strategic visioning

Peterson Zah and Manley A. Begay, Jr.: Strategic Thinking and Planning: Navajo Nation Permanent Trust Fund (Q&A)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Manley Begay and Peterson Zah field questions from the audience concerning the Navajo Nation Permanent Trust Fund and how they and others worked to mobilize and sustain the citizen support necessary to keep the fund intact and allow it to grow.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Zah, Peterson and Manley A. Begay, Jr. "Strategic Thinking and Planning: Navajo Nation Permanent Trust Fund (Q&A)." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 26, 2008.

Audience member:

"We are currently facing a recession here in the United States of America. I guess number one, how safe is our investment from a possible crash in the market? And number two is how will the recession affect the trust fund? Did you guys do any research on that?"

Peterson Zah:

"One of the things that the Navajo Nation has to weigh right now is, because of the economic condition nationwide, I believe they have to pass a legislation that would allow the money managers -- if it should completely go down, before that happens, when it's beginning to go down -- they should probably withdraw that money and reinvest some of those monies into other accounts where it can maintain the status quo or even make more money. They haven't really decided that yet.

There's been a lot of discussion with the budget and finance committee, the money managers, and other finance people within the administration to try to come up with something so that they don't have to take a big hit on what is happening at the national level. So it's something that I think the work group has to come back together and really take a hard look at that to insure that the money is safe and that it will not completely hit the bottom.

When you have monies like this in trust, it's like a roller coaster. It's a roller coaster. And I guess the smart ones withdraw some of those monies when it's at its height. And I think Navajo Nation has to learn how to play that game. And definitely the budget and finance committee is addressing those issues right now."

Audience member:

"With your experience in this process, what would you suggest to a smaller tribe that is interested in this but doesn't have that initial large amount of income, like in the court case, to get a fund like this started?"

Manley Begay:

"So the question is, for a smaller tribe that might have less of a windfall, what we would suggest to that particular tribe? My suggestion is -- in the same vein as what we've been taught by President Zah -- is to save. There really has to be some mechanism by which to save that amount of money, because we don't really know what the future holds. But one of the primary responsibilities of leaders is really to think strategically, to think way ahead of everybody else.

In the Navajo way we say, naat'aanii. The naat'aanii, those are leaders. That particular person is responsible to plan strategically for the long haul, to plan for those that are yet unborn. In the Iroquois Confederacy philosophy they're talking about seven generations. So sometimes, we sort of just think about the here and now -- the here and now is really, goes fast. I mean, look at Curt Massey and myself. We're already at that age where we can't play basketball like we used to even though we might think we can. So time flies very, very quickly. And so for leaders, the primary responsibility is to figure out what's our vision? What are our priorities and concerns? And then make a commitment to the long run.

And also to leave a legacy; my brother here has left a legacy for the Navajo Nation. He'll always be remembered as that leader that thought way ahead. And to this day, we are reaping the rewards of that. And the generations to come will also reap the rewards as well. So the primary responsibility is to answer the question, 'What legacy are you going to leave for your people? How are you going to be remembered a hundred years from now? What will people say about you? How will they remember you?' I think that that is a crucial, critical question for all leaders."

Audience member:

"I wanted to know how did you educate your community members and how did you educate your council members? I know you say you have 88 members, that's a large legislative branch. And how did you get the majority to set up this accounting? How is it educated within the communities, districts or what not?"

Manley Begay:

"So the question is how did you educate the people? At Navajo we're, as I was saying earlier, Pete Zah's like E.F. Hutton. However, people out there in Navajo country, they want to know what's going on. They're also thinking about the future as well and they're interested in the future of the Navajo Nation. And so it was really actually very easy to gather a group of people and begin a discussion. And there are some amazing, intelligent individuals out there. At the same time, also with a lot of humor. So they don't take things too seriously, but at the same time they're thinking very hard about the future of the Nation and less about themselves. This person that made the statement about the corn, this is a guy that was wearing a T-shirt and Levi's jeans and worn out shoes. And he said, "˜Don't worry about me.' He says, "˜I can take care of myself. I get by.' So he wasn't thinking about himself, he wasn't being selfish. He was thinking about everybody else -- his relatives, his grandkids, his children and all of his relatives. I think that that was, there was this spirit about these public hearings that was unbelievable."

Peterson Zah:

"Let me add a bit to that. If you look at the Navajo Nation and its demographics, we have something like 82,000 children that are of school age. We have something like 144 schools on the Navajo Nation; 50 high schools on the Navajo Nation. And in terms of educating those kids, I take the time each year to do what we call a Navajo tour. We just completed one two weeks ago, where I go across the reservation with ten or a dozen Navajo college students from ASU [Arizona State University] -- students that are getting their law degree, engineering, nurses and some of those students. This year we took a trip with ten of them during the spring break. This is when all the other college kids are on their spring break. We choose those students and we go across the Navajo Nation with them. And our job there, while we're doing that, is to recruit other Navajo students to come to ASU. While we are doing that, I make sure that I end up in two or three of these classes at these high schools where there are seniors and juniors. And we talk to them about tribal government and the establishment of the Permanent Fund -- how it is their money and that they should have a role in the say so as to how these monies are spent. So we do that. We still have on schedule, within the next two or three weeks, another ten high schools that we will be going to. So we take that trip each year. So that's one way.

The other way is that with the chapter leaders they usually have an agency council. We have some chapter officers right here. Agency council meetings, they usually have those six times a year where all the leaders from those different agencies come together. We go over on occasion to make those presentations just to keep the local leaders informed as to what's happening so that they have some idea as to the current events surrounding the Navajo Nation trust fund. And so we do that.

And then what I usually do personally is I get on the radio. They have KTNN radio station, Navajo Nation-wide. You can blab away in Navajo about some of these activities regarding their trust fund, just to keep the Navajo people, the general public informed as to what has happened. I love doing that. Now, let me give you the last one, which is hard.

I do that because I really believe in it. I don't get paid for what I do. It's just work that needs to be done. So because of that, people know it. People know it. I don't have any conflict. If you don't work for any of the institutions on the Navajo, you can say whatever you want to say -- whether a council delegate is there or not, or President [Joe] Shirley is there or not, I don't really care -- but it needs to be said, it needs to be done and because I don't work for anybody. You're free -- really, really free -- to express those views. To me, that gives you more integrity. That's where the power is. But once you start demanding some kind of income, compensation for what you do, then you've shot all of what you're trying to do to pieces. And that's why I do what I do.

Let me give you another good example. In gaming, in the state of Arizona we have a gaming compact all these Indian tribes signs with the state of Arizona. And they have on the Navajo Nation X amount of machines dedicated to the Navajo Nation, but Navajo Nation is not in gaming yet. But the law says that if the Navajo Nation wants, it can use its designated number of the machines and lease it out or rent it out or sell it to the other Indian tribes. And so all these tribes, this tribe, Gila River, Fort McDowell, and six or seven other tribes want Navajo's machines. But Navajo politicians weren't ready to make any movements. They were afraid because once they touch this whole idea of pooling those machines to give it to the other tribes for rental -- even though it's for money -- they were afraid to face the people about what they did because they know the Navajo people would say, "˜We were ready to open a casino and you sold all of our machines to somebody else.' Well, what I do in those cases is I put all the tribes together -- the leader that you heard today, four or five of those tribal people -- and say, "˜Okay, what do you guys really, really want? The Navajo has those excess machines.' And then I go back to Navajo and I tell the president, the speaker of the Navajo Nation, and council and I said, "˜This is what these tribes want.' So you put them all together and they negotiate and they come to some kind of an agreement. You don't get paid for what you do. You don't get paid for what you do, but it's something that needs to be done that other people, the politicians who are paid to do that, they don't want to do because it's a hot potato. So when you begin to do something like that, it gives you a lot of credibility, a lot of credibility. And I think more and more of our tribal leaders need to do that. You don't wait to see if anybody's going to compensate you for what you do, but there's just a lot of work that needs to be done.

I always tell the president at ASU, I says, "˜President, I know that ASU sometimes goes through a budget crunch. And I just want to let you know that if you feel like that I'm occupying a space here, you can just kindly tell me what you think. Because I'm going to end up doing what needs to be done anyway, which is to recruit more Navajo students. I always work for ASU. I don't have to do it from that office. I can do it from Phoenix or from Window Rock. I'll just keep on doing the same thing because that is the way it is meant to be. So I don't need to work here and I don't really need to work for anybody.' And I think when people begin to do more of that, we all end up winning -- this tribe, all the other tribes, the Navajo people, and the Navajo students. Your question was how do we educate people? Well, you educate them that way and people will listen. He was, Manley was saying that people listen. Well, people listen because they know that there's no conflict. They know that what you say really has a lot of credence and they know that what you're saying is the truth because nobody is paying you to say those things."

Mediator:

"Anymore questions? Well, in that case..."

Manley Begay:

"Just one second. Let me just conclude by saying that strategic vision is really so critical. It might sound like sort of pipe dreams, but it really has a concrete purpose and that purpose is really, it gives you a basis on which to make decisions. It gives you a basis on which to consider choices. If you don't have a set of priorities and concerns laid out...remember the story I told earlier about the Cherokee Nation and that their number-one priority is language retention, their number one concern is language retention. So you know what? They put all their money into that. So when somebody comes to your office and says, "˜Let's spend the money over here.' You can say to them, "˜No, we can't do that because you told us that this was our number-one priority, number-two priority, number-three priority. This is our number-one concern, number-two concern, number-three concern and that's where our money is going.' It takes the burden off of you. You have a way to go, you have a function, you have a road that's laid out. So strategic visioning, setting priorities of concern has a real concrete purpose. And that's what this session is about here. So with that, thank you. [Thank you, my older brother]. I'm really happy that I spent time with him. We call each other almost every other week, joking, laughing, but underneath that is some real main serious reasons to think about the future of Indian people. And I'm just so happy that we have leaders like Mr. Zah. I'm so happy that he came into this world. And as a result the world is a better place, for me and for everybody else. So with that I just wanted to also thank him. [Again, thank you, my older brother]." 

