White Earth Nation

Jill Doerfler and Matthew Fletcher: Defining Citizenship: Blood Quantum vs. Descendancy (Q&A)

Producer
William Mitchell College of Law
Year

Panelists Jill Doerfler and Matthew Fletcher fields questions from the audience, and several participants offer their heartfelt perspectives on the complicated cultural and social dynamics surrounding citizenship and identity in their respective Native nations and communities. 

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

Resource Type
Citation

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

Fletcher, Matthew. "Defining Citizenship: Blood Quantum vs. Descendancy (Q&A)." Tribal Citizenship Conference, Indian Law Program, William Mitchell College of Law, in conjunction with the Bush Foundation. St. Paul, Minnesota. November 13, 2013. Presentation.

Sarah Deer:

"At this time again we'd like to open it up to questions and comments. We have a few minutes before lunch and we'd like to have some dialogue based on what the speakers had to say.

Audience member:

"Has there been any talks with the state level officials or any federal officials on how they view what an Indian is and at what point...or what do they expect of Indian tribes? We've been talking about funding, we're talking about land being taken back. Okay. I know in Wisconsin we had a meeting with a state representative and he didn't even know we had 11 tribes in the state of Wisconsin. He knew that all the tribes in Wisconsin were per cap Indians. That was his perception and he was from the southern part of the state. And so a lot of times when we...we struggle with this blood quantum issue is the end game that what does the federal government and Chairman Bugonaghezhisk hit it right on the head though. At some point they don't want to pay no more. And of course I speak for myself that they can never pay us enough for what they've taken from us. And I notice that when I look in the appropriations inside the Department of the Interior. Parks and Services get more money than the tribes do and why is that? And so these are some of the questions on the other side of the line is what does the government...what is their end game? The gentleman here talked about...Mr. Fletcher was talking about that at some point all they want to do is wipe the slate clean and mainstream us into society with no debt to the Anishinaabe people."

Dana Logan:

"Hi. My name is Dana Logan from Grand Portage. My question regarding the lineal descent is if the government has wanted to, like you said, wipe the slate clean, get rid of Indians? So if you are going to go to...are thinking of going to lineal descent and I'm going to use the Cherokee Nation, going to lineal descent and I've seen their blood quantum as being at one-3000th. So at what point if tribes go to lineal descent are we no longer going to be identified as Indian tribes and we're going to be so what the government might say is diluted, there aren't no real Indian left? And so that I worry about a little bit in identity and what the government thinks of us. Myself, I'm enrolled in the Chippewa tribe. I have children who are Northeastern Oklahoma Indians enrolled there at a ome-eighth requirements. They're half, my husband is a full blood Indian. Now, look at their CDIB, they're Grand Portage, they're Canadian on my family's side, they're Cherokee and they're also part Shawnee and Eastern Band, and then in the Cherokees, split you up on what kind of Cherokee you are. So you have all of these things that we do to ourselves but yet we have to protect ourselves as a group of people...I don't like to say a racial group either, but we do need to keep our identity so that the American government doesn't say, "˜You people aren't here anymore and you don't matter.' Thank you."

Matthew Fletcher:

"I'd like to just toss out something. I think the way that the self-determination policy has worked in the last couple decades along with the Supreme Court has looked at Indian identity is to really rail and recognize a tribe's decision as to who is a member, who is not. So if you look at a lot of statutes that Congress and state legislatures have passed prior to the "˜80s really, they all talk about blood quantum, they talk about half blood, quarter blood, who's an Indian, who's mixed blood. The U.S. and most state legislatures even have moved away from that. And so for example a year or so ago the Department of Justice, Fish and Wildlife Service in the U.S. government said, "˜Well, we're going to recognize anybody who's a member of a federally recognized tribe. Blood quantum is irrelevant. Whatever they decide, they are able to with their citizenship card they can carry an eagle feather. We're not going to give them any crap for that.' So that was the policy floating around. What it means is, they talk about tribal membership. Whatever blood quantum is, it's up to the tribes and I think that's a really good development. But that's the politics right now. 50 years down the road, maybe John Roberts type people, and he's the one who asked the question in the Baby Veronica case, "˜Hey, the last time that this kid and dad had a full blood Indian was during the time of the American Revolution in their ancestry.' It was important to him and so maybe that will change over time. But right now, now is where the federal government is deferring to tribal prerogatives on tribal membership, whatever that might be, and I think it's a good time to take advantage of that."

Jill Doerfler:

"Yeah, and there's lots of prevailing arguments as well that blood quantum and this racialization was meant to destabilize politics. The U.S. and native nations have a nation-to-nation relationship. It's not a relationship between a nation and a race and so there's also lots of arguments there that treaties that form a big part of that government-to-government relationship there primarily are not racially based. They're governments making agreements with other governments. The U.S. government racial...the race of Americans is changing over time. We're going to start to see the white race decline and we're going to start to see white people becoming a 'minority' in the U.S. Does that mean if the race of America changes, does that mean that those political agreements are null and void? Most people would argue no because it's still the same political system that's in place. The makeup of the people might be changing, but you still have that government structure."

Audience member:

"So I guess to touch on another one of those stories that we carry with us from our relatives, one of the things that I was taught was if you wonder about who you are, think about yourself when you're done with this world and who is it the ones that's going to take care of you to help you on your journey to the next place. And sometimes that is the defining characteristic, because when you're left by yourself and you're completely dependent upon the people who are supposed to take care of you, sometimes that defines who your identity is. What we have based on these discussions is a converging of social, cultural, political type of discourse -- I guess for lack of...for a more intelligent English word -- but...and how that convergence comes into play. I mention these things and the things that come from me that I work with when I work with my people in my tribe is we never lose that connection we have to our relatives. And that's difficult sometimes, especially when they're adopted away and they're taught these different types of...different ways of doing things.

And so when I was in school there was people who were sympathetic, these non-tribal people who were sympathetic, but they wanted this and they always said, "˜Well, how do you...' -- I used to joke with them and tease them because there's some things you don't share with people you don't know -- I said, "˜Well, if you want to know who's Indian, go ask them what happened to their grandparents,' because almost always you can find a story about the boarding schools. My tribe and my relatives all have the same stories about where our grandmothers went and grandfathers and how we can't stop in...when we travel back and forth and Janesville with my grandma.

And so one of the things that I'm proud of as Ojibwe and as Anishinaabe is the treaties that we have going back to American or Federal Indian Law 101 is the four purposes of why treaties are made. Well, there's a fifth treaty, too, that helps define the contents or your...you reserve the rights of your own identity. And for us, for the Ojibwes and among the Lake Superior Band, our 1847 treaty -- one of them gets overshadowed because that was Bugonaghezhisk's allotment that he got over by Wadena -- but the other part of that 1847 treaty is a separate one, which was the recognition...forcing the United States to recognize that Ojibwes did not recognize mixed blood or half breeds or whatever they called us back then and that all of the people who were among our communities from wherever they came from were considered part of our family. And that's a teaching that we have that...we have these cultural bonds that go across there and so a lot of my [Anishinaabe language] are non-tribal. And for those who don't know what [Anishinaabe language] are, it kind of translates to like 'godmother' or 'godfather' or 'god-relative' that is supposed to help you take the place or help assist your parents in raising you or your family in raising you. And then as we include them as our [Anishinaabe language], we also name them so that the Creator can understand them in the Ojibwe that is the predominate method on how we're conducting ourselves. And so even though we use this more dominant language or English to kind of define our interactions and to articulate these views, I still from the time I was born until the time I pass and I sit there with my grandmothers again and my grandfathers and tell the story of my life as part of our teaching. Ojibwe is the means that identifies us because it doesn't set parameters, it gives you the method to teach you how to come back home. And so that is...the prevalent thing that comes through this is the language. We call that...that's the gift from the Creator. Our work is the land that was given to us or the responsibilities that attach us to the land.

But there's still, I guess, and I'll finish this real quick I guess, but the other part that kind of makes our blood boil and all of that is when we have the people who create these manufactured senses of identity of what it is to be Indian and then they come back and they bring these different concepts. Even though I'm a lawyer and trained just as Professor Fletcher is in speaking English in terms of interpreting our laws, the constitution that we have is probably one of the most detrimental and damaging things that we've done as a tribe because it tries to codify what the idea of a good government is or how to run your people...how to organize your people to do certain things and that gives a tool then for those who disagree with our ways of life. Our grandmothers have prominent places in our society, but it's not recognized in the constitution or when people identify their laws and say, "˜Well, you're not a member because the constitution doesn't say that,' even though my [Anishinaabe language] grew up on the reservation and has done as much for me as anybody else, she's not from Lac Courte Oreilles.

It's a dangerous double[-edged] sword that I think that -- and I'm going to get slapped by Robert here if I'm not careful how I say this -- there's people who take this idea of spreading democracy as President [George W.] Bush had said when he was justifying these incursions and sending among others some of our Native youth into Iran and...or I mean Iraq -- whew, there's a Freudian slip -- in Afghanistan and to these different countries is they're trying to spread democracy back to the tribes in that they want to change their constitutions so that they have these things that are not...don't necessarily arise from us, but they come from this idea that we're going to have participation, that we want representation from different areas and the model that they use is the United States, but yet how can that be a positive model when we have something like the Tea Party that's disrupting the government or we have the idea of democracy and we've got the idea that corporate citizens are now or corporations are now people. And so that just...it makes me nervous and I think it's the responsibility of those who really want to be part of that community to be diligent, to hold true to what your ideas are and to not...if you're going to bring something else in there, bring in also with the open mind of coming into the community and listening to what that is.

I know that there's criticisms split between on reservation and off reservation and it shouldn't be that way because the reservations were something that was given...that was forced on us by the American government because we're actually in the area -- and this is going to get me probably slapped by the Dakota in the room -- this used to be Ojibwe country and there was an 1825 treaty that kind of demarcated this line. It wasn't ours like in exclusion of other people. It was our shared responsibility to take care of this land and take care of these resources. And so this idea of possession is something that got forced into us so that the dominant society could figure out a way to kind of [figure out] who to talk to instead of having to talk to everybody, they picked who they wanted to speak with. And so when they come back with these people with these ideas of changing the constitution so that it incorporates more people, I think that's such a dangerous topic because you're incorporating it under the wrong premise. There's other ways that could be done and that needs to be incorporated into that. If we're really going to have binding, logical extensions of ourselves codified in the constitution, it should be in the language, it should be in the way that those words were intended and it should be representative of the practices of who we are.

My grandma told me -- and my grandma told me a lot so I could go all day -- she told me, she says, "˜When you pass, one quarter of you doesn't go somewhere else, one quarter doesn't go to this other spot. It goes to where you think your family is because that's the teaching that the Creator gave to you. And so when you go up and you say your name, your name is like one slice of your life over the time that you've been given this time on this earth. And so when you hear that and they ask for you, you know where to go to.' And I don't mean to disparage people with different beliefs because I've seen people who are strong in their beliefs and I believe them. The major tenet of me and my lodge is you respect all ways and it just...sometimes though when we respect all ways the first way that seems to get diminished or get erased is the Anishinaabe way and we just...I can't allow that. [Anishinaabe language]."

Robert Durant:

"I won't hit you. I want to shake your hand. Again, my name is Robert and I just want to talk a little bit...no disrespect to all the efforts that White Earth is going through and I'm on the council in White Earth. I too, I have always been afraid of this. The new constitution that's been written, I feel there's so many things that take away from the future and also removing the past on where we're at and what was done and closing the door on so many other issues. And then when there's issues that are talked about, how are we going to deal with this here with programs -- whether it be housing, whatever -- and all the other issues that comes along with that and maybe being censored from working one way or working another way if this thing passes? Then it's said that, "˜Well, we'll tweak it out.' Well, tell you what, that's not what people are kind of voting for. I'm not going to say 'yes' to where you're going to change it anyway so what good is it? Things like that, it really gets to my heart. And then when we talk about to opening these doors to rewrite a constitution that's taken decades of interpretations and decisions and ordinances and then to me it's really sad, because to me it's like the modern day of being fleeced by using enrollment. I get afraid of that. I'm afraid of that. Remember the stories of our tribal nations being fleeced? And then sometimes when we talk about the enrollment laws...I remember listening to some old men talking about [Anishinaabe name] or 'Hole in the Day.' He only would...during the removals come to White Earth, he talked about only the half breeds could come with him. We all know he was killed, but there's a lot of other histories, I read about other leaders they wanted, for reasons, whatever that was. And that's what I think about, but they disappeared in life and who was always behind it, it was always the government. So it's really difficult for me...when I think about this, I'm doing it right now, I'm shedding a tear because what are we doing to ourselves and what are we allowing to happen to us? It's not easy, but everybody is not being taught.

We sent out as a lesson for everybody, White Earth sent out...there's 18,700-and-some members under the last roll that we took. That list was used to mail out a constitution. I asked, "˜Well, if you're going to mail that out, at least have some fairness and mail out the one that we've been dealing with that was revised in the "˜60s.' Well, no it wasn't done because I was intercepted and it wasn't done, so it wasn't fair because people on both sides ain't getting a chance. So when you go for this here in other nations, realize that because we're stepping into something that we do not know and it's scary. I can say that because my children, they're tribal. But I can understand they may make a choice not to be with another tribal or their children, but the thing is I need to have that responsibility to show them who they are too. But I made that choice. Why am I tribal? There's a lot of teachings.

I want to tell you a little story, too, before I quit here because it really gives me an insight. I got a gift, again, there's a lot of gifts. I received a packet of writings done by tribal members; I'm going to share that with you Jim. They wrote manuscripts of...100 years ago they wrote this. I had my administrative assistants type it all out because the paper was frail and it was written beautifully. And they told the stories of what it was. They told stories. Imagine 120 years ago someone 84 years old saying...writing the story of the modern Indian. It makes me angry when I read that, but it was the truth. This topic is really tough and I'm not the only one that feels that way. These are lessons we listen, lessons from our elders, real lessons. Not just a story, but this time as being told...these were handwritten. [Anishinaabe language]."

Sarah Deer:

"I think we have time if you want to respond unless someone else in the audience wants to make sure we get you on record. There we go."

Sam Strong:

"It's not really a response. [Anishinaabe language]. I think for me it wasn't actually in any response to Terry's comments there, but basically when I think about being Anishinaabe, when I think about being Ojibwe, when I think about being from Red Lake, what does that mean to me? It means a way of life. It means living that [Anishinaabe language]. It means being a part of a community that has been centuries in the making so it's understanding that you're a part of that history. That's something for me that I'm very proud of. I'm an enrolled member. I'm very proud of that. I'm very proud of my heritage. I'm also proud of...I'm mixed. I'm proud of everything that made me and that's part of being Anishinaabe, that's part of being Ojibwe is understanding who you are and being comfortable with that and then living that lifestyle in all facets of your life.

I think about the past, I think about Red Lake and one of our first leaders, once we started with treat making and all that, his name was Peter Graves and he actually wasn't a Red Lake member. Our first real leader wasn't even a member. He was an Ojibwe person that had moved there. He was mixed, he was half, and you think about the contributions that he made to Red Lake. We consider ourselves unique. I'm sure all tribes consider themselves unique. But we're a closed reservation. We're the only tribe that never ceded control of their land. We're proud of those aspects of who we are, but at the same time you look at today what people are...how they're living and what's going on in the communities and we're disconnected from who we are. So I think it's important to identify that in looking at citizenship. Your community is going to look at where you're at today. What does it mean to be a Red Laker today?

Our chairman always tells this story as kind of a fearful indication of where the community is at. He was at a meeting and one of the guys...it was a forum for an election or something like that and one of the kids stood up and he took his card out. He said, "˜This ID card, what does it mean for me?' And everyone's like, "˜Well, what do you mean?' And he said, "˜Where's my check? Where's our per capita? We have all these casinos. Where's my money? What does this card mean for me?' I don't think that's the prevailing thinking that most of the community members have, but it's out there. That's kind of how the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] would want it. They would want to see us as dependents. They would want to see us as people that our identity is putting our hand out, but that's not who we are and I think understanding that there is...there's that divide. What we have created and who we are are so different from one another.

You think about the teachings and the people that I listen to and that I learn about myself and my culture and some of these people, if you met them on the street, you might think they were Caucasian, but the reality is these people are carrying on the culture and the language. They're not all enrolled members, but these people have dedicated their life to understanding our culture, our language, our traditions and they're carrying that on for our tribal members. And you think about all these people that have helped us get to where we're at today and all these community members that have contributed and it has nothing to do with the percentage of blood that you had. It never has and it never will, but the reality is our communities have become dependent upon the resources from the BIA, from the federal government, so on and so forth and people have started to look at membership as what's going to be put in my hand for free?

And I think the only way to change that -- we're looking at constitutional reform right now -- and you pose this question to Red Lakers, you're going to get a lot of angry people. We're a closed reservation. We've maintained control of our land, so what happens when we open up to lineal descendancy and we have people that are totally disconnected from our land base? Would they potentially put us in a position where we would lose ownership of the land, where the tribe would make a decision to sell it? I don't think so, but at the end of the day, these are the fears that the tribal members bring up when we talk about changing our enrollment criteria. How do we address those?

And to me, it's one of those things...it's obviously mathematical genocide. I think all of us can agree that the current system doesn't work, but how do we move forward in a responsible way, in a way that allows for the people to also grow and the only way to really do that is through teaching your people about your culture, your language, doing all the things that we're talking about here, but it's not a one-day change. Even if you were to make the change from lineal...to lineal descent or whatever it may be, that's not the important piece. It doesn't matter what the criteria are if your community isn't carrying on the values and the traditions of who you are. That's the way it was always taught to me is that the way you live is who you are.

Another teaching that I always was told is, coming into today's world you see the troubles of today with the environmental degradation and all the social ills of the communities and our elders say that our ways are the ways that are going to bring this world back into a better place. That's been our teachings. And how can we do that if we can't even include people that are living in our communities in our traditional ways? You have to think that...what's the long term? The long term is obviously that we need to be inclusive and teach our ways and share those values, but in the short term we have to focus on ourselves. We have to get to a point where our own people understand who they are and their lifestyles. Without that, it doesn't matter how you identify yourself. In 100 years what will our communities be? So to me it's...without the identity the rest is...it's almost impossible to even solve that so it's not to make the...and we're going through the same process so I ask this of all the members of our community when we go out. We have a constitutional reform committee and so they're asking these same questions as well. But the reality is, I don't think it's a one-year thing, I don't think it's just change the criteria, it's what are we doing as a nation to hold onto our identity, to create a better quality of life in our communities and to create for...something that everyone can buy into, not only our people but all Ojibwe people.

I always brag about Ojibwe people because I consider us to be the largest tribal nation. I think from a land base perspective you could make that case pretty easily. But today you see tribal nations that are 100 miles away from one another that are fighting with each other. You have racist communities in between that we just ignore and then we have what you would think would be supportive nations down the road and we're not even on the same page. So who are we as a nation even? Have we forgot who we are as Ojibwe people? Have we forgot who we are as Anishinaabe? When I say 'Anishinaabe,' I mean all Native people. I was hearing some of the speakers earlier and they were talking about what that word meant and for us in Red Lake it means free people, people that live in a good way and I think when you think about what we all...all of our ideals as Native people, it's very similar. So why haven't we come together? Why haven't we come together as a people, as a nation and even as Red Lake Nation? So you've got to start somewhere, but at the end of the day...I think sometimes we focus on all these issues and we forget about where the people are at today. For me, living in Red Lake and seeing it and seeing the suicide, the drug use, the...all the social ills of my community, you would just hope that we would focus on the things that would start to change that and create that pride in who we are and all the other stuff will fall into place. But without that, all the rest is for naught, in my eyes at least. [Anishinaabe language]."

Sarah Deer:

"Thank you. Thank you very much. This has been an incredibly rich and deep conversation, and I'm very grateful for all of the participants." 

John Borrows and Stephen Cornell: Citizenship: Culture, Language and Law (Q&A)

Producer
William Mitchell College of Law
Year

Professors John Borrows and Stephen Cornell field questions from conference participants about a number of topics surrounding Indigenous notions of citizenship and membership. In addition, some participants provide brief commentaries about how their particular Native nations are wrestling with this issue internally.

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

Resource Type
Citation

Borrows, John. "Citizenship: Culture, Language and Law (Q&A)." Tribal Citizenship Conference, Indian Law Program, William Mitchell College of Law, in conjunction with the Bush Foundation. St. Paul, Minnesota. November 13, 2013. Presentation.

Cornell, Stephen. "Citizenship: Culture, Language and Law (Q&A)." Tribal Citizenship Conference, Indian Law Program, William Mitchell College of Law, in conjunction with the Bush Foundation. St. Paul, Minnesota. November 13, 2013. Presentation.

Sarah Deer:

"I want to thank this incredible panel -- great way to start the day. And at this point we have about 15 minutes for questions and comments for our panelists. Of course, Professor Berger had to leave to go back to teach, but Professor Borrows and Professor Cornell are still here, so open it up for questions or comments."

Audience member:

"So I have question for both professors. [Anishinaabe language] is the word that Mr. Borrows had offered out and for Ojibwe that's the way that we say, 'All our relations.' And that hits on a couple different scales, a couple different levels because the way my grandmother taught me is you say that because when you speak Ojibwe all your relatives hear you and they come to listen to what you have to say. And sometimes they're here and sometimes they're in the next place and they want to come back and here the voice of their grandchild speaking the language because that's the gift that we have from the Creator. But one of the things that we have a difficulty with among...I'm going to only speak from Lac Courte Oreilles' perspective, is the definition of 'citizenship' because for us that's almost an offensive word because 'citizen' -- and I mean no disrespect to your presentation -- citizenship seems to create this, kind of like this foreign concept because 'citizenship' doesn't translate in Ojibwe. It doesn't...there is no distinction between how someone is a part of something. And so the best that we have is 'member of.' So [Anishinaabe language] and my other relatives here, they know their clans and so we're a part of that group, that functioning -- I guess we use 'nation' now -- but it's our functioning tribe or our family. So how do you reconcile citizenship under an English term that's been kind of forced on tribes throughout the United States and how do you reconcile that with the words that we have as...that we were taught that is our responsibility to know, when that word doesn't translate into that?"

