us yesterday, it’s going back and taking that time to find out and remember and reinforce or reiterate, ‘Who are we? What do we believe in? What are our core values and who bears that responsibility to do that?’ Because nobody is going to do this for us except us. It’s going to be me, it’s going to be people individually in my family. Each one of us bears that responsibility, and so we may write them in our constitution -- that was one of the proposed revisions in the Hopi constitution, this latest version, is to include an extensive list of a Bill of Rights. But there was no mention whatsoever about what our responsibilities were as individual citizens. So I think that’s something -- I would really like to see that being added to my constitution.”

Gwen Phillips: Defining and Cultivating Strong, Healthy Ktunaxa Citizens

Author
Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Gwen Phillips, Director of Corporate Services and Governance Transition with the Ktunaxa Nation, discusses how Ktunaxa people gained a sense of Ktunaxa identity and belonging traditionally, and the different criteria that Ktunaxa is considering including among its citizenship criteria today.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Phillips, Gwen. "Reforming the Ktunaxa Nation Constitution: What We're Doing and Why." Tribal Constitutions seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. May 1, 2012. Presentation.

“But as a nation in our treaty making, in our self-government expressions, and even prior to assertion of those things in a formal way, we’ve already said, ‘We don’t care about status and we don’t care about residency, that we as a nation will determine who are citizens.’ And so we’ve created a number of categories, one of which is a descendancy through blood. But another one is adoption and there’s another one that basically -- well, it’s kind of a quasi adoption. An adoption would be sort of the formal place. But there’s another one that’s a recognition clause, and it’s kind of in contention right now, because some of the elders, the real elders -- and I’ll talk about the people that were there 100 years ago -- they’ll tell us that, ‘Come, sit, let me talk to you.’ After a while -- and you were sharing these stories with us at the break -- pretty soon that person’s a Ktunaxa. They think Ktunaxa, they act Ktunaxa, they speak Ktunaxa, therefore they are Ktunaxa. That’s the old elders, and then you get the ones that were sort of in the residential school place and subject to a lot of racism and subject to a lot of racial-program criteria and all of the above, and they get kind of, ‘Uh, no, you’re white or you’re this or you’re that or the other.’ We’re coming back to that point of recognizing -- because of the loss of our language -- that it might be important for us to say, ‘Hey, you speak Ktunaxa, you want to speak Ktunaxa, you want to be a citizen?’ That we might actually tie something to the language ability, because we need people to speak, and if people see a privilege of being associated with us and are willing to actually be a keeper of that language, some of us are going, ‘I don’t care what color you are. If you will be an active keeper of the language, we will turn you into a Ktunaxa person.’ So there’s differences in opinion about what a Ktunaxa is, and as we describe strong, healthy Ktunaxa citizens, it doesn’t say anything about blood. It’s all about the way you behave, the things you do, the associations that you portray, etc.”

Jill Doerfler: Defining Citizenship: Blood Quantum vs. Descendancy

Producer
William Mitchell College of Law
Year

Scholar Jill Doerfler (Anishinaabe) talks about the colonial origins of blood quantum as a criterion for determining "Indian" and tribal identity, and explains how the federal government imposed that criterion upon the White Earth people in order to divest them of their land. She also stresses the need for a return to citizenship criteria that protect, enact and strengthen Indigenous cultural core values, and details White Earth's recent effort to abandon blood quantum in favor of lineal descent as the primary criterion for determing citizenship.

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

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Doerfler, Jill. "Defining Citizenship: Blood Quantum vs. Descendancy." Tribal Citizenship Conference, Indian Law Program, William Mitchell College of Law, in conjunction with the Bush Foundation. St. Paul, Minnesota. November 13, 2013. Presentation.

"[Anishinaabe language]. Thank you so much to the Bush Foundation and also to Sarah and Collette for helping with the organizing today. I'm really honored to be part of the program. As Sarah mentioned, I did grow up at White Earth, that's where I'm from. I'll just make a note that I'm not a White Earth citizen. I'm what we call a first-degree descendant, which is that my mother is enrolled at White Earth and I am not enrolled due to the current blood quantum system. So that's part of my legal political identity, my personal identity as Anishinaabe transcends political boundaries I think in many ways.

