Tohono O'odham Nation

Robert A. Williams, Jr.: Law and Sovereignty: Putting Tribal Powers to Work

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Native Nations Institute
Year

University of Arizona Professor of Law Robert A. Williams, Jr. provides an overview of the U.S. government's centuries-long assault on tribal sovereignty -- in particular the ability of Native nations to make and enforce law -- and stresses the importance of Native nations systematically building their capacity to exercise jurisdiction over their own land and affairs in this nation-building era.

Resource Type
Citation

Williams, Rob. "Law and Sovereignty: Putting Tribal Powers to Work." Emerging Leaders Seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 23, 2011. Presentation.

"I'm always humbled when I get to read through the list of folks who attend these events and you're all very busy and you're all doing very important things and good work. And it really is an honor to be able to address you, and that Steve [Cornell] and NNI are kind enough to sort of turn me loose for an hour and to see what damage I can do.

What I want to talk about today is 'Law and Sovereignty: Putting Tribal Powers to Work,' and I particularly want to focus on the role of tribal courts and tribal law making in that equation, those aspects of sovereignty. There's lots of different aspects of tribal sovereignty, self-determination, but this idea of law-making is an important one. Let me just throw a fancy legal word out there to you and you can really impress people back on the rez. It's Latin. It's called 'jurisgenesis.' Juris -- J-U-R-I-S -- is law, juridical, jurisdiction. Jurisgenesis. 'Genesis' -- you don't have to be Latin to know that. That comes from the Bible, the beginning, the beginning of law, the creation of law. Jurisgenesis is the creation of law, that we are law-making communities. Some of the examples are, for example, the Amish make their own law. They always argue to be exempt from Social Security and from sending their children to secular schools. We know that the group, a community of Hasidic Jews in New York, control a very ancient network of diamond trading and they have their own law. They don't use the courts of the United States. They have their own jurisdiction, they assert their own law. They engage in their own creation of law, their own acts of jurisgenesis. And that's what I want to talk about today.

The United States Supreme Court, in the most important case affirming tribal sovereignty over the legal affairs of the reservation, called Williams v. Lee in 1959...my colleague and co-author Charles Wilkinson says that Williams v. Lee really inaugurated the modern era of Indian rights, 1959, before the Supreme Court. And in that case a Navajo had bought goods on credit from the local Indian trader and that Indian trader then tried to sue her for defaulting on the contract for those goods in state courts. And up until 1959 that's what had always happened. In Arizona, in South Dakota, and many of the states you're from, everyone just assumed that if an Indian owed you money you sued them in state court. But in this case the Navajo re-established their own tribal legal system, their own tribal courts, an act of jurisgenesis. And the Supreme Court said that state jurisdiction over this contract, which took place on the reservation, would invade the sovereignty, would violate the sovereignty expressed through that strong, independent tribal judiciary. And really the birth of the modern tribal court system springs from Williams v. Lee and that affirmation of the jurisgenerative power, the law-creating power of Indian communities. And one of the things that Justice Douglas, one of the great justices...I mean when you go to law school, you learn about the all-star Supreme Court justices. Who are the great ones? John Marshall, Earl Warren, Louis Brandeis, William O. Douglas. And Douglas in Williams v. Lee makes one of the most famous pronouncements in all of Indian law. And he said, 'Here's the question of whether Arizona has jurisdiction over the Navajo reservation, absent governing acts of Congress or treaties that took it away.' The question has always been whether the state action infringed on the right of reservation Indians to make their own laws and be ruled by them; infringed on your sovereign right to make your own laws and be ruled by them. That affirmation of your jurisgenerative capacity to create law from your own customs and traditions is one of the most powerful sources of recognized sovereignty in the United States Constitution, and it's still alive in your own communities today.

So that's what I want to focus on. Before I do that -- because what I'm really talking about is the challenge you face -- how do you take up that challenge of becoming jurisgenerative communities that take responsibility for your own law over every aspect of life on the reservation -- whether it be child welfare, whether it be criminal jurisdiction over Indians and non-Indians, whether it be civil jurisdiction over contract disputes, jurisdiction over employment actions at the reservation -- all the different things you can and will assert jurisdiction over? How do you meet that incredibly important nation-building challenge? Because your ability to build your nations is really going to be directly related to your ability to build strong, independent judiciaries or legal systems or mediation systems. You're going to have to choose the model to recognize and empower your jurisgenerative capacity. It might be a system in which everybody walks in with black robes and bangs a gavel, it might be a system of peace makers, it might be a system of sentence and circles, but one way or another you're going to have to respond to the challenge of becoming jurisgenerative communities, because you're not sovereigns, you're wasting your sovereignty if you don't step up to that challenge. So to understand that challenge, no matter where you're from -- I do a lot of work all over the world with Indigenous communities -- and this desire, this aspiration to engage in law creation, to go back to the old ways and see what might fit to meet the challenges of the new, and a lot does for those communities that have engaged in this jurisgenerative act to recreate, to renew -- the renaissance of tribal law making that's going on around the world -- is what I want to talk about.

But before I can talk about that, I have to set the stage so you understand where you're coming from. Because where you're coming from in many ways informs, shapes, controls, threatens, complicates where you want to get to. We all know that. My tribe's the Lumbees. We have a saying, ‘If it wasn't for family, what else would hold you back?' You don't have that saying? Something like it, right? Something like it. And your history holds us back. We're fighting our history every day. We're colonized people; we're traumatized. We suffer the psychic harms. We have the generational trauma. This stuff has been confirmed by social science that this trauma is handed down generationally. You just don't wake up one day and say, ‘Oh, we've reformed our constitution and got a new one. Now we're just going to forget our history, forget our past.' So I think it's important to understand the history of federal Indian law and policy because we know Indian people, even the stereotypes. We always think ahead seven generations and we're tradition bound, so we always want to know what the elders did and what our traditions tell us to do, and we learn from the wisdom of how our elders responded to crises because we think life is a circle, it's going to come back. And so with that, I think it always helps -- many of you know pieces of this story, some of you may even know the whole story, I doubt it -- but in as short a time as possible, I'm going to try and at least give you an overview of the story of the history of federal Indian law and policy and help you understand some of the characteristics and challenges so you can sort of get a lay of how the land has laid out for your elders before. [Because] if you see the terrain and the paths that they took and the decisions they made -- some bad, some good -- you learn from that. That's what Native knowledge is all about. That's what common law is all about, right? If a decision worked before to facilitate contract exchange, let's keep doing it that way. There is value, there's knowledge in the past, and our job is to sort of pull that stuff into the present to understand how it might or might not apply. Sounds a lot like what we do as lawyers. That's what the challenge is.

So I always like to say before Europeans came here -- the pre-constitutional era, about 1532 to 1789 -- what's going on then is that Europeans are asserting their rights as superiors. Basically the theory comes from the Crusades. So Europe has been fighting tribal peoples and infidels and savages and barbarians ever since the Romans, we know that. The Romans went out and conquered the tribes of Western Europe; the Normans came in and conquered the tribes of England. The West has been -- don't take it personally -- it's not an American thing, it's not a Western hemisphere thing. The West has been persecuting tribes for 3,000 years. They just don't like you guys. In fact, it's so inbred that you can find it in the very first book of The Odyssey and The Iliad by Homer. How many people have heard of Homer fighting the Cyclops, the one-eyed man eating Cyclops? He says, ‘We came to the land of the lawless and inhuman Cyclops who neither plant nor plow but who rely on providence to provide them but their land is goodly abundant with grapes and wild things that grow.' Sound familiar? Uh oh. Boy, that's going to come back to haunt us, isn't it? They've been doing this for 3,000 years. So it's nothing personal. And so in the 15th century Columbus comes over here and he says, ‘You know, these people are just like all the other non-Christian savages and infidels that we claimed total sovereignty and control over in the Middle East or in the Crusades, Charlemagne, the Teutonic Knights.' The Teutonic Knights, they were just Christians empowered by the Pope to get on their horses and terrorize the pagan Lithuanians until they submitted to Catholicism. And of course the Lithuanians say, ‘Oh, yeah, we're Catholic.' And then the Lithuanian knights would leave and they'd go back to their pagan tribal ceremonies and the knights would have to come in again. Sound familiar? So essentially the Europeans are doing what they've always done. Wherever they find dark-skinned, different people who don't believe in God, they claim superior sovereignty over them. And that means everything.

There's this great case in England written by James Coke. And I mention that name because he not only was chief justice of England but he was the lawyer who advised the Jamestown Colony. Yeah, I know, conflict of interest but we didn't have the ABA [American Bar Association] code back then. And he actually drew up the charter, which James signed, authorizing the Virginia Company to go and bring the infidels and heathens living as savages to civility in the Christian gospel. Go conquer. So Coke also issues this case called Calvin's Case. And what he says is that when a Christian king invades the kingdom of an infidel, he doesn't have to pay any attention to their laws [because] they don't follow the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. And so therefore their oath is no good, they can't swear to God. So therefore they can't have any rights that the king will recognize in an English court. That's the reasoning. ‘You're savages, how can you have rights against white people? How can you have superior rights to your land when you just roam and wander and hunt?' Ever see 'Monty Python'? When you hear people talk about wandering savages, just do the Monty Python routine [because] that's what they think. That's what their ancestors did. How many people honestly, you meet a white person, they say, ‘Okay, do you ride a horse?' Right. Yeah? I've had 60-year-old grandmothers tell me guys walk up in the airport and ask them that question, ‘You riding a horse?' ‘Oh, yeah, sure. I have to.' You know.

So essentially the precedents are all set. You've all been conquered or decimated by disease or lied to or had your land stolen or your women disempowered. Because many of the North American Indian tribes of the east coast, the women controlled the property and they controlled the naming of chiefs, and that was one of the first things that Europeans subverted through bribes and machinations and getting the chiefs to sign the treaties. Now it's amazing when you look at those treaties from the 1660s and 1700 [because] all the chiefs are signing the exact same name. I can't believe thousands of chiefs signing the exact...what's that name that they all sign? X. 'Zorro?' 'No, I'm an Indian, it's 'X.' Have my land, take Manhattan.' All right. So the formative years are when the U.S. comes in and they basically adopt the principles of the English. They assert the rights of discovery that whoever discovers Indians has jurisdiction and sovereignty over them. But they do some other important things that you need to know about.

They enact a constitution, and because their experience had been that the yahoos in the states were the Indians most deadliest enemies that they had to make Indians exclusively federal affairs, because the states were crazy. They would go out and form posses and militias and just engage in massacre. And then what would happen is the Indians would go up in rebellion or the states would totally ignore a treaty that had been negotiated to quiet the Indians down. And so then it would be the Indians go on the warpath and the states, they don't care. And it's the federal government that has to raise the army to go and quiet the frontier. So the [U.S.] Constitution is absolutely clear -- and think about this, I'm going to play a lawyer's trick -- it's absolutely clear that the Constitution comprehensively puts all of Indian affairs into Congress's power. And they do that by one simple statement. So think of the founders. These are the guys drafting the Constitution. And you're really trying to understand, what do they really think about Indians? And I'm not... just think about it. Have you ever wondered what the founders really thought about Indians? Well, I'm going to tell you because it's in their constitution. So what the Supreme Court says is that we know that the founders gave Congress all the power they needed over every aspect of Indian affairs. This power includes the power to take away their criminal jurisdiction, this power includes the power to destroy their religion, this power includes the power to break up their land and distribute it in allotments, this power includes the power to steal their kids out of their homes and send them to Indian boarding schools, this power includes the power to break treaties with them [because] they're savages. Now you would think that the Constitution would really spell that out. You would hope, right? [Because] that's a lot of power that the Court says Congress has under the Constitution. And you know how Congress took care to make sure that they got all that power? They said -- write this down [because] it's very long, I'll go very slow -- ‘Congress has power over Indian commerce.' That's the only time Indians are mentioned. Why? Because -- as I tell you -- you were basically a business proposition to the founders. And that's all they needed over you [because] the only business they cared about was getting your land, and everything else is immaterial. That's your legal status under the Constitution. But remember that. And the Supreme Court has consistently affirmed in the United States v. Kagama that the people of the states where the Indians are found are often their deadliest enemies. So the state has no jurisdiction on your land, over you or your people or your land, never has and continues to be the law of the United States.