Stephen Cornell:

"My only advice would be go with the words that are yours. Even if...I really like what Oren Lyons had to say about 'member' and 'citizen,' but he was really speaking about what those words mean to an English-speaking audience because they have certain connotations. And I think what's much more important is what your people think the word means in your own language and it may be that you can't find an English word that adequately captures that. I think that's very likely that you have a conception of what those things mean, that it's very hard to express in English, it's very hard to capture the full sense of what you're talking about. But it's much more important that your people share an understanding of that than that they pick a particular word. If 'member' is the English word that comes closest in the way you think about it to what you mean, then you have to use that word. These are the limitations of language. I think there are a lot of concepts in Indigenous languages in the United States, in North America, which it's very hard to capture in English because English arises out of very different traditions and is much more removed from its own Indigenous origins. So it's very hard to make that transition and I just think it's much more important to try to be true to your own understanding and then you're stuck with what...if you've got to talk about it in English, you're stuck with what the English language has to offer. I'm not sure of a better way to deal with it than that."

John Borrows:

"Just my thought is too to draw on [Anishinaabe language] and talk about [Anishinaabe language] and what that could mean to Lac Courte Orielles or [Anishinaabe language], whatever community you're a part of, and then to think about giving that concept meaning by the stories that your grandmothers and grandfathers have told you. That when we identify a concept we then have to look to a place for understanding its meaning, and if the meaning is drawn from that beautiful teaching that you just shared with us, that can be a part of understanding being [Anishinaabe language]. If you need then to be able to talk to the other system about what this word might require...again, I draw on a New Zealand example. In the Natural Resources Act that's been passed by the New Zealand Parliament, they have a list of English words that correlate with some concepts of environmental stewardship, but then they have a list of Maori words that also correlate with ideas of stewardship, and they say the meaning of this legislation will be worked out in conversation between these two words. They don't provide a definition that's determinative; they say the meaning is triangulated. And so that's a possibility as well that some Indigenous peoples choose to do, they say, 'This is what it means to us. That's what it means to you. If you want then to enter into discussion with us, both are helpful by way of analogy.' Neither are completely determinative because you're in a relationship, and that is again, looking to a backdrop of understanding. The final thing I would say is we have our [Anishinaabe language] and the stories illustrate...they're like common law, they're like cases. There's past examples of what it meant to cut someone in or out of a relationship and the [Anishinaabe language] can interpret [Anishinaabe language]."

Gordon Thayer:

"My name's Gordon Thayer, from Lac Courte Oreilles (Ojibwe), with my other folks here. I was looking at what you presented today in this...looking at the historical roots of our communities, our tribes. It was a concept that did not need fixing. It's not broke, don't fix it. But we've got a membership based on what I was writing in my notes here that blood quantum is focused on the eligibility of goods and services and in a sense that's created some...perhaps some greed: who's a member, who's not a member. It's created a lot of turmoil and battle in our tribe, as with other tribes determining that based on that hierarchical model, and I'm wondering if...can we ever get to the point where we were people, in our case Anishinaabe people? Can we ever get to the point where we are back to recognize that members or citizenship is really the core of our strength and sovereignty? I don't know if we can get there because of the...let me go back, back in the '60s.

Prior to the '60s, Lac Courte Oreilles was impoverished in a lot of ways but rich, rich without the casinos in another way. We did have the spirit of entrepreneurship. We have a history of most tribes of being barterers and traders. They survived that way. And as you begin to see the evolution of tribal government, the growth of tribal government, goods and services, you have a dependency on...you're hanging around the fort for your blanket. So you're getting this dependency on that, and we have a lot of entitlement thinking and nowhere near going back to that entrepreneurial spirit of surviving and recognizing. We put together -- I should say I put together -- an urban office down here in Minneapolis when I was chair here last year -- it was two years ago I was chair of the tribe -- following other tribes who recognize their members who are off the reservation. Over 65 percent of Native people live off the reservations in America today. But we took so much heat for having that office based on money should be going here, that should not be used there. The Mille Lacs Band had that, White Earth, Red Lake, all these tribes have their...but we took so much heat that one director of that could not take it anymore -- on Facebook, in general membership meetings. And I feel the strength of your tribal government and your sovereignty is based on your membership wherever they may be.

So I guess what I'm saying, to make a long story short here is, can we ever get back to that place, the historical strength? Lac Courte Oreilles now we're starting with [Anishinaabe language], a language immersion school we have there, proud of that. Let's bring our young people up. But as that brings them up, they have the language, but do they still have that spirit, can they still obtain that spirit that we're talking about of membership or citizenship, whatever you want to call that? Can we engrain that into them at the same time they're learning the language? We've got people calling all the time for, 'What can the tribe do?' I always use that thing that [John F.] Kennedy said, 'Ask not...what you can do for your country...but what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.' The same thing, bringing it back to the tribal place. So I don't know if we can ever get back there at this day and age unless we do some critical thinking and teaching that. In our college, I don't know if we're teaching the history of Lac Courte Oreilles, even the contemporary history, what took place. I don't know if that's being done the way it should be. I just looked at that. I think everything's based on this economy and the economic model and it's taught us how not to be who we really were designed to be."

John Borrows:

"Two comments: one in relationship to getting back, I do believe there are many amazing traditions that are in time of memory that you and I have experienced where people don't always calibrate what they do based on economics. There are those experiences in our past. At the same time, we have to recognize in our past that we had conflict then as well. In fact, many of our stories demonstrate great conflict and some of them are the more recent stories about our conflict with our neighbors, be it the Haudenosaunee where I live, or Lakota and Dakota people and Anishinaabe people in this area. And we had processes for dealing with that conflict. And so when we think about getting back, part of getting back is getting back to a recognition that conflict has always been a part of our lives, is a part of our lives today and will be in the future, and that's why we have laws, that's why we have teachings, that's why we have stories because there wasn't an idyllic past. So then what can we take from that that allows us to deal with the conflict today and into the future? And I think that we see examples around in people who are generous with their time, who are in the [Anishinaabe language] school, people who are generous in serving on elders and youth committees, mothers and fathers, grandmas and grandpas who raise children who might not be their own, and identifying all of those elements of civics that are currently in place and celebrating that. And then there's a great role for a leader to be able to step forward and pull forward the things that we're talking about. That's the first comment.

The second comment is probably controversial, but there's lots of those 65 percent of the people that live off the reservation that earn a comfortable middle-class salary. What I would love to see, and this would require a lot of negotiation and conversation is, when I'm earning a salary, to be able to take that tax that results from that income and have that directed back to my own reservation. So when I'm in Canada and I'm earning a good amount, why couldn't there be negotiations to be able to have what is significant in the range of what the community's living on today. Then when I feel like there's this opportunity, then when you create an urban office off the reserve, there's this sense of it's not just drawing away from the reserve, but the people off the reserve are also contributing their resources to things that are happening off and on the reserve. This is hypothetical.

The point I'm making is how can we take all the resources that we're marshalling off the reservations and start to think about ways of flowing those resources back to the reservation? It may be money, it may be fiscal policy and that could be significant. It could also just be human capital. I like what the Zuni Pueblo did with their settlement in relationship to their lands that were damaged through erosion is they invite all their students home to be able to work on the reservation from the trust funds that have been set up. Those people then get connected with the community, they go back to the universities, they develop further skills and there's this then flow that starts to occur. It's a seasonal round. We did that as Anishinaabe people, had this huge seasonal round. Maybe we can think about our territories and our seasonal round not just being based with the [Anishinaabe language], which is the leftovers, but the entire territory is our territory and from that territory of the United States, resources can start to flow back to the community, through our own members. Other people are smarter than me to be able to work out what all of those components of that flow back might be both fiscal and human resources, but I think it's a great conversation to have and I think we would have many people living off the reservation that would be willing to be involved in that because they regard their own self as being connected. Even though it seems intangible, it's a very tangible thing for people."

Rusty Barber:

"My name is Rusty Barber. I'm on the tribal council of Lac Courte Oreilles and this is just the first session here and it gets the blood kind of...the blood level going up, the pulse starts to quicken a little bit, but going back to the first presentation there, the presenter in regards to the Cherokees. In their constitution, back when [U.S. Supreme Court Justice John] Marshall, the philosophy was, 'Let's show the white man that we can create our own laws and we're just equivalent to them.' And then they came down and made that ordinance saying this is what our citizenship and the right to vote, etc., I think that set the tone for what the United States took to heart then is how to kill the Indian and make them model citizens. And throughout the morning here, we look at a pedigree amongst the nations here in the United States where we were once a proud people, that we all had definitive roles in tribes and where we were coming from. Now the United States even has a book that they go...a 25 CFR, this is who the Indians are. Okay, a federally recognized tribe.

I've been to meetings throughout the United States where blood quantum was an issue, citizenship was an issue for a lot of tribes, and I know that some in the northeast that try to regain recognition were refused based upon they no longer believe, they no longer practice their culture, they no longer speak their language. But still they regarded themselves as a tribal nation and they still attend Housing and Urban Development meetings, WETA meetings, everything throughout the United States, even though they don't have their recognition, but they have a hope that some day that they will regain that recognition as a tribe. And I think that's a big thing that we have to base who we are as a people is that the culture and the language and our beliefs is a must be for who we are, because once that's gone then you're mainstreamed, we then become that melting pot of the United States and immigration.

Lac Courte Oreilles didn't sign on to our constitution until 1966 and from there it was a hasty drawn up constitution with a lot of mettled words such as 'inclusion' -- inclusion to the tribe based upon this -- and there was a lot of interpretative language that hurts us today and causes turmoil. I know as a young man when I was growing up, this is your relative, this is your cousin. Some didn't look Indian, but it was never in our mind...it was our cousin. And all of a sudden after awhile it was like, 'Well, I'm from Lac Courte Oreilles.' 'Oh, you are? Nah, no, you're not.' 'I've got an ID card. I'll dig in my pocket, I've got an ID card.' So now that we are tribal members of a federally recognized tribe, we come down to the concept of proof of identification. Here, in a land that we once owned and lived on and to prove to other people that we are who we are. Anishinaabe, Ojibwe, Lakota, whatever, what nation we come from to prove that. And so when it comes down to it, and I've got a little [Anishinaabe language], a little upset and angry that it's up to us now to determine who our people are.

My good friend Will here had a baby. 'Ah, another Anishinaabe, ah.' My father says, 'More Indians. More Indians, good.' There was no question that that child was Ojibwe and so...and I often hear of a tribal elder that's long gone now that said as long as that child had a drop of Indian blood they're Ojibwe. I see this as a systemic problem that'll continue for not just the 21st century because your ordinances and your codes are going to change and change and change until finally you're looking at lineal descent because the laws of average to be an eighth, how many generations of eighth blood do you have? How many generations of sixteenth blood do you have? At some point that blood's going to run out and then it'll be lineal descents and so that is the...from my perspective is the end result is that...and is that the intent of the United States government when they did the Dawes Act and the IRA and many other things that came into play? So I just wanted to express my point."

Chris McGeshick:

"[Anishinaabe language]. Chris McGeshick, I'm the tribal chairman from the Sokaogon Chippewa community in what's now northeastern Wisconsin, part of the lCO tribal treaty right recognition. I also wanted to talk...when we look at this from the tribal side and we discuss membership at every council meeting that we had, it always comes down to it's a form of what we view as assimilation, the assimilation process is still there. It's still being forced upon us by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Interior, the federal governments, the state governments, but now that we've lived with it for a number of years we have this process where we go out, we become educated, we come back to the community and now we're seeing the greed factor. We're seeing, 'All right, I have this knowledge, but now I see what it can do for me, what it can...' Rather than worry about money, we need to worry about our language, our culture, our history and exercise what we feel as a people that we need to accomplish certain things to further our population within our communities or our reserves. We're always being held back though by government and money and business outside of our tribal communities. So we're always fighting that.

And I look at our constitution and it doesn't have a blood quantum there. However, a blood quantum was established in our base roll, which they say we have to go by because it's a part of our constitution that we look at and we can interpret 20 different ways and it's just not the way we do things. But we have these internal arguments all the time and it's always based on what another tribe -- whether it's out west -- may have done or what the federal government feels is the correct ruling in a court system. We talk about citizenship. We don't talk that way within the community. We're not 'citizens.' We are 'members' of our tribe and...but we're also members of a greater nation and that nation isn't just within what's called the United States or Canada. It's across those boundaries and both governments still tend to keep their foot on top of us to keep us down and have us be good little Natives, but what we want to do is we want to...we all have ideas, each tribe, each band's going to have their different idea, but we're believers of that if you have a drop of blood in you, you're part of this community.

It's the individuals that we have to battle back that are the ones that are thinking about the money and what they can get. 'You owe me this. The government owes us this.' The government don't owe me anything. I don't want anything from the government. I just want to be able to lead my people down the right path and allow that for all Anishinaabe people, not just our band or our community. And whether it's in Canada or the United States, we have the ability to do that and it's individuals like William Mitchell Law School where we may have to look to the legal mind to get some of this established and we shouldn't have to fight those battles. And why do we fight this blood quantum battle all the time? Every month, it takes probably about 20 hours of my time every month to decide whether or not this individual's a member of our community and we just say, 'Hey, yep, you're one of ours. You've shown that.' Even if we have somebody on the committee that says, 'No, we need a DNA test.' Really? We're going to sit here and say now we're going to require DNA testing? It's not something we do, but yet it feels like there's being pressure put on us by other communities throughout the nation that say, 'We want that. We want DNA testing. We want this technology to help us establish our boundaries and pass on our cultures and traditions.' I'm not one of those believers, but I'll listen to them and I'll take what I can from that. How do we get away from that whole...who made this initial base roll and put blood quantums on our tribal members? 15/16ths back in 1937? Somebody from...some non-tribal member from some government agency had the ability to come in and do that and we still have to abide by that blood quantum today? I find that ridiculous, but that was my comment."

Sarah Deer:

"I want to be really cautious of the time because we're over. You should have been done with your break by now. So maybe we could have a couple closing comments for the panel and then take our break. And I just want to again emphasize that our position here is not to take a position. Our position as William Mitchell and funding from the Bush Foundation is to provide this forum. So we expect that there will be disagreement and agreement about various issues and I really want to encourage that discussion and dialogue. So I really appreciate the tribal leaders who've spoken out. So I'll turn it over to..."

Robert Durant:

"I want to make a comment. My name's Robert Durant and I'm secretary/treasurer for council at White Earth. All the words we've said, I'm feeling a sense of one direction as far as the enrollment process is and the descendencies and there's many visits with historians and other peoples in the communities, the studies...I'm going to say that, I want to mention that White Earth is going through a constitutional reform vote. It's wonderful Bush Foundation came along and helped fund some of the studies, but in some of those studies also, what is the other side of the stories, too? Where's the funding when there's people who not agree with diluting the blood quantum because there's a reason we believe some of the historians and friends, old people I visited with, there's a reason there was an agreement. Is it to stop the volunteering or to stop your...did we have a choice? We do have a choice to keep our bloodlines going. We have that choice. Is there permission to make it so that in the future we get rid of ourselves, without consciously thinking of this. We think of that because...we were thinking of talking that because of like White Earth Nation. It's like the White Earth experiment, pulling the bands together on White Earth and the treaty was with the Mississippi. There's a lot of issues that were talked about on it. So are we looking at giving permission to go head let's drop the blood quantum so we don't have to...I've spoken with tribes in Southern California where they had to pass resolutions to not marry any closer than second cousin because they found a way. We need to survive as people, our language, our cultures. Now that's really...that's the power to this. So when it came to Bush helping to create the statistics and when we disappear, where was the other side of it and what are the statistics on how are we going to survive? I just wanted to bring that out there because there's other side of what we're talking about today."

Sarah Deer:

"Absolutely. A couple comments and then we'll take a break."

Stephen Cornell:

"Well, thanks to those who've spoken. I really appreciate what you've had to say and you're the ones who have to deal with this and I realize it is an extraordinarily difficult issue that raises the temperature I think for all of you are members, citizens, whoever they are. I think the key point is you have the opportunity to actually have that discussion. Who knows what will happen at the federal scene, but right now you have the power to say, 'This is how we are going to define this.' You have the power to do that and so that discussion can happen. You can escape from some of these outside intrusions if you wish. You can invent what you want. You can struggle to figure out, 'How do we survive as peoples?' And to me that's the only bottom line. There's no direction here except to take advantage of that opportunity to have that discussion and think through what to you is the most important thing in order to still be here 50 years down the road."

John Borrows:

"There was mention made of Justice Marshall and those seminal cases in Indian law and one of the principles that flowed from those cases was that Indians could not engage in intercourse with foreign nations in terms of having them now be independent in relationship to foreign nations. Justice Marshall also said that Indians could no longer have trade and intercourse with local traders to sell their land, it had to be with the United States. And I think that's an interesting choice of words that he put into play when he was talking about the limitations of Indian rights because what he said was that the United States will control the intercourse of Indian people. Now you can see where this is going, right? If our intercourse -- when we think about forming family relationships and passing on our love and our cherished relationships with our children -- is controlled by the United States and not ourselves, then we buy into that vision of Justice Marshall, which is a doctrine of discovery that limits us in the world and I think that even if we never can quite pull this together as tribal groups, and I think we can, but even if you're doubtful that this could be done as tribal groups, individually we have the power to be loving and to strengthen families and to be good and to look for sustenance and to offer healing and to create ways of being free in our nations. Right? That's the power of our traditions and if we don't get it together, you and I can still be loving and I'm grateful that this is part of our traditions. [Anishinaabe language]."

Sarah Deer:

"So again please join me in thanking our panel this morning. I thought it was a great way to start the conference." 

Jill Doerfler: Defining Citizenship: Blood Quantum vs. Descendancy

Producer
William Mitchell College of Law
Year

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

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

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jill Doerfler and Carole Goldberg: Key Things a Constitution Should Address: Who Are We and How Do We Know? (Q&A)

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Presenters Jill Doerfler and Carole Goldberg field questions from seminar participants about the various criteria that Native Nations are using to define citizenship, and some of the implications that specific criteria present.

Resource Type
Citation

Doerfler, Jill and Carole Goldberg. "Key Things a Constitution Should Address: Who Are We and How Do We Know?" Tribal Constitutions seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 3, 2013. Q&A Session.

Mike Burgess:

Mike Burgess from Pawnee Nation College. My question is to both either yourself Jill [Doerfler] or Dr. [Carole] Goldberg. In your research and findings, had there been any discussion on consolidation of tribal blood quantum and make it all one tribe?"

Carole Goldberg:

"By consolidation, you mean looking at people who have blood quantum from a variety of different tribes?"

Mike Burgess:

"If a member is not enough of your blood quantum, but they have more than enough to be a quarter blood, half-blood, even full-blood Indian, which is happening to a lot of our children in Oklahoma, they're full-blood Indian, but can't get on any roll."

Carole Goldberg:

"Right."

Mike Burgess:

"So if you're consolidating that and you recognize them as a member of your tribe and make them full-bloods or half-bloods, just your tribe only. Have any tribes approached that?"

Carole Goldberg:

"Not only have tribes proposed that, but I have actually seen it in some of the constitutions in California tribes where it may well be, for example, there are so many Pomo tribes in northern California. And you may not have descendance from this particular Pomo tribe, but in times past there was all kinds of intermarriage and kinship relations. And so the view of some of these tribes is as long as you're hypothetically one-fourth is from some Pomo tribe, they'll make you a member of this particular tribe so long as you don't also try to become a member of some other tribe. It's definitely being done. I wouldn't say it's widespread, but it's definitely being done."

Mike Burgess:

"Thank you."

Robert Hershey (moderator):

"It is. It is in a number of constitutions and membership ordinances that if you are a member of another tribe you cannot be a member of this particular tribe that you're trying to be included in. So that is something you'd have to look at either through your constitution or your membership ordinance and to change if that's the result you wanted. Yes, sir."

Ray Louden:

"Hi. I'm Ray Louden with Red Lake. This is for White Earth. How is the new constitution with White Earth going to affect the constitution with the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, and then is the ultimate goal then for the White Earth Nation to be removed from...?"

Jill Doerfler:

"The White Earth Nation has tried for many, many years to engage the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe in constitutional reform at the level of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe and those efforts have not been fruitful. As I said, we've had efforts at White Earth for 30 years and we've tried to engage the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe throughout that time. Minnesota Chippewa Tribe has always -- well, I don't...not always -- they've had for a long, long time had a standing committee on constitutional reform. No actual action has come out of that committee for many years, and so ultimately White Earth citizens felt that we need to move on our own. It's unclear what will happen with regard to the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, whether White Earth will still participate or how the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe will react to us having our own constitution."

Robert Hershey:

"Thank you. You're Red Lake, yes? Yeah. We have time for two more questions right now, the speakers at the microphones then we'll break for lunch. I want to make an announcement about lunch in just a minute. Yes."

Stephanie Cobenais:

"My name's Stephanie Cobenais from Red Lake. What are you deciding on how...what's going to be a descendant on your referendum stuff? What is it?"