We've heard some wonderful presentations so far today and today what I'm going to do is talk a little bit more about blood quantum, a little bit about the history of blood quantum and what's been kind of happening at White Earth the past few years. My research is on citizenship and identity and I've been working on it for a number of years. Ultimately what we know and I think what we'll come to talk about in our discussions is that there's no perfect system. All of these systems have pros and cons and we have to think about what can we work with that works best for each individual tribal nation and that is your decision to make so we're just here to share some information.

I always like to start out with, what is blood quantum because even though it's something that we're all familiar with and probably everybody here could sort of go around the room and tell us your blood quantum, what it is officially and then maybe what you think it is correctly, what the Bureau's [of Indian Affairs] gotten wrong. Ultimately, blood quantum is this western concept. Initially it was a literal concept at the turn of the 20th century where scientists thought that they could literally measure blood. Today we're sort of slipping into maybe a little bit more metaphoric understanding of blood quantum. We understand that blood can't literally be measured in that ancestral sense, but that it's a metaphor for affiliations that our ancestors had historically that then parcel themselves out through time and genealogy. So it's literal, it's metaphoric, it's a measure of race, maybe politics, maybe nation, maybe Anishinaabe blood, maybe White Earth blood, maybe...so there's that slippery concept as well between Indian blood, Anishinaabe blood, or White Earth blood. How is all of that measured out? How does culture fit in there historically? It was thought that that was part of the measurement that those kind of cultural affiliations and loyalties were literally in the blood. Today we don't believe that so much, but it's part of the history of blood quantum.

So originally, it's a scientific calculation of degree of percentage of an individual's either racial and/or national ancestry. It assumes that cultural beliefs, language, intelligence, political loyalties, all types of certain behaviors, all of that was thought to be transmitted biologically and to be held in blood quantum, and so blood quantum assumes that those things are transmitted literally or metaphorically in the blood. And as we've talked a little bit about, it's an attempt to racialize American Indian identity. It's an attempt to kind of undermine political status and turn the tables and say, ‘Oh, you're really a racial group. This is really about race versus about political identity.' So how is and how was blood quantum calculated, how have we seen this change over time to some extent? I'm going to share here a little bit of the history of White Earth and I would encourage each tribe to think about their own history of blood quantum, how they got their initial blood rolls and to look at how that happened.

This is a photograph of Ransom Powell, who was an attorney and hired as a special investigator by the United States government to look at blood quantum at White Earth and figure out the genealogy and the blood quantum of 200 families, about 5,000 people at White Earth at the turn of the century in the 1910s. And so here he is posing with three ladies at White Earth. And he came to do this investigation, to figure out White Earth blood quantums because at that time it was tied to land and so that's what it was about: figuring out who was a 'mixed blood' and who was a 'full blood.' The legal definition at the time was a mixed blood meant any drop...one drop of white blood meant mixed blood and so that's the definition that Powell was working with and he's sent to do this investigation and figure out who's a mixed blood and who's not. And so what he does is he starts by asking a variety of questions to people at White Earth, asking them about their blood quantum or the blood quantum of people that they know. Was Person X a full blood? Was so-and-so a mixed blood? And the answers that people gave at White Earth I always say are better than any answers I could ever even make up. So the historical record on this is very rich. So Powell asked these questions, he and his little team of investigators, and what people would do at White Earth is basically avoid his questions or refute them time and time again. So I'm just going to share a few quotes from the investigation.

One person said -- in response to these questions about blood quantum -- she said, ‘There was never no question about blood in them days, no sir.' Not just within recent years talking about blood, so here the lady who is on the stand is saying, ‘This is something totally new, we haven't really talked about that before. It's only come up within recent years, only within allotment years when blood quantum is coming to matter for land sale.'

Here's a nice quote where we see the investigator being quite accusatory saying, ‘Many of those...isn't it true that many of those who are known to have White fathers were living as Indians and considered in the tribe as Indians just as though they had no White father?' So you see here the investigator trying to get somebody to admit that there are people at White Earth who have White fathers and they're just like other Indians at White Earth and one person says, ‘Yes, sir.' And we see this time and again in the record. In fact, there are many people in 1910s at White Earth who had white fathers who were living in the tribe as Indians and they weren't excluded for that fact.

Another person asserted that there was no mixed bloods, that there's no such thing. That wasn't a concept or category. Part of this is also translation that's going on here between people who may be speaking Anishinaabemowin and English speakers and translating. It may also be refuting the category, that that's a U.S. government kind of category and we're not willing to use that category here. There's no such thing. That's something the U.S. made up. So there are different possibilities for interpretation on those.