We get treaty making. How many of you here come from treaty tribes either in Canada or the U.S.? Incredibly important documents; they're an Indian invention. Wampum belts, you know those things that savages carry around, the beads [because] we like beads. Those wampum, well, they're sacred treaty documents. And the English and the Dutch learned right away if you want to make treaties with an Indian, the 'X' stuff didn't work, when the Indians outnumbered the colonies very early on, that X stuff wasn't going to work. You put it down in a treaty belt [because] that was a sacred text that the sacred keeper of the belts would come out and interpret and remind William Penn and remind the governor of Montreal called Onontio. How many people here are from Canada? Onontio, Governor [Charles de] Montmagny, Onontio. What does Montmagny translate into? Great Mountain. Onontio is the Haudenosaunee word for 'big mountain.' He was adopted into the kinship system. Those treaty, what I call North American Indian diplomacy, those traditions go way back before Europeans. And when Indians were in a position of strength able to assert and exercise their sovereignty, Europeans negotiated according to those protocols and those traditions. And that's why the treaties, particularly the early treaties contained some pretty good language and some pretty good promises. They formed the legal basis of much of your sovereignty, but it's a recognition of what is inherent in you already, for U.S. Indian law recognizes that whatever hasn't been taken away remains. You're sovereigns only if Congress limits it.

Of course what begins to happen is that the United States goes through a Civil War, builds a railroad, acquires essentially what used to be Mexico -- we're standing on Mexican territory, O'odham territory -- the United States acquired this through the Mexican-American War and the Treaty of 1848 and that allowed them to build a railroad connecting the country. And so all those Indians we had put out in Oklahoma and were running around out there on the prairies and plains states that we never thought would be in the way, well, now we kind of need to build a railroad through there. And some of the best routes will be through where the Sioux are and the Cheyenne and the Comanche and the Navajos. So we better make some treaties with them and get those people rounded up and into control and on tighter, confined reservations. And so Congress in 1871 basically [because] the House is PO'd at the Senate for ratifying treaties that contained sweetheart deals for the railroad companies say, ‘You know what, we ain't going to appropriate any more money for your treaties.' What did I tell you? You're just a business proposition. ‘We're not going to appropriate any more money for your treaties and we're only going to break this stalemate if you promise never to make any more treaties with Indians again.' It's the only time -- are you listening to this? It's the only time in the history of the United States that both houses of Congress had voted to divest themselves of the constitutional power. Never happened before, never happened since. There is no other incident in history where Congress has said, ‘Oh, we have a power in the Constitution? No thanks. We don't want it. Okay, we promise never to touch it again.' It's that, Wow, it's mystical. Ooh, the treaty-making power. Put it away in a box. Lock it [because] we can't be doing that any more.' But nonetheless you have those treaties and they're recognized in the United States law -- know where they come from.

And of course what happens is that once the court says that, because you're savages and infidels and under our guardianship, we need to be able to administer your property in a way that you might not appreciate. We're going to pass the Allotment Act over your objections and we're going to allot all your entire reservations. But the problem is you have 144 million acres and we have lots of Irish immigrants and Eastern European immigrants who want to move out there and you've got the lands all tied up. So here's what we'll do, we'll divide up all your reservations into 160 acre allotments and what that'll do is reduce your 144 -- are you writing? -- your 144 million acres of land. If we divide it up into heads of households 160 acres each, that will reduce your 144 million acres of land under the treaties 90 million acres. So you'll get about 48 million acres, much of it marginal, much of it unwatered, much of it dirt and rocks, because the other 90 million acres we're going to give to homesteaders. And what will happen is, because they get all the lands that are around the rivers and the really good lands, you can watch how they grow crops and you can learn how to do it from them. They will civilize you. That was the idea behind the allotment. Courts of Indian Offenses. My god, we've broken up your land holding patterns, we've broken up your family patterns, we're sending your kids to boarding schools, we've divided up your clan and kin just purposely to disaggregate you through allotment. That was a purposeful policy, was disaggregating clan and kinship relations by placing brothers in different corners of the reservations with their individual allotments. And they even know if it was a matriarchal society to move the aunties around. They got really good at these sorts of practices of colonial governmentality.

And so of course what happens is a breakdown of law and order. And we know there's a breakdown of law and order [because] if you look at the Courts of Indian Offenses and their statutory authority, one of the first things they talk about is polygamy. We've got to cut down on polygamy. Well, you're killing off people left and right, you're killing off the men, you've taken away all the food. Have you ever thought about why there might be sisters, cousins, grandmothers, husbands, nephews moving in together into relationships you have no understanding about? But that gives you authority under the Courts of Indian Offenses to go and prosecute those crimes.

Then there's a big depression. It hits Indian Country incredibly hard. If you talk to your grandparents, ask them what it was like before the Wall Street crash. Indian Country was feeling it as were many of the more poor areas of the country. And when the depression hit it just devastated Indian Country. And the [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt administration comes in with a broad mandate to shake things up. And so what he decides to do is, as part of his New Deal, is reorganize Indian tribes and passes the Indian Reorganization Act along with those other famous reorganization acts establishing the Bureau of Irish Affairs, the Bureau of Jewish Affairs, the Bureau of Hispanic Affairs. We all know those great bureaus. You can go to Washington and see the big buildings and the huge bureaucracies built up around those different ethnic groups, who were all reorganized. No, you were the only people that needed to be reorganized [because] they'd screwed you up so much they had to start all over, is what they thought. So we're going to reorganize Indians and we're going to give you written constitutions and we're going to give you tribal councils. And literally, it's -- I'm not going to mention the name of this reservation but it's one I know very well -- when they asked the Indian agent, ‘Well, gosh, we established elective districts, 12 elective districts. And we've got to figure out how to divide that up? We don't gerrymander here.' And they said, ‘Well, do you have a cattle range map?' ‘Yeah.' ‘How many districts does that have?' ‘Twelve.' ‘Use that. That's how you select your political representatives through the way, the pass that the cattle roam.'

I'm going to give you the resume of the guy that Roosevelt picks to head up the Bureau of Indian Affairs: a Communist labor organizer in New York got his head beat in by the Pinkertons; left his wife and children and shacked up with a Broadway actress in a West Virginia river, lived the life of the wilderness; got bored with that, left her, moved to Santa Fe and shacked up with George O'Keefe and D.H. Lawrence and Isadora Duncan. And his first book on Indians, which qualified it [because] he was a born and bred Commie, was called Red Atlantis. John Collier, that was your Bureau of Indian Affairs director during the Roosevelt administration. Oh, I'm not going to tinker with these Indians am I? Gosh, what an interesting sociological experiment I've been given. Let's see what happens.

It starts getting better. Not really, because then Termination comes. Now Termination is like the height of the '50s. And if you read the Argo of -- sort of -- international foreign relations, the only other place you see the word being used is to describe the operations of CIA agents in foreign countries. So we're terminating dictators that we don't like and Indian tribes. And basically it just means end the treaty rights, end the constitutional status of Indian tribes [because] we're tired. And guess where we want to turn you over to? The states. That everybody's in the federal governments for hundreds of years has said [is] our deadliest enemies. Why would you do that? Because we want to promote your civil rights. That's how the Termination Era was used. It was, ‘Oh, blacks want to integrate. We'll try it with you Indians living in a communist society there on the reservation. We're going to turn you on to corporate shareholders and take Menominee's timber mill and turn it into MEI Enterprises; give you punch clocks and consultants and everything else. Then you'll be happy. Look what we did for the Native Alaskans, turned them all into corporations.' It's easy. Snap! Just like that [because] that's the power that Congress has. They can terminate you tomorrow if you piss them off enough. Don't say I didn't warn you. ‘Oh, gosh! Professor Williams told me this might happen. Why weren't you there at that NNI event, at that workshop? He told us. You didn't believe me.'

So Indians really did fight back. That's the birth of the NCAI, people like Vine Deloria. You start getting into the 60s and the Self-Determination Era, 1961. The [John F.] Kennedy administration repudiates Termination. Indians start joining the civil rights movement but they are trying to articulate their own unique voice. We don't want integration; we don't want assimilation. We want our treaties honored; we want the historic relationship between Congress and the tribes, that trust relationship enforced in a meaningful way consistent with emerging international human rights law principles of the state's duty of protection of Indigenous peoples. Isn't that what trust is? It's a duty of protection. And that's exactly what the International Human Rights Covenants say. The state has a duty of protection of all forms of culture, of all languages, of all religions. You can't go exterminating it because it happens to be economically inefficient. You can't go exterminating it because they happen to be a different race who you don't want to disrupt the purity of your own blood as in South Africa. People have fundamental human rights. And Indians start picking up on that discourse and begin to challenge many of the assumptions about what they wanted. And they begin to assert their jurisdiction.

I always love to tell this story cause I...so I was born in 1955. So like I was a teenager when my mother wouldn't let me go out to Alcatraz and join all the other Indians there. I swear since that time, everybody else went [because] everywhere I go there's like a million Indians who were at Alcatraz. ‘Yeah, I was there. Wounded Knee, too!' How many were there? Come on, look at the pictures, it's like eight guys and three women. Y'all hid if you were there. You were there at the BIA takeover? ‘Oh, yeah, I got mimeo copies. Look at that.' That's cred to me. If you've got the mimeo copies from the BIA records then you've got some cred but otherwise...But like Vine Deloria used to tell me, he says, ‘Man, it was great being an Indian leader back in the '60s. We'd go out there with Brando, we'd get shot at and he'd be ducking. We'd be going to fish-ins and we'd be trashing the BIA. Being a tribal leader today sucks. Man, sitting in budget meetings all the time, going to Washington, dealing with lobbyists, having to go in and talk to those idiot Congress people.' At that moment I swear to god, [Supreme Court Justice William] Rehnquist walked by. Rehnquist walked by, [because] we had him as a guest lecturer and Vine -- and he was old -- and Vine said, ‘Who is that, Williams?' I said, ‘Well, that's Chief Justice Rehnquist.' He said, ‘Man, he looks like S.' I remember that story very well.

But it's hard being a tribal chairperson today. It's hard being a tribal councilperson. It's hard running a tribal program. It ain't much fun. How many people had more fun days last week working than not so fun? How many fun days did y'all have? Give me one fun day that you had last week. [Sighs] Well, now you know why I do comedy [because] you guys need it. But I hope you understand there's a serious message here. Creating an independent tribal judiciary is hard work, because my uncle used to just pick up the phone and call the tribal judge when there was a problem. Why can't I do that? Or my aunt used to go attack the tribal budget when her nephew was in jail and she felt he didn't belong there. Or I remember the old council battles where they wouldn't fund the tribal defenders office [because' it just wasn't important enough. ‘Those kids were all guilty. Let them rot in jail without a lawyer.' I won't mention the community but I went up and gave... I used to give real fancy talks as a professor: 'This is why we need a juvenile justice system...' Until one day some of the aunties stand up and say, ‘We ought to go back to custom and tradition.' I go, 'Yeah, that's what I've been saying. Beat the hell out of them, then they're good.' ‘No, that's not the message. That's not what I meant by custom and tradition!' (That's just my first slide. Steve's getting really upset.)

So the good old days are over. It's hard work. You're in what I call the Nation-Building Era. I tell my students the good old days, the Self-Determination Era, in the sense that you all know what the boundaries of your self-determination are [because] you're pushing up against them every day, that's what the -- if you're a tribal leader -- the hard work of being a tribal leader is pushing those boundaries. But you know where they are [because] you get the AG upset or you get some judge sitting in Pima County ticked off or someone calls from the governor's office or something. So you're pushing those boundaries but you know what they are.

We know there hasn't been significant Indian legislation that tribes have aggressively pushed for that really created meaningful reform and recognition of rights since the Indian Child Welfare Act. It was that recognition of fundamental human rights, but we've been able to expand our jurisdiction over other Indians, right? The Duro Fix, the [U.S. v.] Lara case. Tribes were told, ‘We'll let you exercise criminal jurisdiction over other Indians as long as you don't even bring up Oliphant [v. Suquamish Indian Tribe] and the fact that case says you don't have it over non-Indians.' Okay. [Because] we'll get this and we'll prove we can do it and then things will, we'll see how it develops and see if we can mount that next challenge for that tribal [jurisdiction]. That's how we do things. It's hard work. We build step by step. And one of those important steps is putting the pieces in place to meet these challenges. And one of the most vital pieces is a strong tribal court [because] you've got limits on Indian self-determination defined by Congress and the courts, not tribes, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. And a lot of you are probably spending money on lobbyists beating back assaults on that.