Jill Doerfler:

"We haven't identified a base roll yet, which needs to happen. We sort of worked under the presumption that we'd use our current roll, but that isn't 100 percent clear. So a descendant would be somebody descended from a roll that will need to be identified."

Robert Hershey:

"Thank you. Yes, sir."

Audience member:

"How many tribal members do you have enrolled in your tribe?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Excuse me?"

Audience member:

"How many tribal members do you have on your rolls?"

Jill Doerfler:

"We have about 20,000 citizens right now."

Audience member:

"Wow, that's quite a bit. Yeah, we have 900 enrolled tribal members in our tribe but due to our blood quantum it doesn't allow...a lot of our tribal member...a lot of family members to be enrolled. I have a granddaughter that's six tribes. She has six tribal...she's six tribes anyway right now and she couldn't get enrolled with my tribe so she went to one of the other tribes that she represents and then she got enrolled there. But it was kind of a sad deal. But I liked your presentation and I like the way that you guys dealt with the lineal part and I think we got a lot of good ideas out of that and it made me think a lot, too, about our lineal part because here in Arizona...I know tribes here in Arizona it's a lot different here. I have family members from a lot of different tribes here from Arizona that...even some of these guys like, I'm Tonto Apache, I'm related to these guys over here. I'm related to a lot of people in the San Carlos Apache Tribe. And we have other tribes too like Yavapai, other Yavapais up north. My father is a northern Yavapai and his clan still exists. It's still up there. And then I'm also half, I'm a southern Yavapai too. So there's a lot of this stuff going on here in Arizona, it's like a big melting pot. I see a lot of that, but I saw a lot of good ideas in your presentation that really stood out to me and I think we're going to probably take some of that home to our tribe and just try to present it to our people and see what they think about it. I just want to thank you for your presentation."

Jill Doerfler:

"Well, [Anishinaabe language] thank you to you. That's wonderful to hear. I didn't have time...I'll just make one brief comment. I am not a demographer, I'm more the historian/literature-type person, but the tribe did hire a demographer to do a population study and even though...sometimes it sounds like 20,000 is a lot of people, but we are going to soon be reaching a stage where we just have an aging population at White Earth. Our death rate is going to be outpacing our birth rate and we're going to be moving towards declining numbers and so that's also motivating factor. Even though it seems like we're big, we're still really feeling a lot of impacts of blood quantum."

Robert Hershey:

"Thank you. Carole."

Carole Goldberg:

"There's just one brief observation that I wanted to make. For a very good reason we don't have members of the outside press here but if they were, I think they might be very interested in the fact that the word gaming actually has not appeared in any of these presentations about enrollment because there is such a misconception out there that is driving all of this discussion and it's really not, as I think we've seen..."

Robert Hershey:

"Can you share some of the experiences in your community of what you're dealing with regarding identity, membership, citizenship? Why do we have this distinction between "˜membership' and "˜citizenship'? What does "˜membership' mean to you? What does "˜citizenship' mean to you? These are some of the questions you're going to be dealing with when you...I could call on my students. Can I call on a member of the Pascua Yaqui Nation's council to...sorry, Robert, because you brought it up at lunchtime. There's an issue within your constitution that is kind of contrary to the membership rules that you've set out. Is this something that you feel like that you're going to have to attend to? Is the Pascua Yaqui Council going to have to attend to dealing with some of the divergent issues or the irreconcilable positions within a constitution?"

Robert Valencia:

"There's two things that affect our tribe and our current constitution. One is our tribe was very instrumental in the Law and Order Act, getting that together, but our constitution still is what it is and we...that gives us a one-year limitation on the sentencing and I think it was $5,000 on fines and such, and the other is the Membership Act. Our tribe has been...was recognized in 1978, recognized again in 1994, and with this membership bill it's something that in order to do what we want to because it's in the constitution, it was in the Act, we would have to change that. So those are the two pressing issues that we have, among others."

Robert Hershey:

"Thank you very much. But the reason I asked you to speak to this was because there was a contradiction in the constitution as to what the nation wanted to do with regard to its membership. It went to Congress. Now some of you may have, not the IRA [Indian Reorganization Act] tribes here, but you may have also some other federal act that has designated you into the federal recognition and the acknowledgement process, too. So those types of things are unique where you can get congressional acts to go ahead instead of going through the whole formal process amending the constitution and the Pascua Yaqui Nation has been successful in that regard."

Robert Valencia:

"That's right. Initially the Act establishing the tribe did say that we had to have a constitution and initially it was supposed to be in 1980. We didn't have one until about 1988 and we haven't changed it or modified it since that time."

Robert Hershey:

"Thank you very much. Kevin, we've been looking for you."

Kevin Dupuis:

"I have a question for White Earth and as being a former tribal executive committee member I can understand what you're saying and as a reservation business committee member now, the question I have, if the constitution is done with White Earth, is there a point where the tribal executive committee of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe has to approve or disapprove that constitution? And the concern I have is this -- that if an individual reservation in the consolidation of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe writes their own constitution, do they become separated from the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe because the question I would have to that, if they have their own constitution they could not represent the membership of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe [as] their tribal executive committee member. Because our constitution that exists now, whether it be right, wrong, indifferent, it's the only document we have, and the concern with is if it can't be followed now, how is this going to go with the constitution coming from White Earth?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Right. We're definitely in new legal territory when it comes to the White Earth constitution and the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe constitution and these are questions that we'll have to be exploring, especially this summer in consultation both with MCT staff attorneys as well as TEC members, White Earth attorneys and White Earth tribal council and exploring how can the MCT accommodate in some way. Can White Earth have its own constitution and can other MCT nations have their own constitution and still participate in the MCT in some way. Is that possible? These are sort of questions that we need to be working on answers to."

Kevin Dupuis:

"I understand it and I agree with you, just simple principle of federalism. It was discussed years ago in 2004 and I think all the way to 2006 that the tribe already has its own constitution, can we delegate that authority to the individual reservations to write their own constitution and be under the umbrella of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe? My concern is this, if you follow a constitution that you write under White Earth and White Earth adopts that, even through the principal referendum I need to ask myself as a tribal member, because I'm not enrolled in Fond du Lac. We're all enrolled in the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. Our enrollment papers go to the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, not the individual reservations."

Jill Doerfler:

"Correct."

Kevin Dupuis:

"So an action like this, I'm asking at that point, you finish your constitution, it goes through a referendum vote with your people on White Earth. Is there a separation from White Earth from the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, because I can't see White Earth representing members of the tribe anymore if they have their own constitution."

Jill Doerfler:

"It will depend on what actions MCT wants to take. If MCT does nothing, that may be your question. If MCT does nothing, does White Earth essentially then separate? I would say the answer to that is most likely yes, but I'm not an attorney and I'm not here to give legal comment on that. These are issues that we're working on exploring."

Kevin Dupuis:

"Okay. Thank you."

Robert Hershey:

"If I may add something too. It implicates some other issues as well. One of the issues is, what is the Minnesota Chippewa constitution, the nations that are involved in it, is it a Secretarial approval constitution, to do amendments?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Yeah."

Robert Hershey:

"So even though there's a referendum, it doesn't automatically result in a new constitution if the new constitution and the...then you have to call for a Secretarial election, and so then there's a whole process that has to be put to the voters. Then that's also going to go ahead and implicate. Whether or not this becomes an example to the other nations or not as to whether they want to go ahead and adopt a new form of constitution, it could be very exemplary in that regard. And there are situations where in constitutions...the Tohono O'odham Nation for one, Hopi Tribe for another, that they have separate and distinct powers that like the districts here on the O'odham Reservation have their own sense. The Hopi constitution allows for the villages to establish their own constitutions as well. So this could be a number of ways to go ahead and satisfy some of the concerns that you were raising there and at the same time allow for that kind of semi-independence or quasi-independence and it could be a united affiliation of nations with separate and distinct constitutions. It could be an example to go ahead and formulate one type of a constitution if that's the way the people go. But it still is going to require after a referendum, it still is going to require a petition to the Secretary of the Interior to go ahead and have a Secretarial election."

Jill Doerfler:

"I should maybe clarify that our referendum, the plan is to proceed with that referendum via a Secretarial election."

Robert Hershey:

"Yes, please."

Pamela Mott:

"My name is Pamela Mott and I'm from the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation. At lunchtime we sat with Navajo and the other Yavapai tribe and to our question who we are and how do we know, it all came down to a Creation story, "˜cause we all know people sitting here where we come from, how we were taught. The time I grew up, I grew up with a bunch of elders so everybody that I came with, we know who we are and where we're from, but when federal government came and gave us those IRA constitutions that we have today, we have to start changing and identifying ourselves. And I think one of the things at our table that we kind of agree with and I brought up was that when you brought up maximizing your numbers and talking about political, it had a concern to me as a Native American woman "˜cause we're raised like family and we take care of one another. I was wondering, it's so hard for me to understand why other tribes would make one tribal member less important than another one when you said you put restrictions on somebody living off the rez versus someone living on, because a lot of times we don't have the wherewithal to have jobs for educated tribal members and they have to go somewhere else to work or they have to go out of state to work. I have to use my family as an example. I have a nephew that's a doctor in mechanical engineering. There's no job for him on my little reservation, so he has to go. What makes him less of an important tribal member than somebody back home that doesn't have an education but is there working? And I think when you guys teach, as professors when you teach this to people or other Native students that are in your classes, every tribe is different, we're all different, so some of those things I think need to be brought out because I'm a leader for my tribe and when I have to go to [Washington] D.C. and fight for Native American rights or fight for...big one is gaming and you said gaming didn't come up. It is coming up because that's what we're fighting against now but a lot of the things stem...why would you want to make one person less than another when the way we were brought up we had to take care of everybody within the community? And there were adoptions. I know Navajo had talked about some adoptions they had and it depended on your history. If you took slaves in...we weren't mean people. We took care of those people, unlike when they brought the slaves. I understood back east the slaves were more happy to live with the Indians than they were with the non-Indians because they were treated better, they were incorporated as families and that's how we're brought up. So that was one of the things I think our table agreed with, it was kind of hard for me to understand why if there were tribes out there, why would you make somebody different than another based on whether you live within the reservation, whether you don't live in the reservation, because we get a lot of feedback from the people that don't live within my community because they're educated and they tell us, "˜This is what we're doing out here. How can you incorporate with the businesses on the reservation to help us be successful?' And those are some of the things I think that was brought up at our table and I wanted to share that. So I think when you guys are teaching you need to know that. A lot of it comes from our heart and family. We're not like the regular outside non-Indians because a lot of them, they just move. It's easy for them to get up and move one state to another and not have contact with their family members. It's not like that for us. We're always contacting somebody. My sister...I may not...she lives on the same reservation and she lives a hop, skip and a jump from me, but I call her every day or I go see her every other day or something and my children live...I have a son in Oklahoma and he calls me every single day just to let me know how he's doing, how we're talking. So a lot of times you guys don't incorporate that in your teaching, and I think...coming from us now maybe you guys need to start doing that or understanding the tribes."

Carole Goldberg:

"Thank you very much. Actually, I live in Los Angeles. My husband's tribe is in North Dakota, so I'm actually very familiar with the situation of living far away from one's home community. There are places where issues arise involving resource extraction. So there are places where there is a lot of potential money to be made by things like strip mining or various other forms of resource extraction. It has in some places created some tensions, not that people don't care about folks who live far away, not that people don't want to take care of them or stay in touch with them, but just plain old worries that the temptation to do things in the territory might be too great if you don't live there and so that's the source of the tensions that I was referring to over what do you do about folks who live in a place and want to make sure that it's not ruined by various forms of environmental strains and people who live far away and may not experience that. And that...but the variation is tremendous and there are places where that is not an issue and where there are not concerns about treating folks differently. What I was trying to do was give you some sense of the tremendous variety of issues that exist out there and only you can know whether those matter to your own community."

Robert Hershey:

"I'm going to add one thing here, too, just before and this was brought up at our lunch table with my students and they're very passionate about this as well. And if I may just digress just briefly into a little history lesson. Back in Jamestown Colonies with...we hear about Pocahontas, but we don't hear much about her father, which is Powhatan, who was the leader of a number of tidewater tribes in that region. During the treaty ceremonies that would go back and forth whether or not the attempted colonists would be allowed to stay there, there was a ceremony where the English wanted to put a crown on his head and they wanted him just to bend down a little bit so they could put the crown on his head. So the English were taking that as that he was declaring fealty to the crown of England. Now he wasn't thinking that. He was thinking that he was extending his empire. And what I heard from the woman that just spoke, and I thank you for those comments very, very much, is that those educated, those people that are off the reservation, they're contributing and they're bringing things back to your community. So it's very, very interesting how you can extend your empire out there and it doesn't just have to be that people living within a particular area, that's determinative, but it's about those relationships and those contributions that can be far and wide. So that was just something, so I appreciate those comments of what you said. Thank you. Sorry for the history lesson, it's just law professors."

Steve Cornell:

"Steve Cornell from the University of Arizona. For Carole Goldberg, Carole I was just wondering if you had any experience with tribes that are dealing with citizens who live outside U.S. borders with nations that were split by the border. Obviously it's a huge issue right here in southern Arizona with the Tohono O'odham people. There are Yaqui people south in Mexico, but it's also an issue for Mohawks, for some of the Blackfeet Confederacy and others, and have you seen any constitutions that directly try to address the citizenship of people who through no fault of their own are living on the other side of the U.S. border?"

Carole Goldberg:

"I actually have, because one of the communities that I've worked with is the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians in northeastern Maine and a number of the people from the Houlton community, the Maliseet people are actually living in Canada and it is interesting to note that over time the international border has had the impact on communities or it can have the impact of creating a sense of division that would not have existed had that international border not been introduced. And this is a topic that required a lot of internal dialogue within this community. Are they really a part of us? Even though the kinship relations were pretty obvious, the language, the cultural tradition were common but there was this bit of unease about whether...first of all whether there was something that would be viewed wrong by outsiders of including these "˜foreigners,' I use that in quotes, as part of our tribe and there was also again this sense that there had been some separation over the years. And there was at the end of the day I think more receptivity to saying, "˜These are part of our families, these are part of our culture and community and we shouldn't arbitrarily say that they're outside because they're in another country'. But it was a very hard discussion."

Jill Doerfler: "No Easy Answer": Citizenship Requirements

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Anishinaabe scholar Jill Doerfler discusses the process that the White Earth Nation followed to arrive at their new constitution, and details the evolving debate at White Earth about which citizenship criteria it would incorporate into this new governing document.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Doerfler, Jill. "'No Easy Answer': Citizenship Requirements." Tribal Constitutions seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 3, 2013. Presentation.

"It's wonderful to be here. As I mentioned, had the privilege of being here last year, thrilled to be back this year. For the sake of time we're just going to sort of roll right into it. My presentation today is "'No Easy Answer': Citizenship Requirements," because it's a difficult topic for us. Basically I'm going to talk about a sort of case study of the White Earth Nation and focus on citizenship and how, over a number of years, we talked about citizenship and came to a decision on what we wanted. I identified four basic keys that helped us that you may find useful as well. We had an inclusive and open process, we talked a lot about the history of tribal citizenship, both how citizenship or identity was regulated prior to the Indian Reorganization Act, post-Indian Reorganization Act, and then when we came to a blood quantum in 1963. We worked really hard to integrate and practice our Anishinaabe culture and values within the governance structure and within citizenship. And then finally, perhaps most importantly, patience and perseverance. As I said, it's not going to be an easy task and as Carole [Goldberg] said, there are many, many different options and things to be weighed and considered and yet it's worth it in the end. So I'll elaborate on all of these.

I'll say briefly that White Earth is currently part of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (MCT), which is an umbrella structure that has six nations. You'll see White Earth located furthest west there. White Earth has been very interested in creating our own constitution. We've had several different efforts for constitutional reform that have gone on for about 30 years. So it has definitely been a long process. What I'm going to focus on is our efforts from 2007 forward. In her 2007 State of the Nation address, Chairwoman Dr. Erma Vizenor noted that among the issues she wanted to address in the upcoming year was constitutional reform. Vizenor noted that a clear separation of powers of tribal government should be considered as well as requirements for citizenship stating, 'As tribal membership continues to decline under the present one-fourth blood quantum requirement, we must decide eligibility for enrollment.' She went on to note that 'White Earth members must decide these issues by referendum vote.' So she put it up right away, establishing from the outset that it has to be up to the citizens to make this decision. Tribal government isn't going to be the one to make it.

For me personally, I was elated. I had been studying tribal citizenship for several years and was in 2007 preparing to defend my dissertation, which examined citizenship regulations and cultural values among the White Earth Anishinaabe. So after the State of the Nation address, I contacted Vizenor's office and asked how I could be of assistance. We agreed that I would write a series of newspaper articles for our tribal newspaper called the Anishinaabe Today based upon my dissertation research. In the articles I delineated the ways in which Anishinaabe got White Earth conceptualized identity during the early 1900s, then I shared the history of blood quantum and then discussed the changes in tribal citizenship that had occurred within the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. What we hoped is that the articles would both provide information, as well as encourage White Earth citizens to get involved in what was the newest effort for constitutional reform. Some people were a bit wary of having been involved for several years at this point, but we wanted to sort of revitalize them.

So basically citizens were invited to serve as constitutional delegates. There was an application process. Everyone that applied was accepted. We had the first of what would be four constitutional conventions beginning on October 19th and 20th, 2007. The convention was an open public process. Anyone who was interested could come. It wasn't delegates only, but anyone who wanted to come could. At the first convention, Chairwoman Vizenor discussed the need for reform and gave a brief history of the different attempts for change. The delegates were provided draft copies of different constitutions both a draft that had been generated in the late 1990s at White Earth, another draft, and then the current Minnesota Chippewa Tribe Constitution that we were under -- that we still are under -- at that time. There was both an air of excitement and nervousness that day when the process began. We got right into it with the topic of citizenship on the agenda. I was instructed to give a presentation to start things rolling -- I did. I gave a brief presentation about the history of tribal citizenship, explained how blood quantum came to be, the requirement for citizenship in 1963. Part of my goal was to integrate Anishinaabe values and cultural practices so I asked delegates to keep in mind the concept of mino-binaadiziwin. Mino-binaadiziwin translates as 'live well, have good health; lead a good life.' It's a concept that's not about just physical survival, but about a world view in which individuals and groups work actively together to create what we think of as a rewarding, ethical and nourishing life. So it's kind of a whole worldview outlook. In conclusion I asked that we work to restore mino-binaadiziwin in our families, our communities, and our nation at all the different levels and I noted that by working together we could create a strong nation that would both echo our traditions and create a positive future.

After my presentation, delegates were divided into small groups to discuss citizenship. The use of small groups was really effective. It allowed everyone time to share their ideas and concerns. The small groups then, after a period, reported back to the whole group. Several of the groups agreed that blood quantum was not an effective or appropriate way to regulate tribal citizenship, but at that time they found it difficult to decide what the best requirement would be. Many people noted that they had at least some children or grandchildren who could not enroll because of the blood quantum requirement. One group stated that they were confident that a strong effort to maintain our culture and language would ensure that using lineal descent would not water us down, which is something we may be familiar with, the idea that it might be a problem if we used lineal descent. There were some delegates who voiced their desire to continue to use blood quantum. So at that time we agreed that the issue of tribal citizenship would require further discussion. Delegates were encouraged to discuss the issue with their families and their communities and to go home and continue to think about these things. We weren't going to rush to come to any decision that day or anything. The convention went on, we talked about other wide range of issues, separation of powers especially. Ultimately the convention ended with optimism and a real push for positive change for the future. So we'll continue rolling.

A second convention was held January 4th and 5th, 2008. Constitutional delegates had expressed a desire for the White Earth constitution to reflect Anishinaabe values; not surprisingly, that's the main reason a lot of people were there. So we began that first evening with a presentation by White Earth citizen Natalie MacArthur and she talked about the ways in which values could be applied to and implemented within constitutions. She stressed that a constitution must reflect a society's values. So delegates were asked to write down four of their own personal core values and then a correlating belief statement: how do you put that into practice? They discussed these personal values in small groups and then reported back the common values they had identified together. Many of the values, not surprisingly, related to respect, love, truth, honesty, family and compassion. One delegate noted that 'everything we do, all the hard work, love, respect, etc., should be pointed towards future generations. Core values should be used to take care of future generations.' The core values and sentiments discussed closely parallel the Anishinaabe seven grandfather teachings, which emphasize the importance of courage, truth, respect, love, honesty, wisdom and humility as the guiding principles of Anishinaabe life, to live the good life.

Then I was up again to give a presentation. I talked about the history of blood quantum, the concept -- where it came from, the European origins -- and then how it came to be used for tribal citizenship. I explained that while blood quantum was at one time considered science in the 19th century maybe into the 20th century a little bit, today we know that it doesn't exist as a real thing. It's used kind of metaphorically, but it's not real. Blood quantum was not a requirement for tribal citizenship as I said until 1963. And I wanted delegates to have clear and concise information about how the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe came to use this one-fourth Minnesota Chippewa Tribe blood as the sole requirement for tribal citizenship. I summarized resolutions passed by the MCT in the 1930s and '40s that required lineal descent for tribal citizenship and explained that these resolutions were rejected by the Secretary of the Interior, not surprisingly. The Secretary of the Interior was not interested in those and therefore were not made part of the constitution and the Secretary sent many letters back saying blood quantum would be great, residency would be great, you guys need to keep thinking about this. I also used a variety of examples to show that elected leaders of the MCT fought really hard against blood quantum because they knew that someday their descendants would not qualify to become tribal citizens. The records on this are just absolutely spectacular -- people getting up giving long speeches about the importance of family. So I was able to quote extensively from those. I hoped that this information would empower delegates to redefine citizenship in a way that both enacted Anishinaabe values and emphasized relationships, which was something that many people had talked about wanting. I ended the presentation by acknowledging that tribal citizenship was a difficult and controversial issue, but I also emphasized that it was an opportunity to put our values into action. I suggested the delegates consider how the core values that we had discussed earlier that evening might translate into citizenship requirements. How could we put those values into action in the constitution itself? So we had that discussion.