Other people talked about how Anishinaabe people created their identity, they made themselves who they were through their actions and so a woman was being asked about her husband in this case and she says, ‘He was a full blood. He made himself a full blood.' And the investigator goes on to ask, ‘Oh, you mean by living like an Indian.' And she says, ‘Yes,' and they go on and she explains that through his actions he creates his identity. It's not something that he's born with, that he's locked into, that he has no control over. He has the control to create who he is by what he does.

Then those questions aren't going that well for Powell, right? This is like not helping him create his blood roll so he's like, ‘Let's move on. Let's also think about phenotype. Let's start asking some questions about skin color, complexion, hair, that type of thing.' And he gets an equally array of colorful answers. Here's an example. The person was asked, ‘Is so-and-so light skinned?' The person from White Earth says, ‘Yes, she was light. Some Indians are light, but she was an Indian.' And so here again, not using a category of mixed blood or full blood, just using the term 'Indian' and just saying that skin color doesn't necessarily determine identity.

This one is similar, but the person does choose to use the term 'full-blooded.' So in this case the man says, ‘Yes, he was light but he was a full-blood Indian.' And then there are an array of answers where people say, ‘I never took particular notice,' ‘I can't remember,' ‘I can't recall,' ‘I can't say what they were,' ‘Who knows,' ‘They were a medium shade,' and so there's all kinds of evasive answers going on and Powell is not getting anywhere really with these questions either. And so ultimately what has to happen is we need some anthropologists, right? We need somebody to come in with some scientific knowledge and help.

So Powell brings in Dr. Ales Hrdlicka and Dr. Jenks and they come and they do physical examinations. They measure heads, they scratch skin, they do hair analysis. Hair analysis samples were sent down to the University of Minnesota to the College of Ag [Agriculture] and Animal Sciences to be analyzed and they start working on their blood roll using that because they're not going to get the answers they want from the Anishinaabe people at White Earth. So ultimately we get our base roll via that process and then once you have your base roll you are free to calculate your blood quantum...here's a handy chart created by the Bureau if anyone wants to utilize this, it's available to them. So you have your base blood quantum and then you take both of your parents and you calculate on down the line and that's how we've gotten our blood quantums. I know other tribes have similar stories. You got a base roll somehow and then you calculate from there.

So, what meaning does blood quantum have? That's a big question for tribes to think about. Is this a good system? What does it tell us? How can it...is it useful in citizenship? What meaning does it have? We can think about people with an array of different blood quantums, maybe they have Oneida blood, maybe they have English blood, Ojibwe blood. What does it tell us about that person or Person B who has a little more variety of ancestry here? What does it really tell us about Person B? Do we know where they live? Do we know what their belief system is? Do we know what language they speak? Do we know how they were raised? No, it gives us this ancestral kind of picture, which may be useful to some tribes, but it doesn't really give us a whole lot of information.

What does blood quantum do? How has it functioned? Practically, it's functioned in a variety of ways. It's ultimately designed to erase and eliminate American Indians. The feds used blood quantum to try to reduce the numbers of people that legally are native. A couple of quick quotes. Scholars have done lots of work on how blood quantum has functioned and what it's done. Eva Garut has said that the ‘ultimate and explicit federal intention was to use blood quantum standard as a means to liquidate tribal lands.' Definitely the case at White Earth. ‘And eliminate government trust responsibility to tribes.' Dr. David Wilkins and Dr. Heidi Stark have said that ‘blood quantum is a new form of federal termination of Indians who are eligible for federal aid and services.' We also heard some comments about that earlier today.

So, nations are faced with those questions about blood quantum. What is it, what does it do, how does it work? And in looking at citizenship requirements, we've been, as was mentioned, we've been going through a process at constitutional reform at White Earth. The current effort started in 2007 although there were other efforts in the late ‘90s and also previously in the ‘70s and ‘80s as well at constitutional reform. But the effort I was involved in got started in 2007 and when we talked about citizenship, we talked about the history, we talked about how the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe came and White Earth came to use blood quantum in the ‘60s, what happened before that, look at that history, think about our values. And we asked many, many questions and here's just a few things that we talked about in our discussions. And citizenship was something that we probably spent the most time on during our constitutional convention process. Delegates found this was an emotional issue, it's an issue that impacts everyone and it really sets the foundation for the nation: who are we, who do we want to be, that type of thing.