Regis Pecos: The Why of Making and Remaking Governing Systems

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Former Cochiti Pueblo Governor Regis Pecos shares his thoughts about the ultimate purpose of constitutions, governments and governance from a Pueblo perspective, and argues that constitutional reform presents Native nations with a precious opportunity to reclaim and reinvigorate their cultures and core values.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Pecos, Regis. "The Why of Making and Remaking Governing Systems." Tribal Constitutions seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. May 1, 2012. Presentation.

Regis Pecos:

"Good morning. In my language of the Cochiti people, [Cochiti language]. I am of the Sun Clan, my given name is [Cochiti language], which is translated as 'antelope.' [Cochiti language]. How are you, my Elders? [Cochiti language] -- our leaders? [Cochiti language]. How are you, my brothers? [Cochiti language]. How are you, my sisters? [Cochiti language]. How are you, my relatives? [Cochiti language]. I give thanks to the Creator, as our brother from their homeland here welcome us -- to give thanks for our Creator and those who've gone before us who have answered our prayers, prayers of many that we might have this opportunity for dialogue. [Cochiti language], to have this discussion with regard to how we carry forward. [Cochiti language], how we carry forward what the Creator gave to our people. We all have stories of our migration. We all have stories of our origin, of our emergence, of creation, how we continue to sustain the gifts of the Creator, so that -- as we have been blessed and fortunate to inherit from all those who have gone before through their sacrifices -- that they maintain the vitality and the vibrancy of the gifts of our Creator. The question today becomes a very profound question and that is, what will future generations of our people from all of our respective areas inherit from us? It's a question that we must ask [Cochiti language] for the sake of the people and for the sake of the children. I begin this way to help put into context, and to put into some proper perspective, the incredible responsibility that we collectively have as we engage in the deliberations on this discussion about governments and governance.

I want to share with you a Pueblo perspective, but I want all of you to keep in mind that your people, your communities and your nations -- that you represent here today -- have their own story to reflect upon their journey through many generations of our people since the time of emergence, origin or creation. And I want all of you to keep in mind these reflections. Why did we start this morning with a prayer? We start with a prayer because it is recognizing our Creator. One of the great gifts of our Creator is all that we were given for the maintenance of a healthy mind, body and spirit that we define as a way of life. It is incredibly resilient that after hundreds and hundreds of years of an onslaught to disconnect our people from our lands, from our mother tongue, from our way of life, from our governance, from the language and traditions and customs of indigenous law, defining our jurisprudence, the institutions of family, the spirit of community, the gifts of resources with which to sustain us -- all of these are the gifts of the Creator. Sometimes we do not reflect upon the past to make sense of where we are today. As we talk about how we move forward, where I want to begin is this recognition that who we've become today, where we are today have very deep roots in history. That in all of your relations, generations of your people -- from Indigenous country, from this end to the east coast, around the world -- generations of our people have been engaged in a struggle to sustain all that our Creator gave to us for the maintenance of a healthy mind, body and spirit. Governance, Indigenous laws, customs and traditions are at the heart and the soul of our people. What I want to share with you is a recognition of what our forefathers -- all those who have gone before -- have sacrificed in their time to sustain the gifts of the Creator. Governance -- the spirit with which we maintain the collective wellbeing of our people, the spirit with which we maintain the wellbeing of our people. Indigenous laws, customs and traditions are the gifts of the Creator with which we are to use, that when individuals are in conflict -- out of balance in their relationships -- that these tools were provided to bring us back together for the maintenance of balance and harmony among individuals, among families, among clans, among members of our community.

About ten years ago we [founded] the New Mexico Leadership Institute, which is a convener of Pueblo people -- of young people, college students, young professionals, established professionals, community leaders, spiritual leaders -- all that represent who we are as Pueblo people. And over the course of the last ten years, we have engaged in bringing people together, creating a safe environment where we can have the frank and honest discussions of those things that challenge us within our communities, realizing and appreciating that sometimes we cannot have that frank and honest discussion in our own communities. And at the first of last month was the culmination of ten years of work across all areas that reflected upon where we are with regard to sustaining our last remaining homelands upon which are the gifts of the Creator -- places of worship where we go to draw upon the spirituality and connection of our people and all those who've passed, all of the living things that are a part of this environment, the state of where we are in the maintenance of language. Language is what gives us meaning to understand our purpose in life and our role in all of humanity, where we are with regard to the gift of governance, the gift of the tools of our customs and traditions and laws, the health of our family, the place where we learn our core values; where we are with the maintenance of the spirit and vitality of our community as an institution; and where we are in the protection of all that sustains us as a people -- our resources, the precious spirit of water, the giver of all life. And this is what we reflected upon -- a Pueblo convocation that brought 400 Pueblo people of all ages that I just shared with you -- one, to reflect upon where we've been, where we are, and where it is that we're going, understanding that the challenges we face today are deeply rooted in history.

And I want us to think about this context and this perspective -- that over many, many years this has been our fight and this has been our struggle. I shared with you the gifts of the Creator. From those gifts of the Creator come our core values. If we went around this room and I asked each and every one of you to share what has been a core value that has guided your passion in your life and all that you are engaged in -- and we could fill a huge circle to add to just the few that are here. But the principles of these core values is what brings to life our relationship with the gifts of the Creator. Every one of us from where we come -- whether we're Pueblo, whether we're Oneida, whether we're Sioux, whether we're Diné, whether we're Cherokee, whether we're Choctaw -- at the time that the Creator gave us these gifts, the Creator also provided to us pathways to maintain our connections to these precious gifts from which come to life the core values that guide our relationships.

In Pueblo worldview and in our existence we have a traditional calendar -- from winter to spring to summer to fall. Daily we engage, as I did this morning, to give thanks to our Father Sun that, as he travels the course of today, that we might be blessed -- that our minds and hearts could be opened that we can absorb all that is shared in our contributions to sustain our connections to these gifts and to these core values as we examine the governance of our people at a critical time in our journey. So daily -- if we maintain our connection to our Creator -- daily as we wake up, we think. And as we pray, we verbalize and articulate in prayer, asking our Creator, all those who have gone before, to guide us in all our engagement for the sake of the people in the work that all of you are involved in -- that our actions may demonstrate our convictions in how we relate to one another in this process of defining expectations -- as we define the values and principles of relations that come through the process of governance of our people. So we get up, we have these thoughts, we put them into words. And at the end of the day, as we pray and retire, we reflect upon what we have done that day. So daily, weekly, monthly, annually is this cycle of engagement that connects us to the core values, to the gifts of the Creator -- that is a validation, a reaffirmation that these are the values that guide our lives and our people since the time of origin, of creation, of emergence. That is our connection to that time that we continue in our daily contributions to this purpose, or we wouldn't even be having this discussion. But here is what has happened over time.

Among Pueblo people, upon first contact -- as you all in your respective history reflect upon contact with the English, with the French, with the Spanish, as you reflect upon your own histories -- for us as Pueblo people, our first contact was with Spanish. And as the Spanish colonizers imposed their will, or attempted to -- threatening the gifts of the Creator, our core values, our way of life, our lands, our language, our families and communities -- what happens? What happens to a people when they are afraid, faced with the threat of something so precious that defines who they are and their connections to a way of life? It results in resistance. And classically, the Pueblo Revolt in 1680 demonstrated what people will do in the face of threats to a way of life, to their values, to the gifts of the Creator. And in each one of your own respective histories are the classic examples of Indian history of resistance because of those threats to the gifts of the Creator, to our core values, to a way of life. Ours moved from that period --through the impacts of Mexico and the debates about whether or not Indian people were human beings -- moving quickly to the impact of the time that I want to focus in on, are the years of our collective experience and struggles with all of the impositions of one of the most powerful countries, if not the most powerful country in the world.

And as you reflect upon your own histories, all of these impositions -- over generations of our people -- results in who we have become, the personalities that have been defined that we can understand. Because none of this has ever been part of our own inquiry -- with regard to the history and the impacts -- because nowhere in our educational system provides us that opportunity. Federal policies and laws that dealt deliberately with efforts to disconnect us from our lands, to kill our Native languages by prohibiting the speaking of Native languages [with] the policy creating boarding schools, resulted in a mission of this country that the way you kill a culture is to take the children from that culture and deny those children their culture. Does that make sense? A deliberate process to disconnect us in that process -- after they were unsuccessful in their practices of genocide and extermination -- that a more humane way was to try to assimilate us as a way to become visible in this society, in this country, disconnecting us from the gifts of the Creator, from those core values. So as we move through history of genocide and extermination, through assimilation, the forced segregation of children in an educational process -- the effort to kill a culture by removing its children and denying those children -- they removed their culture. And as we move through that process using education -- the effort of the policies articulated, delineated, implemented -- that tried to change the governance systems of our people. And now, 75 years later, many are struggling with the impositions of a form of government imposed that we have not properly engaged in a dialogue -- with regard to how do we deal in the aftermath. Seventy-five years later to examine and reflect: How have these impositions taken us further away from the core values, our connections to the gifts of the Creator, incompatible with fundamental core values of our people?