And then the next morning we had... turning it again to the topic of tribal citizenship. We weren't coming to any conclusions just yet. Delegates were asked to examine a list of options and you see them here on the slide. I'm not going to read all of them, but basically the 1990s effort for reform constitution had created a list of citizenship options because they couldn't decide at that time exactly either. And so delegates were asked to look at that list and you see them here. Lineal descent is one option and then the other options are each based on a variety of blood calculations, some of which get kind of complicated. At that time the Chairwoman Vizenor instructed delegates to narrow down the list to one or two options. However, before that happened, one group said, 'Actually we have another option to add to this list. We're not going to narrow it down just yet.' So their idea was that, 'All those who are currently enrolled be made full bloods.' This eventually became known to us as the 'Four-Fourths Band-Aid,' which I think does sum it up. So delegates discussed this at length and then reported back to the group. Basically they reported back saying that they really felt strongly that it was a difficult issue. Some people said, 'Yes, we favor the Four-Fourths Band-Aid because basically what it would mean is that everyone who is currently enrolled is going to be able to have his or her grandchildren enrolled.' So it'll go a certain step so far. So some delegates were ready for change to some extent, but they were uncomfortable making maybe a permanent decision regarding change. They were unwilling or maybe unable to completely let go of blood quantum. They kind of wanted to manipulate and still find a way to maybe use that. As the discussion continued, the issue of family surfaced on many time and again with the delegates' comments. One delegate noted that he favored the use of lineal descent because it includes all family members and was a way of taking care of our families, so enacting some of our values. It was also noted that lineal descendants would go on forever and that if blood quantum were to continue, White Earth -- our sovereignty could potentially be in jeopardy; the Nation might not always exist. However, some delegates were apprehensive that more citizens would put an increased strain on already limited resources. Another delegate stated pretty succinctly, 'No one is happy with blood quantum,' but that person just was unsure about how White Earth should regulate citizenship, how we could move forward. So ultimately the wide diversity of comments and opinions reflect both a desire for change as well as trepidation about what change might really mean. Even though the delegates could easily identify core values, some were having a difficult time conceptualizing how to practice those values in citizenship requirements. Again, delegates were unable to come to a clear conclusion about what the best requirement would be and so, once again, we agreed that the topic would be revisited at a later date. Again, go home, keep thinking about it; keep talking about it.

We came back several months later for what would be the third convention, October 24th and 25th, 2008, focusing here again on citizenship. During my presentation, I noted that delegates had discussed values at the last convention and suggested that a good way to think about core values is to think about the things that we were taught as children or the things that we teach our children or emphasize to our children or grandchildren today. And I turned to stories for this. Stories are one of the primary ways that we teach our children their place in the family, community, nation, and even within the world. Stories also delineate proper and improper behavior. Anishinaabe scholar John Borrows argues that stories contain core Anishinaabe legal principles and traditions that continue to be important as Anishinaabe nations create legal codes and judicial systems today. So I wanted to tie constitutional reform to cultural revitalization in a very concrete way and I thought story, for us as Anishinaabe people, would be a good way to do that. I talked about our story of [Anishinaabe language]. I thought this would be a good story because it offers some interesting possibilities for interpretation with regard to core values and the constitution. So I summarized the story for the delegates and then I gave an allegorical interpretation that related to citizenship based on that story. I invited delegates to consider how to create citizenship requirements based on the positive values expressed the previous convention and in the story about [Anishinaabe language]. I ended my presentation by advocating the themes and story, which were sovereignty, resiliency, persistence, respect and [Anishinaabe language]. I thought these would be useful to consider as we moved forward with constitutional reform.

When we reconvened the next morning, we had a wonderful presentation by Dr. David Wilkins. We saw a little clip of him earlier today. He gave a great presentation on tribal governments and kinship and how kinship can be used to create responsibilities within nations, how it functioned historically and could be used today as well. Then I gave a presentation entitled "Evaluating the Options for Tribal Citizenship," so we moved back to our list and we said, 'We've got to kind of work through these.' What I did was tell the delegates what we need to do is take a closer look at each of these requirements on our list and we're going to ask this set of questions and go through item by item and think about how can we evaluate this and how can we come to a decision. So you can see the questions here that we went through. So we were going through this process. Most delegates were listening intently, weighing the options and yet you could start to feel some tensions rising in the room. Some people were unhappy, some people began talking really loudly to each other and being really disruptive. At that point one delegate was frustrated and she stood up and she said, 'Can I make a motion?' And Chairman Vizenor said, 'Yes, you can.' And so the motion was made that no options for tribal citizenship that require blood quantum be discussed any further. The motion passed. There was only one option on our list that doesn't include any type of blood quantum, which was the lineal descendancy option. Consequently the issue of citizenship was decided. It was kind of surprisingly quick in a certain way even though we had been talking about it for a long time. It was the culmination of numerous discussions on citizenship that had occurred at the previous conventions as well as conversations that delegates had had with their family outside of the conventions. At that time, I simply ended my presentation early; we were done discussing the issue.

After that convention, Chairwoman Vizenor designated a constitutional proposal team to draft a constitution based on the three conventions that we had had. She asked constitutional delegate Gerald Vizenor, who was a very well known scholar and author from White Earth, to be the principle writer for the document. I was also a member of the team and as agreed upon by the delegates, during the process, lineal descent is the sole requirement for citizenship within the constitution. So we know then that the constitution of the White Earth Nation was created through a grassroots process of open discussion and compromise. Delegate Gerald Vizenor did an incredible job of writing the document. He did a nice job of astutely balancing a wide range of viewpoints and his attention to detail was crucial for the mechanics of the constitution. The constitution is a unique reflection of the White Earth Nation. Most importantly it reflects and enacts Anishinaabe values and incorporates enduring cultural traditions while envisioning a certain future. The constitutional proposal team was satisfied with the document. We presented it to constitutional delegates in April 2009. The delegates did make some changes to the document at that time, not to citizenship. They voted in favor of ratification and so the document was complete at that time. Chairwoman Vizenor was happy with the process and reminded delegates that we would...that the delegates were done with their work, but that the document would still go out for referendum vote.

Ultimately, the ratified constitution of the White Earth Nation echoes Anishinaabe traditions and envisions a perpetual future of promise. Today, what we're doing, we're in the process of preparing for a citizen engagement and education effort, which will culminate in a referendum vote on the constitution, which will hopefully be in September or October at the very latest. So we're working on that. Ultimately, in conclusion, as I said, I think four keys that basically worked for us is: really digging into our history -- thinking about how Anishinaabe people thought about identity and citizenship in historical times; looking at our cultural values: how they could be implemented; having these open respectful discussions; and focusing on the future -- what would be best for future generations as delegates often emphasized? Miigwetch."

Jill Doerfler: Constitutional Reform at the White Earth Nation

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

In this in-depth interview with NNI's Ian Record, Anishinaabe scholar Jill Doerfler discusses the White Earth Nation's current constitutional reform effort, and specifically the extensive debate that White Earth constitutional delegates engaged in regarding changing the criteria for White Earth citizenship. She also stresses the importance of Native nations understanding their traditional governance systems and also documenting the origin stories of their current constitutions prior to engaging in reform so that they can deliberate constitutional change with the appropriate context in mind.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Doerfler, Jill. "Constitutional Reform at the White Earth Nation." "Leading Native Nations" interview series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 2013. Interview.

Ian Record:

"Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I'm your host, Ian Record. On today's program we are honored to have with us Jill Doerfler. Jill grew up at White Earth and is a descendant of the White Earth Nation. She's been involved with White Earth's efforts for constitutional reform and served as a member of the constitutional proposal team. She also serves as Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota in Duluth. Jill, welcome, and good to have you with us today."

Jill Doerfler:

"Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here."

Ian Record:

"So I've shared a few highlights of your personal biography, but why don't you just start by telling us a little bit more about yourself. What did I leave out?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Sure. Well, as you mentioned I grew up at White Earth and then I did my undergraduate work at the Morris Campus of the University of Minnesota and then on for a Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities campus. And then had two years outside of Minnesota, one at Michigan State and one at the University of Illinois. Then I came back to Duluth for American Indian Studies, which has been really a great place for me to work."

Ian Record:

"And you're also a published author."

Jill Doerfler:

"I am. Thank you. I have had a couple of books come out recently, one co-authored with Gerald Vizenor called The White Earth Nation: Ratification of a Native Democratic Constitution, which we'll be talking more extensively about as we move on today, but Gerald was the lead writer during the constitutional proposal process and so we collaborated on a book. David Wilkins wrote an introduction for us. Gerald wrote a chapter and the constitution itself is in there and then I write newspaper articles for our tribe and so some of my newspaper articles examining the constitution and explaining different chapters are in the book. So that was exciting. And then just recently in February I had another book come out that's co-edited called Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World Through Stories. And so in that book, I collaborated with Heidi Stark and Niigaan Sinclair and we have 21 chapters. It's a much lengthier book than the first and it's a wide range of scholars working in Anishinaabeg studies and using story as a kind of framework to look at law, to look at environmental studies, language, education, so a wide range of disciplines and kind of centering around story as a framework. And my chapter, in that I examine Ignatia Broker's Night Flying Woman which is a White Earth author's text about basically it's very instructive about how to act as a Ojibwe or an Anishinaabe person, and I examine how that text might apply to constitutional reform."

Ian Record:

"That's great. I'll have to check it out. So we are here today to talk about constitutional reform, and I'm curious to learn about how you personally came to be involved in the recent constitutional reform effort at White Earth."

Jill Doerfler:

"Yeah. So I was just a Ph.D. student working on my dissertation, which was on Anishinaabeg identity and citizenship focused on White Earth starting around the turn of the 20th century and moving forward. And I was just wrapping up the dissertation in 2007 when Erna Vizenor, our chairwoman, gave her State of the Nation address stating that we were ready to move forward with a new effort for constitutional reform. There had been other efforts at White Earth previously, but she announced that and so I was very excited to think about how my research could come into play in a very sort of real concrete way. So I called up the office and asked how I could get involved and we started out using newspaper articles as the first way, using some of my dissertation research and rewriting it into newspaper articles to share with people the history of tribal citizenship and Anishinaabeg identity. And then as the reform process moved forward, I continued to give presentations on my research to the constitutional delegates and so I became involved in that way."

Ian Record:

"So in 2009, those delegates ratified a new constitution for the nation. What prompted...you mentioned that White Earth had looked at constitutional reform in the past and had never sort of gone through the whole process and this time they did. What prompted them to go down the reform road?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Well, I think there's a wide range of factors. Currently, White Earth is under the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe constitution, which hasn't been functioning very well for us and there are no separation of powers, for example, in that constitution and the provision for citizenship hasn't been working well for us and there are several things, the Secretary of the Interior I think is mentioned maybe 13 times, and so that constitution just basically hadn't been functioning. And so there had been a few other efforts for reform starting actually in the "˜70s and then a strong effort in the late "˜90s and then Chairwoman Vizenor had ran in part on the fact that she would engage in constitutional reform. It's something that the people at White Earth have wanted for some time. They feel that a new constitution could provide some checks and balances. We have had some issues with corruption and fraud at White Earth in the past that were really problematic and if we don't have a new constitution in place, we don't have a way to prevent that from happening again."

Ian Record:

"So can you briefly describe the process that your nation devised to develop a new constitution, because I can tell you from my own experience that there's a lot of nations talking about the need for constitutional change, but of that number, there's a minority among them that actually make it through to the ratification of a new constitution. So in that respect, process is absolutely critical, so can you share a little bit about the process that your nation took?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Sure. It was definitely a grassroots kind of process and we weren't as organized to have a full plan laid out with timelines and deadlines when we started. Mostly, Chairwoman Vizenor just wanted to start by holding a constitutional convention and see how things went. So in preparation for that, I was writing newspaper articles and then we had a process for constitutional delegates. It was advertised mostly in the tribal newspaper and then people could apply to be constitutional delegates and then Chairwoman Vizenor also sent word out to our community councils and asked those community councils to each send two delegates. And everybody who applied to be a delegate was accepted so it was really inclusive that way. At the first convention, we discussed a wide range of issues and Chairwoman Vizenor ended it by asking the delegates if they wanted to carry this process forward and they did and so we did. So it was really...even though she was in some ways leading the process, she was really letting the delegates make the decisions as far as what they wanted."

Ian Record:

"So your process went through to its fruition, but I would imagine along the way there were several issues or obstacles that emerged. Can you talk about some of those challenges and how you worked to overcome them?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Sure. I think one of the biggest challenges was keeping everyone engaged and keeping the attention of the people and of the delegates, 'cause it was a couple of years in the process. So we started with that first convention in 2007 and then wrapped up in April of '09, so it was that lengthy process. We didn't have a large amount of funding or anything like that. We didn't have a person in charge of doing all the organizing. There were myself and Joe LeGarde and a couple of other people helping get things done, but we didn't have a dedicated person, which I think would have been advantageous to have somebody really coordinating the effort who was in charge. And so we were kind of splitting the duties and kind of each contributing what we could. So that was a little bit of a challenge, but I think the delegates who really believed in the process stuck through with us because they cared so much about the issue they were willing to take the few bumps in the road and to keep moving forward knowing that the results would be worth it."

Ian Record:

"So you sort of touched on this issue of citizen education and engagement, and you mentioned you did a number of newspaper articles which I've had a chance to read, and I think unfortunately we don't see that level of education in many other tribes that are engaging reform so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the efforts that you and the delegates undertook to really I think first and foremost get the citizens to understand why this should matter to them and then get them sort of moving in and engaged in the actual deliberations around what do we need to change in our current constitution or do we need to in fact develop an entirely new one."

Jill Doerfler:

"Yeah, well, I think the delegates are the ones who really did a lot of the work going out. We would talk about issues at the conventions and we would always say, "˜Okay, go back to your families, go back to your community, whether you're on community council or whether it's informally at other gatherings, talk about these issues,' and then I would write the newspaper articles also to kind of keep things at the forefront and hopefully keep people thinking about it and talking about it whether it's over a coffee break at lunch or whether it's at a powwow or like I said, another formal meeting. So we really asked the delegates to kind of go out and keep those conversations going and then to come back and share with us what they had learned and what people were telling them."

Ian Record:

"So it wasn't just about what you were hearing in the actual meetings but it was what you were hearing second hand from people who were coming back with essentially field reporting on what they're hearing sort of on a one-on-one personal basis."

Jill Doerfler:

"Definitely, definitely, and I definitely also received quite a few emails. As technology improves and with my newspaper writing, definitely a lot of people emailed me to tell me their thoughts and ideas and so we took all of that into consideration."

Ian Record:

"How important is that to make sure that the education and engagement of citizens around everything from what a constitution is to what we're thinking about in a new constitution, how important is that to be ongoing versus intermittent? We've seen other tribes stumble where really the only time they're really educating and engaging is when they have a physical meeting and whoever shows up, you show up and you get the information you need and you maybe give the feedback you want to give, but everyone else is sort of left out in the cold."

Jill Doerfler:

"Yeah, I think it really has helped the process that we've tried to stay as engaged as possible throughout, because it gives people more of a commitment and they feel like they're more part of the process, they are more part of the process which is what we want. We don't want a document that just comes out of a few opinions. We need to have everyone's input, because a document like a constitution is a big compromise ultimately. We took in lots of ideas and I'm sure no one person got exactly everything they wanted in that document and so that's another part of the process is sharing the deliberations, sharing the different ideas, and then the outcome so that people can see that there's such a range of ideas that we compromised on certain aspects to try to do our best with what would be the best choices."

Ian Record:

"So you mentioned at the outset that Chairwoman Vizenor was sort of the spearhead for this effort. She made it part of her State of the Nation address and took a lead role sort of at the outset, but then from what I'm hearing, she sort of took a step back after that and played more of a supportive role. And we've seen that as critical in other places as well, where it's good that the leaders are supportive of the effort but not dominating the effort. Is that sort of how it unfolded there and how important was that in the overall success?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Yeah, absolutely. I think it helped take...politics is never going to be out of anything, it's definitely not going to be out of a constitutional process, but I think it helped remove that Erma was not a delegate, she did not vote on the document, she helped facilitate the meetings, she helped with the agenda, but she was not making any of the choices. When delegates had to vote for something, she helped make the motions and helped the process, but she didn't have a vote in the issue, and so it helped give voice to the people and helped the people realize that it's up to them, they're the ones in control and they have the power to make the choices and it's not going to be a process where tribal government just hands us a document and says, "˜This is what tribal leadership wants.' Instead, it's more coming from what the people want."

Ian Record:

"So you did a presentation earlier this week at the Native Nations Institute's constitutions seminar on this topic and one of the things you cited as a key to success in terms of getting the citizens engaged and keeping them engaged was the use of small-group discussions, sort of breakout groups. Can you talk a little bit about what led the nation to use that as an approach and just how critical it was?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Yeah. Boy, I'm not exactly sure how we came to the decision to do that now that I think of it, but in preparation for the first convention we talked about...I was talking with Chairwoman Vizenor and Joe LeGarde and others about how the convention might run and topics and I think it probably was maybe Joe LeGarde that said we should do the small-group breakout. We started out with 40 delegates, which is a large group to try to have a conversation with and then all of the conventions were open and public, so at all conventions there were also other people who attended who were not delegates, and so what we did then is we would have a presentation on a topic or introduce a topic and then give the delegates time to consider certain questions within their small groups. And I think that gave each individual, whether they were a delegate or not a delegate, time to discuss and time to discuss with delegates what was best and it helped people get a more personal viewpoint and also not to feel intimidated to talk in front of a group of 40 delegates plus other attendees. That can be intimidating for some people and as far as time constraints go it was also useful that way. People could say more and then report back as a group and also kind of start the compromise process within the groups hopefully hearing a diversity of ideas in the group, presenting back maybe one or two ideas, and then hearing from others. And so I think overall it helped people feel like they were heard."

Ian Record:

"That's great. So you mentioned that this process lasted over two years. You had four constitutional conventions sort of spaced out during that time and obviously from what you're saying a lot of work in between, ongoing work. Was there...at any point in the process were you at all concerned that or did you doubt that a new constitution would actually take shape and be ratified by the constitutional delegates?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Well, let's see. I don't think...there was going to be no guarantee at the end what the outcome was because we started out with a very loose process with delegates asking them if they even wanted to continue with the process. And there was probably not the clearest of roles from the outset, and it wasn't until Chairwoman Vizenor selected the constitutional proposal team to start the writing of the document...and I think we were very fortunate to have Gerald Vizenor be a constitutional delegate, and as some of the viewers probably know, Gerald Vizenor is a really accomplished scholar from White Earth -- having written I think at this point well over 40 books, everything from poetry to novels to short stories to theory to history -- and so that was lucky for us. We didn't engage a lot of legal consultation, we didn't have somebody sitting by the wayside doing that, and so we had our processes and I had detailed notes and we kind of used that to start the writing. So I think until we started writing the document, it was a little unclear how long the process was going to be and who was going to be in charge of the writing. And I think it actually helped that we didn't have that team designated from the outset, that we were kind of in a looser process because then it wasn't...nobody identified us early on and said, "˜I want to make sure I say this to Gerald or this to Jill because they're going to be part of writing it.' Instead it was...kept it more open and kept the power also more dispersed."

Ian Record:

"So you briefly referenced the role of lawyers in reform process, and I think you may be an exception to the rule at White Earth in that you're not a lawyer and Gerald's not a lawyer and you wrote the constitution. We've seen other instances where the lawyers get involved, even before the writing of the constitution they're heavily involved in the process. Was that ever at sort of the forefront of minds, "˜Let's keep the legal aspects to the side, the legal folks to the side because we want this to be an expression of the people's will and not the expression of any particular lawyer's will?'"

Jill Doerfler:

"Absolutely. I think it's really difficult to find sort of objective legal advice. Everybody has their opinions, even staff attorneys at White Earth have their interests, and so we really wanted it to be a document that people can read and understand. Sometimes...from a legal perspective, sometimes lawyers write in a certain way that's difficult to understand and so we definitely wanted it to come from the people and we did not really utilize lawyers, which some lawyers have critiqued since then. Sometimes I get a raised eyebrow from lawyers that we didn't really engage that in the process."

Ian Record:

"Time will tell I guess if it's going to be an issue."

Jill Doerfler:

"Right, right. We'll see how well that works out in the end."

Ian Record:

"So what would you say ultimately -- now that the process is done -- what would you say ultimately were the keys to the success of the nation in actually seeing this process through?"

Jill Doerfler:

"I think definitely we had a very open, inclusive process. As I mentioned, we had delegates -- who everyone who applied was accepted -- and then all of the constitutional conventions were announced in the newspaper, it was open, anyone could come who wanted to come. No one was ever asked to leave or turned away and so it was very...it was as transparent as we could be and I think that was really critical. We never had a closed door meeting. Never had a closed door meeting with lawyers, we never had a closed door meeting with delegates. Everything was open and so that was definitely one of the keys to our process. Maybe I'll also say that persistence was part of the key as well, because it did take a couple of years and in a way that seems like a long time for me, 'cause that's the timeline I was involved, but some of our constitutional delegates had been involved in different efforts for reform over the past 30 years and so some of them definitely get a lot of credit for seeing the different processes through. And I would say that none of those previous efforts were failed efforts which could be looked at as well. We tried in the late "˜90s, there was a draft constitution at that time, but no action was ever taken on it. True, but I think nonetheless that process still helped us build up to what we did in 2007 and the experience that those people had, they brought that to the table with them when they came in 2007 with those other efforts so that was really advantageous for us."