Now you're dealing with labor unions. Okay, so, labor unions. We all know the stereotypes. I feel sorry, as someone who worries about Indian stereotypes, I feel sorry for people in labor unions and some of the stereotypes they have. But this is not something that you want to deal with. Labor relations are knock down, drag out. They come in, and let me tell you something, my father-in-law is in the labor movement. I have a tremendous respect for what these people do. Their ethic of belief in the labor movement is every bit as strong as your ethic of belief in tribal self-determination. And so if you're confronted, it's really hard work to sit down and work out common ground so that you can work together or maybe not work together. But at least do it in a way that's constructive and doesn't alienate all the employees in your establishment for example. So that's a challenge.

If I had told Billy Frank that you are fighting on the banks of the Columbia River for the right to avoid NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] certification, he wouldn't have believed it. No one knew where the struggle was going to develop. You don't know where it's coming next. You've got an incredibly hostile Supreme Court. Again, I love the people at NARF [Native American Rights Fund]. They're brilliant lawyers there. I've worked with them. And they and a bunch of other Indian lawyers said the best strategy now for Indian tribes before the Supreme Court is don't go, stay away. And it's hard work just to kind of get the cases through the circuit level in a way that the court won't pick them despite your desire not to have them go.

So you've got horrible cases coming out. You've got anti-Indian groups, anti-affirmative action. We just passed a proposition in this state that outlaws affirmative action in financial aid and in admissions. It's going to have a devastating impact, particularly on non-federally enrolled tribal kids. A lot of Indians can be full blood but they're not federally enrolled. And so since they're not federally enrolled, they're really a minority. And so you have these totally arbitrary distinctions where you have 100 percent Navajo and Pueblo kid where you have the flip on the matriarchal/patriarchal membership roll. And they're 100 percent, but they don't belong to the tribe. And under this bill, they're not entitled to affirmative action and financial aid or in admissions. They're in the pool with everybody else.

We've got shrinking federal budgets, rising health costs, No Child Left Behind, rising crime, unemployed youth, gangs, drugs, poor infrastructure. Let's throw some in. This is a cleansing ceremony. Anybody want to throw one in there? Come on, shout one out that I didn't include. Suicide -- oh, my god, yeah, good -- bad, horrible. Good in that, exactly. The voice coming from where it's happening at, you know. Domestic violence -- ah, good. I'm going to add the index of misery, the hard work. If you took one of these issues and made it your life's work and moved the ball ten yards down the field, you'd be Hercules, you'd be the new Amazon woman they're casting. To take all of them on at the same time with the resources you have, it's hard work. And your enterprises are competing inan increasingly multi-cultural, multi-global environment. [So where am I at on time [because] I want to leave time for questions? What time do I have here? Good, I'm going to wrap this up and then I'm going to let you fire away.]

So, here's where I kind of tie-in the nation-building stuff. We know that the real keys are practical self-rule. Well, think of what a tribal court does for you. It takes your tribal law and custom, its traditions, your constitution, the codes, the statues that you enact and apply them every day in a transparent, rational, non-political, non-partisan way so that everybody on the reservation -- Indian and non-Indian -- feels they are treated as equals with equal dignity and respect as human beings according to our tribal customs and traditions. A tribal court keeps you guys honest. You need that oversight, you need that accountability, you need somebody who has the final say on, ‘Just what the hell were you doing with this expense account report?'

Strategic orientation and leadership -- we've been talking about that. But you need something else. You need a legal framework for nation building. Remember your tribal powers. Remember your tribal constitution. Some of them may date back even before the IRA. How suitable are they to your needs today? Think about the way you treat issues of waivers of sovereign immunity. Think about your criminal codes, your juvenile codes. What have you done to make your nation stronger in those areas during your tenure on the council, during your leadership of a tribal program, in the classroom?

I want to kind of give one test to ya'll. I'll leave you with this and then I'll open it up for questions 'cause this'll get you thinking. Hopefully, I've provoked you enough to kind of think about where you're at in meeting this challenge. But this is a university and we like instruments. We've got to have data. So I collect this data, I promise they're writing it down. If you want to be anonymous, okay, but I want you to take this quiz. This is the tribal leader's executive education test for whether your reservation has an independent judiciary. And this'll tell you whether or not you really need an independent judiciary as part of your major nation-building task. On my reservation, the chair is related to the chief justice, yes or no? Just mark it down. On my reservation, the chair is poker buddies with the chief justice? On my reservation, judicial review means the council can review any judge who makes an unpopular decision and fire him, yes or no? On my reservation, checks and balances are something the tribal finance office can't ever seem to keep track of, yes or no? This is serious. You're compromising the integrity of my study by laughing. On my reservation, separation of powers means the council doesn't ask questions about the judiciary's travel expenses and the judiciary doesn't ask questions about the council's? Oh, my god. I've had people pass out. So just let us know, raise your hand if you're feeling...I've given this test [at] hundreds of workshops. These are the oldest jokes in the world. Come on. Okay. On my reservation, the question of whether the tribe should ever waive its sovereign immunity is something that only a fool would bring up in council? Serious question.

Okay, so here's how you judge yourselves. Six to five no's, you have a very independent judiciary. You don't have any work to do in that area. One to two no's, it's kangaroo [court] city baby. So where are you at? Are you hopping up and down trying to figure out where you're out in this nation-building challenge? Are you going to tackle it head on? Well, let's talk about that. We have a few questions. Let's talk about that challenge in some of your questions about this need for an independent judiciary to really recognize all those things we're talking about gelling together, the synchronicity of the nation building model."

Q&A Session

Audience member:

"How do we fight as a collective body and as individual tribes those of us that are fighting that white man's colonial rule? We were in court a couple weeks ago and we're dealing with...we've had contact since 1640 when our tribal system was set up in the 1700s based upon that trusteeship of put three people in a, three men in water, they're going to control everything and we can control them. Give them a bottle, they can sign their X and we get their lands and all. And how we deal with their water rights and their land rights and who can do what on their land and...so you just don't have any rights anymore. How do we fight that, and what is our recourse for those things?"

Robert Williams:

"So do you hire outside law counsel to do this for you?"

Audience member:

"We have our own and we have outside law counsel. We have tribal lawyers."

Robert Williams:

"And how's that work divided?"

Audience member:

"Of course the white man is getting more and the tribal member lawyer gets this much..."

Robert Williams:

"And what do they bill you per hour?"

Audience member:

"Probably $700 and our trial lawyers maybe get $125. What did my sister say? She gets 38 cents per hour."

Robert Williams:

"It's a tribe around here. Because I've been associated with them so long and have been intimately involved with them for so long, some of the details I don't remember. So I'm just going to give you a basic narrative of what happened when I came here in 1987 and was asked to be a judge at the Tohono O'odham tribal court. There's a guy there named Ned Norris...I love Ned as a brother. And we used to sit in the trailer at Tohono O'odham court. I remember going down there -- they asked me to be judge -- and I'm looking for a building and I can't find it. And I call up and Ned says, ‘The trailer, dummy. What'd you think, we had our own building? This is tribal court.' So I go in the trailer. And the library is like 30-year-old volumes given out by the law school that were eaten away and it was just absolutely horrible. And Ned's sitting there thinking, ‘Rob, one day I'm going to run this place.' I go, ‘You can have it, man!' But Ned had vision, you know what I'm saying? Ned had vision.

And you know what I saw over the course of 25 years, I saw people like Ned and chief judges and tribal council members and great tribal leaders who started...They had an attorney general and they had like one lawyer and basically their job was to farm stuff out to the big firms in Phoenix and to Tucson and to New York on their water rights litigation and they were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. It sort of constrained their ability to assert their sovereignty and it also constrained their ability to pick their battles and to strategize [because] they had this firm doing that and that firm doing this and you had two guys or women in there who just really didn't have control. They weren't having strategic control, they were like insurance adjustors. Don't answer, but if that sounds familiar you see where I'm going. And you can begin to see the lessons, because what I saw happen there was, they said, ‘We need to protect the rights of people here. We've got a crime problem, we're going to invest in our police, we're going to do community policing, we're going to build our own jail, we're going to stop sending our kids to Pima County where they hang themselves and nobody cares. We're going to provide alcohol counseling. We're not going to lock up people as a first resort; we're going to give people a second chance. And that's going to require investing in lawyers and tribal advocates and training and judges and that's going to cost money.'

But guess what? They started training their own lawyers. And some of those lawyers that started out as advocates went to law school and then went into the attorney general's office. Again, this is going to be a really radical proposal, but I bet you all agree. I would rather have a tribal attorney who understands the tribe really well than who understands a technical area of law really well. Sound familiar? These people -- whether they're your own tribe or other Indians or non-Indians -- who come and work in those entry level positions, they learn the community, they learn who to talk to, who not to talk to, keep your head straight, know how the community feels about certain things. They become valuable instruments. And they started moving into the AG's office and instead of paying Phoenix $500 an hour, they were paying those folks a salary of $80,000, but a lot less than $500 an hour -- do the math -- to work on their water rights case. And I've seen that legal department. And again, it's a feeder system. They're developing their own and you've created a legal system. Remember the requirements, the legal infrastructure? You've got a strong AG and they can take on your water rights cases and you've got a strong legislative legal counsel who can help you draft your codes and your ordinances. And what you find on very successful reservations is somebody's resume -- they've done three or four of those jobs -- and the good ones go in, get the office in order and are asked to take on a new challenge. And you're investing in people rather than in some stupid law firm's mahogany desk."

Audience member:

"We're at that point now. We just got our federal recognition after a 32-year fight. We've been a state-recognized tribe, so we have run our own things, but we are in the process of doing tribal courts grant so we can put our law enforcement and our tribal court in place. We are working on constitution, not ratifying what was drafted yet, but trying to look at it. And that's why we're here to help put our governance in place with that and all. But again, it's like we're fighting. You have the state attorney general...now we're in...we went for federal recognition so that the feds would take up our land claim case, which now with Carcieri [v. Salazar] and everything else, the game's changed. The rules changed."

Robert Williams:

"Strategic orientation. That sounds what's key for you guys is to keep your eye on the prize. You're fighting fires every day. Prioritize, strategize, learn, build resources as you go along, and pick your fights well. And you'll find out that one fight well fought teaches them a lesson. Let me tell you something that I learned. I've done some litigation with some very good litigators. And the first thing a good litigator told me was, focus on your opponent's greatest strength and turn it into a weakness. And in this area, I hate to say your law firms are your opponents, but when you look at those monthly billings sometimes, ‘What does this guy got against me?' But their greatest strength is their expertise and knowledge. If you build and invest in that expertise and knowledge as part of your strategic orientation, if you invest in judicial training, think about the cost that you save when you can bring cases in your own tribal courts. Imagine if you have a tribal contract and it gets flipped into state court. Then you don't have anybody who's ready to litigate that case. You're going to be paying $500-600 an hour for state litigation. Whereas if you were confident enough to waive your sovereign immunity into your own tribal courts and you had independent judges who could hear that case and the outside business community knew they would get a fair shake and your guy can walk out that trailer to the court next door and doesn't have to bill you to go into Pima County Courthouse, think of all the money you save."

Audience member:

"Or federal circuit court."

Robert Williams:

"Thank you. Boy. I would. No, I wouldn't want to see your billings but I bet you pay for Kleenex for these guys. If they pack Kleenex in their suitcase, they charge you. Other questions?"

Audience member:

"Can you comment a little more on waiving sovereign immunity for economic gains?"

Robert Williams:

"Yeah. Many tribes, I think, ‘the most successful tribes.' Now, what do I mean by successful tribes? There's lots of ways to measure success, but to me these are tribes that have healthy, vibrant communities. And you go there, you just feel things are moving forward, that people have a vision, that there's a shared sense of responsibility and reward that we're doing things the right way. What I find is those tribes have tackled the issue of their sovereign immunity. Twenty years ago, it was very rare to see tribes willing to address the issue of strategically choosing when to waive sovereign immunity for certain types of businesses and business entities. And there are still tribes and many of the old-line tribal council members who feel that a waiver of tribal sovereign immunity -- no matter how carefully crafted and strategically thought out -- is a surrender of sovereignty. It's not. It's using your sovereignty. It's a tool. It can be a bargaining tool. It can make you stronger. It can make you think about where you need to use it and where you don't. You can think about how it can leverage other investment opportunities.