And as we move from that period, obviously the impact of many men and women who were engaged in military experiences -- and how that experience changed many people becoming quiet agents when they returned -- ways in which, following that period, the policies of termination, the policies of relocation added a whole other layer of impact to many generations of our people. Conscious or unconscious decisions, in this time of relocation, that many made to follow the American dream for their children -- and how for many following that American dream really became an American nightmare -- and the further victimization that we in our communities inflicted on those who tried to come home. Another layer of victimization that we imposed on our own and the painful human emotions -- those experiences compounding the way in which many dealt with that -- reflect an inability to deal with these impositions and the way it led to dysfunction in their lives and in their communities. That created the struggles and challenges we face today -- as a result of many people engaging in self-hatred and self-destruction that still haunts us today in our communities -- only we never traced the deep roots of those experiences and how they shaped and formed many people in our communities.

And as we moved into a period today -- that will be defined as a period of self-determination -- we have to be mindful, that over the course of 30 years, to ask the question, have we simply just been engaged in replicating programs that people before us were critical of? Questions like: What are we doing differently in this time of self-determination when supposedly we're in control? What are we doing differently from those times when others were in control and we were critical of? We so embraced accessing resources for Head Start in the late '60s and early '70s that we forgot to ask where is this a head start to, if not to an earlier and a more aggressive pursuit of acquisition of language proficiency? And now in our communities, programs that engage children even younger than Head Start age children? But that's not a criticism, that comes with new ways in being places we've never been before.

Housing development -- and the way in which in many communities but particularly, fundamentally important in Pueblo society -- is the way in which homes and the community are built to complement our social organization. And the way that we embraced HUD [Department of Housing and Urban Development] homes and the development that was cost effective -- it was argued to create subdivisions -- that over time, we reflect how disruptive these subdivisions were to our social organization. What have we done differently in the education programs that we are now in control of at the elementary, mid and high school levels? We operate a school of 800 Pueblo students at the Santa Fe Indian School created in 1890. I was chair of that school for 15 years, and I often asked this question of our board and faculty and our leaders: What are we doing differently today, different from those times when education through boarding schools were imposed upon our children? If we're not doing anything differently, then why do we continue to take children away from the families and communities for nine months out of the years in similar ways as the government took our children?

I take you through this timeline very quickly to understand and appreciate that where we are today -- as we move towards this discussion specifically on governance -- is to ask those same questions. It really is ironic that in this time period, as treaties and other obligations were being made, that the whole issue of blood quantum was introduced. And as we move into other parts -- through the land allotment, the Dawes Act, and all of these other imposed policies and laws meant to disconnect us from our lands -- that the whole issue of blood entered the debates to define who was civilized and who was uncivilized. And yet today, one of the most conflicting issues in our communities are those who argue that we should keep policies that have been imposed upon us through laws imposed upon us -- that over time has caused incredible disconnect from the core values and the gifts of the Creator. And yet, we are now in control but arguing to keep those things that cause conflict and division in our communities, as blood quantum haunts us today and, in many cases, threatens our own demise. And as we look at constitutions, if we're not asking questions with regard to, what must we change in this time that we are in control and create something that is compatible with our core values? Think about the way in which elections in our communities have become so disruptive, that it results in -- as we see the Republic and Democratic parties play out daily, the ugliness of that divide that threatens the demise of the most powerful country in this world from within -- and think about our own communities of that overlay and that supposedly democratic process threatening -- as long as there are winners and losers -- the kind of tremendous internal conflict of our people.

Our elders teach us that along our journey we must always be mindful of our collective past experiences tied to the gifts of the Creator -- our core values -- and when we disconnect from that consciousness -- driven by our core values -- that we can become our own worst enemy. And sometimes we think that where we are in the journey are those times that we can self-destruct from within. Now here is a thing to appreciate -- that with colonization and impositions brought by different representatives from around the world, depending on where we live -- that each generation over time has been faced with these challenges. And through all of the generations before us -- reflected in our history and in our stories -- there was never a willingness on their part to compromise our core values and our gifts of the Creator that defined our inheritance today. The question becomes, what will future generations of the Cherokee and the Choctaw and the Oneida and the Sioux and the Hopi and the Diné inherit from us? These are incredibly challenging times, but these are incredibly important times in the maintenance of these connections.

Here we are in this middle circle today. We're connected through our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents. That arrow moving in that direction is a personalized experience of these inflictions that I've just briefly gone over with all of you. We are personally connected to that history of infliction of impositions -- that defines who we are as individuals, that defines our families and our communities -- but we never take those into consideration, as we assess where we are today in the challenges that we face, because none of this is a conscious part of our thinking. And think about the next 100 years. We're in the middle. How many have children? Raise your hand. How many have grandchildren? How many have great-grandchildren? So we have in this gathering here individuals personally connected already to the next 100 years. All dictated by the decisions we make today that 100 years hence, will be a discussion among future generations of our people. How will they reflect upon this time? Will they be as kind as you reflect upon your history and you reflect upon the heroes and the champions that have let the fight in your struggles to retain your identity, your connection to the gifts of the Creator to those core values? How will future generations reflect upon all of us, upon all of you as parents, as grandparents, as great-grandparents? How will they reflect upon this time? Will they say [that] we were blessed, that in that time of incredible challenge and struggle of our people, that they rose in equal and honorable ways -- as all generations before them -- that defined our inheritance? Or will they reflect, "˜If only great-grandpa, if only great-grandmother, if only grandpa, if only grandmother, if only my parents had the courage and the strength to rise to the challenge that we might still have connections to our lands; that we might still have a language, our mother tongue; that we might still have a way of life connected to the core values and our Creator; that we might still have our own governance systems; that we might still reflect upon the incredible gift of the tools of the Creator of our traditional laws, customs and traditions; that we would still have the vibrancy and the vitality of family teaching core values and the vitality and the vibrancy of a community fully engaged in one mission toward the same vision.' How will they reflect upon this time, that history will define as your time, as our time? And that becomes the really profound nature of your discussion.

Grandfathers and grandmothers have always prayed that sometime in our journey that we could be blessed with the minds and hearts represented in this room and represented back home. That they would be wise, that they would have the courage and the strength driven by their core values and their conscious connection to the gifts of the Creator; that they would find balance for the first time in our history to use an education and a process intended to disconnect us -- to use the skills that finally struck the elusive epiphany of a balance between the two. Our communities, the communities where you come from, are richly blessed with individuals like you, who are having this dialogue. That after 70-plus years of an imposed system of governance, that you would have the courage and the wisdom and the strength -- that as fragile as the connections to the core values might be, the fragileness in the connections to the gifts of the Creator might be -- that there still is a connection that takes us all the way back to time immemorial when those gifts were provided to our people for the maintenance of a healthy mind, body and spirit. Who are we as a people? What is our mission?

Now here's something that we have to think deeply about. And that is, we are at all points on the spectrum driven by the many differing experiences by way of contact with other sovereigns -- through their own impositions -- that created challenges of our people in their struggles to maintain their connection. Some have been affected more significantly and dramatically -- that sometimes we hear the criticism of over engagement in development generating money and revenue -- but for them we have to say that it's their way perhaps, of never being threatened in ways that almost decimated them from this earth. And there are many on the other opposite end of the spectrum.

In my community, we're blessed that we still have a traditional governance system, that people rise to the level of leadership -- largely through the recognition of spiritual and medicine people -- as the ultimate gift of service to their people. And in those times when leadership changes, it is a time of reunification and a reaffirmation to our core values, to our connections of the Creator. In Pueblo governance, culture deeply matters because that is the soul, that is the heart and the soul to the vitality and the vibrancy of our governance system -- but it permeates throughout all of our society. Language is a critical part in the maintenance of that spirit of vitality in Pueblo governance. It drives our decisions with regard to protecting the gifts of the Creator, lands upon which there are places of worship from where we draw our sense of spirituality and connection to those gifts. Governance and our way of life are inseparable -- there is no separation of church and state in our government and in our governance system -- but we represent only one point on the spectrum of many other points on the spectrum.

So as you engage in your own reflection of where you are in your journey, at this part and time in history, think about the incredible opportunity that you have knowing all that you know of the collective experiences of many of your brother and sister nations across this country. As we reflect and share how people are responding -- always in contact with other sovereigns -- the strength and the powerfulness of their impositions have always dictated our responses. And sometimes they've been so powerful we've succumbed and they've taken it all to transform us. Sometimes we stood up to those challenges and in our response we adapted, striking a balance. In this time of self-determination we have to ask, are we simply replicating programs that further undermine the fragile systems and institutions that nurture and nourish our core values and our connections to the gifts of the Creator? If we didn't believe that we are still connected in this spiritual way, that our responsibilities -- as politically as they might be defined -- that at the very core and the heart of what we do, is driven with an understanding of a sense of sacredness of that responsibility and that obligation all toward answering the question, what will future generations inherit from me, from you, from all of us? So this is a time of important sharing and if we're not mindful -- that what we do today has a profound impact in the future -- the question becomes, whether we will maintain that connection we have had as Indian people since time immemorial or will this happen? Will future generations be disconnected from the gifts of the Creator and our core values? And when that happens, is there ever a time that we can reconnect? And so as you deal with the issue of governance, think about what you're blessed with. Think about this time in history, that we can actually revisit with the powers and authorities that have been retained with tremendous sacrifice something that makes sense to us. Or will this time be no different than the plus hundreds of years that -- even in the sacrifices of our own people in our own communities, families -- that we're going to internalize this imposition in ways that results in the contributions to our own demise? That's the question. And what will your contribution be towards that effort, is how profound this time is.