Ian Record:

"And perhaps some informed perspectives on what didn't work and what to avoid and that sort of thing."

Jill Doerfler:

"Absolutely, yes."

Ian Record:

"So I want to turn to the subject of citizenship, which is as you know one of the most controversial issues facing all Native nations -- who's going to be a part of us and how do we define the criteria that determines that? Citizenship was at the core of your nation's constitutional deliberations, and I'm curious before we get into sort of the mechanics of how you came to arrive at your new definition of citizenship or perhaps a returning to an old definition of citizenship, can you talk a bit about how the White Earth Anishinaabe defined citizenship traditionally and what criteria they used prior to colonization?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Sure. It varied over time, so there isn't just one answer to how things worked, but there's big changes over time. Anishinaabeg people have had contact with non-Indians for hundreds of years by this point and there have been changes, migrations and where my research really starts is starting in the early 20th century, right after the turn of the century. And in my research, I wanted to look at how Anishinaabeg people thinking about their identity, sort of pre-IRA, pre-organized government, and what I came to look at was a series of records that were based actually on land transactions at White Earth. In the 19-teens, allotment happened at White Earth as it did in many nations. And what happened at White Earth is there's legislation that says, "˜Mixed-blood people can sell their land, full-blood people cannot.' Land at White Earth is really gorgeous and spectacular. It was both good timber land and good farm land, lakes country. Lots of non-Indians said, "˜Hey, we'd like that land, we can either make a living there or make money there.' And after allotment happens at White Earth, then we get that legislation about mixed blood and full blood and then land transactions take place at an extraordinary rate. White Earth is often pointed to nationally as a case study because of how quickly land changed hands. And White Earth people complained that there was illegal activities, that people were being lied to or people who couldn't read were asked to sign papers that they were told was for their bill at the store and it was for a lease or it was for the sale. So lots of White Earth people complained and ultimately the federal government did a couple of investigations and one was conducted by Ransom Powell, who was a relatively well-known attorney in Minnesota because he represented some lumber company interests and he was selected to do the process at White Earth. There's a clear political choice there on the part of the U.S. government in choosing him, but he and his team went around and interviewed Anishinaabeg people asking them, "˜Is so and so mixed blood or a full blood?' and those records are extraordinarily rich with responses by people at White Earth saying, [a] "˜I have no idea what you're talking about when you say mixed blood and full blood. We don't define people like that.' 'I can't remember' was a big one. And then Powell and his associates would then also ask questions like about phenotype. "˜Well, did such and such have dark skin' and Anishinaabeg people would say, "˜I don't know, I don't remember,' or some people would say, "˜I don't know, they weren't really light but they weren't really dark, they were kind of medium,' and so Anishinaabeg people found all these inventive ways to kind of get around these definitions that the U.S. government was trying to push, which were these sort of fixed biological, unchanging definitions and for Anishinaabeg people identity wasn't something that was fixed. Identity was something that people created themselves through their actions, how they lived their lives, what choices they made and so they conveyed that time and again in the interviews. And so part of what I shared was some of my research on that, that identity was fluid and people were empowered to create their own identity, which I think is really interesting for us to think about today, that many of us have been really familiar with blood quantum and thinking of identity as this thing that is unchanging that you're born with versus a 100 years ago, Anishinaabeg people saying, "˜Well, you make yourself a full blood or you make your own identity.'"

Ian Record:

"So you brought up a good segue to the next question, which is about blood quantum, because in 1963 White Earth, the sole definition for...sole criterion for citizenship at White Earth became blood quantum. And I'm curious -- how did that come to pass? And it doesn't sound to me like the White Earth people certainly prior to that and I would imagine in 1963 probably didn't fully embrace that change, did they?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Right. Blood quantum I always think is used to disenfranchise people at White Earth in two ways and first it starts with those land transactions. Ultimately, what that investigation found is that about 90 percent of people at White Earth were mixed blood, i.e. 90 percent of those land transactions are legally valid and there's no legal recourse. And so people at White Earth were familiar with how the federal government could use identity to disenfranchise them, in that case to take land basically illegally. And so White Earth becomes part of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, which forms in 1936 with the IRA kind of style government and originally there isn't real firm criteria for citizenship. People basically apply to become citizens based on their parents and they're approved. There is no blood quantum requirement initially. And the Secretary of the Interior starts writing to the tribal executive committee, which is the governing body of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, saying, "˜You really need to think about your citizenship requirements and you really need to think about using either blood quantum or residency or some combination of these things.' And many members of the tribal executive committee including people from White Earth said, "˜No, we don't want to do that. That's going to become a problem for our children or our grandchildren and we need to think about future generations.' And so they passed several resolutions on citizenship that were lineal descent and sent them to the Secretary of the Interior who has, there's an approval clause in the constitution that the Secretary has to approve. The Secretary rejected all of those resolutions time and again and so over about a 20-year period, this would kind of ebb and flow. It would kind of come up and they would pass a resolution and the Secretary would reject it and then time would pass and the Secretary would say, Well, you really need to decide this.' And they would do the same thing and the Secretary would write back saying, "˜For all intents and purposes, this is the same legislation that you sent me last time. I rejected it last time, I'm going to reject it now.' And then finally we move into the later "˜50s and into the early "˜60s and this is termination time as people familiar with American Indian history are familiar. And basically there were some letters sent that weren't too veiled threats regarding termination saying, "˜If the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe doesn't decide this very soon it'll be made a matter of Congress and Congress will decide.' And so ultimately the tribe agrees to one-quarter Minnesota Chippewa Tribe as the sole requirement for citizenship. It gets voted on by the leaders in '61 and it goes into effect in '63 as a constitutional amendment."

Ian Record:

"So it sounds like this was at the beginning...it sounds like this was a main topic of conversation from the get-go when the new effort began."

Jill Doerfler:

"Yes, absolutely it was. People have felt the impact of blood quantum now. I myself am one of those people. As you mentioned, I'm a White Earth descendant, meaning my mother is a tribal citizen and I'm not and the reason is because of blood quantum. And so many, many families have been impacted, literally divided by blood quantum which is what leaders were talking about in the "˜30s and "˜40s and the record on their statements is very rich, very impassioned speeches about the importance of family and how this will affect the future. In a lot of ways, it was a delayed form of termination. The tribe in some ways was up against these threats of immediate termination, but blood quantum itself is designed to slowly make the population smaller and eventually designed to eliminate tribes. And the Secretary of the Interior was very, relatively frank about that in some of his communications to the tribe saying, "˜Every person that you add to the roll diminishes the share that each person has,' and so trying to use resources to try to get people to tighten up citizenship requirements, trying to limit population numbers. And so to some extent, it's working. And the tribe actually did a demographic study recently showing population and the demographer found that using trends over the last 100 years, if we kind of average things out, we anticipate that by about 2040, we'll just have an aging population, there won't really be anyone eligible for citizenship, and by about 2080, 2090, we anticipate that there may be few or no citizens meaning that as the U.S. government has hoped, the nation will cease to exist. If there are no citizens, there are no treaty obligations, no tribal government, and it's over."

Ian Record:

"So you said the resolutions were from about the 1930s and the 1950s from White Earth about this issue and they were all rebuffed?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Yep. Yeah, "˜30s, "˜40s and then they tried some other tactics sort of in the "˜50s because what was happening was some people were like being rejected from healthcare, other BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] programs and the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe and White Earth as a part of that would write to the Secretary of the Interior or to the agent and say, "˜These people are our citizens and they don't have one-quarter blood quantum as the Bureau sometimes wants, but they're still our citizens and they still are entitled to these services.' And there was a big fight and as I said, the record is really rich, and I would imagine that the same is true for other tribes, and I would really encourage other tribes to take a look at their histories and kind of examine what was going on. If the tribe has blood quantum, how did that come to be, what was going on before that? Because I think for lots of people at White Earth, you know, we've had blood quantum since '63. A lot of people have grown up with that and not known anything different, and we need to look back at what our ancestors were saying, what people were doing historically, and think about, 'How can that guide us today? Can some of their wisdom still apply today?'"

Ian Record:

"I saw you when I was doing my presentation yesterday, I was making that exact point. You were nodding your head 'cause I was basically saying that it's absolutely vital for tribes when they begin the constitutional deliberation process that they need to first understand where they came from, where their constitution comes from, what's the oral history, what's the archival history, what's the documentation around what your own people were thinking back when these things were created and did they have any say in how these things were created? Or did they try to voice their opinion on how these things were created and were ignored, were refused, etc.?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Absolutely. I think that's very key. I think people sometimes assume that whatever document we have now or whatever document their tribe has been operating under was somehow sanctioned by elders or was the result of a lot of deliberation and thought and that's not necessarily the case. Sometimes these constitutions were passed with very little participation, sometimes the Secretary of the Interior or other bureaucrats from the BIA were heavily involved in writing these constitutions and it's important to look at that history. Before you're ready to move forward you have to think about the past, because really the way that we construct the past and what happened helps us understand our present and that's what helps us envision our future as well."

Ian Record:

"Isn't it really...at a fundamental level isn't it really an issue of ownership, that there are a lot of people in the community that -- because they don't know that back history, they don't know the origin story, if you will, of their current constitution and system of government -- that there is a sense that we do own this, that this is ours, that this is somehow our creation when in most instances, I won't say all, but in most instances, that's absolutely not the case."

Jill Doerfler:

"Yes, exactly. Yeah. There can be a loyalty to that document that maybe people would have a different opinion on if they had a little bit more historic information."

Ian Record:

"So I want to kind of dive now into how you guys deliberated citizenship, this issue of citizenship in the recent reform process. At the outset you developed some questions to help guide constitutional delegates in terms of evaluating the different options for redefining tribal citizenship. Can you talk about what those questions were and why you chose them?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Sure. It was actually a little bit more towards the end of the process. So we had had several deliberations on citizenship. I had given some presentations also on the history of blood quantum, which is important. It's important for tribes to know their own history, but then blood quantum as a concept has its own history. So we discussed those things, and then because of previous reform efforts at White Earth, there was a constitution created that had a list of citizenship options and so we utilized those during the current process. And so I asked delegates to take a look at those options and start going through them and based on the previous conventions I created a set of questions that wanted to ask which of these options best enacts our Anishinaabe values and beliefs because delegates had said time and again, "˜What we want is a constitution that's ours, that reflects our Anishinaabe culture and our values and how can we put that in the constitution? And so that was kind of an easy mark to say, "˜Then that's a question we want to ask as we look at our citizenship options.' One delegate had talked about how citizenship really is part of the question, who are we and who are we in our hearts,' which I thought was good so we utilized that. We also utilized a question relating to which of the citizenship options will be best for White Earth in the future, so not only looking at our current situation, not only thinking about ourselves or delegates thinking about themselves, but thinking about future generations as our ancestors had encouraged us to do then if we used that to look at the different options."

Ian Record:

"So tell me about one option which you've termed the "band-aid" option or maybe you didn't come up with it, but it's what you shared as the band-aid option. What did it propose and why was it ultimately discarded?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Sure. So we basically had several options that we were looking at. One was lineal descent, three were a variety of blood calculations of different types that were...some were relatively complex, and then delegates, White Earth delegates came up with another option during one of the conventions. One of the small groups said, "˜We have another option which is to make everyone who's currently enrolled, whoever is on the rolls right now, we'll make them a full blood. We'll make them four-fourths.' And ultimately that became termed the 'band-aid' approach. I think one of the delegates said that, that wasn't my term, but delegates considered that option a little bit and it was called the band-aid approach I think because it just put a temporary fix on the problem. What it would do would make it so that everyone who's a citizen now would guarantee that their grandchildren are enrolled no matter who they've had...who their children had children with, etc., that their grandchildren would be enrolled. But it doesn't guarantee anything beyond that. So we're looking into the future, but we're only looking into the future a little bit and there were probably definitely delegates with great-grandchildren who are part of the process who could already see that that probably wasn't forward looking enough. And delegates talked about the fact that this will fix the problem now, but what it will ultimately do is pass the exact same problem on to either our children or onto our grandchildren or some future generations, and so I think delegates ultimately felt like they came to be part of the process to make the hard choices. This isn't going to be an easy choice regarding citizenship, but they wanted to make it in a way that was more forward looking than just two generations in the future."

Ian Record:

"I think on Capitol Hill they call that the 'kicking the can down the road' approach."

Jill Doerfler:

"I think they do."

Ian Record:

"So what decision -- and I think you referenced this already -- but can you talk about the decision that the delegates finally arrived at regarding citizenship, and how did they arrive at that decision?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Sure. Ultimately lineal descent was selected as the option. We deliberated it, delegates deliberated it several times, I had given several presentations as I said evaluating options and sharing information and finally we were discussing different options for citizenship and finally one delegate just made a motion and said, "˜We would like to stop discussing options that deal with blood quantum.' It passed and therefore the only one option that doesn't deal with any type of blood quantum, that was lineal descent and then we moved forward from there. And I think it was probably a culmination of things. In some ways I think delegates who probably decided from the outside that they were in favor of lineal descent were maybe weary of talking about it because we had spent a lot of time on it and so I think for some of them they were like, "˜We are ready to make this decision' and I think for other people it was a little bit of a push that they needed to be like, "˜Okay, we're just going to...we're going to have to just make a choice here. We're never going to get a unanimous decision. There's going to be some people who are going to vote for and some people who are going to vote against and we have to accept that process and move forward.'"

Ian Record:

"So how do you...it seems to me that you're pretty certain that this will strengthen, this new criteria will strengthen the nation moving forward. Can you discuss in what ways?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Sure. Well, I think ultimately it is an enactment of our Anishinaabe values. It really places family and relationships at the center of the nation which is historically appropriate, which is things that we know that our ancestors wanted, and so that's advantageous 'cause it's putting those values into action. If we say family and love and respect is at the heart of the nation, how can we do that? Well, using lineal descent, using family then is one way to do that. It also strengthens the nation from the perspective that potentially we have the option to exist in perpetuity. We don't have a graph with a line that shows when the population will end like we do with blood quantum. We have the idea that as long as families are passing on their values and traditions and political loyalties exist, people will choose to become citizens of the nation and that leaves that option open. A strong citizen base I think is critical for any nation. It gives them a diversity of resources regarding people, what citizens can contribute to the nation, which is something we also talked about at White Earth quite a bit. Sometimes there's a perception that citizens will just drain resources and people will just want to become citizens in order to get certain benefits. We also talked about the fact that becoming a citizen is a responsibility and that when you make that choice to become a citizen, A, you're in some ways acknowledging the jurisdiction of the White Earth Nation, B, you're submitting yourself to those laws and codes and you have obligations to carry out. You're not necessarily going to get anything. We don't have per capita payments at White Earth. I don't see that happening in the future, and I think we want to think of citizens as assets and think about how can more citizens provide more resources. How can having somebody who's a citizen who has expertise in environmental like change, climate change be an advantage? How can we bring more people in and be more inclusive and what could that mean both for the nation politically and economically as well?"

Ian Record:

"So it's interesting you mention this issue of obligations. We talk with a lot of nations about that issue, that somewhere it was lost in the colonization process the obligations of citizenship, that a lot of folks in Native communities, because of the legacies of colonialism, view their relationship with the government as 'what do I get out of it?', not so much what the government and the nation should be expecting of them and what they should be obligated to do. Can you be a little bit more specific on what sort of obligations I guess are expected of citizens under the new constitution and system of government?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Sure. And I'll also say that I think in some ways, because of colonialism, that the relationship with tribal government and the relationship with federal government has sometimes been a little bit confused and I think there is this obligation and what the federal government owes especially via treaty obligations to tribal nations and tribal citizens. But tribal governments don't necessarily owe tribal citizens anything. They may choose to provide services, again enacting our values or choosing to do certain things, but that's not an entitlement necessarily that somebody has. So part of being a citizen is contributing and everyone...as Anishinaabe people we always say, "˜Everyone has a gift,' and the range and diversity of gifts is important to us. We don't want everyone to have the same gift. We want a diversity of people which also relates to increased population. But everyone will contribute in their own way. They will contribute maybe working in tribal government, maybe working for a certain program or service. They may contribute by raising healthy children, they may contribute by helping other family members, they may contribute in a wide range of ways, but focusing on that instead of focusing on what a single person might get."

Ian Record:

"I want to move now onto the other aspects of the new constitution, and I'll ask you in a second for your thoughts on what you think stands ou,t but I'm curious, there's one change that I forgot to write on the list of questions and that is, you're no longer the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, you're now the White Earth Nation. Why was that change made?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Well, we use that sometimes now anyway and we do feel it's a little bit more appropriate for us. It's a little bit stronger assertion of our sovereignty. That's been a preferential name that we've used internally for a while and so this was an opportunity to make that change officially in the constitution."

Ian Record:

"So what other things stand out in terms of the new constitution? Can you give us a brief overview of some of the concrete, fundamental differences between the new constitution and how you govern yourselves under the old arrangement?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Absolutely. I think the separation of powers is one of the biggest things. When Chairwoman Vizenor first announced the fact that she wanted to start constitutional reform, she mentioned two things: citizenship and separation of powers. Currently, there is no separation of powers and the court system is basically established via statute not in the constitution, which gives it a little bit more precarious of a position. And so the new constitution, the ratified constitution of the White Earth Nation, separates out a president, a legislative council, and the judiciary, and each has separate roles and responsibilities. Also the legislative council is not enumerated in a fixed way, because we know that White Earth population will change over time and we don't want to lock ourselves in to having three representatives or three districts or five districts and so that is left open, that will change over time. One part that is fixed is off-reservation representation -- which is something that doesn't exist now -- in a very concrete way. Right now, everyone votes for the chairperson and the secretary-treasurer. They're elected, as we say, at-large. But there are three districts on the reservation right now. So the constitution has sort of open number of districts on the reservation and then two representatives for off-reservation but within Minnesota. And so that's a guarantee that off-reservation [citizens] will have at least two representatives, which is important because we have a large portion of the population, White Earth citizens living off the reservation, so that was a major change. And as I said, having the judiciary separate and established within the constitution, that's really critical because things like the new Tribal Law and Order Act and the Violence Against Women Act, which is hopefully going to allow Native nations to extend their jurisdictional reach a little bit, part of that is having that separate judiciary helps guarantee for everyone that there will be some independence there. I think most of us in Indian Country are in favor of increased jurisdiction, but increased jurisdiction without a separation of powers can be a little bit scary and so that's also..."

Ian Record:

"It essentially raises the stakes and if you maintain a politicized court system, it's just going to make things even worse potentially."

Jill Doerfler:

"Correct. I'll also say a couple of other things about the new constitution. Currently at White Earth, we have community councils, which are operating in a relatively informal basis. They're not written into any governing document, but in the new constitution we have community councils established, we have an elders council and a youth council, and they all have real important roles within the community for people to gather to talk about political issues to also engage in cultural activities, to keep language and cultural practices ongoing and it allows people ways to engage the elected leadership and allows elected leadership maybe to choose to come to a youth council meeting or to come to an elders council meeting when they have a problem. And so that was really important to delegates, and I'm really proud that we have those different councils established and set within the constitution itself."

Ian Record:

"That's fascinating. One tribe I worked with for quite a long time, they, in a draft constitution, which has not yet been ratified, they actually gave constitutional authority to their elders council and their youth council to review legislation before it could be voted on which I thought was really cool."

Jill Doerfler:

"Wow!"

Ian Record:

"I'm really looking forward to that getting ratification at some point. So we talked about what's actually in the new document, some of the things you referenced. That's ultimately just a piece of paper. That leads me to the question: what's the new governance reality that that document seeks to create? How does it seek to improve the effectiveness of White Earth governance and make it more culturally appropriate, etc.?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Yeah, I think also trust is a big issue with government at White Earth and other nations as well. White Earth, as I said briefly, has had some issues with fraud and corruption in the past and that has really tainted peoples' view and their trust and their view of the tribal government as legitimate. And so we hope that the new governing document with the separation of powers, with the ways in which elections are structured, will help improve peoples' pride in the government, potentially their political loyalty, that would be improved."

Ian Record:

"If you were to explain to somebody that knows nothing about your tribe and knows nothing about the reform effort, what aspects of the new constitution and the new governance system are most culturally distinct to White Earth, what would you tell them?"

Jill Doerfler:

"I would say that our preamble is actually potentially most distinct. Preamble, as some people know, is a place in the constitution where there is sometimes a little bit more freedom rather than the articles and exact procedures that are laid out. But I think the preamble is really nicely written, acknowledges our broad range of relationships and cultural values historically and contemporary, and so I think that does a nice job. I do think that we have some processes for basically ethics, impeachment, citizens are allowed to petition. I think that kind of citizen involvement is very culturally appropriate and something that people will welcome having in the new constitution in a way that citizens haven't been able to be as engaged with the current governance structure. And I think historically, Anishinaabeg people and White Earth people had a lot more opportunity to engage leaders, to be a little bit more involved in the process than is currently available, so I think the new constitution also does that. And I think the balance of checks in power and balance of power is also culturally appropriate. Historically, Anishinaabeg people didn't have one or two leaders who were making all the decisions for the tribe. That power was disbursed, there were lots of lengthy council meetings where people could get out and participate, and so we see some of those things integrated in the new constitution as well."