For example, I've seen this at negotiations and the negotiations get hung up on choice of form. ‘Okay, well, we're going to...we want to put this contract dispute,' it goes into Oklahoma court. And the tribe sits there and says, ‘Well, we're not going to waive our sovereign immunity.' And that's it. The deal goes away. Think about the tribe saying, ‘Uh, we don't have anything in principle about defending our actions. We're entering into this in good faith. We know we're going to honor our obligations but contracts break. Sometimes there's problems, but we'll waive our sovereign immunity but we'll do it in our own courts. And we'll invite you to sit in on our courts and see how they work. And we'll show you, we'll introduce you to our judges and you can look at their resumes and you can see their training. And we can guarantee you a fair hearing and we can point to other litigants in our tribal court -- some of whom have won, some of whom have lost. We can refer you to outside attorneys who've been in our tribal court and you'll see if you're willing.' So at least it gets you to part two of the deal. Instead of the door closing, you've opened up another issue for negotiation and you've kept the deal rolling.

So I think that the tribes that I think have been kind of most thoughtful about how they use this tool and when they use this tool and the power it gives them have been the ones that I think have been able to do things economically. And both in terms of housing, community development -- there's a whole range of issues where tribal sovereignty can stand as a barrier to the hard work that needs to be done. And quite frankly, you can go and insure up to an amount. Again you can limit your liability under an insurance policy. You can make the Republican legislators happy by eliminating punitives in tort cases. They love that. That's what the whole fight over medical malpractice is. Many tribes have eliminated punitive damages in their own courts. And so the only people who are going to end up upset about that are trial lawyers." 

Cynthia Manuel: What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Tohono O'odham Nation Legislative Council Member Cynthia Manuel discusses some of the challenges she has faced as an elected leader of her nation, and stresses the importance of leaders taking care of themselves physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

Manuel, Cynthia. "What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 20, 2012. Presentation.

"Good morning. My name is Cynthia Manuel and I'm from the Tohono O'odham Nation. I live in Santa Rosa, which is the Gu Achi District and that's who I represent on the Legislative Council. Our tribe has a three-branch government: the legislative, the executive and the judicial. The executive has the tribal chairman and the executive department. And we're legislative and we have 22 members. We have 11 districts within the nation and we have 22 members, two representatives from each district. And we serve four years when we get elected and then every two years we have an election. So every two years -- it's staggered. And that's really good for me because we learn from the ones that were there before. And I want to recognize two of our members that are here, is Edward Manuel who is Vice Chair of our Legislative Council and he's sitting over here. He represents the Pisinemo District. And we also have Pamela Anghill over here, who represents Gu Vo District. And as I said, I represent Gu Achi and this is my second term. I've been there six years now and it seems like forever. I'm okay with it. This is our full-time position so we're paid to be on council. We have a salary, an annual salary, and this is what we do daily. Within the legislative branch, we have our staff and our chairman who wasn't able to be here. That's why I'm here [because] he couldn't make it and so he asked me and I said, ‘Yeah, I will do that.' His name is Timothy Joaquin and he comes from the same district I come from. He's taught me a lot.

Next May, we'll have our elections and my term will be up but he'll keep going, my colleague. And then two years after that his term will be up. So we have staggered terms and we each represent our own, we get elected by own people within our district. I ran in 2005. Before that I worked at the health department for 15 years. I did everything. I started what is our HOP program now, the Healthy O'odham Prevention program, which is a diabetes program. Me and my brother Isidro, he just got out of the service then, and he took the exercise portion of it and I took the diet portion of it. We started the program; now it's growing. We have a site almost in every district to work on our diabetes rates. Our diabetes rates are really high in the nation. So we started that and [I'm] glad it's still going. When we started it was just us two, the staff and now we have probably a staff of about 50 people.

Then I went to work at our nursing home. It was mentioned on the screen that we do have our skilled nursing facility. We have...long ago, we always talked about as far as I can remember that our elders want to come home and recuperate on the reservation. So when they started the nursing facility we do our own traditional foods, we do our own activities, whether it be our traditional dancing or just the modern exercise. And a lot of the staff that are there, I believe 95 percent, are tribal members and then they serve the elders there. So they speak the language and can communicate. They like to sit outside and outside the backyard is the desert, so they really like it there. We have, I believe, it's 63 beds and right now we're starting to build housing for those that can be on their own and they just need a little help. The groundbreaking was last Sunday to start that [because] we would like to take a lot more elders in that are in the hospitals here in Tucson and in Phoenix, because a lot of times they don't, some of the care facilities here, they don't understand our O'odham when they speak [because] some don't speak no English. So it's really good that we do have it. But they also take others that are younger that need help in whatever they're going through.

I worked there as the activities manager and then I decided to run for council in '05 and I won my seat. I won my opponent by 65 percent. It was really good and before then I looked at the constitution and what a legislative department and what our jobs will be and I liked what it said and that's what I recommend. If you have a constitution or whatever your job description is [because] that's our job description, what it says on there, that's what we do. But I first talked to my family. I have a family of eight brothers and sisters, my mom and my dad and my aunts. I always say that I was raised by a village or by a community, because that's how it was within my own community, my aunts and my uncles, my grandparents. So I talked with them and I think that's the most important [thing] because you have to have the family support in that, whether it be your sister, your brother, your uncles. You have to have that support. My own family, my husband, my son -- I have one child, my son. He's 18. Well, he just turned 19 and I have a grandson who is two years old. I talked to them and what I think this job will mean, a lot of time away from home. And because when I worked with the health department, I also went to a lot of the diabetes workshops all over and I remember I used to call home and my son would say, ‘Mom, just come through the phone, come home.' So I had to tell him this is how it's going to be, but by then he was older so he was okay with it. So I had to talk to them and my mom and my brothers and my sister and tell them what I was going to do and they supported me. So I did that and I won my seat then.

Then when I started there it was kind of scary [because] you're just getting into like this whole world of, like it's a different, you're going to be representing the nation here. And when I first got on...we have in our legislative department we have 11 committees that we each serve on three of those committees except the chairman and the vice chair. So when I first got in, they put me on the Rules Committee, which oversees like the constitution and things that happen within; and the Domestic Affairs Committee, which is the law enforcement and the border issues; and the Health and Human Services Committee, which is health and human services. Those are some of the biggest committees and then they asked me, then they elected me to be chair on two of them and vice chair and I was like, ‘I don't know if I can do that. I just now got here. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do.' Then my brother, he was on council before and he was saying, ‘Don't say that, act like you know what you're doing.' I said, ‘Okay.' But I was real fortunate. I have an older brother who served in council for four years and he was the vice chair of council and then he became, right after he left his term there, he became the chairman of our district. Then I have another brother who is three years younger than me who also served after my oldest brother's four years; he served his four years but he had moved to another district so he was serving for that district. Then when he ended, a year later he became my vice chair of our nation. So I had those, they taught me a lot. I said, ‘Okay, I'll accept the chair's position and the vice chair.'

And it was really a lot, because at that time with domestic affairs we were going through the SORNA [Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act], it was a whole different change with the Adam Walsh [Act]. And we were going with the sex offender notification registry, the SORNA. And also the cards, I can't remember. I was trying to think of the cards, the tribal cards that we need to use like to cross over because, as our vice chair mentioned, we have membership on the Mexican side of the border and we have from what I understand last two years ago we had 11 communities that still have our membership in Mexico. And our land actually extended all the way to Mexico City and then this way to the ocean. And so we still have membership on that side. And so at the time that's what we were working on because we also have a big celebration on October 4th in Magdalena, Mexico and so we needed to make sure that our members were able to cross over and back. And so we were working on that at that time and so I knew that it was going to be a big challenge to be on the committee.

And then on the other committee that I served on at the time, the same time, was the Health and Human Services Committee and at that time we were working on the Indian Health Care Improvement Act and even that was a big issue. So I was really overwhelmed by so much but I just did my best. Also asking for like direct funding, that's what we pushed for instead of our funding going to the state and then down to the tribal level and then it ends up with us and it's nothing, hardly anything. And so we were working on direct funding.

So I was on those committees and it opened my eyes to a lot of things. I think I really learned fast. I remember when we were working on the Indian Health Care Improvement Act because when I got on health I was also selected by our tribe to sit on the National Indian Health Board. And then at the National Indian Health Board I was elected to serve as the secretary. So it was really an eye-opening [experience]. I remember when we were working on the Indian Health Care Improvement Act we were at the NIHB, National Indian Health Board office, and they called it the war room. And we were, as they were talking on the floor and trying to pass the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, we were sitting in this room and I think we sat in there for two days and as whatever was going to be passed. And if somebody spoke that we knew that we could reach the representatives, when they spoke and then we would call them and try to change their mind so they could vote for it or not change or add amendments that they were doing at the time. I remember they said, ‘Arizona, Arizona, Kyl and McCain, call them, call them and tell them why they should vote for that amendment.' And I was just like, ‘Wow, me?' ‘Yeah, call.' And so I did and then they, then Kyl wanted to meet -- I don't think he knew we were in D.C. -- and he wanted to meet face to face with me and ask me questions why he should vote for these amendments. And so at the time there was a youth group meeting at the Indian Museum, Native American Museum. And so one of the people there, anyway, she works part with NIHB. They were saying, we should go down there and get the youth and get to Kyl's office before he goes back on the floor. And so we walked. And at that time taxi cabs were on strike so we were walking. I had comfortable shoes, she had to take off her shoes, and we went and got the youth and within that time when we got there we had to educate them why, what we were going to talk to Senator Kyl about. And so we walked over there and we did what we needed to do and went back. And I was so happy that those youth were there and it really changed his mind I guess, Senator Kyl and how he was going to vote. So that was really an experience and I then I thought at the time, this is probably about three months into my, when I first got on council and I thought, ‘Wow, I think I'm going to like this after everything that just happened.' And I always tell my family, [because] they used to ask me, ‘How do you know all this?' -- my son. And I said, ‘Oh, I just wing it, I just wing it, I just get up there.' But I told him, ‘I pray about it, I pray every time, I'm always in prayer and whatever happens that's what is supposed to happen and I don't go back and say, 'Oh, I should have done this because you're going to be stuck back there.'' I always tell him that.

And even with our elders, whoever, I always feel that whoever voted you in, whether they voted for you or not but they're from your community, your district, that you listen to their needs. I know when I first got on council, one of my aunts came and she said, ‘I listened,' [because] we have a radio station too, KOHN 91.9 FM, the Voice of the Tohono O'odham Nation, that's the radio station. And she said, ‘I listen to you guys on the radio, but I don't even know what you guys are talking about.' And she didn't speak any English and so she said, ‘It would be really good if you guys talk in O'odham, our language.' And I said, ‘Okay.' So when we had session again the next time I spoke in O'odham [because] I am fluent and I spoke my language. And so now a lot of the elders will say, will ask me questions, ‘What was that about or what were you guys talking about?' And my aunt told me, she said, ‘Now I know what you guys are talking about and I'm really happy that you speak in O'odham when you sit there because then we can understand what you guys are talking about.' And so I try to listen in that way so they can understand them and get at their level, whoever it is, whether it's the youth or whomever, get at their level and speak their language. I know, there was a job announcement out for a youth advisor and so I put my name in it and I got an interview from our youth council and I got selected to be a youth advisor for our youth council. So I'm trying to teach them a lot on that, too, because they're upcoming leaders. We have two of our youth that are ambassadors at the national level and they go to meet with national leaders and so I'm trying to help them out.

But it's been, it's really been good. I learned from a lot of people. I think it was an eye-opening [experience] when I got on. But even though I knew, kind of knew before what it was all about. I had two of my grandparents who sat on council and kind of taught me back then, too. And I was like 18 when I was our tribal queen and I traveled and had to travel with a lot of the legislators; they were my chaperones. And then I thought, ‘Oh, some day I want to do this,' and so that was one of my goals. So I'm here. But one thing that I wanted to mention is be you, be yourself and also rest and relax [because] I know when you're a tribal leader everybody wants you here, there, even if it's at a dinner or a function, they always say to us, ‘Well, you weren't there. We had this and that and we didn't even see no tribal leaders there.' So you're just pulled every which way at the national level and in your own community. Even just at Head Start graduation they want you there, they want to see tribal leadership there, just everywhere, at elder's gathering, youth gathering. But it's okay to say ‘no' or ‘not yet' or ‘not today,' because sometimes it's really a lot to be everywhere. And I know that firsthand because you need to relax and rest.