An important part in the maintenance of the core values, affects decision-making at every level. In all the decisions we make, we ought to be asking, how are the decisions we're making today strengthening our core values? Or, how are the decisions we're making today taking us further away from our own core values? And if we're not consciously making decisions with regard to that basis and analysis, then are we really finishing what the most powerful in the country in this world could never do -- destroy us as Indigenous peoples, disconnect us from our lands, kill our languages, kill the oldest Indigenous religions in this world, destroy our governance systems, destroy the oldest Indigenous customs and laws in this world, destroy the institution of family, destroy what is beautiful, that is rare in this country, the spirit of community that we still have that drives our passion to sustain and maintain, protecting our resources to provide future generations their sustenance, mind, body, and spirit. And how will we do that if we're not more consciously articulating a vision, delineating our strategies and using education where there is a complement between the formal education and a rich cultural education? And then lastly, who will be your caretakers? Will your caretakers be loving, respectful and compassionate? And who will define that if not each and every one of you in what you do?

So governance, to close, is not something to be treated in isolation of everything else. Governance must be connected to all of the other realms that contribute to the maintenance of our core values for the collective well being of our people. And it can only be engaged in that fashion to produce leaders conscious of that connection -- driven by their core values for the collective well being of their people -- because it's also a connection to the gifts of the Creator. What will be your contribution?"

Native Nation Building TV: "A Capable Bureaucracy: The Key to Good Government"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Guests Urban Giff and Joan Timeche explain that good governance requires effective, transparent and accountable bureaucracies. The segment demonstrates how clearly defined organizational structures and roles and responsibilities help make things work and get things done, and how their absence actively hinders Native nation governance and development efforts.

Citation

Native Nations Institute. "A Capable Bureaucracy: The Key to Good Government" (Episode 6). Native Nation Building television/radio series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy and the UA Channel, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. 2006. Television program. 

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

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Mark St. Pierre: "On today's program we examine a critical aspect of Native Nation governance -- bureaucracies. We'll look at how clear bureaucratic organization roles and responsibilities contribute to effective governance and how ineffective bureaucracies can stop Native Nations dead in their tracks. Here today to explore the importance of bureaucracies are Urban Giff and Joan Timeche. Urban Giff, a citizen of the Gila River Indian Community has served as Community Manager at Gila River since 1986. As one of his Nation's chief administrators, he's been directly involved with managing incredible growth his community has experienced over the past decade. Joan Timeche, a citizen of the Hopi tribe is Assistant Director of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the University of Arizona. She also spent eight years serving as Director of the Hopi Tribe's Education Department. Joan, Urban, thank you for being with us today. Let's jump right in. What is bureaucracy's fundamental task, Urban?"

Urban Giff: "Well, I once equated that to and compared it to the older customs of tribes, my tribe included as well as other tribes, in which the villages of the tribe were safeguarded by sentries and warriors that were away from the villages and they sounded the alarm in case there was danger and they were effective in safeguarding the tribe, the people, their assets. I equated that and compared it to the modern-day tribes. We still need warriors and sentries, but in the field of accounting, in the field of law, in the field of human resources administration, in the field of management, all the functions that a government has to operate under, and that we need qualified warriors in those areas and that's what will benefit the tribes. As the ancient warriors did and benefited their tribes, we still need warriors today."

Joan Timeche: "And I think the only thing that I would add to that is it's basically just trying to get the job done, whatever the council, the government, the people decide or their long-term vision, it's the everyday task of just accomplishing that."

Mark St. Pierre: "This is for either one of you. Why is an effective, efficient bureaucracy so critical to Native Nation building?"

Joan Timeche: "In the early 1930s or so, many of us were forced to adopt modern forms of government. We traditionally had very effective forms of governments and bureaucracies in place prior to Europeans, but because if we were to receive and be recognized by the federal government we had to have a new modern form of government in place. And during those times, the federal government made a lot of decisions for us, the Bureau of Indian Affairs made those decisions for us. They basically set these councils in place and they, in many cases, often served as rubber stamps and the government made all the major decisions. But as time has evolved and over the years and particularly since the '70s and '80s, tribes have begun to take a major role in determining where it is that they want their societies to be moving towards and they've become the key decision-makers. And because they're the decision-makers, it's important for them to be the one to set that strategic, long-term vision of where it is that they want the tribe to be moving towards, and having in place this effective bureaucracy that gets the job done and helps them move towards accomplishing their goals." 

Mark St. Pierre: "Urban, would you want to comment on that?"

Urban Giff: "Just to the effect of that enables the tribe to really better understand its opportunities that [are] available and can be made available to the tribe -- not just the entire tribe as a whole, but to individuals of the tribe, the families of the tribe. That's the essence of the value of having bureaucracy in place that have the knowledge to bring these opportunities and not necessarily to do it for them, but to provide the opportunity that will enable the tribal members to move on."

Mark St. Pierre: "Well, we all know that some Native Nations, some First Nations, have ineffective, inefficient bureaucracies and that those tribes find it difficult to move forward. What are some of the key ways to set up an effective, efficient bureaucracy?"

Urban Giff: "I would say that probably the important thing that comes to mind right off is to have a better understanding among all the players, all the decision-makers as to who has the resources to do what, and that's where the bureaucracy comes in. The bureaucracy are there, the bureaucrats are there because they have qualifications in their respective areas. The politicians are there because they have rapport with the voters and they have the vision for the tribe. And if you put those two together, the politicians with their vision of what is to be done, what they're striving to get done, and the bureaucracy and the bureaucrats of how it's to be done, that can't help but win for the tribe. So no one segment can do it alone. They have to work together as best as they can."

Joan Timeche: "Well, I think one thing that I would add to that, it has to do with clear a clear separation of roles and responsibilities. I was very young when I started to work for my own tribe, and to have that role delineated of what the legislature is responsible for, to what program administration is responsible for -- 'cause we're the ones that get the job done -- was very important for me because I needed to know to what extent powers, what powers I had and what I didn't have. And of course it was a very political environment, so you had to get accustomed to understanding what the rules were internally, and I think that those are two key important points, having stable rules, consistent rules so that irregardless of who the administration is at that time, the elected leadership, that there's going to be some -- when turnover occurs -- there's going to still be the same rules in place that we might be able to understand how to still accomplish our jobs."

Mark St. Pierre: "In helping your...in looking at young people as they come up through the bureaucracy, are there things that you've done at your tribe or at Hopi to help these young administrators, these young bureaucrats achieve the skills that they need?"

Urban Giff: "What I would refer to is in the job descriptions, the written job description that delineate what that position calls for in terms of responsibilities and authorities that may be assumed by the person that's hired to handle that position, but it also identifies the qualification requirements for that position and it's really gauged against that person's educational level, experience level and what not, and the selection process would then pick the best-qualified candidate who has applied. And so it's not based on who they are related to, but really on their qualifications and what not. And it really does a lot to the ego and to the wellbeing of the individual to realize that they were chosen because of their qualifications and requirements and that they were expected and required to carry out those duties and responsibilities, however difficult they may appear. But that's where...I think it's a key thing to help the young people realize the opportunity that they could have."

Mark St. Pierre: "There's always the chance that a tribal employee, a program director for instance, might do something that would get them in trouble politically. How do you create a buffer between the bureaucracy, the people that actually run the tribal programs and the elected officials?"

Joan Timeche: "Well, I think that comes in the form of good rules and this clear delineation. I can give you one example from when I worked with my own tribe and it has to do with our scholarship program. Our education department was a K [kindergarten] through post-secondary ed programs and we...coming in as a young program administrator who'd recently completed my degree, I knew the weaknesses of our grants and scholarship program and how little they were able to support a person such as myself get their education. So because I had young staff, we decided that we would revamp the scholarship program but we had a process within which to do it. We had to go to our 12 communities within the...on the Hopi Reservation. We got their input, we prepared the rules which would govern the program, making different types of options available, setting out the rules, but we had to go back to them and get approval. And then our tribe has a standing committee, an oversight committee that then has to review and approve of it before it goes on to the council for adoption. Well, one time what happened to me and in regards to that was I got a call from the tribal chair and he asked me to report to his office. And when you get those calls, you're there pronto. They don't tell you why you're there, they just say please come to the chairman's office immediately. So you go scurrying. I went scurrying across to the other building and went in and found out that he had been approached by a family -- I'm sorry, a community member who had a son that was going to college and apparently the son had received the notice from our office that he was not going to get funded for his grant, he was not going to get a grant to go to school and she was really irate and she demanded that -- she had been a long time supporter of him, reminded him that she had a large family within the community, a large constituency which could impact his future as a politician and said, 'My son deserves this grant and I want you to get it.' And he basically told me to reinstate it, receive the grant right then. And I told him, I said, 'I can't do that. I have these rules that were recently adopted, we set them out. Let me go back and find out what the situation is about the student.' Well, I went back, came back later on that day and found out that within the rules, we have some basic criteria. You have to have a C average, you have to complete the required number of credit hours. He was a full-time student, so it was 12 credit hours per semester. He'd received funding from us before, but he didn't fulfill those criteria so we put him on probation, allowing him to receive another semester of funding to be able to meet it at the end of the two semesters. It still didn't work, so we told him, 'Go back to summer school, bring your grades up, meet our criteria again and we'll re-fund you.' But he did not comply with our rules so we had to say, 'Sorry, you're not eligible until you bring up your grade point average and complete your credit hours.' And I tried to explain this to the chairman and he said, 'Go out and do it or I'll fire you.' And I says, 'I'm sorry, I can't fund this student.' I says, 'I have too many students out there who are probably in the same boat and if I fund this student, it's just going to open the flood gate for everyone else and our rules will have no meaning at all to that. All they have to do is go to the tribal chair, complain a little bit, cry a little bit and get their funding reinstated and then out the door goes our rules.' Why have rules if you're not going to follow them?"