Ian Record:

"So what cultural values would you say does the new constitution seek to protect, advance, to live, and what future do you feel it's designed to help create within the nation?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Sure. I think that one of the things that we talked about a little bit during the process was cultural values and core values. At ones point delegates were asked to identify some of their core values and write belief statements, and ultimately they came very close to intentionally or not intentionally mirroring our teachings, which are sometimes called the seven grandfather teachings, which is basically love, respect, honesty, humility, wisdom -- these types of really basic core values that transcend time, that transcend place that we can all be engaging in today. Sometimes culture for American Indians gets fixed a little bit historically in the past and fixed into certain actions, but if we think of love and respect as part of our cultural values then that opens us up to enacting them today."

Ian Record:

"So final wrap-up question. You guys have gone through the whole process. You're awaiting a secretarial election, is that correct?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Right."

Ian Record:

"But in terms of the actual process and the crafting of a new foundational governing document, you've gone through that process. What do you feel other nations can learn from the White Earth experience? What sort of lessons do you feel that you've learned that might be transferrable to the challenges that other tribes are facing?"

Jill Doerfler:

"Right. So I do hesitate to say we're through the process, 'cause we're gearing up for a really...hopefully what will be a really big citizen engagement and education effort, because things have been sitting at White Earth a little while. Delegates ratified the document in 2009, it's now 2013, and so we do need to work this summer and into the fall to reinvigorate and to educate about the document to make sure any questions that people have are answered. But as far as the writing process and the process that went into getting the document that we have now, I think that transparency was key. I think we did a relatively good job with that. I think since we've finished, social media has really taken off and I would say if we were doing...the nation who's doing it now I would say need more presence on the web. We primarily used newspaper articles which was great, but things on the web can happen a little bit more in real time and I think that would be something that tribes could utilize. I think the fact that we were inclusive as far as delegates went is also good. It also provided some trust I think to people who were maybe skeptical of the process. We can say that everyone who wanted to be included was included but there was that application process and there was a deadline and that was it. There were later some people who wanted to become delegates after the process started and we were unable to do that because we had to stick with our original plan. But I think that that was good as well. I think if we would have added new delegates later we would have almost had to start over and re-educate, so I think it was good that we had that open process, but then once the delegates were selected we stuck with it and we didn't make changes. So I think it's easy to say, "˜Oh, yes, we'll add you,' because there were definitely great people who came along that would have been great additions. Instead we said, "˜Please continue to come to the conventions and you can still share your thoughts and ideas and talk with the delegates and be involved that way.'"

Ian Record:

"Well, we really appreciate you taking some time out of your busy schedule to share your thoughts and experience and wisdom with us, and I'm very eager to see how things unfold there. I definitely think that other nations that are talking about reform, embarking on reform, struggling with reform can certainly learn a lot from the White Earth experience."

Jill Doerfler:

"Thank you. It's been a pleasure to be here and I'm definitely looking forward to our referendum, which will hopefully happen soon."

Ian Record:

"Well, thank you, Jill. That's all the time we have on today's program of Leading Native Nations. To learn more about Leading Native Nations and the Native Nations Institute's website, please visit nni.arizona.edu. Thank you for joining us. Copyright 2013, Arizona Board of Regents."

Honoring Nations: Using Partnerships to Achieve Governing Goals

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Heather Kendall-Miller moderates this panel of Native leaders for a discussion on building and maintaining intergovernmental relationships.

Resource Type
Citation

Anderson, Neily, Theresa Clark, Lori Gutierrez, Heather Kendall-Miller, Mark Lewis, Justin Martin, Mark Sherman, Miranda Warburton, Don Wedll, Cheryl Weixel and Nicholas Zaferatos, "Using Partnerships to Achieve Governing Goals," Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Sante Fe, New Mexico. February 7, 2002. Presentation.

Heather Kendall-Miller:

"It's my pleasure first of all to be an advisory board member. Coming from Alaska, oftentimes, we have our focus on our specific issues. And it's been so wonderful and so educational for me to be on the advisory board and to learn about all the wonderful things that are happening throughout Indian Country. The first advisory board meeting that I participated in I just walked away totally stunned and wowed because there is incredible stuff happening in Indian Country, as you've been learning these past several days and you've been sharing. So I'm really excited to be here and participate in this because as usual it's been eye-opening in many, many respects. Maybe what we'll do, while Andrew is passing out the name tags, is to offer our panelists an opportunity to introduce themselves and also to talk a little bit about the award-winning program of which they are here representing. And once we each have a chance to introduce ourselves then I'll begin to pose some questions. So why don't we begin over here with you, Justin."

Justin Martin:

"All right. Sorry I was late. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Justin Martin and I'm with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde where I'm the Intergovernmental Affairs Director, as well as a tribal member. I have a background in public policy and public administration, as well as working as a legislative assistant within the Oregon State legislature. Our program, Enhancing Government-to-Government Relationships deals exactly with that. We have, basically, a five-pronged strategy or approach to that that includes communication, education, cooperation, contributions, political as well as community contributions, and presence. All topics that we all have been sharing over the past couple days and I look forward, again, to sharing some more of that with you and this panel. So thank you very much."

Don Wedll:

"My name is Don Wedll. I'm with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. I've served as the Commissioner of Natural Resources for 18 years and also Commissioner of Education. I'm talking about today partnerships in regards to natural resource activities."

Theresa Clark:

"My name is Theresa Clark. I'm from Galena, Alaska, the Louden Tribe, which is a federally recognized tribe for Galena. Every village in Alaska is a tribe. I run Yukaana Development Corporation, which is a tribally owned business of the Louden Tribe and we've used partnerships extensively in developing our business."

Mark Sherman:

"[Native language] My name is Mark Sherman and I'm the Director of Planning and Development for the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa [and] Chippewa Indians. I was really glad that I was chosen to participate in this particular panel discussion because I really believe in partnerships in achieving governing goals. In our department we knew what our mandate was and what our governing goal was. When we got started, we didn't know who our partners were. But the important thing that I wanted to say about our process and how it relates to partnering is that number one, when you have partners you have to start using the word ‘we' instead of ‘I' or singular uses of pronouns. And so it's been a great privilege of mine to develop these partnerships and accomplish our goals. I took inventory last week about some of the things we've accomplished over the last several years and who our partners were. I spent a lot of time analyzing it, categorizing it and listing it in different ways. Finally I came to the realization that there were too many to list, too many to talk about. And so what I wanted to stress today, as we get going further along here and get a chance to talk about our process a little bit, you'll come to understand that what's important is that we developed effective partnerships, not only externally with contractors and consultants and government officials and various other entities, but more importantly we developed an internal partnership with our own membership, with our own government. And these things really set the course and made my job much more fun. Thank you."

Nicholas Zaferatos:

"Hi. I'm Nick Zaferatos and I have the pleasure of working for 20 years with the Swinomish tribal community in Washington State and with Chairman Brian Cladoosby, who asked me to speak today because he had to catch a flight back home because general elections are being held tomorrow. The Swinomish have been involved for about 20 years, almost 20 years now in Principle #4 that was outlined today, which states that a strategic orientation matters. It was concerned with addressing chronic problems on the reservation dealing with the loss of control over the reservation territory that hadn't occurred since allotment days and brought about a lot of interest from outside governments that were making decisions about how the reservation ought to develop and a realization that none of that was benefiting directly the tribal government. So employing, developing a strategy, it looked like it had several ways of approaching that including and primarily regionalism, one of opening up dialogue and relations with a broader region, county, local government, state and us reasserting tribal interests in matters relating to land use control and development. The centerpiece for the project was a land use planning program that was begun in mid 1980s, but it also included all aspects of reservation development, water supply, sewer control, public works and the web of cooperation between the Swinomish Tribe that's been employed through this cooperative program really affects just about every jurisdiction that has an interest in operations in Skagit county. So it's a regionalism approach, it's one that's been tested for about 15 years now and it's still operating."

Miranda Warburton:

"Good afternoon, I'm Miranda Warburton. I work for the Navajo Nation Archaeology Department. I'm the Director of the Flagstaff, Arizona Branch Office of the Navajo Nation Archaeology Department. And I started that little office up in Flagstaff some 15 years ago and I would like to say that first of all it's been a tremendous honor and privilege to work for the Navajo Nation for the past 15 years. And the goal of doing this was to really set up a program to train Navajo students who were interested in cultural preservation, to give them the opportunity to do practical work on the reservation, and to learn more through interviews with Navajo elders, with knowledgeable people, to really be out in the field while they were working on their academic degrees. So our partnership was really between the Navajo Nation and Northern Arizona University. And I would say that the greatest example I can give you of the success of our program is that after 15 years, I'm quitting in October and a woman who is with our program, a Navajo woman, Davina Begay-Two Bears will be taking over. And as I speak, the reason that she's not here is that she's supposed to be turning in her Master's thesis this afternoon. So Davina is a great example of our program and I'm thrilled that I'll be turning it over to her and I'd also like to acknowledge someone else who's here, Reynelda Grant, who is the San Carlos Apache Archaeologist, tribal archaeologist. And Reynelda was part of our program too and that just like is a great feeling to be able to sit here and see Reynelda doing such a great job and speaking so well and setting such a great example. So again another example of what this partnership has done."

Lori Gutierrez:

"Good afternoon. My name is Lori Gutierrez. I'm from Pojoaque Pueblo and I'm the Assistant Director for Pojoaque Pueblo Construction Service Corporation. Our project that was awarded by the Harvard Project was the unique collaboration and partnership between Pojoaque Pueblo Construction Service Corporation, which is a for-profit tribal corporation and the Poeh Center Cultural Center Museum, which is a nonprofit arm of the Pueblo of Pojoaque. And the unique collaboration being that the corporation was first established to not only build the Poeh Center at cost but to, reduce the construction cost, but would do work both on and off the reservation as generating revenues to go back to build the Poeh Center as well as to sustain it through its long term goals. Thank you."

Cheryl Weixel:

"Good afternoon. My name is Cheryl Weixel. I'm the Wellness Center Director for the Coeur d'Alene Tribe and it's an honor to be here and it's also an honor to work with the Coeur d'Alene Tribe. 10 years ago the Coeur d'Alene area, or the Plummer and Worley area, didn't even have healthcare, hardly any. And even with the non-Indians and the Indians in the area, we had to go 40 miles to get healthcare. So the Coeur d'Alene Tribe partnered up with the city of Plummer and built a medical center and from there they decided to start changing lifestyles and the only way they could do that was to help people with exercise in Spokane, which is 40 miles away. So they saved money from third-party billing, grants, just partnering up with the city of Plummer again, got a HUD grant and built a $5 million debt-free wellness center and hopefully...we've been there four years now and we're changing lifestyles one person at a time and it's a great opportunity to be there and it's just very rewarding."

Neily Anderson:

"Good afternoon. My name is Neily Anderson and I'm here as the chairperson for the White Earth Suicide Intervention Team. I know...when I...I was so honored that we had gotten honors and I went around and was telling my friends and family that we received high honors from Harvard from the Governing Honor of Nations and they're like, ‘But you're a suicide prevention team, what does that have anything to do with Harvard?' And so it was kind of like we had to go through in depth and explain that the team was started by grassroots community members in 1990 and it was developed because there was a very high rash of suicide completions and attempts that year. So what they did was they formed...they did some forums and let the people talk and the tribal council really kind of hung themselves up and sat and listened to what the people had to say. Not just about the suicide attempts or completions, about everything else that was going on as well. And what they did recognize was that something needed to be done and so they signed a resolution stating that we needed a team and developed the team. And the team, like I said, is grassroots and it is community members. So it's not social workers coming in, saying, ‘Well, I'm a social worker and I'm here to help you'. It's, ‘I'm a community member and I care'. And that makes all the difference in a crisis situation and for Native American people. We just recently got a...received a grant and are working on getting some more funding because the team...the WESIT team, the suicide intervention team is a nonprofit organization. There's nobody paid to be on the team. There is 26 on-call volunteers that go every two weeks; there's a different set of three people on call. They go out all hours of the night and volunteer their time. And again, when you're talking about people in crisis or Native American people, knowing that these people are here because they care, not because it's their job to be there, not because they're being paid to be there and they have to be there to maybe please their grant makers or whatever. They're there because they want to be there and that makes the big difference. So as a grassroots organization the people volunteer their time, whether it's night or day, whether it's during work or out of work, and with the tribal R2C behind us 100 percent, we're allowed to leave work. If we get a call and we're on call, we're allowed to leave work and go wherever we have to go to respond to that call. The partnership that we have is mostly with the counties, the police department, the hospitals, facilities subject to our home facilities, things like that. We have partnered up with them basically. They have finally recognized us as a value to them, something...someone that they can use to actually lessen their job. We get a call through the dispatch system just like the police department does; we carry radios and get our call. And when we respond to a call, we basically get the information from the police officer; they make sure the scene is safe when we get there and they kind of turn it over to us. We're not allowed to sign 72 hour holds if that is needed, but the police officers are. And so our doctors as... but they're more willing now to go ahead and sign a 72 hour hold or what has been happening most recently is, they have the information, they know that this person needs a 72 hour hold, but they're calling us to see what our opinion is and same with the hospitals. We get more calls from the hospital where a family member has brought an attempter into the hospital; it's not done through the police department or the ambulance service. The family member brings them into the hospital and the hospital's calling us, they're calling our dispatch. We have a tribal dispatch, they'll call our dispatch and we'll be dispatched out. So it's a real grassroots...it's people who care and that's what I've seen a lot while I've been here is these may be our jobs that we do but they're just an added benefit. We do what we do because we care and that's what I've seen here. You people...the people that I've been surrounded by for the last two days are here because they care, they want to help their people expand, grow and accomplish things that they may not accomplish on their own and that's the job that they have. It's not that they're politicians, it's not that they're a tribal council member, they're there because they care and that's how I see you people here and the people that we have on call on our team."

Mark Lewis:

"Good afternoon. My name is Mark Lewis. I'm from the Hopi Tribe and I'm from the Third Mesa area, Hotevilla Village on the Third Mesa area. I am pleased to see a couple Hopis. [Native language] I'm an eagle clan so I wanted to say that since there's a couple Hopis in the audience. My mind's really spinning now because I had an introduction that I was going to do but I'm kind of worried about how it may come out after listening to Neily. I'm really concerned so if you bear with me I'm kind of going to tinker with it and I'm not meaning to offend anybody, but this is really how I was thinking I was going to introduce this. I was going to just make a remark that I'm in a rather unique situation here today because I've been asked to be on this panel as the...representing the Hopi High School. And as I was introduced they have Mark Lewis, the Hopi Guidance Center, and that is my job; I'm the Director of Behavioral Health and Social Services. And so given that I was going to make kind of a quick joke that I was relieved that I was introduced as representing the Hopi Guidance Center because I would feel much more comfortable speaking about the Hopi Guidance Center, but I'm not here to speak about that. I'm here to speak about Hopi Junior/Senior High School. The problem with that is I've only been...I've been elected to school board and I'm only on my third week and the reason I'm up here is because some of our more senior veteran board members were just unable to make it to Santa Fe today. And so what I'm a little nervous with my new friend here is I was just going to kind of make a remark that I am a professional social worker, I have my undergraduate and master's both in social work. I'm very proud of that and I was going to also say that I was thinking of the lady from Minnesota who I know very well, some of the negative perceptions of social workers throughout history. I was going to say I'm very proud to be a social worker and so should you and we should never not feel proud about being a social worker. But also I'm nervous too because I've just been elected to school board and that's very political in Hopi and I've been accused of being a politician. So I'm both now a politician and a social worker, but I'm also a community member and I do really care. So anyhow, the good thing going, my strategy was to...I was really relieved. I was excited coming here; this is my very first school board trip. I was really excited to come and meet new people, new professionals in other disciplines such as yourselves and then...but I got a call this morning around 8:00 from Mr. Glenn Gilman who you'll be hearing from shortly. He's our junior high principal, a very good, wonderful junior high principal. And he says, ‘Hey, just want to let you know that you're on a panel this afternoon and you're going to talk about 2+2+2'. And I says, ‘Well, that's because our board member called in late and was not able to make it', so that just kind of added to the excitement and nervousness I had about meeting a new flock of people. But as soon as I came in I saw Dr. Stephen Cornell and my colleague and friend Cecelia Belone of the Navajo Nation, my colleague, counterpart, and friend from the Navajo Nation, who I work a lot with in social services area. I also work with Dr. Stephen Cornell in the areas around TANF reauthorization, nation building etc. So I'll focus on you so I'm not as nervous talking about 2+2+2 at Hopi Junior/Senior High School. So I'm glad that you sat right there. I feel much more comfortable. I'll just pretend I'm talking about social services issues and maybe I won't sweat so much on my folder. 2+2+2 essentially it is partnership, it is partnership between three academic institutions, Hopi High, community college, Northland Pioneer College and Northern Arizona University and it was a partnership from the get go and I can talk more about that as we move on but it was genuinely a partnership from the get go in an effort to achieve one governing goal, one of the many governing goals that I know that we are working on. I'm learning more about the board and that was to try and do what we can to improve and prepare young students for academia beyond high school by giving them a boost while they're still in high school. And I can talk more about that but I don't need to get in too much detail because Mr. Glenn Gilman will be telling you more about that true partnership between community college, university and Hopi High. So again, thank you very much for allowing or asking me to be up here and allowing me to be up here."

Heather Kendall-Miller:

"Thank you, panelists for those introductions. Partnerships; each of you have given us examples of the partnerships that your tribal governments have formed in the process of implementing your vision. What interests me is, in some cases, some of you have been forced to develop effective partnerships and relationships with state and county governments, even federal government, and as Lance so articulately told us, we all as tribal people have experienced the hostility that is oftentimes focused on tribal governments by state and county governments. Given that history of hostility, how do you begin to build an effective relationship with an agency or another government? Justin, you want to begin again?"

Justin Martin:

"Sure. Well, I think that there are several layers to partnerships and as we heard from the panel, there are many wonderful partnerships on many different levels. When starting to work with what can sometimes be seen as hostile governments or governments that one, do not have an understanding of Native peoples or even tribal governments, I think it's very important and very critical to first of all understand their government, understand where the government that you're looking to work with is coming from. Whereas, we want folks to understand and respect tribal government and to learn how we elect our officials, how we operate our communities and governments, we should also make an effort to one, understand where they are coming from. And then I think it steps back even further and it looks to the personal level. Let's start to build some personal relationships while we are educating them to how our tribal government and how our people operate and conduct themselves. And that can be handled in many, many ways, but I think once you do that, once you get to know people, once you put your face with your name that's on your business card or the name that is seen in the newspaper or even your tribal newspapers, people start to understand where you're coming from. So it's basically a very basic relationship, find out who the people are, what makes them tick, even if it's outside of what you're both working towards. If you can find some common ground or a common goal, you can start to nurture that relationship. One other important point, I was talking to some folks earlier in the day, I think is, don't expect to make those top level relationships the ones that really get the job done at the end of the day. And I want to say this without offending tribal leadership and I've been very blessed to work with Kathryn Harrison and our tribal council who gets this. Those top level relationships need to happen out of mutual respect for a tribal government or a state government or a federal government, but at the same time, the ones doing the ground work, the ones trying to understand the tribal issues, and the ones that are going to be dealing with you on a day-to-day basis are the staff. And I think it's critical to involve staff at all levels. And from my own personal experience in working at the state legislature, I can't tell you how many times my state representative, who was new at the time, outside of his expertise area would call me as a staffer into his office and say, ‘Justin, what are we going to do?' Those are the people with the vote. So if you get to that staff member, create that relationship at those lower levels, then you begin to work up into the upper levels. Again, those are the solid foundation relationships. And who knows? I think in a lot of time within the tribal system and within state government and federal government, a lot of time that staff moves on to be that elected official or that leader. So to begin to lay that ground work in educating people to your government and also learning and being able to understand their government and where they're coming from is certainly an excellent tool that I feel needs to be utilized in every day relationships."

Don Wedll:

"Maybe to follow on that a little bit, one of the things that we saw that was very effective in negotiations and partnerships is that if you eat with someone, have lunch with them, it makes it much harder to fight with them a little bit later. You actually get to see them in a little different light than if you're in trying to negotiate and ultimately where you want to, after you've settled negotiations and you start building that partnership, a meal, that type of thing, is a very effective way to bring about a good partnership, get to know people on a very personal level and be able to discuss things and have trust in people that what they're committing to and the partnership that you're developing will grow and create a good forum for the types of things that you are working on. So that's my suggestions."

Theresa Clark:

"Yukaana itself does not have inter-government relationships. Our owner, Louden Tribal Council does. We separated government, politics and business so our partnerships, Yukaana's partnerships are business partnerships, whereas the government, inter-governmental relationships are left to the tribe or the politics are left to the tribe. I can go further on that, but I'd much rather let Louden tribal council do that because that's politics.

Mark Sherman:

"In our planning department we have forged a number of partnerships with county and township governments, worked a little bit with some state officials. We'd like to do a little bit more in that respect. Our relationship with our state government needs some improving. We've reached out to them on a number of times for a number of different reasons and for some reason, we have a situation where they prefer to minimize or should I say minimize that acceptance or recognition of the fact that we do exist. I think as the future goes forward that this will improve. It's got to come to a place where both sides have some common goals to work on. It's not always an adversarial situation and if it is an adversarial situation, you can usually accomplish more by searching for things that are...that you have in common rather than focusing on those points that are controversial. I found from my own experience in dealing with non-tribal government officials it's always better to listen than to talk. And if you hear something you don't like, you're better off rather than to argue the point, rather just to repeat the point, let them hear how ridiculous it sounds. It's not all give and take. Sometimes tribal governments have to draw a line in the sand and say, ‘This is our position'. And we've had to do that a few times too. Once they understand your position, whether they agree or disagree, they come away from the experience with a lot more respect for your organization having a clear understanding of why you made your position and why there's no room for compromise. And so you have to use every arrow in your quiver, you can't just go with one standard approach."