On May 28 -- I remember this day -- I was the vice chair for the Budget and Finance Committee. We see over 136 budgets yearly that we go through. And so the chair, she wasn't going to be there so she asked me if I would do the meeting and I said, ‘Okay.' And I always try to do my homework ahead of time. I go through all that stuff so I know what questions to ask if I don't understand it. I start adding it to make sure everything comes out okay. So she said she wasn't going to be there and I said, ‘Okay, I can do it.' So I was really anxious. I got up early, I got up at...so for like the last two days before I was reading my stuff and so I got up early that morning at four. I told my husband, 'I'm going to be there early, set everything out and be ready for our meeting.' I got up at four. So I jumped out of bed when the alarm rang [because] I didn't want to be late. I jumped out and our meetings are not until nine but I wanted to be early. So I jumped out of bed, my side of the bed, the window's right there. So I stood up and I had my fingers there and I held on and then all of a sudden this side just gave in and I fell. And so my husband got out of bed and he got me and he set me on the bed and I laid down for awhile. And then I told him, ‘I'm going to get in the shower.' So I sat up and I fell again when I stood up and I was like... and he said, ‘Are you okay?' And I said, ‘I think so. I think I'm just nervous or anxious or something.' And so he said, ‘I'm going to call the ambulance.' And I said, ‘Wait, wait, wait, I'm going to go in the shower first.' So I went in the shower and I came back out and I was okay. And I sat on the bed and he said, ‘I already called the ambulance.' And I said, ‘Okay.' And so the ambulance came and they asked me, ‘Can you walk...' [because] we have steps. They said, ‘Can you walk out? Then, we'll put you on the stretcher.' And I said, ‘Okay.'

So I went out and they got me on the stretcher and went to Casa Grande Regional, which is about 45 miles. I got there and then we were in there and the doctor was talking to my husband. And then he came in and he said, ‘They're going to send you to Phoenix Heart Hospital.' And I was like, ‘Why?' And he said, ‘I don't know, they'll tell you and he's going to be in here to tell you.' And I said, ‘Okay.' And so I was laying there and then he came and he said, ‘We're going to send you to the Heart Hospital, they're going to need to do more tests.' And I said, ‘Okay.' And I said, ‘Was there something wrong with me ‘cause I don't feel any way right now?' And they said, ‘Well, they'll talk to you over there.' So I said, ‘Okay.' So when I got to the Heart Hospital, one of the doctors came in and he said, ‘Oh...' and I said, ‘What happened?' And he said, ‘Oh, did you know you had a stroke?' And I said, ‘No.' And he said, ‘It's all this...what do you do?' So he sat down and I went over my schedule, ‘I go in at five to work ‘cause I get like a stack this high of paper every day. I think we use like so many reams.' And so I said, ‘And I go through all my stuff, I get like over hundreds of emails. I sit down, I go through all them, delete and save what I need to. And then at  nine o'clock is our meeting and depends on how long it lasts and I stay there till like six, seven, eight, nine just to go through all that and fix everything and be ready for the next time ‘cause I'm not one to just not know the issue.' And so he said, ‘Well, that's what it is. You're too stressed out. You're really stressed out.' So he said, ‘I want you to slow down.' He said, ‘You have a clot in the back of your ear and...but we can't do anything right now. It's too hard to get into there so what we're going to do is try to flush it out, give you all these fluids and try to flush it out for it to move or go out.' And I said, ‘Okay.' And so I stayed there for like I think a month and they said it wouldn't move, it wouldn't do nothing, so they were going to let me go home but I had to promise them that I won't go into work at five, that I would wait till my meeting time, which is nine. And he said, ‘You can do stuff at your house. You can print it and bring it home so you can rest when you need to.' So I said, ‘Okay.'

And so since then, it's been, it's been kind of slow for me but I've learned to adjust. We have, I'm glad in our office we have, each of us have individual offices. I can close the door and now I lay down at noon and I rest. If I go in at five I take an hour break before my meeting at nine and I lay down. I have my blankets there, I have my cot there and I rest. And in the evening I rest before I go home because I have my grandson too and I play with him when I get home. So I think that it's really important that you rest. I know it's hard to do because you have so many, a tough schedule daily but I think you really need to rest because it's hard being in a position like that [because] having a stroke just slows you down. I'm still weak on my left side but I manage to do...I texted my husband this morning and I put, ‘I sure miss you,' [because] he helps me out in the morning. But it's okay. I get by. But it's just rest, rest and if you feel like you...only you know your body and what your body can take, nobody else knows your body, so when your body's telling you to rest, you rest. I try to use like the handicap door button because I can't...I don't like want to really push, push, push. And people look at me. And when I go shopping I use one of those carts [because] I know my body, only I know my body and how I feel. If I want to do that that day, then I will do that and it's okay because nobody else knows your story but you. That's okay to do that. Thank you."

Tohono O'odham Nursing Care Authority - Our Story

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

This video -- produced by the Tohono O'odham Nursing Care Authority using its monetary award from the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development's Honoring Nations awards program -- explains the history and development of the Archie Hendricks, Sr. Skilled Nursing Facility and the Tohono O'odham Hospice, which are located on the Tohono O'odham Nation in Arizona.

Native Nations
Citation

Tohono O'odham Nursing Care Authority. "Tohono O'odham Nursing Care Authority - Our Story." Rock Steady Productions. Sells, Arizona. 2009. Film.

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

[Singing]

Frances Stout:

“I was on what they call an advisory committee and the group was very passionate about what they did. They were determined to build a facility in spite of the cost. They were very determined to bring their people home. This past year we were honored by Harvard University and their project, which is called Honoring Nations, with an award. It gave us an opportunity to share our story and we feel that the information that we have given will help others perhaps be as successful as we are. This facility opened in November of 2003 and it’s located on sort of in the middle of the reservation close to the Mexican border on Indian Route 15.

[Singing]

When we share our story about success, we always mention passion, that we feel that if someone doesn’t champion the idea that probably it just won’t go. In our case, it was a group of ladies who just kept approaching the nation asking, ‘Do we have money now to start the program?’ And then it moved to an advisory group, which actually by that time, we had money. And we also need a government that listens to the people and who honors the elder because I think we’ve seen a lot of times when someone said, ‘Yes, we do honor our elders,’ but there was no action taken to care for them. In our case, we have executives who followed through with the money, appropriated the money and this gave us the ability to move forward with the building, staffing and the programs that we have here.

Funding for the facility comes from gaming, but not all of it. One third is from our, we’re reimbursed by ALTCS which is the Arizona Long-Term Care System, which is Medicaid. Then there are a few that are on Medicare. We also are licensed to take veterans so if we do the Veterans Administration would pay for their care here. There are very few private pay. The rest, anything that’s not paid for by any of these entities, then our tribe then pays for it.

As far as jobs go, we have, especially all our managers, they are all O’odham except one and they’ve all had special training. We’ve been able to have consultants come in and work directly with them, help them with policy making for their specific department, help them even if need be, be certified. So this has been a very outstanding thing for the people here on the reservation.”

Caroldene Garcia:

“After a couple of months of being here and having the board, dealing with the board, working with the board, I happened to have the opportunity with the administrator -- who also runs another facility, who has their own HR [human resources] department -- and was willing to provide that training for me. So the board allowed me to do that, set up a contract where she would monitor me and give me some advice and help me upgrade my skills that I already had in place.”

Frances Stout:

“We truly bend over backwards to bring our staff in and to keep them. We have bonuses for our nurses. The benefits for the, that the nation provides for all their employees are very, very good. This includes medical care, dental care and a 401k. We do have housing and we have housing also that takes care of the shifts. For instance, if we have person on 12-hour shift and they want to spend a couple of nights here, we have facilities for them.

[Singing]

In the area of communication, we do try to communicate quarterly with the districts, with our oversight committee, with the executive. And we do feel that any plan that we have, we try to maintain transparency with everyone so that there are no surprises to anyone and then we also get their input. We find now that planning is very important and we try to be very sure that we implement. It’s not just a plan that’s put on the shelf. We do work at implementing every goal.”

Charlene Conde:

“In addition to the Archie Hendricks Skilled Nursing Facility, we also have the hospice program. The hospice program is taking care of O’odham people that are reaching their life’s end. Before we had a hospice here on the nation, our people had to go out to the city and the hospitals, Tucson, wherever they’re sent to get hospice care there, so this is a good thing for our people. I worked as a CNE on the nursing unit before I transferred over to the hospice care. I wanted to work for my people.”

[Singing]

Frances Stout:

“We have a mission. This mission has not been changed since I’ve been because it’s such a strong mission. It sets up the reason for our existence and we feel very passionate about it. It talks about continuum of care and that’s one of the new passions that we have is hoping to put together a model of continuum of care for our aging population we do have, beginning with the nursing care facility here.

[Music]

We also have started an organization or a consortium. It’s called the Elder Care Consortium and we realized that there were many issues and this group alone could not solve the problems. So we, this is how the consortium came into being and we, it consists of the tribal Health and Human Services, the Indian Health Service, and the community college, and of course us. So the four entities meet monthly, we talk about the issues of aging and we have put together a white paper for the new administration so that they see what we see and we also have a few recommendations for them. We will continue to update that white paper as time goes on.”

Priscilla Ortiz:

“I work with children. I worked at a school and then from school I went to elders and I enjoy doing what I do. I love it. I like being a clown, I like letting the residents know that we’re here for them. And we did wonderful. I didn’t understand their language. Now they’re teaching me how to say certain words. I’ll say it, they laugh at me, but they correct me, which is okay. It’s been a rewarding thing for me to learn their language.”

[O'odham language]

Frances Stout:

“I think right in the beginning that was the main thing we wanted to do was to deliver care in accordance with what we call Himdag. Himdag is our way of life and that includes foods that we eat, some of the traditions that we do and the medicine person, having the medicine person come and always be I would say almost on call.”

Lisa Folson:

“We made this healing room, one of the nurses Richard Hix made this, painted this area and it was requested on behalf of the staff, O’odham here mainly to bring the medicine people in and to have healing here. It’s really good that we have this because there’s a lot of people that don’t recognize our culture, don’t recognize our tradition, but because we’re at home, they see this as something that we need and it’s just, it’s like you going to the doctor, or it's somewhere where you can pray. So it would be something like your church or your temple.”

Frances Stout:

“There were many obstacles. I think the first one was staffing the place. We do not have very many professional people here on the reservation so it was, we needed to go out and look. And I mean we went all over the country looking for a DON, an administrator. The administrator has to be licensed and we went through three administrators, the third one being our present administrator, and he’s done a fantastic job. So that was the biggest obstacle. The other was finding a Director of Nursing Services and we went through several before we found our present one who was willing to stay and I think she’s doing a very good job. That obstacle is the fact that we are out in the middle of the desert and we are, people, our professional people have to commute and that gets old after awhile. I think we pretty much accomplished what we set out and that’s get the building up, to bring most of our people home. There are a few who cannot come home because of the level of care. However, we do keep in touch with those people. Perhaps at some time in their life they may be able to come home.”

[Singing] 

Frances Stout: Archie Hendricks, Sr. Skilled Nursing Facility and Tohono O'odham Hospice

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

In this interview with the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development's Joseph P. Kalt, Frances Stout of the Tohono O'odham Nursing Care Authority discusses what led the Tohono O'odham Nation to establish the Archie Hendricks, Sr. Skilled Nursing Facility and Tohono O'odham Hospice, and the positive differences the facilities have made for the nation and its citizens.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Stout, Frances. "Archie Hendricks, Sr. Skilled Nursing Facility and Tohono O'odham Hospice." Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 18, 2011. Interview.

Joseph Kalt:

Hi. I’m here with Frances Stout. Frances is chair of the board of the Tohono O’odham Nation’s Nursing Care Authority, which governs an award-winning program, a nursing home called the Archie Hendricks, Sr. Skilled Nursing Facility. And Frances, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Let me first ask you just to describe this...I’ve been there, I’ve seen your nursing home operations. It’s state of the art; it’s truly fascinating what you’ve accomplished. Describe what the Archie Hendricks Sr. Nursing Care Facility does, the kind of services you provide, and what you’re trying to do with it.