Mark St. Pierre: "So did you get fired?"

Joan Timeche: "No. Luckily I didn't, but I was forever on his black list for his term and he actually ended up getting re-elected for a second term, so it was very difficult years for me."

Mark St. Pierre: "Urban, at Gila River how do you create that, in a sense, protection for your bureaucrats that are doing their job?"

Urban Giff: "Well, one example comes to mind. This happened years ago, and we had a project that an old building had to be demolished and so we looked for somebody to do it and we had two community members that were interested and were willing and were able to do it and one of them was selected and the other one was not. The other one who was not went to our tribal lieutenant governor -- or vice chairman as other tribes call it -- and expressed concern about it as why that other person was selected. The other person, we happened to have gone to high school together, and I was the one that had to do that so I got called into the lieutenant governor's office with that complaint and I said, 'Well, yeah, I can understand that, but his quoted price was higher than the other one.' He said, 'Are you sure?' I said, 'Yes. I had them submit written quotes on what they were going to charge.' And he said, 'Do you have them?' I said, 'Yes, I do.' I went back to my office and brought it back. I think that was a big relief to the lieutenant governor because it was based on comparative prices on it and there was a considerable difference in the cost. And so he had the ability to be able to go back to him and tell him why, and the individual that went to the lieutenant governor knew that he had submitted a written price and he should have known that it probably was the outcome, but he complained and I think that reassured the lieutenant governor that these bureaucrats probably are worthwhile."

Mark St. Pierre: "You've been in the same position with your tribe since 1986 and we know that tribal governments turn over, that the politicians and the elected officials turn over sometimes in some tribes once a year and other tribes every two years and other tribes four years. Is there a role in administration providing continuity for tribes?"

Urban Giff: "At Gila River, what we have is we have staggered terms for the council. So of the 17 members, we have one-third up for re-election or their terms end every year, so at no time is the total tribal council going to change over. But that's kind of a little bit different situation with the other, the governor of the tribe and lieutenant governor because they're elected every three years. What that does though is that provides the opportunity for the staff, the bureaucrats to provide that continuity because all the staff are hired employees of the tribe and aren't subject to political appointments and they're hired and as long as they do their job and don't get fired because of cause -- that's the only way they can be fired. They can't be fired for personality difficulties or whatever else, so that's what provides us, our tribe, the stability that's there and I think that has worked for us. And also I think, well, Pimas just generally get along okay."

Mark St. Pierre: "Native Nation bureaucracies have grown in both scope and function over the past three decades as their Nations have moved to expand their development objectives. What are the implications of this fairly rapid growth?"

Urban Giff: "I think one of the things that comes to mind when you talk about rapid growth and development of the tribe is that it really has to be determined ahead of time before you start on that process of development as to how far the development is going to take. If it is not done, any new program or department that's established is going to identify other needs that before were not possible or were not visible because there was nobody there doing that work, and it's going to create and it's going to cause other things to grow. So there really needs to be a time where the decision-makers -- and I call the politicians the decision-makers -- that have the vision as to where they want the tribe to go, how far they want the tribe to go as far as the tribal government. But also as a part of that, there needs to be a place and a way in which the abilities [of] individual members and families need to be acknowledged and encouraged and fostered so that the individual members can start doing some of the things that is not being done because they didn't have the opportunity or whatever the case might be, or maybe they didn't have the knowledge of how to do it -- that is provided to them. So give them a hand up not a hand out. So that's something that I think the politicians really could be beneficial to their tribes by so doing and identifying the vision."

Joan Timeche: "I'd just like to add to that, too, because we work with a number of tribes across the nation and what we often see is as a result of this quick growth you see organizational charts that are flat, all of the departments end up reporting to one entity and it's usually, if they don't have a chief administrative officer like they do in Gila River's case, it ends up being the chief executive officer of the tribe and the growth is haphazard, everyone ends up having their own turf, they don't share, there's often a lack of communication, they don't connect. They may be serving the same client populations, the targets. Their services may be the same and oftentimes they don't communicate with each other. We were working recently with a tribe here in the southwest on strategic planning and we called like service programs to come together -- in this particular case it was their tribal enterprises -- to talk about what they would like to see happen within the nation. And as we were going through the meeting, there was an observation by one of the program directors there of the enterprise that that was the first time that they had met, ever assembled together all their ten tribal enterprises in one meeting place, and they were learning that they had common goals and they had common marketing strategies and yet had never talked to each other before. And that's one of the results of the fast growth, and if you don't plan it effectively and set up these clear roles, that's one of the things that can happen.

Mark St. Pierre: "In looking at bureaucracies, the type of bureaucracies that a tribe has -- whether it's effective or ineffective -- sends messages to the tribal members. Can you comment on that for a minute about how tribal people see their government in relationship to the bureaucracy?"

Urban Giff: "The tendency -- and I guess maybe it's human nature -- that occurs, the bureaucracy will start to looking at the procedures and the process and lose sight of the people that it's intended to serve, and you find that happen very quickly that if they're concerned about crossing this 'T' or filling in this block and what not, and it really just puts the community member to feel second place to that form or to that process or to that step-by step-procedure, and that's where the bureaucracies kind of hurt themselves by not relating to the people. And yet the people are the primary purpose of why bureaucracies exist. And so without constantly being reminded about that and being alert to those things, that can cause difficulties, and the community members can take it so much and then they start complaining and start...and cause a bigger problem. So that's part of what I would suggest that really needs to be considered."

Joan Timeche: "And that perception isn't just internal. It can go to the external markets and the people that you deal with as well. Let me just relate to you one story that I experienced. In our Head Start program, we ran five Head Start centers across our reservation and our reservation is very expansive. One time I had my program director for Head Start come to me and tell me, 'Joan, Joan, you've got to help me.' She said, 'Shamrock just called' -- and Shamrock delivers all of our milk and dairy products -- 'and they called me and they said they are not going to deliver any of the milk and we're down to our stock in all of our Head Start centers here. They're not going to deliver. I have to have a check in hand to be able to pay them. Otherwise they're not even going to send the truck out at all. I have to guarantee that they will get it.' And she said, 'I've been calling our finance office, I've called treasurer's office trying to find out where the check is, and it's buried in some stack of papers somewhere, and I can't get the check.' Well, what ended up happening is Shamrock wasn't going to come because they weren't going to get paid. I couldn't guarantee that they would get a check in hand at the time that they delivered, and we tried to call our local stores. We had two little markets on the reservation and in a very remote area, that's not a lot of milk when you're trying to serve hundreds of children. So what ended up happening is after that we had to go internally within the administrative departments and find out what the reason was, and Shamrock was going to go and tell everybody within the Flagstaff community, the Northern Arizona community, 'Do not do business with the Hopi tribe because you will not get paid for 60, 90, 120 days.' And we couldn't afford to have our vendors talking that way about us 'cause we were such a remote community. We had a reliance on those external vendors. So it's that perception of ineffective bureaucracies that also gets sent out there as well."

Mark St. Pierre: "Urban, would you want to comment on that?"

Urban Giff: "I guess just part of it -- we've had the same experience at Gila River from time to time, and a part of that I think is it's the bureaucracies sometimes get bogged down in procedures and processes and not the end result. The end result is the primary thing that should be the focus of everything and how you get to that end result of pay your bills on time and what not. So sometimes that creates problems on it I think."

Mark St. Pierre: "How in your experience does the culture of the people themselves reflect how a bureaucracy should operate?"

Joan Timeche: "In many communities, if the people don't believe in the system, whether it's the government or the rules set in place and how decisions are made, they're not going to have any respect for it at all and that's what it boils down to. They'll just totally disregard it. In many of the communities that I'm familiar with, particularly here within Arizona, a lot of the decisions are made at the local levels and if your bureaucracy, your tribal bureaucracy, doesn't account for decision-making at the local level that then transforms into what happens at the central government level, you're in a real bad situation if it doesn't account for that. My community is like that. Decisions are made at the village level and there are several large communities within Arizona -- Navajo is the same way with all of their chapter administration. So people have to believe in the system for it to be effective and for it to work."

Mark St. Pierre: "Well, that kind of leads to another question. What happens to tribal bureaucracies when you have outsiders dictating aspects of tribal administration and measuring outcomes, for instance a lot of grant programs that are designed in Washington by people who've never been to Gila River or have never been to Hopi?"

Joan Timeche: "Well, what happens there then, again, is the decisions are made external to the tribe and the end-recipient of the services doesn't get what they need or maybe they might get it, but maybe it'll be in a very different form than they had thought that it was going to be in or at a much later date and time. So I think it's very important that the tribe assume responsibilities. And a lot of times we, because there are federal strings that are attached to these federal dollars, we often don't think that we can change the regulations which we have to operate within, but that's an opportunity for a tribal government  there to exercise its sovereignty. It can set its own rules, it can create its own ordinances to be able to administer, and then it can then tell that funding source that, 'Here's our code, here's the way we believe it to be done, and we want you to take a look at it.' And you'll see that in many cases it often meets or exceeds what the federal government is doing. You see that a lot with environmental protection codes that tribes adopt. Many times they're much more stringent than what the federal government might have imposed upon the tribe."

Mark St. Pierre: "Urban, would you want to..."