Nick Zaferatos:

"I think for Swinomish cooperation was a result that began by using confrontative tactics. That is, with the tribe being in business, as usual that was carried out for a really long time by county or other governments in making decisions on the reservation and where the tribe asserted its interest. And when that occurred there was a reaction and the reaction was the status quo was being disrupted and there were kind of two paths to consider. One was a path of conflict, litigation, problems, costs. And the other was a better understanding of what's the root of the change in course, talking, education, lots of education and a need for some kind of mutual benefit because cooperation does require a commitment of resources of time and money and people to engage in that. And when there's a perception that there is something to gain, I think that's almost always necessary in order to get the commitment both on the tribe's part as well as the government. The tribe entered into about a dozen separate agreements over the course of about 15 or 16 years with almost all of them the same kind of situation was presented where the tribe saw to disrupt business as usual and assert some kind of an interest and a receptiveness on the part of the other governments to at least begin discussing ways of cooperation, mutual gain. With all of them, it was formalized politically in terms of entering into some kind of an agreement, which then allowed the business of government to take place, which is almost always on a staff level on a day-to-day basis. And that's when the culture of cooperation really starts to take place. When you start dealing with lots of little itty bitty issues on a regular basis and you solve problems, it leads towards developing a more positive culture or at least more faith in working together to resolve problems. Sometimes political meetings are necessary, sometimes even litigation is necessary, and Swinomish has been more recently involved with some litigation, which the tribe views as okay because after you've exhausted the time of talking and trying to work things together through things at the staff level or even at the policy level, some things just really can't be agreed to and that's after all what the courts are all about. But even despite litigation from time to time, most issues with respect to land use development affecting the reservation do take place on a day-to-day basis, mostly in an administrative bubble, sometimes at a policy level. But there is an overall perception that there's a mutual gain in the long term by investing and keeping the doors of communication open, and in the process of doing that there's an awful lot of learning when the tribe understands the culture of the county or local governments and those governments understand a lot more about what the interests of the tribes are. And what we found is that the visions between those two governments were really not that far off and in fact, we were able to be brought together into like a unified land use policy. So there really wasn't a difference in terms of the vision."

Miranda Warburton:

"In our program we're really talking about a partnership between the Navajo Nation and Northern Arizona University and so there are some differences, it's not city or state governments. But I wanted to say a couple of things in that regard and first of all, to my colleague from Hopi, that if there's anything worse than a social worker politician, it's an Anglo anthropologist working for a tribe. So I kind of felt like I had this real uphill battle, but I think that there are a lot of people within the Navajo Nation who would like to see people like me replaced and I wanted to see people like me replaced as well. So in order to do that, in order to have an effective program, I felt that there really had to be a tremendous amount of cooperation between the Navajo Nation and Northern Arizona University. And I would just sort of reiterate some of the things that other people have already said. One, the long haul; people have to know you're there for the long haul. It's taken 15 years I think for me to feel like this program is really a success. I have three students who are getting master's degrees this year who I think all are going to go on to great things, but people have to know both within the tribe and at Northern Arizona University that you are there for the long haul and that there is a real commitment, that you really do care, and that if things get rough you're ‘not just going to sort of run away and abandon the whole thing; that you really are there and you really care about it and you really mean it. And I think what you just said about something to gain. I mean, NAU doesn't really care about our program, and this is like being the most sort of practical reality based statement but it brings in Native American students. So if I can convince them that it's worth having this program to recruit Native American students for their head count, they'll realize they have something to gain. The Navajo Nation definitely has something to gain because Navajo students are getting degrees, undergraduate and graduate degrees and anthropology or other social sciences and in many cases are returning to the tribe or to work for them or if they're not coming back to work for the tribe, they're going off into other places and setting a really good example. So the whole idea of something to gain and I think a personal commitment to being there for the long haul makes all the difference in effective partnerships."

Lori Gutierrez:

"We at Pojoaque Pueblo Construction, we have agreements with large business for outside business opportunities and I remember when we first started negotiations, there was extensive negotiations when dealing with sovereign immunity. Large business did not know structures especially dealing with small entities like Pojoaque Pueblo, with tribal enrollment of 320. It was really difficult to explain to them how you go about it. It turned out that they ended up hiring an Indian attorney so that they could get a better grasp about a tribal nation. But I think in order for a partnership to flourish or even to have longevity and continuity, it's important that during this time that there's mutual benefit because without that mutual benefit it doesn't exist. But I think it's important that during these negotiations that you keep in mind what that mutual benefit is and use that as your focus because I know that during these extensive negotiations we would get off on that and it was always a constant reminder to keep going back to what it is that we were doing this partnership for."

Chery Weixel:

"I think what was an important aspect to the medical center, Benewah Medical Center, and also the Coeur d'Alene Tribal Wellness Center came afterwards, was the fact that both there was a need out there and then there's a common vision. Everybody needed healthcare in the area so they brought the partners in, they utilized each other's strengths and built from there and then they took the weaknesses and built them up. And in that they had a vision and that is a better healthcare for the whole area and also a chance to change the future generations and provide fitness and exercise for the young kids so that they'll want to be healthy and they'll hopefully one day rid diabetes and heart disease from that area or at least control it. So I think if I go back, I think this strikes on the weaknesses and a common vision and a common goal is really what we needed. And today I can say that just from people telling me stories from the past that when they decided to build the medical center, they had the Indians and the non-Indians saying, ‘No way will I go in that building with an Indian', or ‘No way will I be in there with a White person'. And I can honestly say today that side-by-side there's Indians and non-Indians working together, playing together, sitting side-by-side in the waiting room together and actually talking and communicating for the first time, which I think is a tremendous accomplishment, especially in that area."

Neily Anderson:

"First off I've got to get some things straight here. Being the chairperson on the team isn't my job. I'm also a social worker. But the team...when the team started, we started out with a goal. We weren't quite sure how to get to that goal. We knew what we wanted to do, we knew we had to do something and we knew that we had to do it now and that was kind of what we looked at. And so going in we...the only thing that we had that could link us to any attempts that maybe the police department had or any calls that the police department had about attempts or completions or whatever the case may be was our tribal dispatch. That was our only link at the time when we started. And we're going on 12 years now and we used to meet in the back of a restaurant, a local little restaurant and talk about what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. And it was there that we realized that we needed to partner up with some people. We need to start going out and doing some in services and letting some people know what we were going to do. So we started going out to the hospitals and letting them know that, ‘this is where we're at, this is where we want to be in a year, can you help us get there? These are the people that we have on board. These are the caring people that we feel the community members will react to.' So it was the hospitals that we went to first and it was...it took years, it took years. And we're going on 12 years now and I would say in the last four years we've finally got...we still don't have 100 percent backing from other specific agencies, but in the last four years we've got...our policy is to, if Menominee County Police Department has a call, they call the tribal dispatch. Well, they know where I work so they were kind of skipping around things and calling me right at work. And the reason we had that policy was so that when we went out on a call it was the same for them. I have a radio, they have a radio. Our radios are our lifeline and if something was to happen to me, my dispatcher knows where I was, what I was doing. So next it took the police department. We were showing up at calls, the police department was looking at us like, ‘What are you doing here? You're interfering with the law.' We got a lot of that and so it took a lot of in services with the police department to say, ‘We can help you. We can work side-by-side. I'm not here to do your job. I'm here to help you make the situation better for a family', because with a police officer coming in and saying, ‘Okay, we're taking these people, we're putting them on a 72 hour hold', they never really took a look at how that affected the people that were left behind. So the next thing that we did was we went to other agencies, tribal and non-tribal, our tribal mental health programs and the non-tribal mental health programs, because we figured, ‘okay, we've got this person that's attempted suicide.' Now if they were to call and try and get an appointment, a lot of times the mental health field, to get an appointment it's really backed up. So what we would do then is, ‘Okay, I can get you an appointment tomorrow. I can make sure that you have transportation to get there. Is this what you want?' And so it got...now it's to the point where all I have to do is to make a phone call or another team member...all we have to do is to make a phone call and we can get that client some services immediately instead of having to wait two or three weeks down the road. The schools, we also work with because when, with the adolescence and the rate of suicide that we had at the time... In 1990 when we started, we were 50 percent lower, 10 percent, excuse me; we were 10 percent higher than the national suicide rate nationally but we were also 8.5 percent higher than the Native American rate normally was. So on our reservation we had a big problem. So in the schools when we had adolescents attempting or being placed on 72 hour hold, the parents not wanting to give up information when the school calls and says, ‘Where's your kid? Your kid isn't in school. Your child isn't in school. They're truant, they're tardy. What's the situation?' Then the parents really having a problem telling the school system that, ‘My child is on a 72 hour hold,' without the school system or without the family members feeling that the school system is looking down on them. ‘Oh, you must be bad parents if this is what's happening to your children.' So those were some other partners. The main partner that we have that we rely on is the tribal council backing us 100 percent in whatever direction we go, whether it be...like with the grant, we just applied for a grant. We just, before I left, we just got word that we had received the grant. We have received the grant, now we have to go forward with that. So it's the tribal council that has backed us and said, ‘run with it'. They have opened their arms and realized the fact that this is something that they cannot fix as a tribal council member. This is something that the community has to help themselves to do and with a little bit of organization. So with those things, those partners we would not be able to be a team, we would not be able to work as a team and that's why we come up with the name Suicide Intervention Team because it takes more than one person to fix the things that are going wrong with our people. It's a team effort whether it be...when I say the Suicide Intervention Team, I mean not just the people that are on call that go out there in the middle of the night, not the people that have to leave their jobs or get up from the table during dinner because they've got a call from dispatch, I also mean the police department, the mental health services, the hospitals, the tribal council, the schools. They're our team and we all have to work together as a team or else we will not exist. That's plain a simple. It took us a lot of years to establish that team but it was something that we realized right away that needed to be done. That was one of the things that we worked on right away and with our patients and I think what really kicked it off was we were there. When there was a call, we were there, somebody showed up. Whoever was on call took the call and that's what I feel really made the difference. It wasn't, ‘Well, I'm eating dinner right now', or ‘I'm sleeping and I've only been sleeping for a half hour and I don't want to get out of bed to go on this call', ‘I don't want to get up from dinner and skip dinner because I have a call. We got a call, we went out. It didn't matter what we were doing, who we were with. We took that responsibility when it was our turn to be on call, that was the responsibility that we took and not because that's our job. It was because we care about the people, about our people and what they are doing with their lives."

Mark Lewis:

"As for the Hopi High 2+2+2 program, you're going to learn that it is a partnership between a community college and Northern Arizona University. It involves interactive television; it involves a new satellite campus being built on the Hopi High school grounds and facilities. And what that really means is that...that meant that the Hopi High took the initiative to work with the state systems and other systems in order to be able to develop this program for the future needs of our kids and for the current development of those kids so that they can achieve success academic-wise in the math and sciences after they leave high school. And what I've observed and what I've noticed and in talking with my colleagues that I've worked with, I think that approaching a hostile government if you want to call it that, there's a lot of leadership that's involved with that, approaching that kind of a situation. I think in the case of Hopi High I think you had some real important dynamics that happened there. One of them, the board was made up of very experienced leaders within the Hopi Tribe in a variety of areas and it was also headed by former chairman of the Hopi Tribe, Ivan Sidney. So I think already Hopi High was in an advantageous position because there was already influences and relationships that had been established by that board. And so that leadership didn't think twice about worrying about government. They had already experienced working with these people, had already relationships established with these people and all they really did is capitalize on that, but that takes leadership and initiative. And so I think that that's one of the ways that Hopi High was successful in developing this 2+2+2 program, and as well from the former governing board, I think a lot of credit goes to them for being very proactive and for being very interested in taking the initiative to do things to improve upon Hopi High. One of the main things they did there is to get away from the Bureau and move into a grant school. And after that it was by rather than just, as somebody mentioned earlier today, by just kind of continuing to operate things as usual as the way the Bureau and as the way IHS has taught us, they weren't going to...they weren't satisfied with that. So they were very proactive and they went and developed an administration. Glenn Gilman is a wonderful example of somebody who had many years teaching and worked on his own principal-ship and those things were allowed to be developed because of the leadership of that board and being proactive and outreaching and going to get good administrators rather than just doing things as usual, doing an advertisement and selecting from whoever shows up at the door. So I think those are the kinds of things that are under...the underpinnings of the ability of the high school to be able to successfully develop partnerships with the state system. In my own experience, as an administrator, we are involved in a number of intergovernmental agreements with the State of Arizona, with entities that are regulated by the State of Arizona and without a doubt we have to work with the federal government as contractors of the federal government. And so my view about that is that...and part of it's probably just being a young administrator. You're allowed to be kind of stupid and risky and my view is to kind of approach these situations as not even thinking that I'm dealing with a hostile government or a resistant other entity, but rather expending more energy and time thinking about how can I best establish the rapport with these people because we need to get something accomplished. So that's been one of my experiences as far as developing partnerships is expending more energy on finding creative ways and skillfully and thinking strategically like the gentleman from Winnebago about how I'm going to make this thing happen, what can I do to make the relationship develop but also too having a little...enough savvy to say, ‘Well, what do I do if they're not resistant', and that's just a matter of holding people accountable. And so those are some of the ways that I think that you develop good partnerships with people is you're going in knowing that your mission is to produce a result, not to be expending so much energy on worrying about how hostile they are or how much they may not want to work with you or whatever. And the lady...the presentation at lunch brings up a very good point because I think that if we continue to see governments as hostile or if we continue to see states as ‘us vs. them,' if we continue to see and feel and believe that we're not respected, then that's how we're going to approach these situations. And oftentimes what happens is we just simply do not approach that situation, but if we're more proactive, if we feel and believe ourselves as equal partners, if we truly believe in and embrace sovereignty, I think that's how you're going to be successful in developing the kinds of partnerships that we're talking about here today."

Heather Kendall-Miller:

"Thanks. Well, listening to you I'm struck by the similarity of things that each of you have shared with us. It's obvious that in the work that goes into building relationships and building partnerships. There's obviously some core characteristics. I hear building personal relationships and the importance of those personal relationships. Communication, open communication both ways; communicating to others about tribes, tribal governments and then being open and listening to being educated about the needs and concerns of other agencies, state governments, counties or whatever. There was also lots of emphasis on common goals and finding ways of building upon what are going to be mutual benefits. That seemed to be fairly critical in establishing relationships and partnerships. Joint problem-solving; that was interesting that once those relationships are made that it takes an evolution of actually sharing in partnering in solving problems; education, respect, common goals, personal relationships. We've only got about five to 10 minutes left and so I'm going to ask you to keep your final comments fairly short but I'm intrigued about now that you have built these relationships, now that you've worked at establishing these partnerships, how do you maintain them? Do they become institutionalized? Do they become static or are they fluid? Do the relationships change as the tribal council changes? How does the continuity of these relationships continue? Again, I'm sorry to suggest that maybe you keep your comments within two to three minutes each and then we can quickly wrap this up, thanks. Go ahead, Justin."

Justin Martin:

"I think you kind of hit the key concept right on the head when you said institutionalize. And I think everybody here has worked very hard to institutionalize their program, especially once you find that vision or that clearly defined objective and you're able to go out and in a grassroots type of method start to educate staff, general public, your own membership as to what good governance is all about, then you start to institutionalize that. So then it becomes Grand Ronde, not Justin Marin. And then five years from now, what if Justin Martin or what if Neily Anderson isn't in that role? Well, the program has been built over time by grassroots through education, through communication, through cooperation and it becomes an entity in and of itself and I think the key is institutionalizing these programs so they do co-exist with that long term vision the tribal council can provide.

Don Wedll:

"In Mille Lacs's particular case with...ultimately our agreement with the state Department of Natural Resources was institutionalized through a number of things, court rulings and ultimately the setting up of schedules of annual meetings usually in January and July to re-discuss where things are at, set limits, and then there's actually some physical things that are happening as to what are safe harvesting of particular resources, those types of things then drive the partnership because neither side can arbitrarily make a decision on their own, they have to do it jointly. And so those are some examples in our particular case and how that partnership gets institutionalized and because of the physical harvesting of resources, there needs to be joint decisions about the amount of those resources that can be harvested and that I think binds that partnership and will bind it for as long as people are harvesting those resources."

Theresa Clark:

"Our partnerships are a little different because they're business partnerships and our business partnerships are through like joint venture relationships or teaming relationships and other businesses that have gotten us to where we are today. So I think ours are probably more short term. We partner on projects, completed the projects, and then the joint ventures are terminated or dissolved because the contracts have been completed. But we do maintain relationships with them, personal contacts or whatever for future projects. We may not be capable of doing a project or may not have the financial resources or whatever and we may be able to partner again in the future so we do...I do keep in contact with all our business partners that we have terminated joint ventures with."

Mark Sherman:

"Maintaining our relationships? The simple answer is we have to sort out our relationships and keep them differently. We do a lot of our work through contracting sources when it comes time to actually implementing the plan and one thing that has worked very well for us in our department is that when a contractor knows that we're releasing a plan for bid, they know that they'll be treated the same way they were the last time and the process is consistent in its fairness and that it's de-politicized and that all players in the process have equal opportunity at the table and that's essential in dealing with outside business entities because they will only play the political game one time and then you get a reputation in the neighborhood so to speak and so it's a good idea to maintain a sense of consistency and fairness. And then we try to reinforce our relationships, the ones that really matter as we go along you have certain partners that become more essential to your process and maintaining a frequent relationship and just not taking day-to-day matters for granted or assuming that everything is going to be smooth. Don't be afraid to just pick up the phone and call them even on problems that require simple answers because when you're calling them and they're calling you, that reinforces the relationship and makes them feel like there's a good reason to maintain an ongoing relationship in the future."

Nicholas Zaferatos:

"The agreement-making and relationship-building activities are part of this first generation experience for changing a hostile environment into a cooperative environment. I think that our honorable speaker from Hopi really expressed it very well by saying that the next generation should just simply come to expect that we operate in a cooperative environment and that's an ideal state that all of this work that we're mining right now will take us to, that this is the preferred status quo, this is the way people behave and nations behave and governments behave."

Miranda Warburton:

‘I agree. I guess in our case what I would like to say is that it was a long struggle to become "institutionalized," to develop some kind of institutional standing so that now we actually have a place, a space, physical space, at Northern Arizona University and we actually have funding from the Navajo Nation for our students. But once that's in place, as I see myself stepping down on October 31st and Davina [Begay-] Two Bears taking over, there's a certain amount of training for her that she needs to do but way beyond that, I just hope that whatever my vision was is done and that her vision, whatever she chooses to have happen, to make it become a truly Navajo program that that really happens and that that just really evolves in a wonderful way and I have every confidence that it will. So while the structure and framework is there in an institutional sense, whatever she chooses to have happen and whatever the next person who takes over after her chooses to have happen and how that evolves and I hope that none of us can envision what that's going to be. I hope that it just exceeds all of our expectations."

Lori Gutierrez:

"Maintaining our relationships, our established partnerships; we have concrete contracts in place. However, times change, our business changes, our needs change and I think it requires a constant evaluation of the partnership, evolving the partnership, making modifications, if necessary, to adapt to new needs and concerns."

Cheryl Weixel:

"Well, it's like any relationship with the special businesses that we keep the lines of communication open. I think that's very important for us and then also, not assuming something that we don't know from the other person. Ask those questions, get the facts and then make decisions based on that."

Neily Anderson:

"Well, with us and the team, to talk about suicide on our reservation was something that was thrown in our face, it was something that was chronic there, something we couldn't get away from. On other reservations, I've talked to several different reservations who want to start up a team on their reservation, and on other reservations this is something that is hush-hush, this is something that you don't talk about. Well, on our reservation, with the attempts and everybody being open about the attempts, about the completions, about the ideations, everybody who sits on the tribal council or sits on the team is or is in some way affected by somebody either completing suicide or attempting suicide. So everybody has been affected by it in one way or another. Even if the WESIT team or if WESIT was gone, I don't think that the people would settle with that. I think if I was gone, if the people who are on the team as on call members were gone, I think that the community would pick it up and run with it. We do have a resolution in place stating that this is the team and this is...we're going to keep this running one way or another, but even if we didn't have that, I don't think the people on our reservation would self-manage."

Heather Kendall-Miller:

"Mark, the last word?"