Frances Stout:

Well, Archie started because of our elders were far away from their home and we really needed to bring them back. They were lonely, they were...it was just painful for everybody, families. And so when Archie opened, we immediately had many elders come in and mainly because they were frail and families couldn’t take care of them. So one of the things I think we did right in the beginning was to provide comfort and food that they could eat, plus they had people who spoke to them in their own language. And they also had family visiting. This was a biggie. But I think the main thing that really, I would say, made a difference was in the ability of the elder to relax or to feel the comfort. And that took a while. As you know, when you move elders from one facility to another, it’s very painful and it’s a big adjustment. So when they came from the Tucson homes into our facility, there was an adjustment and you really could see it, and it took a while for them to say, ‘Am I really here?’ So the hospice program is new and right now we have...and it’s actually a new concept for our people, too. We don’t normally talk about death, we don’t normally talk about, ‘When I get to that point, do this for me.’ Those are things you never talk about. So it’s been new and we’ve...although we have a program where they...it’s called 'Pathways.' We have a program now where our people go into the home and talk with them about medications they’re taking, the type of treatment they’re getting and maybe getting them to the point where they feel or they can comfortably say, ‘I don’t think I want to go back for any more treatment. I don’t want any more procedures done on me. I would like to just pass comfortably.’ So this is what Pathways does and they may either stay in their home or they may come to the facility.

Joseph Kalt:

When we go around Indian Country, tribe after tribe is struggling with the same issue you faced of the elderly essentially having to leave home at a critical time in their lives when they’d like to be with their families. And tribe after tribe asks us, ‘How did Tohono O’odham do that?’ How did you do it? This is a world-class facility at Tohono O’odham Nation. What was the impetus and what was the drive behind this that allowed it to happen and now to be sustained is this premier operation in the United States?

Frances Stout:

Well, as you know, most Natives have always cared for their people from birth to death, but with all the lifestyle changes and all the things that have entered into our lives, we no longer can do that. And there are families that still make an effort. In fact, we’ve had people say, ‘I have to quit work now because I’m going to start taking care of my grandmother.’ But that’s a small number, very small number who can do that. The majority of them just finally say, ‘It’s too much. We have to take you away or put you somewhere.’ So the people...I think there was a small group who really felt badly and felt like we really needed to work towards getting a home on our reservation and that little task force -- which was I believe all women at first -- would come to the administrator’s office or our chair, the chair of our nation’s office and ask were there monies? And no, there weren’t any monies. But they were persistent and after a while, when money was available, the chair did call them and say, ‘Here’s the money. Now who’s going to stand up and work towards bringing the home here?’ And then there was silence in the council and finally two of the women stood up and said, ‘We’ll do it.’

So they again set up what they called an advisory group and this is when I came in. And they worked very hard. They...and I think they spent their money wisely. They got an excellent consulting service who had done nursing homes in the past and they were wonderful. They helped us put together a plan, a business plan, a fantastic business plan. In fact, every once in awhile even now we look at it because whoever wrote it was very future-oriented and that’s what you need. We are not...most Natives are not future-oriented. We live...we’ve had to live from day to day, so it’s difficult to plan sometimes.

But I think the board, when they finally got to the point where the board members were appointed, that was when I think we decided, ‘How are we going to do this? We’ve got the money, we’ve got the architect, we’ve got the plans and we’re ready for construction.’ And as soon as construction started, it was difficult to really realize this was happening. But the board I think was very...I wasn’t on the first board. It was the second...a position opened up and then I joined the board and I’ve been on it ever since. The board that I work with now is fantastic. They are very passionate. They’re very, as I said, strategic in their thinking and every once in a while...in the past...the past board I think, every once in a while somebody got a wild hair and off they went in a different direction. So we try to stay focused and it has worked for us.

Joseph Kalt:

The facility and the programs are simply world-class because you have world-class care being provided to people as you say in their own language, with their own families around and you keep winning awards and rightly so. I know that the Archie Hendricks Sr. Nursing Facility has won one of the Honoring Nations awards from the Harvard Project. Our role of course is to take your wonderful stories and try to document them so other tribes can learn from them. From your perspective, things like the Honoring Nations award, have you found that that helps you? Have other tribes sought information from you directly? What role has it played in your work?

Frances Stout:

I think the main thing it did for us, at least for the board, was it validated the fact that we were going in the right direction. It really made a difference. After we won that award, we thought, ‘We are...we must be doing something right.’ And I think that just motivated us to work even harder. Yes, we’ve had some tribes come down, take a look, and one of the biggies that seems to be a big obstacle is money. The nation has to buy into it and then they have to get the money somewhere. We’re very fortunate to have gaming and we’re very fortunate that they have it set aside and...

Joseph Kalt:

For the facility?

Frances Stout:

And they are willing to, as I said, give us subsidy. We just went for our second, oh no, our...is it our third or our second request and we got that without...

Joseph Kalt:

From the council?

Frances Stout:

From the council. Well, we first have to go to the districts and let them know that we...and have their approval. That’s always I think a good way to find out what the people are thinking about your facility, what’s going on there.

Joseph Kalt:

Well, I can say you certainly are on the right track and we thank you for participating with us and allowing us to tell your story across Indian Country 'cause as I said earlier, tribe after tribe is struggling with this issue and your leadership has really been phenomenally important to all of Indian Country so thank you very much. Thank you.

Frances Stout:

Thank you for letting me tell the story.

Joseph Kalt:

Great.

Honoring Nations: Frances Stout: Archie Hendricks, Sr. Skilled Nursing Facility and Tohono O'odham Hospice

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Frances Stout, Chairperson of the Tohono O'odham Nursing Care Authority, shares the inspiring story of the Tohono O'odham Nation's state-of-the-art elder care facility.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Stout, Frances. "Archie Hendricks, Sr. Skilled Nursing Facility and Tohono O'odham Hospice." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 16-18, 2009. Presentation.

"Good afternoon. My name is Frances Stout and I'm Chairperson, as she said, of the Tohono O'odham Nursing Care Authority, which is the governing body for the Archie Hendricks Skilled Nursing Facility and the Tohono O'odham Hospice, which are both located on our Tohono O'odham Nation. First we wish to thank Harvard Honoring Nations for the privilege of telling our story. Harvard's program motivated us to ask ourselves, 'What worked and why?' We hope that parts of our story will resonate with you today.

Let me begin by telling you a little bit about our Nation. It is the second-largest tribe in Arizona as measured by population and its geographic size. There are approximately 29,000 enrolled members and of these, 15,000 reside on the Nation. The Nation is comprised of four reservations which total about 2.8 million acres, about the size of Connecticut. Our elder population number around 4,000. These are elders over 55 years of age. Some speak only O'odham, which is our Native language. Others have strong -- most of them have strong cultural ties and strong family ties. Many are active in the workforce and some in tribal leadership. Our Nation suffers from chronic diseases that interfere with quality of life. Fifty-eight precent live with onset adult diabetes, 63 percent have been diagnosed with high blood pressure. These figures were compiled from the tribal health department in 2002 on elders who were 60 years and older. In addition, the survey reported that 8 percent of the surveyed population felt depressed all or most of the time and that 11 percent considered their health status poor.

The Nation does not have sufficient housing for its membership, and this makes it very difficult to care for the elder at home. Other issues of the O'odham elder include lack of transportation, social service, and home-based health services. In addition, there is elder abuse. However, our Nation has enacted an Adult Protection Services, an ordinance which has improved the situation. Our facility is a shelter for the elders for this program. Until the opening of our skilled care nursing facility and hospice, there were no long term care services on the Nation. Does this all sound familiar? I think all of us can in one way or another relate to some of these issues. And in your program, I think it described it as an endless cycle of poverty and social distress. But I also remember what Oren said, 'What happens to us is in our hands.' So this is pretty much how we work, what we were thinking when our program came into being. About 10 years ago, the elders who needed long-term care had to be sent away to neighboring cities. This was very painful for everyone. The families reported when they returned from visiting that their loved ones were in worse shape. They were not eating because the food was foreign, they were not speaking because the language was foreign and they wanted to come home. This outcry began the process to bring our elders home. An advisory group worked for about a decade to realize the dream of having our own skilled nursing facility. On November 17th, 2003, we opened the doors of Archie Hendricks, Sr. Skilled Nursing Facility. It is now home to 60 elders. In 2007, our hospice program began.

Our facility, the Archie Hendricks Skilled Nursing Facility, is a state-of-the-art facility. The design includes large social areas for gathering and community activities. We also respond to our cultural needs by a separate healing room for our residents and medicine people. Critical to the quality of care provided to our people, is the quality of professional staff. The board believed that a combination of highly trained staff and sufficient staff to provide care would result in a higher quality of care. We established a ratio of one certified nursing assistant for every five residents. Our facility currently employs 135, of whom 80 percent are O'odham or Native American. Our turnover rate is less than 2 percent. This compares favorably to any jurisdiction. For example, the annual turnover rate for certified nursing assistants within the state of Arizona is 84 percent. We believe our strategy, staffing strategy, was and is effective as evidenced by our receipt of a five-star rating from the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid. The awards that this facility has received speak for the caliber of our staff. In 2009 our facility received, as I said, from the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid, a five-star rating. This is based on positive results of an annual federal inspection. Superior staffing and positive performance reflected in the key quality indicators. Only 14 percent of homes in the United States receive five stars. We are a finalist in A Winning Workplace. This is a small business award from The Wall Street Journal, businesses that provide competitive wages, superior benefits, opportunities for growth and development, opportunities for training and education. This describes our facility. Tucson Indian Health Service awarded us the Area Director's Award. The Tucson Indian Health Service director selects programs, services and individuals who have partnered with and enhanced the healthcare in the service area. The National Indian Health Board awarded us the Local Impact Award. Selections for this award is based on, as the word implies, a health program that has impact on the health and well being of Native Americans at the local level. And of course in 2008, we received highest honor awards from Honoring Nations. This award, as you all know, is based on successful contribution toward Native American self-determination, economic development and tribal sovereignty.

A little bit about our governance; two things that we are very, that we feel are very important. One is that we have to know who we are. We identify ourselves -- and we do this every time we present to our council or to our villages -- because once they know who we are and we do this over and over again, once they know who we are they began to trust us and when we bring new programs or come for requests, they know that we know who we are and that we know what we're asking for. The other thing is our purpose. A purpose tells us where we're going and this is something that I think the board feels is very important because the leadership, we are responsible for the continuum of care of people on our Nation. We operate the skilled nursing care facility and hospice. Our charter established and approved by our Nation's government provides substantial independence to the seven-member board. Our board is comprised of tribal leaders with relevant professional and technical knowledge in nursing, business and care giving. In addition to providing policy direction, we insure our cultural values. O'odham Himdag is part of all that is done within our service. In creating TONCA, the Nation directed us to take a leadership role in providing a continuum of care and services to meet the changing needs of our aging population. To establish this mission, the TONCA board invests in projects and programs that will bring value in the future.

In closing, we do strategic planning for the facility, but it is now apparent we need to connect, communicate and collaborate with other entities on the Nation that are charged with responding to the growing social and health needs of our Nation. We are convinced that we will have better coordination and reduce fragmentation of the services that currently hinder the provision of services to the aging O'odham population.

Thank you."

Ned Norris, Jr.: What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Tohono O'odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris discusses some things he wished he knew before he took office as chairman of his nation, and shares some strategies that have worked for him as he works with his fellow leaders and the O'odham people to strengthen their nation.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

Norris, Jr., Ned. "What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office." Emerging Leaders Seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 23, 2011. Presentation. 

"Wow, Chairwoman Miles. I cannot disagree with anything that she shared with us today. That is so...everything that she said has been so true about leadership. And I'm sitting here and I'm listening to you and I'm listening to her comments and she's kind of going into a little bit more of her experience in those situations and I'm like, "˜Wow, I thought I was the only one that had that kind of an experience.' And I admire you. You may not want to do it again, but you need to do it again. You need to do it again. Your people need you in that way.