Urban Giff: "Yes, I'd like to add and that is that like from the federal level, Congress passes a law, a bill, and it has certain statements in there and the intent of that law is very crucial. Then the appropriate agency then develops regulations on it and then that's applied to the Indian tribe. The tribes have become accustomed to going by, 'That's what they said, they want it done...' but yet have found that it not always meets the needs of that tribe, and now it's realized that if it's stated one way in the regulation, that can be changed and you don't have to go all the way to Congress to change it, because that can be changed at the department level and it's maybe just a matter of...and it doesn't change the intent of the original legislation. And so that's the area that really is important and the more recent trend is before the regulations are completed, there should be some consultation with the tribes to make sure that it captures what the tribes are in need of and how they can best fulfill the need. The difficult thing, of course, is that there are so many tribes and each one may have different approaches to the same regulations under the same statute. But that's a challenge that's worth pursuing, because otherwise it becomes a disservice to the tribe that may not have their needs met because the regulations have a certain process or certain statement of how it's to be done."

Mark St. Pierre: "When tribal bureaucracies grow and they reflect federal programs, grant programs, needs that are perceived and then one need begins to identify another, how does the tribal bureaucracy prevent becoming a dependency agency for tribal members? In other words, how do we know when a bureaucracy has assumed some of the responsibilities of an individual family or an individual tribal member and in fact increased dependency?"

Urban Giff: "That's part of the elected, the politicians, the politicians and their vision of how they want their tribe to prosper and whatnot. And what I... personally I'll use that term to describe, there's a lot of rhetoric and a lot of discussion by all of us about tribes, especially politicians, about self-sufficiency and about self-determination and that type, but yet there's very little actual applying that at the local level to provide each individual member or a family their abilities to be self-sufficient and to self-determine. And so that's kind of a difficult thing to do probably for the elected officials, because they're relying on their constituents for the elections is to put forward the ideas that they need to do for themselves and not expect the tribe, the tribal government to do everything for them. But I think that's the only way that the self-sufficiency and self-determination can really be realized."

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

Peterson Zah and Manley A. Begay, Jr.: Strategic Thinking and Planning: Navajo Nation Permanent Trust Fund

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Former Navajo Chairman and President Peterson Zah and NNI Faculty Chair Manley A. Begay, Jr. discuss the role of strategic vision and planning in the establishment and cultivation of the Navajo Navajo Permanent Trust Fund, and stress the need for Native nations to forge a long-term vision for their communities and peoples.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Zah, Peterson and Manley A. Begay, Jr. "Strategic Thinking and Planning: Navajo Nation Permanent Trust Fund." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 26, 2008. Presentation.

Peterson Zah:

"[Navajo Introduction]. In the Indian way and Navajo way you always identify yourself, who you are, where you come from, who you're related to because, after all, that's what we're all about. And so that's normally the way you start your conversation. Because you're not the only one I'm talking to here in this room. We have other entities that are also here and they always want to know who you are. I wanted to say just two or three words before we get going with what I'm supposed to be doing here.

Number one, I now work at Arizona State University [ASU]; I've been there for the last 14 years. And after the Navajo people kicked me out of office I went down to the University and I started working with young people because, at the time, they only had something like 600 Native American students on campus. And the President says, "˜That's as far as we get. We come to that number then we always come down. Our graduation rate is horrible,' he says. "˜So we need to improve that. Let that be your concern.' He also said, "˜I can't tell you how to do your job because I don't know what to tell you. You evidently know.' And so essentially that's the way we got started. From 600 Native American students to today, we have 1,500 Native American students. Our goal is to reach, within the next five years, 2,000 Native American students. So we're doing very well in recruitment. Our retention rate is improving. Our graduation rate is improving also. And so I wanted to just give you that little commercial. If I didn't say anything about ASU, the President it's going to get back to him and he's going to be angry. So I wanted to just say this.

Number two: I really, really enjoyed the conference here during the last two days. I'm learning a lot and listening to all of the young ones -- all of you, participating in these discussions -- and all of the dedication, and a good sense of where we should be headed all comes out. And as an old man, as a grandpa, that really makes me happy. And we need more of these kinds of training to equip the upcoming leaders with all of the tools that they need so that they can do better among their people in their communities nationwide. So I just wanted to say this.

In terms of the subject today, the establishment of the [Navajo Nation Permanent] Trust Fund, I always tell people that the needs of the Navajo people back then in the mid-1980s were the same as they are now. Some people say, "˜Well, you were able to do all of that because the needs back then weren't as great.' Well, to be honest, they were the same, basically the same. As the tribal chair sitting there at that desk every minute people coming in, they want service, they want to talk to you, they want advice, they want a sense of direction, they want this and they want that. And so your time is occupied a hundred percent throughout the day, almost 24 hours a day -- how they want those services to be rendered to them. And so basically that was the backdrop of the Navajo Nation back in the mid-1980s.

Navajo, as you know, is the largest of all of the Indian tribes, whether it's a pure membership or land base: 88-member council, over 300,000 Navajo people, 110 chapters. And at those chapters you have chapter president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, grazing committee members. So you can multiply 110 times five, and that's how many people you have to work with as an elected official of the Navajo Nation government. So to put your program into place, you have to work with those officers at the community level as well as the 88-member council. So it's not an easy task. You may have a great idea but if you don't do your homework to begin with, you're in trouble right from the word "˜go.' And so with establishment of the trust fund, we had to basically deal with that kind of infrastructure on the Navajo to get to where we wanted to go. I do not know in this room how many of our tribal government, tribal leaders, have tried to create trust fund for the Indian people. I was extremely lucky to be working with a tribal council that had a lot of vision. They were visionary leaders, the 88-member council. I would say probably one half of them had no greater than 10th-grade, 11th-, 12th-grade education. We didn't have a single college graduate but they were visionary in a lot of the things that they did. So we were very, very lucky to have that number in the Navajo Nation Council.

Prior to my becoming a tribal chair I worked at the legal services program called DNA [Diné be'iina Náhiilna be Agha'diit'ahii or "˜attorneys who work for the economic revitalization of The People'] People's Legal Service. I spent 11 years there as the executive director, as a non-lawyer executive director. There were always a lot of people who wanted me to go to law school and I used to tell them, "˜Listen, I'm better off than a lawyer. So I'm going to continue running the program. Because when you become a lawyer, you get tunnel vision and sometimes you can't see things out here. And therefore you have to really, really concentrate on the overall problems of the Navajo people.' And as such I was always working with lawyers to make sure that the cases that we handled at DNA, many of which went to United States Supreme Court, was handled right because I knew that when you get into that court you don't really know what's going to happen. Sure, the lawyers will tell you that they're going to win, this is their argument and this is what we want to do. But we always had a mock trial that we insist our lawyers go through that mock trial -- not only once or twice or three times -- 10 times to have those kinds of sessions before they went into the United States Supreme Court.

So I was intimately involved in Kerr-McGee vs. the Navajo Nation, a taxation case that was accepted by the Navajo Nation to go on to the United States Supreme Court. Within that four-year period, we were able to win in the United States Supreme Court where the tribes were given the authority to tax companies that work on the reservation, that extract minerals on the reservations and that do business on the Navajo Nation. I remember the controversy when we passed that taxing legislation by the Navajo Council, all of the people who do business, companies who do business on the reservation, they all banded together and they said, "˜We're going to sue you because we don't think you have the authority as Navajo Nation to impose taxes on us because we have this contract with you. And we look at that contract as a bible and in there it says we are not to be taxed.' But those were the old leases that were approved by the Navajo Nation Council and the contracting parties. And so when we decided that we're going to start taxing people, they used that against us, the very same thing that the other Navajo Council did in the past.

And so what happened was that we went into court and basically did all of our homework and we [ended] up winning that case. And I remember getting a call from the clerk of the United States Supreme Court saying, "˜I'm just letting you know a decision was made today. It was nine to zero. You guys won the case. That means Indian tribes can now begin taxing companies that operate on the Indian nation.' That was a precedent-setting case. And what that did, what that did was I told the companies, when they decided to sue us in court, I says, "˜As a tribal chairman you get sued every week so it doesn't really matter. And so can I get a concession out of you that while this case is going on can you pay the amount of money that you're supposed to pay in escrow, in escrow account? If you win, you take all the money back. If I win, I take all the money.' And so basically that's how the $217 million was accumulated. So when we won the United States Supreme Court, I went down to the bank and got a check for $217 million. I was the most popular person in Window Rock.

But the question about what to do with that amount of money was really, really something that people, leaders, have to deal with because it was the election year. The 88-member council, they said, "˜We understand you picked up the $217 million. Let's call the council into session and I've got a project. I want to be reelected.' Council delegate from Chinle says, "˜I want to have a laundry, laundromat at Chinle chapter and we'll call it Chinle Wash. We want to have that going because using that I can get re-elected and we'll get further in our progress that we're trying to accomplish.' And so that was something that was really a lot of pressure, activities that happened on the Navajo Nation. The problem was, what do you do with that money? A lot of services are needed. Anything you can think of you can throw the $217 million at those problems because it's election year. And so everyone wanted a role in terms of how they all thought we should spend the money.