So we asked questions like, ‘What kind of citizenship requirement will put our beliefs, values and culture into motion?' ‘How can we enact those values?' The things that John was talking about today, those big picture things, love...we talked about love as one of our primary values. How can we put that into action? How might our values of love and family be expressed in citizenship regulations? Which citizenship requirement will strengthen our nation? At that time we had a variety of options in front of delegates to take a look at, but these are the types of questions that some of you are thinking about changing citizenship requirements, replace your values in there and think about what can we do, how can we best express these things. Ultimately, the constitutional delegates at White Earth felt that lineal descent was the best option, that it allowed people choice where people create their identity, they have the choice to apply for citizenship provided they can bring the documentation necessary, but it puts that back on families, it puts a focus back on relationships in families. Is it by any means perfect? No, but that was the route that was decided to go with.

Sometimes we get this question when it comes to lineal descent. Won't there be too many of us if we kind of go with lineal descent? And here's a round dance event with lots of Indians. ‘Isn't this too many Indians here?' That's something for tribes to think about. How do we think about citizens? Are they assets to the nation? In what ways can a larger population be a positive thing?

What about resources? This is the other thing that comes with lineal descent. What are we going to do? We can't...we don't have enough for everyone as it is now, we're not going to have enough for more people. Citizenship and resources, entitlements, programs have to be to some extent divorced and they are already in tribes now. All these programs and services generally have requirements, an income requirement, a residency requirement, why not do a nice reciprocal requirement where if you're going to get a scholarship you have to volunteer a number of hours at the tribal pre-school in the summer? Why not require learning the language? Why not require taking courses on history? So I would encourage tribes to think about how qualifications for programs can be a little bit different than citizenship and how those can be parceled out, because not everyone is entitled to something and the chairman shared earlier the entitlement issues and that came up at White Earth as well. ‘Well, how are we going to have enough houses for everyone?' Well, the tribe isn't responsible for providing everyone a house. As Anishinaabe people, we have the responsibility to take care of ourselves and we have the responsibility to care for our families and so you end up bringing back some of those traditional values as well about our own responsibilities that we have. How can we keep our culture alive is something that we also talked about. We have to do that, speaking of responsibilities and actions and making our identity. It's not passed down in blood, it's not literal in that sense. That's our responsibility with our families and our communities to do that sharing and that teaching.

A few bits of information: how to move forward with your decision. Ultimately, I think what helped us was an inclusive and open process. All of our meetings were open; people could say and share anything they wanted. We looked at the history of citizenship in quite a bit of detail and then we looked carefully at how we could practice values within governance. And then ultimately patience and perseverance, right? This isn't an easy decision; you're not going to figure it out in one day. We worked on the initial constitution for two years, even though we had drafts from efforts previous to that and then of course now the decision is in the hands of White Earth citizens who are voting as we speak. It's a by-mail voting process that's going on right now and we'll be counting our votes next Tuesday to find out if we will move forward with a new constitution or if we will continue under our current structure. [Anishinaabe language]."

Migizi Business Camp

Year

This video -- produced by the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians -- depicts the Band's efforts to implement a work readiness and job training program for teenagers and young adults. Five years ago, the Band’s planning and education departments joined forces to create the Migizi Business Camp for tribal youth. For six days, students are taken off the reservation to learn business development concepts and build entrepreneurial skills. They complete business plans and present their ideas to a panel of judges. The Camp represents a conscious effort by the tribal government to involve its younger citizens in the effort to build an economic future for the nation.

Citation

Little River Band of Ottawa Indians. "Migizi Business Camp." Lessons in Nation Building, Honoring Nations, Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. Little River Band of Ottawa Indians. Manistee, Michigan. 2005. Film.

This Honoring Nations "Lessons in Nation Building" video is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development.

[Music]

The Little River Band of Ottawa Indians presents

The Migizi Business Camp 2005

Interviewer:

“Just say, put Dr. Stickney.”

Florence Stickney:

“Will you stop it, just Florence Stickney. I mean, come on, I was Florence Stickney before I could give anybody an aspirin.”

Florence Stickney:

“These are high-energy kids. They’re very bright, very high energy. This year it was unbelievable, it was phenomenal. I think that there was the beauty of the setting itself, the fact that they had archery, they had an opportunity to see a rodeo, there was horseback riding, there were so many activities along with the water slide and the swimming.”

Amber Shepherd:

“My name is Amber Shepherd and I’m from Ludington, Michigan. This year we are staying at Double J Resort in Rothbury, Michigan.”