Mark Lewis:

"That's a tough one. I just started these relationships. I haven't had enough experience yet to maintain them. No. As a social worker and as a social work administrator but I actually began my career as a mental health provider for Hopi. And so one thing that I've learned, and also as a member of the Hopi Tribe, one thing I've learned is that collaboration, which is needed, a prerequisite for partnerships, it's a very profound word, it's a very strong word, it's embedded in our Hopi values that we teach. But as a mental health provider I've learned something that it's...the word is profound but to actually apply it and practice it is very difficult. It's not an easy thing; it doesn't just come natural for everybody to collaborate successfully. And what I mean as a mental health provider, I think that there's a mindset that goes with that. I think there's a condition that goes with collaboration, an ability to approach things to produce an outcome, ability to approach things healthy, healthy-minded and the skills necessary to collaborate successfully is a result of development, a fully or better, best developed kind of individual and people can be trained of course to be successful at collaboration. So I guess to maintain partnerships to me is to have...is to hopefully ensure you have good leadership that will continue to produce people that have that great unique skill of being successful collaborators and to ensure that those people are in those positions that make those decisions to maintain those partnerships. So that's the one thing I would say and as this conference notes here, leadership of course isn't something that is new, certainly not to Harvard, but I'm pleased that it's beginning to come in and infiltrate, if you will, Indian Country. Because I think that in this new world we have a lot of knowledgeable and intelligent people, but leadership skills, that's something that is...can require a lot of training and, at least for my tribe and I would bet for your tribe, is that we need to develop the leadership qualities in our tribal leaders because they're knowledgeable and intelligent, but to be an effective leader requires high level skills in practice. And so that's what needs to continue to happen and continue to develop in Indian Country. And I hopefully won't say anything more but as a tribal administrator, as a chairperson on several committees and now...I do this when I take my staff or a group or a team of Hopis to different meetings or symposiums but certainly without a doubt as a governing board member now it's very important that I support those people that do that work. And I do this with tribal administrators but I just wanted to be able to recognize the Hopi staff that really do 2+2+2 that have come along here; Glenn Gilman, you're going to see him in a moment, a wonderful speaker so he tells me, and Mr. Stan Bindell, one of the wonderful faculty you've seen around with a camera way in the back, he's...it's great to have a local reporter as well. He's a faculty member but also does a lot of work for the local newspapers and it's very important for Hopi for him to be able to come back and share this event with Hopi, the Hopi public and Stan's responsible for that. I'm very pleased also because what this is about is now you have these people like us jabbering but the people who actually do the work, that doesn't get enough attention. And Mr. David Logan who just walked in here, he's actually one of the teachers in the 2+2+2 program, if you can just kind of raise your hand. And we should be paying attention to these people so I just wanted to show my support as a governing board member. Thank you."

Heather Kendall-Miller:

"All right, thank you very much. Unfortunately, we do not have time for questions. We are out of time and we nee dto move on with the next speaker. So I want to thank all of our panelists very, very much for sharing with us your experiences and your insights. Thank you."

Honoring Nations: Miriam Jorgensen: Achieving Good Governance: Cross-Cutting Themes

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Miriam Jorgensen, Director of Research for the Native Nations Institute and the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, shares the cross-cutting themes of good governance that exist among the Honoring Nations award-winning programs.

Resource Type
Citation

Jorgensen, Miriam. "Achieving Good Governance: Cross-Cutting Themes." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Sante Fe, New Mexico. February 7, 2002. Presentation.

Andrew Lee:

"Now I'd like to introduce my colleague Miriam Jorgensen, who's going to talk about some cross cutting themes of Honoring Nations winners. I think one of the unique things that's happened in this room that I'm not sure if any of you have had the chance to afford to do is sit next to somebody who's work is just entirely different than yours but you share some things in common. And we want to use this opportunity to talk about some of those things that you do share in common and Miriam Jorgensen has thought quite a bit about this issue. She's actually so well liked, so well respected that she splits her time. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Harvard University is in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the University of Arizona is in Arizona, obviously, and she has an appointment with both of us. And we just think the world of her and I'm looking forward to hearing some of what these great Honoring Nations winners have in common. Miriam, the microphone is yours and after this we can go upstairs and there's a reception that we're going to end on."

Miriam Jorgensen:

"I appreciated getting to be a fly on the wall during the discussions that took place earlier today when you broke out into groups. And I think that most of you probably hit on a lot of the themes that I'm going to talk about today. And in fact, I probably won't get to all the different ways that these programs have themes in common. But what I wanted to talk about a little bit are, what are some of the underlying elements that show how winning programs have achieved their success? What are those cross-cutting elements? What approaches underlie their positive progress that are shared across programs? And turn that also into, what are some of the lessons that all of this universe of 32 winners from the two years of the program, so far? What are the lessons that they bring to Indian Country and really to the rest of the world, to governments around the world? And what are some of those lessons?

I think one of the first and really outstanding lessons to all this is that programs that have achieved good governance have an ability to measure and track their progress. I think it's certainly clear that we look, as an evaluating team and as the advisory board looks at things, they look for evidence of success and progress but it's... I want to take this farther and say it's not just evidence of your success but looking at measures of progress, looking at measures of success, assessing programs is part of what actually makes programs better. And I think as you think about the work that you do and the work that you've heard your colleagues in excellence do, you see that one of the things they're doing is figuring out how to see that they're meeting their goals and that they're using that information to become even better programs. Let me give you a couple of examples that come from the winners in this room and potentially from some who weren't able to be with us today.

On the purely numeric side -- and you can imagine that there are ways of tracking progress that are quantitative and qualitative and I'll try to give some examples of each -- but on the purely numeric side, I will give you the example of the White Earth Suicide Intervention Team. Now, they are very consciously a suicide intervention team. They don't put the goal out there to prevent suicide, even though they have managed probably to prevent quite a few, but they look for data that says, ‘How is it that we can measure how well we're moving toward this goal of suicide intervention,' and they look for something that would be appropriate that would say, ‘What is it that's really telling us that we're going out there, meeting that mark that we care about of suicide intervention?' Well, it turns out that one of the things they decided to track was 72-hour holds. In the early 1990s, as the team was just forming and beginning its work, about six percent of the individuals who had attempted suicide and they were rushed to emergency rooms or hospital, only six percent were held in the hospital for 72 hours for observation and holding. This is a common intervention procedure, a prevention procedure but only six percent of the members of the White Earth Tribe who had attempted suicide were being held. As the team began its work and tracked its innovations, it tracked its progress on trying to increase the number of 72-hour holds. This was really fantastic progress because you have to understand, White Earth doesn't have a hospital. All the hospitals that it's dealing with are non-native hospitals, off reservation or within the reservation but are not controlled by the tribe. So it's working with outside entities to make them live up to their responsibility to their native patients. By the late 1990s over 70 percent, up to about 77 percent of the individuals from White Earth who had attempted suicide and were then placed in emergency rooms in hospitals were on 72-hour holds. So they used this data as a tool, they said, ‘Here's something that's going to track our progress, that can measure our success, that shows us where we're going,' and they used it to set the bar and to set the mark and track their progress in that way. And their goal of course is to try to have 100 percent. So you can see how they used data to measure their success, move toward it and to challenge themselves to do even better.

Now it doesn't have to be that it's just numeric data that is the kind of assessment tool that you can use to measure progress. I think a number of the programs in this room are looking at what they do and they say, ‘Look, yeah, we also use information and data to assess our progress that's not necessarily quantitative. It can be more qualitative.' One example is the Grand Traverse Planning and Development Department. One of the things that they've done is say, ‘Hey, are we doing what we said we'd do? Are we making progress? Are we achieving our goals?' Let's create a list of very achievable goals, much of it generated from community input in a very innovative way, and they sit down and they deliberately track their progress toward meeting those goals. So that's a more qualitative approach of using information and data, of improving their programs. So those are just a couple of examples to show you that one of the cross-cutting themes, one of the things that we see all successful programs doing, all the winners sitting in this room is that they use assessment information to track their progress, measure their progress toward their goals and to challenge themselves to do better and I think that's something that all the programs do.

Another thing that I think all the programs do is that they've achieved good governance oftentimes by tackling really hard problems, and using those hard programs as motivators, and using their success with having tackled those programs or problems as further motivation. Now what do I mean by this? What are some examples we see out there? Think to yourself about all the situations you see in Indian Country and beyond where governments and citizens allow themselves to be sort of beat down by how hard the problems are that they face, whether or not it's like a White Earth suicide problem or the challenges of implementing technology that can help them or the negotiation kinds of problems that we've heard about. Those can be really difficult problems to face. They can be immobilizing in the face of that difficulty. But one thing we see across all the winning programs, a common strand, is a willingness to take up those challenges, to not see a hard problem as something to just bend over in front of but rather to say, ‘What can we do about this?' and then to use that as motivation.

One of the really exciting and incredible hard problems that one of our winners has tackled was the Louden Tribe of Alaska and their Yukaana Development Corporation. Now Yukaana doesn't have a lot of control over the land that the U.S. Air Force had polluted, but they decided that because it was their traditional territory they really wanted to do something about it and this was a mandate from the community that they try to do something about it. They said, ‘Look, this is a huge challenge. It's something that in a sense we don't even have authority and control over but we're going to use that as motivation to try to do something about it.' And they did, with the formation of YDC, the Yukaana Development Corporation, they were able to clean up over 12,000 50-gallon drums of petroleum waste and 3,200 barrels of tar out of that area. They trained hundreds of people in their workforce to solve problems in their area and beyond. They were able to take this really hard challenge and say, ‘We can do something about it.' And in fact, in reflecting on their success with that, it's also been a motivator to even greater work for that organization. So that's one of the things I mean about when you look across these programs, one of the things that they evidence is an ability to take up those hard challenges, to not just say, ‘We can't do something about it,' but to use the difficulty as a motivator to move forward and then also to use the success, once they've achieved that, as further motivation. So good government is achieved as leaders and program directors accept big challenges and use them for inspiration.

I think it's also clear again, as we look across the universe of programs, that programs that have achieved good governance as were spoken about in the presentations earlier as well, they create distinctly Native approaches for local solutions and by doing so this has distinct benefits. What do I mean? Well, I think that it's important to understand that, for instance, self-determination, that's just not about Indian people managing programs for other Indian people. It's about creating special programs that are uniquely native that have uniquely local approaches embedded in them and that definitely has benefits. One of the benefits that we see is that by creating programs of this sort, it's often the case that those solutions are much more workable, are better solutions than externally imposed style solutions.

One of the best examples of this I think from the universal winners is the Navajo Child Special Advocacy Project. This is a program that addresses again a really hard problem, child sexual abuse on the Navajo reservation and they've said, ‘We're not just going to do our therapy and our interventions in a western style. We're going to wholly integrate Navajo approaches into our treatment and into our program development.' And in so doing, they're able to create a more holistic program, a program that serves more of the child's needs to bring in both the western approaches and the Navajo approaches, to address it within the cultural context of harmony and critically they also then serve whole families which many programs of this sort do not do. So therefore they're able to be a more successful, better and improved program as a result of the fact that they've integrated these cultural approaches.

I think one of the other things that having a more cultural local approach does is that it actually generates positive results for Native culture as well. To me, one of the examples here is that it's frequent for us to hear, maybe it's not Indians, maybe it's even detractors within the Indian community saying, ‘Well, if you pursue that kind of highly high-tech solution or if you pursue that really highly institutionalized organized bureaucratic approach you're losing your 'Native-ness'; you're not going to be Indian anymore if you do it that way.' But I think there's strong evidence that says there are ways to do even really progressive, innovative, interesting modern programs that promote and preserve culture. A couple of examples of those are like the Mille Lacs and Ojibwe language programs, where they're using modern approaches like rap music and computer technology to promote and improve language learning within that culture. Here's a place where technology has been controlled by the tribe instead of having it denigrate culture it's building up culture.

Another thing is that it's also the case that it's possible to use highly organized, very capable institutions to promote culture and I think this is one of the examples that we see from one of the speakers this afternoon of the Poeh Culture Center. Here's a case where you've got this very technologically innovative advanced idea of saying, ‘Let's have our construction services firm support our artists and we're going to have a bureaucratic structure, which allows them to have a place to do their work and to sell their art.' Now that means we've got this highly capable institution, helping move forward the culture. It's not drawing the culture down. It's not eliminated the culture. It's moving it forward. So again, good government is achieved as tribal governments use and expand local and cultural knowledge as they carry out their programs because it makes the programs better and it also promotes the culture of that community.

I think the last thing I want to say, and this is really inspired. I thought about this one a little bit less but it's inspired by listening to the conversations this afternoon and talking to members of the advisory board who have been engaged on these issues as well. I think it's really clear that programs that have achieved good governance are administered in ways that promote sovereignty. I think that in a sense not enough can be said about this point. As we all reflect on the conversations of this afternoon and on the work that you've done, that you can see that the programs that you carry out have achieved good governance because they are promoting sovereignty. I think they do this in two different ways. One is through institutional capability. Charlie O'Hara mentioned this a little bit just a little bit ago where he talked about when you have the technical expertise, the institutional expertise, it's very hard for outsiders to look at you and say, ‘Hey, you can't do that. You're not capable of running that program.' So by having strong institutional capacity, as they do at the Swinomish Cooperative Land Use Program, as they do at the Jicarilla Fisheries and Wildlife Program at the White Mountain Outdoor Recreation Program. These have strong institutional capacity that prove to outsiders that native nations are highly capable of managing programs and taking control of that sovereignty.

I think one of the other ways they do it is that programs like yours have been very strategic in figuring out ways to promote sovereignty of the nation through programs operations. This is clear in the work that, say, Justin does at Grand Ronde through the Grand Ronde Intergovernmental Relations Department, strategically following paths that expand the sovereignty of the nation. So that would be the point on which I conclude, that I think as we look across the universal programs, one of the other things that's a common denominator and a common strand is that good governance is achieved as programs promote and underwrite the sovereignty of their nations.

So those are the reflections that I had as I thought about the work that you're doing. I didn't mention all 32 programs in the room, but I think these elements and strands are reflective of the work that you all do, which is commendable and I'm very pleased to have learned from you and I'm excited to share these lessons with other nations both Indian Country and beyond."

Erma Vizenor: Engaging the Nation's Citizens and Effecting Change: The White Earth Nation Story

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

White Earth Nation Chairwoman Erma Vizenor discusses some of the historical factors that eventually compelled her and her nation to undertake constitutional reform, and the issues her nation has encountered as they work to ratify a new constitution and governance system.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Vizenor, Erma. "Engaging the Nation's Citizens: The White Earth Nation Story." Emerging Leaders seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 25, 2010. Presentation.

"Good morning. At home we say, '[Anishinaabe language].' Good morning. I want to thank everyone for being here, and to come to such a beautiful place. I came in late last night, so all I saw as the cab was driving me in was this huge place with all kinds of lights. And I was so anxious to see it this morning and it's gorgeous. Your home, your beautiful home, yes. I'm just sorry I can't stay very long today, but I want to thank my dear friend Manley Begay for inviting me to this seminar. He contacted me at least two-and-a-half, three months ago, and of course I checked off the date and made sure that I had this time open. So Manley and I, way, way back we started our doctoral program together at Harvard. This is kind of funny because this is how things happen but we were just overwhelmed with everything and we were also changing Harvard at the same time, because I know that we worked hard to get the Harvard [University] Native American Program as it is today. So we were overwhelmed with all of our doctoral studies and Manley and I said, we were sitting there and he said, ‘Yeah, we're going to go home in three years. We're going to go back where we belong.' Well, Manley stayed on at Harvard for 12 or 13 years doing good work at the Kennedy School of Government. I went home after three years and I got into a reform movement to oust corruption in my tribe and I did that for five years. All good work, necessary work. We didn't leave as we should. The day that I...or a week after the indictments came against three council members for bid rigging, election fraud, embezzlement theft, all kinds of crimes, a week after that I received a letter from Harvard. The letter said, ‘You come back and finish your dissertation or else by the end of...by the spring of 2006 we're going to drop you.' So I jumped on the plane and went back to Harvard and worked very hard, had to do everything over again, and I didn't write a masterpiece but I finished my dissertation and graduated that spring.

We as Indian people, I just want to say and commend all of you because most of us have to run twice as hard, work twice as hard, run twice as fast to keep up and that's the way it is. I don't think anything comes easy for us. I want to say that I am...say a little bit about the White Earth tribe. We are called; the federal government calls us the White Earth Band of Ojibwe Indians. I have gotten, I have worked hard to get our people -- although when we sign our documents with the federal government I have to use that name -- but amongst ourselves we call ourselves a nation because that's what we are. We always have to remember that we are what we call ourselves. I say to our people back home, ‘A band? My goodness, we're a nation of many bands and we think about a band -- loose, disorganized, small. We're more than that, we're a nation.' And so the White Earth Nation is located in northern Minnesota. We're one of 11 tribes, seven Ojibwe tribes and four Dakota Sioux tribes in the southern half of the state. White Earth is the largest tribe. We have 20,000 members and we're part of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, which is White Earth, Leech Lake, Fond du Lac -- and I know Chairwoman Diver was here yesterday -- Grand Portage, Bois Forte and Mille Lacs. We comprise the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, which is an IRA [Indian Reorganization Act] structure created in 1936. The Red Lake Nation is not a part of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. The Red Lake Nation is Ojibwe -- and we have a good relationship with Red Lake -- but Red Lake is unique. It's a closed reservation because they didn't participate in the Allotment Act, the Dawes Act. They kept all their land in common and didn't allow...didn't participate so the land was not allotted and consequently lost. Wise chiefs in those days.

That did not happen to White Earth. White Earth was allotted all out and White Earth...and Red Lake by the way was the federal government's solution to the Indian problem in Minnesota and created these two large reservations to move all the Indians in Minnesota to the Ojibwe Indians, Chippewa Indians to these two reservations. Relocate the Indians again and get them all together where we can oversee and control them, but that didn't work because our Indian people did not leave their homelands and so we still have our reservations up of Fond du Lac and Mille Lacs and Leech Lake and Bois Forte. People went home again, even if some of them did come to White Earth. So that didn't work, but White Earth is the largest tribe because many of the different Ojibwe people came to White Earth. And the land was allotted out at White Earth and consequently because of that allotment process the land was lost, it was swindled, it was theft, it was lumber companies and farmers and people who were homesteading. So our land was lost. We had...our reservation was established in 1867 and comprised approximately 850,000 acres of land. By the 1900s, we had 50,000 acres of land left. The rest was lost. So land acquisition is a huge priority, large priority for us. Today, when the federal government organized the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, the six reservations together, it put all of our land in common. We have approximately 60,000 acres of land at White Earth out of the 850,000 acres. That's in tribal trust land and it's under the ownership of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe in common. I worked hard to get that back and some of the tribal leaders want to be paid out within the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe and I tell them, ‘I don't see your tribe in our treaty.' But that's the federal government creating these problems for us as Indian people.

The governance of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe is an IRA constitution adopted in 1936 and is a very...since 1987...Vernon Bellecourt was a White Earth secretary/treasurer and was a very progressive man. He initiated a resolution that the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe conduct a constitutional convention. I admire Vernon because he was a visionary person. And in 1987, the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe passed that resolution but it never to this day has not held a constitutional convention. Well, we have an IRA constitution and it's very, very difficult for our people -- how many of us read our state constitutions or our United States Constitution and figure out what our rights...how many of us do that? We know it is taught in our schools, but our constitutions are not taught. And so when I came back from Harvard after I finished my classes, we had corruption in our tribe at White Earth, huge corruption. Our elections were fraudulent, we had bid rigging, and so I worked with elders on a grassroots reform movement and I spent the entire summer of 1991 in jail because we had all of this corruption. By 1995, and with the help of the late Senator Paul Wellstone, an investigation was done and indictments were issued and consequently a federal court trial. This grassroots movement really involved a lot of people at home and got them engaged.

When I was at Harvard, I studied the...Manley and I and Colleen Larimore, we did a paper together on community organizing. And so I learned some good skills there and so we engaged, I engaged the community, the reservation, which is a large area. It's a square that's 36 miles on each side and a lot of our people live in Minneapolis/St. Paul and they came up to help. So we had this huge momentum and change had to come and the people were, the people were empowered to make that change. We had to have open meetings every night, every night we had open meetings and it was spiritual because we had our spiritual people there and we always gathered around to pray first and we always said that we need the Creator to help us.

So in 1996 I was appointed the secretary/treasurer, which is the second role in government and I was elected to that position and re-elected in 1998. I lost my election in 2002. I lost it. But I ran on the platform of constitutional reform. Other tribal leaders run on it but don't do anything about it. But I did. I put together a committee and in 1997, '99 the committee drafted a constitution, I took it out to the reservation, to the Minneapolis area, and very few people showed up. It was a very, very difficult constitution to understand because it was...it talked about grand councils and it talked about language that we had never experienced before. And so when I lost the election in 2002, the constitution went off the radar screen, many things went off, went to the bottom of the drawer. I ran for election for the tribal chair in 2004 in the primary and I won the primary, beat the incumbent and constitutional reform was back on the radar screen again. And so we have, I facilitated, I organized and I facilitated all of the constitutional convention process from delegates, kept the entire process totally transparent and we drafted a constitution and we ratified it by the delegates about a year ago.

And then because...I say we're part of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe with this IRA constitution, I've gone to the...now I'm at the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe level and I'm getting stalled. Some tribes don't want to change, and I think it's because of the colonization and the institutional oppression that people haven't come out of yet. I really do. Don't see the need to change, don't see the need to. There are some issues that are huge. The blood quantum issue is a huge issue, very controversial. Well, that's one of the most controversial ones is the blood quantum and in our new constitution we...our delegates voted on lineal descent. We are terminating ourselves, people, if we cooperate with the federal government on one-fourth blood quantum. We just need to do the math and pretty soon within...we think of seven generations, by seven generations most of us will be gone. That's a controversial issue and even our tribal members in our constitutional conventions get to the point where they say...they get into ethnic cleansing. We have African...our tribal members have married to African-Americans and look like African-Americans and they don't want them there because they're black. I say, ‘My goodness, ethnic cleansing? I can't believe that.' But that's where we're at sometimes. I want to just...I know I don't have a lot of time, but I want to just stop right now and turn it over. Thank you very much.

White Earth Nation caseloads grow as tribe taking over human services cases from surrounding counties

Author
Year

White Earth tribal officials are preparing to begin the final phase of transferring human services cases from surrounding counties to the White Earth Nation.  

The movement began three years ago when a state law authorized White Earth to take control of all human services programs for its members and their families...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Quam, Paula. "White Earth Nation caseloads grow as tribe taking over human services cases from surrounding counties." Inforum. May 19, 2014. Article. (https://www.parkrapidsenterprise.com/content/white-earth-nation..., accessed May 20, 2014)