My mother is a traditional Navajo lady. She never went to school. She doesn't know a word of English. She has lots of sheep all her life. And every once in awhile she always wants us to come home, spend a night, two or three days with her. So when the pressure got so hot, boiling over in Window Rock, I jumped in my pickup truck and I went home. And I got to the house late in the evening, slept and early in the morning my mother was butchering the sheep. And she says, "˜I'm cooking for the kids.' And then when I got up she started talking. And I told her and she says, "˜Son, I hear all these things on the radio about what's happening in Window Rock. What is happening? What is happening with that money? What did you do with the $217 million that you got from the bank?' And I says, "˜I just put it in the safe and I'm trying to decide what I should do with it.' And so then she started talking about her herd and she says, "˜Is there a way, is there a way that you can treat money the same way as you treat a herd, the sheep?' And she says, "˜Remember, say back several years ago, when our herd came down and we only had 15 sheep and we were all worried? Then I told you kids, let's not eat the sheep anymore for the next two years. If we do it that way, the 15 will multiply to 30 if we leave it alone. The following year we'll have 60. The following year we'll have 120 and we'll be back to where we were. Can you treat money that way?' And this is a traditional Navajo lady talking with me. I could have probably hired a consultant at $400-500 an hour to tell me the same thing, but the mother cares. She's a permanent fixture on the Navajo Nation. She's a tribal member. So I thought to myself, 'Well, she's given me an advice and what she's really, really talking about it is putting money into trust so that it can multiply the same way as her herd multiplied.' And so I got all recharged. At the end of that two-day period, I went back into Window Rock and I went to the council and I says, "˜Ah ha! I've got the answer. Let's put these monies into trusts, let's not spend it. Let's not spend it foolishly. Yes, we all want to get reelected -- I do too -- but let's be prudent. Let's use our judgment in the right way for the Navajo people.' So it was advice that I got from my mother that was highly valuable to the Navajo Nation.

So we sat down with the council and we developed a plan in terms of how that $217 million should be distributed and used to the trust fund. And we established what we call Chapter Government Nation-Building Fund. We put something like $60 or $70 million into that account. That means at the end of the year, whatever interest that it earns those monies were divided among the chapter houses and that's the way their chapter houses operated throughout the year. We created a $20 million Navajo scholarship fund. We had something like maybe $20 million in there already, but we put another $20 million on top of that for something nearly $40 million and we said the interest that this earns at the end of each year will keep the Navajo kids going to college, a college and a university of their choice. So we took care of the chapters. We took care of the young people but not everybody is fit to go to college. Some want to go to vocational education. So we said why don't we take care of them? And we put something like $7 or $8 million into that account. The interest that it earns then can send those Navajo kids to those vocational institutions.

Then we had some problems. There was tremendous need for the handicap people. It was right at this time that old man Ronald Reagan came into power and he cut off all those social programs. Remember back then? Maybe some of you were in diapers still but Ronald Reagan came in and they said, "˜No more of these social programs.' So he cut them. Well, that left the senior citizens out in the cold. We then said, "˜Why don't we have a handicap trust fund?' So we put $7 or $8 million in there for all the elderly people that may need hearing aid -- like the one Manley is wearing -- and hearing aid and all of these other things that they need, the senior citizen. And they're the ones that use that trust fund to help them with some of their problems that they were having. And then there were senior citizens' trust fund. All the senior citizen organizations on the reservation and we put some money into the trust fund for them. And we said that the interest that it earns, "˜You can use that for your activities,' all the seniors.

Then we gave Navajo Academy -- the only Navajo high school, a prep school -- we gave them some trust funds so that they can establish a truly Navajo Nation school. And that was built in Farmington, New Mexico, and today it's still there. They're the only high school on the Navajo Nation that sends every graduate to colleges and university. And I like to go over there and recruit students. So they're the ones that have that Navajo prep academy.

The other one that is not listed, these things happened in 1984-85. In 1990, early 1990, we established three more trust funds. One of them is what we call Land Acquisition Fund. All of you are wondering, "˜Say, how come the Navajo Nation has such a big land base, big huge reservation?' Well, we buy land back. We buy land back. So we created what we call Land Acquisition Fund. There are some ranchers, non-Indian people adjacent to the Navajo Nation that always put their land up for sale. We said, 'When those people make their land available, we should get to the bank, make out a check, buy the land.' Now our reservation is growing. It's getting bigger and bigger and so we established that Land Acquisition Fund. Today it has $50 million, $50 million in that account. So anybody who puts out their land for sale, we use that money to buy land. The reason why we did it is Navajo Nation keeps on growing; the people, the membership is getting larger and larger. We want the land to grow with those numbers. And so every year we purchase more and more land, and we're not going to stop until we get back the whole Southwest. And so that's why we established that fund.

The other fund that we created during that period was a trust fund to take care of a lot of these economic development that's taking place on the Navajo Nation. They have their own trust fund that they can tap into to do economic development projects. And so basically those are the trust funds that the Navajo Nation now has. Now why did we do that? My thought back then was, you can use the $217 million, put them all into trusts. If you have enough trust accounts that you establish, I want to see the day the Navajo Nation government would run on trust fund; we don't have to beg anybody for money. Is that called self-sufficiency all of you young people? Self-sufficiency, that's what we're striving for. Twenty years has gone by. Many of these trust funds are being utilized and they have matured. So much of your trust fund is being utilized to keep the tribal government going.

Now I work for Arizona State University as I told you. We have a rather new president that came out of back east. His goal is to put Arizona State University in a position so that all of these monies that people donate, he puts it into trusts. He calls it endowed funds. And he says, "˜I'd like to put the university in the position where we don't have to go to the state legislature and beg for money each year, we don't have to go see the governor. We want to run this university like NYU, Harvard, Yale, all of those universities. They all run on their own. They're all running on trust funds.' So basically the Navajo concept was to essentially to do the same thing.

The biggest one that we wanted to talk about is the Permanent Fund. It was established because of the natural resources being depleted. I told the Navajo people, I said, "˜We have coal, but you know coal is a non-renewable resource. Once the coal is gone, where are we going to get our money? Once the coal is all extracted from Navajo Land, where are we going to get our income? So while we can, we should put these monies into trust.' So a permanent fund was established by the Navajo Nation. One thing that we had to keep on explaining over and over to the Navajo people is, 'What is the difference between the principal and fund income?' Probably the most simplest thing that you can put across to people, but there was a lot of misunderstanding between principal and the fund income. And we keep on saying, 'We want to make it so that we don't spend the principale when we are at a point of using, beginning to use these trust funds.'

The way it works now is, when the permanent fund was authorized, we put something like $26 million as a basis, as a foundation of the Permanent Fund; we put that in the bank. On top of that we said, '12 percent of all projected revenue shall be invested from the Navajo Nation.' So each year, the Navajo Council comes to decide the budgeting process. The first thing they do is they take, on top of everything they get, 12 percent of that, they put it on top of the Permanent Fund. So the Permanent Fund enjoys two things. One is the interest that it earns goes back into the Permanent Fund. The Navajo Nation uses 12 percent of their general fund total, they put that on top of that. So it enjoys a lot of deposits of money and the generation of revenues that way.

We agreed among the council, I told the council, I said, "˜I want to get an agreement from you that we're not going to ever touch this money for the next 20 years. For the next 20 years, you shall not come to my office and ask that you withdraw these monies. We're going to put it into trust for 20 years and we're going to see what happens, how much money it can generate. After the 25-year period, we will then have a five-year plan where 95 percent of the money could, may be expended according to rules established by the council.' And so that is still in the plan. However, there is no program in place right now for the use of those permanent fund[s]. And so basically that is something that the Navajo Nation agreed to and that they are still, we are still holding them to those agreements. All of the expenses that is associated with the administration and the management of the Permanent Fund comes out of that amount of money that it earns. And so that's what happened to the Navajo Nation and the establishment of its permanent fund.

Today, March 27th -- is it today? -- we have some like $1.4 billion in that permanent fund. This is money that is not earmarked for anything. It's free money. So money in the bank, 1.4 [million dollars]. One of the biggest push by the council every time they come into session is they want to get at it. They want to spend the money. So usually Manley Begay and I are there in Window Rock saying, "˜No, no, no, no. You guys agreed not to do this. Let's keep it growing, let's keep it going.' So thus far, we have been successful and so that is the way this permanent fund and all the other trust funds was established.

Now in 2002, a work group was established called Permanent Fund Work Group. The Navajo Nation Council wanted to get seven people from the Navajo Nation that can decide what to do with that permanent fund. And they made me the chair and then we selected people like Manley Begay and others. And we've been meeting on and off since then and talking about what the future holds for the Navajo Nation trust fund. Manley says, "˜You go first, talk about how these were established, but no joke.' He says, "˜As long as you agree that you aren't going to tell any joke to this group, then you should do this.' So before I crack a joke, I'd like to give him the floor."

Manley Begay:

"The reason why my brother walks around real slow is [because] he has $500 million in both pockets. A good friend of mine, I ran into him again, Curt Massey from White Mountain Apache. I used to play basketball with him years ago. I noticed he was walking real slow, too. I told him, I said, "˜You're walking really slow.' I said, "˜Are you still playing basketball?' He says, "˜No, I don't have any more knees.' I used to play ball with him years ago. We used to be neighbors over there in the East Fork area of the White Mountain Apache reservation. So it was really good to see my brother and good friend Curt Massey. Now he's on the council at White Mountain Apache. And one thing about my brother Pete Zah is that he used to play basketball also, years ago at the Phoenix Indian School, and he was actually on a championship team. So quite an athlete back when.

As Pete was saying, we were selected to this permanent fund work group. And lo and behold, we're sitting on millions of dollars, and it was our responsibility to decide what to do with that money. So I asked Peter, I said, "˜What should we do with the money?' And he said, "˜We should buy Tahiti, the Island of Tahiti, and move over there, get a flock of sheep and herd sheep by the ocean.' But can you imagine the responsibility that's given to you about what to do with that amount of money? In 2002, the money was hovering around $800 million and seven of us, these individuals, we were the ones to decide how the money was going to be spent. As my brother was saying, when they first won the legal case, everybody became his best buddy. They'd come out of he woodwork. The same thing happened again, this time to me, again. People I hadn't seen for years they said, 'Brother, uncle, grandpa, have I got a deal for you.' So can you imagine the amount of responsibility we were given?