Well, I wanted to start out with a quote. I usually try to do that, starting out with a quote and ending with a quote. And the quote that I want to start out with, people ask me over time -- like Rebecca [Miles] said -- I serve my people, started in 1977. My first job with my nation was the assistant director for our children's home and I've served in some capacity since then and continue to serve today. And people over years have said, "˜How do you do what you're doing? How do you get to where you're at? How do you become the success that we see you at or being?' And I don't know the answer to that, but there's a quote here that I wanted to share with you. It says, "˜There are no secrets in success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.' Preparation, hard work, and learning from failure. And that was Colin Powell who is attributed to that quote. And when I think about the question, when it's asked, "˜How do you become the success that you are?' I knew in 1977 when I took my first job with my nation that I wanted to do the job that I'm doing today. I knew in 1977 when I came out to my people and I saw the situations that we were faced with that I wanted to do the job that I'm doing today. And so consciously and subconsciously, you kind of prepare yourself over the years. And there are things that happen in your life, there are definitely things that have happened in my life that probably wouldn't, shouldn't have given me the opportunity to serve in this capacity that I'm serving as chair of my people. And we think about some of those things and we think about what are we doing, how do we prepare ourselves to lead, how do we prepare ourselves to lead a nation, and what does that even mean?

Somebody asked me when I was preparing to go to my first day in my capacity as chairman of the nation, of the [Tohono] O'odham Nation, and they said, "˜So what does a chair do its first day?' And it kind of -- as Chairwoman Miles had indicated -- you kind of come into this thing not really knowing exactly what it is -- in my term -- I got myself into. So what does a chair do on his first day? I don't know what a chair does on his first day. I've never been in that situation before. So I go into my office and I sit there, I sit in the office and I'm looking around, my wife's with me, one of my grandsons is with me. And I kind of look around and I think to myself, "˜Oh, my goodness, what did I just do? What did I get myself into?' And the reality of this whole leadership thing, this whole Chair of the Tohono O'odham Nation, chair of a people that's 28,000 members strong, chair of a land base that's 2.8 million square acres in size, and I thought to myself, "˜Wow, what is this? What am I going to do?'

And so I think everything that Chairwoman Miles has said, you've got to begin to think about, 'Okay, what is the condition of the O'odham Nation as I'm coming into office?' And she talked about campaigning for change. One of the things that Vice Chairman Isidro Lopez and I did when we campaigned, and to date this creative time of year is campaign season for us, because my term as chair will end unless I'm re-elected in May, in a couple of months now. But when we were campaigning for this office, we were campaigning not for change. We were campaigning not to say, "˜We promise you this, or we're going to do this when we get into office, or we're going to address these kinds of issues when we get into office,' because I knew in doing that, I knew in running for this office that I don't know what it is going to take in order to make those kind of changes. People are going to remember the commitments that you make. People are going to remember, "˜Well, you know, you said when you were running you're going to get rid of so-and-so. Four years later, they're still here, why haven't you done that?' No, we can't do that. You can't campaign on the platform of change in that way.

And as other comments were made, you're establishing your leadership. So what does that mean? So you establish leadership and as a leader you're a problem solver. What kinds of problems...and there's a lot of things that you inherit in the office from previous administrations. There are things that you realize need to be addressed or there are things that the previous administration has done that you want to try and continue. And regardless of who started addressing that particular issue, you shouldn't be so concerned that people are going to say, "˜Well, the only reason he's doing it is because Chairperson So-and-So started that.' If you believe in your heart that that's the best way that you want to move forward on that particular issue, why reinvent the wheel? Why go back and say, "˜Well, you know what, I didn't agree with that administration so we're going to do it this way,' and it all ends up accomplishing the same task, the same thing. It makes no sense.

So one of the single aspects, the [most] difficult single aspects of my job was thinking that after some 30 years of service before being elected as chairman, that I knew everything. Because in getting into the office, I realized, after 30 years, Ned Norris, you don't know everything about the government, the tribal government. You don't know it all. Yet, in the back of my mind thought, "˜I've got 30 years of service, man, I'm going to come in here and I'm going to do a bunch of stuff,' not realizing that that bunch of stuff that I want to do isn't going to happen overnight. So that was difficult for me thinking in my mind, in the back of my mind that I was going to be able to make the kinds of decisions and make the kinds of changes that we needed to make because my 30 years was going to help me do that, and it didn't. And so I guess that was probably one of the surprising, unexpected aspects of my job as well, with what I do as well, is coming to terms with the fact that you don't know it all. And your 30 years of experience -- granted, yes, will help in many ways -- your leadership, your direction, but you don't know it all.

I think there are a lot of topics...one of the questions was, 'Were there topics, for example financial literacy, federal laws that you had to play catch up?' As I was introduced, I spent some 14 years as a tribal judge, as a non-attorney tribal judge and in my different academic experiences and different work experiences I've come to understand federal law, tribal law, state law and so on and so forth and how it works or how it doesn't work. And then in my experience a little over ten years working with our gaming enterprise, I really began to understand this whole concept of making money -- foreign concept to us as Native people because we've never had any money. We really never had any money to make and so I think that those experiences really helped me better understand the nation's finances.

And let me share this story with you because it was kind of a lifesaver for us, the Tohono O'odham people. But I don't know how many of you take time to read your audits. Sometimes... we get audited every year, many of our nations do; you have to anyway. And how many of you take some time to read your audits? I guess that's one of the first things Vice Chairman Lopez and I did when we got into office. My gaming experience said, "˜Okay, what have our audits told us the last five years?' So I said, "˜I want to see what those audits look like so let me have those audits for the last five years.' And I started looking through these audits and I started to see that there was always this ending balance of $5 million, $10 million, $15 million that appear to just be sitting there as a result of an audit. And so I asked our tribal treasurer, I said, "˜What is this dollar figure here, what does it mean? Go back and reconcile those years of those audits and come back and tell me what those dollar figures are.' And the treasurer did that. The nation, the Tohono O'odham Nation, when we came into office, we were spending more money than what we had. We were in a deficit where, and for historically the Nation has always been in a deficit spending more money than what the general revenue fund had. But what the treasurer came back and found out was, you know what, that's unobligated money from the previous fiscal years. That's unobligated money from the previous fiscal years. And what he ended up finding was $60 million of unobligated money from previous fiscal years. And I thought, 'My goodness! Jackpot. Jackpot. We can redo the budget, we can put ourselves in the black and we might have a little bit of money to start addressing some of the issues, some of the things that we wanted to address during our administration.'

We got elected in May of 2007, four-year term's coming up May of 2011. The recession hit. One year into our administration, our revenues, our projected revenues of 'X' millions of dollars from gaming was up here, just about a year after our first year of our administration was now plummeting down to here. And so what we've been able to do is survive these last three years on that surplus of revenue. And so I share this with you because I think having an understanding of big financial situations, financial structure, I think it's critically important to a tribal leader to understand. And even if you don't understand it, you've got resources I would hope within your tribal government that will help you better understand those. I've worked for my tribe for years and we had to make sure we understood where every single penny was. I'd get an invoice across my desk for $2,000 or $3,000 and I'm saying, "˜Where the heck are we spending $2,000 – $3,000 on?' In the gaming business, I'd get invoices across my desk and I was going to pay a single bill $20,000 - $25,000 and I'm like, 'My goodness, what are we spending this money on?' But that's not uncommon in that particular industry. And I'm not suggesting that we not make sure that we hold ourselves accountable. We have to hold ourselves accountable, but we need to understand big finance. We need to understand that, that's critical.

In addition to Chairwoman's comments, is there anything you wish you had done differently? When you get into office and when I got into office, I had every intention of making my presence available to our O'odham public -- to those villages, to those districts, to those communities. I wanted to be able to go out to them and just sit in the back of the room in their community meeting or their district meeting and listen to what and do that on a regular basis. And after...and over the years I'd comment, 'Once you get into office you get sucked into this hole and you can't get out.' Well, I got sucked into that hole and you don't realize it because you've got an enormous amount of issues that you're having to deal with. You've got an enormous amount of decisions that you need to make. You've got an enormous amount of direction that you need to establish that you just get so overwhelmed that that simple idea of going out to the communities and meeting with the folks and keeping that contact and sitting in the back of the room listening to what they have to say, it sort of went away, unintentionally. So I think in that respect what I would do differently is you've got to make time to be able to do that. You have got to make the time to sit back and go to the people that you've been elected to serve regardless of whether or not those people are in your support or not.

One of the things that, last things that I want to share with you, based on your experience, what skills, values and knowledge do leaders need to possess in order to lead effectively? One of the things that I got, I got a gift from one of our banks not long ago and the gift is a Harvard Business Review's 10 Must Reads in this book here, On Leadership. It says, "˜If you read nothing else on leadership, read these definitive articles from Harvard Business Review.' And I thought to myself, what does Harvard Business Review know about tribal government? What do they know about the Tohono O'odham Nation? But I took a look at the stuff in this, the ten articles, and I was really impressed with how much, at least the authors, in some of those articles knew about leadership. And one in particular was an author by the name of Daniel Coleman. He's author of Emotional Intelligence, 1995 and the co-author of Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, Harvard Business School 2002. And what I liked about that particular article is because, is that what Coleman distinguishes in great leaders from merely good ones. He talks about that and he talks about emotional intelligence and he talks about five skills that enables leaders to maximize their own and their followers' performance. Maximize their own and their followers' performance.

Let me talk about those skills [because] he talks about self-awareness as one of those five skills of emotional intelligence. In self-awareness you've got to know one's strengths, you've got to know one's weaknesses, you've go to know what drives that individual and you've got to have self-awareness on what impacts that has on others. That's one of those emotional intelligences that he talks about. Another one is self-regulation -- controlling or redirecting disruptive impulses and moods. Motivation is another one. Relishing achievements for its own sake. Relishing achievements for its own sake, not for your sake but for the sake of the achievement itself. Too many times we get leaders that come into office and say, "˜Well, I did this, I did that.' Everything's, "˜Me, me, me.' In my humble opinion, that's not a leader, because in my opinion my role is to help and provide direction and to take on those challenges that we face as tribal leaders and tribal communities, to try and take on the challenges of addressing those issues and coming to some resolution in some way.

Our campaign four years ago ran on the theme 'working together.' In O'odham [O'odham Language], "˜all of us together.' And that's what we wanted to do, that's what we wanted to bring to the table, the idea that we were going to re-establish those bridges that were no longer there between the other governmental entities within our nation, within the O'odham Nation. Our legislative, our executive, a lot of times didn't see eye to eye. We wanted to re-establish those relationships and I think we've done a pretty accurate job at that, four years later. But one of the other emotional intelligence skills is empathy, understanding other people's emotional makeup. Empathy: understanding other people's emotional makeup. And the fifth one that he talks about, Coleman talks about is social skills. Building rapport with others to move them in desired direction. Building rapport with others to move them in desired direction. Think about those. When I read that article, I thought, "˜My goodness, this guy wrote my article before I could.' But something to think about.

And I'm going to ahead and leave you because I think I've used up all my time. But I want to leave this thought with you, this quote. And it says, "˜The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he or she wants to get done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them when they do it.' Think about that. We're not micro managers, we're leaders. We're directors. We bring in people around us that are going to serve the agenda that we want to accomplish, that are going to be able to address those challenges, those issues that we face as tribal leaders. Let them do their job, but hold them accountable. Let them do what you ask them to do. If I'm going to be meddling in what I'm asking them to do or if I directed them to do, why do I need them? So thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share these thoughts with you. Have a good one." 

Ned Norris, Jr.: Perspectives on Leadership and Nation Building

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Tohono O'odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris, Jr. speaks to aspiring and current Native nation leaders about the keys to being an effective leader and shares his personal experiences in preparing to become the leader of his nation.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Norris, Jr., Ned. "Perspectives on Leadership and Nation Building." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 26, 2008. Presentation.

"Thank you. How is everybody? Good. Alright! Thank you, Manley Begay, for that introduction. I just wanted to take this opportunity to welcome you, welcoming you to the Tohono O'odham Nation and welcome to our home. This is one of our business facilities that we just opened in the beginning of January [2008] and we're pretty proud of it. We're proud of what we have been able to accomplish thus far, and realize that there are more things ahead of us that we know and that we may not know that we'd like to accomplish for our people. This gives us the opportunity to establish some economic base for us to do some of those things that we just dream about.