Student:

“Horseback riding was a lot of fun. I thought I was going to get bucked off, but I stayed on pretty good.”

Daisy Walters:

“My name is Daisy Walters and I’m from Sparta, Michigan. I’ve had a lot of fun on the first couple days of camp and I’m glad I decided to come here.”

Mark Sagi:

“My name is Mark Sagi. The resort is beautiful. They’ve got pools and horseback riding. The rodeo was fun yesterday.”

Florence Stickney:

“Because we were dealing with such young children where they need activities all the time,you know, some sort of a diversion. And I think the kids really had a wonderful time and they,they really paid better attention in that environment.”

Amber Shepherd:

“If you’re a newcomer to the business camp, have your mind open to new ideas that you haven’t been introduced to yet.”

Ann Harrison:

“I am Ann Harrison and I’m from Sturgeonville, Wisconsin. A good business person, like they have to have a good attitude because if they have a bad attitude then their business won’t make it. They can’t say like, ‘I’m going to fail, nobody’s going to buy my product,’ because with that attitude, then nobody will. The most difficult subject was the like math, the COGS [cost of goods sold], the profit you make, because it’s very confusing.”

Student:

“The cost of goods sold is what all the supplies, the price of all the supplies added together and that took to make that item and you subtract that and you come to your profit.”

Raquel Cole:

“Raquel Cole, Scottville, Michigan. You go to class usually from early in the morning around 8:30-ish until probably 8:00 at night, 9:30. It’s kind of hard and you kind of start to get irritated, but then it’s like you get to hang out with people and meet new people.”

Zachary Split:

“I’m from Massey, Michigan and my name is Zachary Split. Right off the bat you need to crack down, you need to write some notes because if you don’t, then you’ll be left behind and when you’re left behind with notes from yesterday and trying to catch up today, it’s really hard. You can stay up like until 1:00 in the morning if you don’t have a business plan, rewriting your rough draft and your final draft like I did last year.”

George Lawrence:

“I’m George Lawrence and I’m from Free Soil. I get up about 6:00 in the morning and go to bed at about 1:00 or 12:00.”

Interviewer:

“What do you think of your first couple days of camp?”

Ann Harrison:

“It was hard at first, but as it went on, it got more fun and not as hard.”

Gabe Santos:

“My name is Gabe Santos and I’m from Muskegon, Michigan.”

Interviewer:

“If you had advice for other campers in the next,in the future, what would it be?”

Gabe Santos:

“Don’t slack off because you always have to catch up really, really quick at the end if you slack off. Just do your work when you’re told and listen to Bridget.”

Interviewer:

“That one we should play over and over.”

Gabe Santos:

“Listen to Bridget. Listen to Bridget. Listen to Bridget.”

Raquel Cole:

“And you have different abbreviations for a bunch of things.”

Gabe Santos:

“Yeah, USAIR,utilities, salaries, advertisement, interest and rent. Rent’s the most important. Rent’s the most important one, because it’s a constant thing and it goes up and down all the time.”

Florence Stickney:

“And the quality of the kids because we have a number of repeat performers, they get better and better. They know the material, we see them growing up before our eyes, they’re more focused, they sort of know what they want and I can see them building bigger dreams for themselves.”

Mark Sagi:

“My financial statements are doing good so far, but the business plan, like Zach said, he stayed up until 3:00 in the morning doing his and I don’t want to do that, so I’m going to get done.”

Elise Moore:

“My name’s Elise Moore and currently I’m living in Ravenna, Michigan. Yeah, today was Saturday. It was the only day and the first day we get to go shopping. We got $78 to spend on our supplies that we needed.”

Zachary Split:

“What we do is that we go to a store like three, four days before the trade show, buy whatever we need, goods, cards, anything, flowers, you can make beads, homemade stuff, food.”

Florence Stickney:

“When they go to college, they will know a lot more about business and entrepreneurship than most incoming freshmen do on any major campus.”

Raquel Cole:

“It helps you in school actually like in economics and stuff it does help you if you know what you’re doing more and it makes you sound smart too. The fixed cost, the variable cost and the different costs that you have while you’re in business, you talk about your target customer and who that you want to buy your stuff.”

Florence Stickney:

“When I first developed this program, I called it the Eagle Camp, eagle being that that symbol in Native American culture, it soars, it’s strong, it’s powerful, it’s free. When I talked with the economic developer at the time, he said, ‘Well, the word in Ottawa is 'Migizi'.’”