And so what do you do? How do you handle this? Because everything's important, right? Grandpa and grandma are important, the handicapped are important, roads are important, health is important, education is important, veterans are important, the youth are important, and there are 300,000 Navajos. Shall we go per cap, 300,000 Navajos? Not much money to go around. And so that was what we were facing. So what did we do? We did a lot of research. First we wanted to figure out what's been happening all these years since the money was put into a trust fund and we wanted to find out exactly how much money there was.

So my brother and I and the five other individuals, we had the fund managers come to see us and we had meetings with them about where the money was at, how the money was invested, where did it go, how much is left and this was shortly, if you'll remember, after 9/11. And the stock markets were really fluctuating around that time. It probably would have been up to $1 billion, but 9/11 sort of made it dip, up and down. And we consulted with the community. One thing about my brother here is that he's very close to the people, the people that are out there in the community. And he said, "˜I want to ask them what they think because that's the heart and soul of who you are.' And he says, "˜We have to go there, we have to go there and ask.'

Then we found out, lo and behold, we found out that in the year 2000 this legislation was passed. The Navajo Nation during an election year earmarked 50 percent of the money to go to this local governance trust fund. And so that remained that only 45 percent of the fund income would be available to us to determine an expenditure plan for and then the 5 percent would be reinvested back into the principal. So essentially this is what happened. So we were actually only dealing with $6.8 million and the vastness of the needs of Navajo is unbelievable and here we were only dealing with about around $7 million. And here we were thinking, we're going to buy Tahiti. But there was a reality check. All of a sudden things began to change very, very quickly. So what to do, what to do?

And so we began to figure out how to do this, what do we do, how do we think through this particular...? So we began to research more and more about how much money there actually was and we wanted to know if there were other extenuating circumstances. This bullet point three. Were there other things that were going on with the money that we hadn't known about earlier? We requested reports from just about everybody at Navajo; we met with the money managers again, we talked to attorneys, we went to the natural resource department. We wanted to know how much time is left for the coal deposit at Navajo? How much more oil do we have left? Because all of that plays into how you plan for an expenditure plan. We held public hearings and then we began to devise a final permanent fund work group report to the Navajo Nation Council. Here is an assumption chart that if coal reserves at our coal mine were depleted, if our oil fields were depleted, what's going to happen to the Permanent Fund trust. And so this middle road is sort of the best route that was imaginable.

So 2008, we're talking about the money hovering around maybe $700-800 million. But as my brother was saying, it's actually at $1.4 billion; so the stocks doing a really, really good job. And here's sort of the market value chart of the Permanent Fund. So you can imagine that in 2010 it would be nearing $1 billion, but it's actually exceeded expectations. Here's another chart that we were working with. In terms of the local governance trust fund -- let's say -- if the money went there, what's the best-case scenario? So we were thinking through what to do with this money and we held public hearings. We wanted to hear from the people. We wanted to hear what the people had to say. And my brother here is like -- remember the old commercial of E.F. Hutton? When Peterson Zah speaks, everybody listens. It's absolutely true. He has that stature that when he goes out to the community, when he talks to the people, people really listen to him. They want to know exactly what he's thinking. To this day, even though he's not in office, he's still a leader. He's still a leader to be respected, to be listened to, to be thought through. So at these community hearings, this is what we put together. And here are the public hearing questions. So we started to gain data and information. And this was actually my brother's idea. He said, "˜We've got to go over there, talk to the people, find out what's going on. Let's pose to them these questions and let's find out some answers about what they're thinking.' And these were their comments.

There was a big push for reinvesting the money, instead of spending it. They said, they told us...these were grandmas and grandpas, people that we would consider sort of everyday people. Very intelligent, smart people. And they said to us, 'Reinvest the money.' But they didn't come out and say, 'Reinvest.' They said this, "˜It's like seeing your corn grow. You should pick the corn only when it is ripe. If you pick it when it's too young, you won't get enough to eat.' So what they were saying was, reinvest the money, put it back. They also said, in reference to the local governance trust fund, they said, "˜There's this huge cow with lots of milk, but only a few calves are allowed to feed, then others are all standing around hungry. The money is like milk, it all goes to just those few.' So they were saying to us, 'Wait a minute. Let's wait a minute.' And then those of us that are living off Navajo Nation land, they were saying, "˜Count us in; don't count us out. Don't call us outsiders. We know our homeland and the homeland knows us. Our umbilical cords are buried in our homeland. We are still your relatives. We are only here because of jobs, education, training and for medical reasons.' Often these services are not available on the Navajo Nation. In the Navajo way, when a baby is, the umbilical cord falls off, there's a whole ceremony that it entails. So where it's buried is where your heart and your soul is at. So no matter where you go, wherever your umbilical cord is at, that's where your heart and soul will be.

And so what did we do, we put together this permanent fund work group report and this is what we said. Number one, we challenged the Navajo Nation Council and we said, and we also challenged the Navajo people, and we said, "˜Develop a vision with a strategic plan for the Navajo Nation as a whole that can provide guidance to those -- including the Navajo Nation Council -- who must make momentous decisions regarding finance and other matters affecting the long-term future of the people.' We said, "˜Reinvest all of the Permanent Fund until 2012, an additional period of five years, or until the corpus of the fund reaches $1 billion, whichever comes first.' As my brother said, it's at $1.4 billion and everybody wants to get at it. And we said, "˜Repeal the legislation requiring the Permanent Fund income go to the local governance trust fund.' And we said, "˜the Navajo Nation should really resist further legislative diversion of the money. It makes the fund quite vulnerable.' And we said, "˜set up an endowment commission.' The endowment commission's responsibility would be to figure out according to policy, rules and regulations, how the money would be dispensed.

Today, what's the future of the Permanent Fund? We're not sure. It's sort of a question mark, although we're all following Mr. Zah's lead. He says, "˜We sometimes as Indian people have a hard time saving. We get a paycheck and then we're driving to town, we spend all the money. We're happy going over there, coming back we're all quiet. No more money.' And he says, "˜We've got to save. We've got to save that money.' So we're following his lead to this very day." 

Back to Our Path is not a Trip Backward

Author
Year

Many of us are familiar with our expression Ohnkwe Ohnwe. It is what we use to describe ourselves as the original people of Turtle Island. The approximate translation is “real human being, forever.”

There was never any question that we had a future. We were never tied to a spot on a timeline. We were never frozen in history. We were neither primitive nor at the end of our evolutionary scale. We continued to develop.

The entire concept of Seven Generations was based on knowing that our growth and development would require a priority placed on the impacts on the unborn faces — those ones who would come long after us.

But for all the certainty of those that have come long before us, our future would not be a sure thing, certainly not over the last two centuries and certainly not going forward from here. That path, so meticulously crafted by the tens of millions of feet of those that came before us, has been so neglected and deviated from that it is only Creation and our language that guide our feet back to it. But that course correction back to that great path, the Kaianerehkowa, is not a trip backwards or back in time. It is a trip forward, into the future...

Resource Type
Citation

Kane, John. "Back to Our Path is not a Trip Backward." Let's Talk Native. The Two Row Times. January 14, 2014. Opinion. (http://tworowtimes.com/opinions/columns/lets-talk-native/back-path-trip-..., accessed March 7, 2023)

Rebuilding Our Nations: Tips and Tools for Getting Started

Year

LEARN ABOUT THE INHERENT RIGHT TO SELF GOVERNANCE. First Nations citizens and all Canadians should learn about our shared history. There is an important booklet on our website called A Brief History of our Right to Self Governance. It demonstrates how we possess the inherent right to rebuild our own systems of governance, to make our own laws and to extend those laws to our traditional territories...

Resource Type
Citation

National Centre for First Nations Governance. "Rebuilding Our Nations: Tips and Tools for Getting Started." National Centre for First Nations Governance. January, 2013. Article. (http://fngovernance.org/news/news_article/rebuilding_our_nations_tips_an..., accessed April 19, 2013)

Native Nation Rebuilders Speak

Producer
Bush Foundation
Year

Participants in the Bush Foundation's Native Nation Rebuilders Program offer their personal perspectives on nation building and share their experiences in the program.

Citation

Bush Foundation. "Native Nation Rebuilders Speak." Bush Foundation. Saint Paul, Minnesota. April 3, 2013. Film. (https://vimeo.com/63277472, accessed April 19, 2013)

Developing a First Nation Constitution

Producer
National Centre for First Nations Governance
Year

Chiefs, Administrators and Advisors discuss the importance of constitutions and the work involved in developing their own nation's constitution. 

Topics
Citation

"Developing a First Nation Constitution." Bear Image Productions. National Centre for First Nations Governance. Canada. 2011. Film. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c5yNli1Xkk&feature=plcp, accessed April 3, 2023).

Ktunaxa Nation: Building from their Vision

Producer
National Centre for First Nations Governance
Year

This video, produced by the National Centre for First Nations Governance, offers a history behind the vision or mission statement of the Ktunaxa Nation in British Columbia.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

"Ktunaxa Nation: Building from their Vision." Ktunaxa Nation. Bear Image Productions. National Centre for First Nations Governance. British Columbia, Canada. 2011. Film. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTZhlZsZMpU&feature=plcp, accessed August 1, 2023).

Nisga'a First Nation Circle of Governance

Producer
National Centre for First Nations Governance
Year

People of the Nisga'a Nation discuss custom and tradition before the Indian Act. They tell how they made the move back to traditional ways through strategic planning and abandoned oppressive ways of the Indian Act.

Native Nations
Topics
Citation

"Nisga'a First Nation Circle of Governance." National Centre for First Nations Governance. Canada. Film. 2011. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmBtq9YIXEA&feature=plcp, accessed September 18, 2012).