Just a little bit of a background, the Tohono O'odham Nation, when you think about our ancestral lands, you will know that the ancestral lands of the O'odham include those lands which are where the city of Tucson sits today all the way east to where the Rincon Mountains are at, all the way north to the city of Phoenix and Scottsdale is at, all the way west to where the Colorado River is, and all the way south some 130 miles south of what is not the international border of Mexico. Those are ancestral lands of our people, of the O'odham. Today, we ended up with 2.8 million square acres and always tell an audience, 'We're 2.8 million square acres small.' And usually when you have a non-Indian audience, they kind of look at you like, "˜What are you talking about? 2.8 million square acres is a pretty big piece of land.' But when you think about the ancestral lands of our people, 2.8 million is nothing. So I wanted to give you that background. Also, we have about 28,000 enrolled tribal members, so there are about 28,000 of us running around here in the United States and in some other countries. In fact, we have about 1,500 enrolled tribal members that live in Mexico and not necessarily because they want to live in Mexico, it is because when the international border was established, they cut them off from the rest of the people, from the rest of the land here. We continue to have about nine communities that still exist within Mexico, and my trip to Nogales, Sonora this afternoon is meeting with a couple of members of the O'odham in Mexico, because the lawyer that they are working with can't get on this side of the United States, so we're going to go meet with him down there and talk a little bit about land issues that are important to us that still exist in Mexico.

And actually I wanted to get a feel of the audience. I was asking Manley Begay, "˜Who is the audience here?' And he said to me that "˜there are newly elected tribal leaders here, there are aspiring tribal leaders here.' I was speaking to one of the young persons here and they said there are some people from a college up in Phoenix area that are here to learn about leadership, and learn about what you might want to be thinking about as you are emerging into a tribal leader. And then I was also told that there are some emerging old tribal leaders, and I'm like emerging old tribal leaders, and I'm wondering what he's talking about. And I'm assuming that they are those newly tribal elected leaders that, for some odd reason, you decided to get back into the thick of the politics and get elected again, so you're back. It's a return of the old leadership. He pointed out a couple of you to me, take for example, "˜So and so over there or so and so over there, they are old returning tribal leaders.' And I won't point you out because you know who you are.

I was sharing with Manley that I knew I wanted to do this job 30 years ago. I knew I wanted to be the Chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation 30 years ago. When I started my first job in 1977 as the assistant director for the Tohono O'odham Nation Children's Home, I knew someday I wanted to hold this job. And over the course of the last 30 years, I have done different things -- consciously and sub-consciously -- preparing myself for this day, preparing myself for this job. And people ask me today, "˜How do you like what you're doing?' And I tell them, "˜I love it. I love this job. It's everything that a job needs to be. It's challenging, it's exciting, it's frustrating, it's disappointing.' All of those things that our jobs need to be in order for us to grow, in order for us to challenge ourselves, in order for us to be challenged. We have to have all of those experiences, all of those ingredients in order for us to be successful as tribal leaders. And I know that over the course of the last 30 years, there are things that I have done in my life that probably put question on whether or not I should or shouldn't be elected as a tribal leader. And I think every single person in this room has done something questionable in their lives that may have put question on whether or not we should elect you or not elect you, but you know, we learn from those situations as well. We learn from those mistakes. We learn from that part of the journey in our lives in order to prepare us for what we are doing today as tribal leaders. And that's the way I like to look at it. That is the way I like to look at the past 30 years. And I've been married for 35 years. My wife -- and actually I tell this story -- that my wife has put up with me for 35 years. We just had our 35th anniversary in February, and I'll share with you now that in the 35 years that we have been together, there have been things that I've done that would have probably required her or wanted her or forced her to leave me, but she didn't. She didn't leave me, she didn't give up on me. For some reason, she believed in me and my ability and my capability, and I love her more today for not giving up on me because she stood by me. And I always say that, "˜Behind a good man, there is always an even greater woman,' the woman that is there to help us, to pick us up when we fall. To help us gain the strength or regain the strength we may have lost at different times in our life, and so I appreciate that of her.

You know, over the course of my years involved in politics -- and we see sometimes on the TV commercials, the commercial about Michael Jordan and there was a commercial that said, "˜Be like Mike.' It caught a lot of the attention of our young people: "˜Be like Mike Jordan, buy these $250 tennis shoes and you can be like Mike Jordan. Be like Mike.' Well, you know, there's people in my life that I would like to be like, that I had sat back years ago watching leaders, watching aspiring leaders, watching people over the course of time that I have said, "˜You know what, I'd like to be like that person. I'd like to be like that leader. I'd like to be able to think like that leader. I'd like to be able to have the good heart that I see that leader have and be like them.' Just like the commercial is saying, "˜Be like Mike.' There are several Mike people out there that I would like to have been like. You know it really is an honor for me to be standing in front of you sharing these thoughts with you, because one of those people that were "˜Be like Mike' for me in my life' was Dr. Peterson Zah. I am standing up here thinking, "˜What am I going to be able to say to Dr. Zah that is going to make any sense or that he hasn't already said or has already experienced himself?' So it is an honor for me to stand in front of you, sir, and be able to share some thoughts with you, because I'm thinking, "˜Man, I can't share, I can't teach you anything.' But it's out of that respect that I hold for him as a leader, as a continued leader, and what he's been able to do not only for his own people, but for all nations, all tribal people nationwide.

One of the things that I have shared with different audiences is some of these quotes. I keep these, I keep some quotes in this thing that we use now called this Blackberry, and I keep these in here because at times over the course of, you know, when you are feeling down or when you are feeling like maybe you're questioning what you are doing or questioning the worth of what you are doing, I go back to these and I start reading these. One of the things that I've always thought about -- and I try to live my own leadership ability after -- is this quote, and it says, "˜You can accomplish anything in life provided that you do not mind who gets the credit.' 'You can accomplish anything in life provided that you do not mind who gets the credit.' As leaders -- and that quote is attributed to Harry Truman -- as leaders I like to think of myself in that way. That what I have to do -- the people have entrusted in me their trust to lead them and to guide them for the term that I have been elected. As a leader, I should not ever take advantage of that trust that the people have placed in me. I should never take the position that, "˜That was my idea, not yours.' I should not take the position that, "˜It's my way or the highway.' As a leader, that should not -- that's not something that we should be doing as tribal leaders. The [Tohono O'odham Nation] vice chairman and I -- Isidro Lopez -- when we ran for these offices, we ran on a campaign that we say in O'odham, it says [O'odham language], and [O'odham language] translates to "˜All of us together.' And what we wanted to be able to do was to bring the people together, to bring our people together, to give our people the opportunity to actively participate in the decision-making process. Too many times, we get tribal leadership that think they are going to impose those decisions on the people. We can't accomplish that, we can't accomplish what we need to accomplish if we are going to dictate to our people. That's not our purpose. Our purpose is to lead, our purpose is to work together, and our purpose is to bring our people to the table so that we can hear what they have to say. And there have been times in the last nine months that the Vice Chairman and I have served in office that people have said, "˜So much for [O'odham language], because I thought we were going to work together.' And that is because they were on the short end of a decision. You know, and we have said that this theme is going to be the heartbeat of our tenure in office. We intend to make sure of that. Now, people need to understand that we're not always going to agree on what the outcome of a decision is. We can't expect to always agree. There are going to be things that we disagree with each other on, but we are always going to make the effort to try and involve you in the decision-making process. So that is what I wanted to share with you on that.

The other quote that I look at, that I've always tried to model my leadership after, it says here, "˜The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he or she wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.' You know we're elected leaders, we are elected to lead, we are elected to direct. I always make comments to my staff, I say, "˜We only are as good as you are.' You know, we end up getting the credit for a lot of the work that a lot of other people that aren't elected leaders do, and I try every time to let my staff do what they need to do in order to get done what I gave them the direction to do. If I keep meddling in what they are doing and micromanaging what they're doing, why do I have them? If I'm going to take that responsibility, why do I have them there to do that job? So that's what I like to look at and think about at times.

One last one that I want to share with you is -- wow, what happened to it? But I remember it, because I remember it off of a fortune cookie, and I put that thing in my wallet many, many years ago, probably about 20 years ago at least. I know that for a fact. I opened this fortune cookie and I read it and it says that, "˜One of the greatest things in life is doing what people say you can't do. One of the greatest things in life is doing what people say you cannot do.' I usually use that in an audience of young people, of teenagers, high-school age, and I tell them, 'I'm not telling you to be defiant. I'm not suggesting you violate school rules or the rules of the household. What I am telling you is that when people stand there and tell you that, "˜You are not going to [amount] to anything. All you are is a troublemaker, and you are not going to be worth anything in your life,' that you challenge them on that.' And I stand here before you and tell you that I was one of those students. I was told that by a teacher in high school at one time. You know I probably gave him reason to think I was going to be worthless. I probably gave my family reason to think I was worthless. I know I gave my wife reason to think I was worthless, but you know I took that and I try to live that as a challenge to me in my life as a leader.

So those are things that I wanted to share with you. I really am honored that I was given the opportunity to stand in front of you and to share these thoughts with you and that you were actually listening. I was wondering, "˜This is going to be difficult. I'm going to be hearing papers clashing and cups making noise.' I've talked to audiences before lunchtime before, and I might as well just not stand here and say nothing because nobody is listening, but that's not true today. I see you listen, I feel listening, I see what you are doing here. And in closing, I wish all of you the best of success in your leadership. I wish all of you the best of success for your people, for your tribes. You know we have many, many challenges ahead of us. And I say that it's been nine months that we've been in office, but it feels like nine years. I think in nine months my hair had grayed more than it has if I wasn't sitting in this office, but you know that is the sacrifice that we make. That is the sacrifice that we make. And I wish all of you well. I congratulate you for the positions that you were elected to lead in, and I want to say to those young emerging leaders, "˜Stay on course, stay focused, and know that you have support out there.'

I want to share this last thought with you. One of the most honorable times that I was honored in my life in being able to sit down at a lunch table with the late Wendell Chino. Years ago, Wendell Chino, a great Mescalero Apache leader for many many years. He was one of those "˜Mike' people for me, it was like I wanted to be like Wendell Chino. I wanted to have his drive, his same good heart, and his same good thoughts. One time we were sitting at a luncheon and it was just, it ended up me and him being the last ones at the table and I was like, "˜Wow, man I'm sitting here with Wendell Chino, man, this is great!' I started picking his brain about leadership and at the end, he said, "˜You know what the sign of a true Indian leader is?' I'm asking does anybody in this room know what the sign of a true Indian leader is? And he said, "˜It's those people that can take the bullets from the front and the arrows in the back.' So be prepared for those bullets and those arrows. Thank you very much."

Cutting Edge Tech on the Rez

Author
Producer
Indian Country Today
Year

Bigger isn’t always better. Arizona’s Tohono O’odham Nation covers some 2.8 million acres, only a small portion of which is occupied by the successful San Xavier District’s Hi:kdan Business Park. The tribally chartered, Native-owned private business operates under the banner: “Moving Forward with the Future.”

Housed in the shadows of Raytheon, the nearby giant missile manufacturer, the O’odham have done quite well for themselves with their 51 percent ownership of Advanced Ceramics Manufacturing (ACM)–a Native Small Disadvantaged Business providing “high tech products for a better world.”...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Allen, Lee. "Cutting Edge Tech on the Rez." Indian Country Today. December 19, 2013. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/cutting-edge-tech-on-the-rez, accessed April 3, 2023)

A Solution: Sowing the future for tribal youth

Author
Year

For aspiring farmer, Vernal Sam, 24, the physical labor came easily. Like many Tohono O'odham, he'd helped out on his uncle's cattle ranch as a kid, bringing in cash when his family needed it, and he'd helped his grandfather bury traditional tepary beans and squash seeds in the brown clay soil. What felt different about his new farm apprentice job was the sense of possibility within the bounds of the reservation...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Bregel,Emily. "A Solution: Sowing the future for tribal youth." Arizona Daily Star. August 08, 2013. Article. (http://tucson.com/news/local/sowing-the-future-for-tribal-youth/article..., accessed February 24, 2023)

Extinct No More: Hia-Ced O'odham Officially Join Tohono O'odham Nation

Producer
Indian Country Today
Year

After 33 years of hard work to right the past, the Hia-Ced O’odham, once thought to be extinct, can finally say they belong as part of the Tohono O’odham Nation.

On June 12, the Hia-Ced O’odham District officials were sworn-in and the Hia-Ced District was officially recognized as the 12th district of the Tohono O’odham Nation...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Ramon-Sauberan, Jacelle. "Extinct No More: Hia-Ced O'odham Officially Join Tohono O'odham Nation." Indian Country Today. June 30, 2013. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/extinct-no-more-hia-ced-oodham-officially-join-tohono-oodham-nation, accessed April 11, 2023)