(NOTE: This is the first in a six-part series of essays that reflect and meditate on the problems caused to us by immoral leadership—and solutions to the greed of these individuals. This essay was originally posted in January 2009; the series will be posted on a irregular basis.)
I.
As a child, I read Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. This was in the 70s, and those of us of a certain age remember that the Wounded Knee book was everywhere at that time, dog-eared and worn in everyone’s living rooms, cars, kitchen tables. I was in elementary school when I read it, and it was such a painful experience that for years after I did not open another book on American Indian—United States history until my mother introduced me to the historian, Angie Debo, at a small gathering. I then read several of her works, but some time elapsed before I finally could forcefully confront the tribal histories of our genocide and colonization in print form. In the meanwhile, after a viewing of The Hiding Place, I turned to the cultural and political literature of the Shoah, a genre that I read exhaustively for the next couple of decades. It was only near the end of that reading when I realized that it had provided me an indirect way of studying the histories of genocide, occupation, and militarization (along with culpability, complicity, and denial) on our own families, communities, tribes, and nations.
However, this particular reading schedule that I established for myself when I was younger did not prevent me from learning about Indigenous histories. My family and relatives constantly discussed our tribal history, and our family’s place in that history, including the Native Diaspora, disappeared friends and family members, and their own memories of boarding schools, languages, and ceremonies. I was fortunate that our family spent several years in the Prince Hall housing complex (Shawnee, OK) when it first opened. Prince Hall stretched over several blocks and was a richly diverse intertribal community so living in that neighborhood, and in that town during the 70s, I grew up listening to stories and histories from many different tribes.
I understand now that these particular reading and listening experiences shaped my thinking and behavior in so many helpful ways, including being provided with a trove of possible morals, reactions, and responses to choose from during those moments that a friend of mine has named the “Time of Sorrow”; this is a reference to working with immoral leadership whenever it emerges in Indian Country. We will all have this experience, some of us will have it more than a dozen times. A few of us will even be co-opted into supporting such leadership. I understand now that reading about the Shoah and taking in all those oral histories of our Nations while I lived at the housing complex was a study not only into genocide but also into what we in the post-genocide generations will confront. This includes recognizing the types and responsibilities of leaders, themselves individuals who are consciously choosing to fight for Sovereignty or who are deliberately attempting to keep The People in the fog of colonization / assimilation / collaboration.
II.
Simply put, there are several camps of leadership styles with which we need to become proficient. We need to understand the leaders that undermine, represent, and fight for us during the seasons of extermination and removal on one hand, and those on the other who steal from us and who ignore us during the current era of colonization (assimilation) and those that fight for us as they move the tribes toward a politics of decolonization with the goal of, in great part, liberating, consolidating, and strengthening our land bases.
What does Sovereignty look like? Basically, Sovereignty is practicing self-determination and respectful coexistence (academics looking for definitions of absolute sovereignty need to spend more time in Indian Country and abroad; Sovereignty is a conflicted, complex system overseen by pitiful human beings, which is why we have traditional peace-making/peace-keeping ceremonies, the United Nations, etc.) And, for us, the basis of this phase of Sovereignty activity is creating the Native-oriented networks that will eventually restore our lands.
As we prepare for the year when our representatives and the United States come to terms about this restoration and the new geopolitical borders that will result, our immediate task is to contribute to our own well-being and the well-being and resiliency of our families, communities, and tribes. Not as assimilated, colonized “What Will the Non-Natives Think?” persons, but rather as People who live first—and only—as Indigenous Peoples and Tribal Nations. Along the way, we will need to identify, nurture, and mentor those who can intelligently and ethically coordinate our struggles; these individuals will need our support as they foster connections between the social and tribal movements and organizations and the mainstream and emerging political parties (someday there will be political parties whose platforms will begin with us, thereby freeing Natives from choosing between the non-Native-oriented Republican, Democratic, and other such groups). As President Evo Morales has said, all of this activity will require the support of our academic institutions—support from Indigenous-oriented scholars that will result in the re-creation of a greater critical, tribal, and intertribal consciousness. The strategy is Sovereignty, and the generally-described tactics above will make it possible for The People to achieve liberation.
III.
So much, then, depends on the collective health of our communities as we choose who are our leaders and representatives, on how we support the moral leaders and how we survive (and toss out) the immoral individuals and the times of sorrow that they bring to Native Peoples.
Basically, moral leadership promotes and fosters Sovereignty; such a position means that, even when times are tricky and conflict emerges, the interests of the tribe remain first. In recent times, these individuals have included Mary and Carrie Dann, Clyde Warrior, Cato Valandra, and Hank Adams. Intelligent, tenacious, pro-Native to the marrow, these folks were/are well-studied into the political literature and arena, and were/are firmly tribally-grounded.
Immoral leaders will say the right words and phrases, and can be impressive manipulators to the press, but you will know them by their deeds: they put personal ambition and greed, family interests, and nepotism ahead of the tribe and Nations. They do not believe in opposition (a necessary component for a thriving politics of sovereignty) in the community, but they do believe in placing their primary allegiance to the United States. And their actions will show this.
Moral leadership for Native Peoples is characterized by politics and actions that promote and nurture self-determination and the well-being of our respective Nations. Such leadership understands that they are representatives of the People; they have been mentored (in positive, Native-oriented ways) into their roles and they understand that their strength stems from the expertise of the community (including our ancestors and descendants). These leaders understand that are there to contribute to the solidity of the community for a temporary time—or, perhaps for the long duration.
Moral leadership desires the liveliness of its community, a desire that involves promoting and fostering responsibility to the tribe and Indigenous Peoples while simultaneously appreciating and nurturing our variety, our uniqueness, and our place within the tribal organization, agency, institution and within our communities and Nations. This leadership thrives on creativity, and understands that beneficial tactics to realize decolonization politics can come from any camp.
At times, moral leaders will be given nothing. Yet they still will provide for Native Peoples.
Immoral leadership promotes internecine behavior and policy; it draws its strength from, in fact it thrives on anti-Indian activity. It needs chaos to survive. If chaos is not present, it will bring it forth. We are in the midst of this leadership whenever smokescreens emerge that keep us distracted from the immoral leader’s own hateful and spiteful anti-Indianism—and her or his theft of our funds, our resources, and the weakening and destruction of our tribal institutions. With its bureaucratic, greedy, and paranoid mind, this leader has only two weapons in its little arsenal: co-opting others into (a false) consensus and bullying others into submission. It is enthralled with its image in the smoke and mirrors, and only supports those who will jump with it off the cliff, no questions asked. When it spots an individual who is intelligent or pro-Native or popular or insightful, it immediately cowers into an offensive position in order to formulate a plan to remove this individual from the community.
Immoral leadership is that individual who consistently seeks to kill the spirit of individuals, including our young, and including those that other tribes have sent to the community for nurturing, guidance, education, mentoring, employment; this leadership desires not to lead but rather to control; it nurtures dependency and learned helplessness; it discourages critical thinking and question-asking. Not only does it seek to rob The People of their finances, it seeks to rob people of the ability to see each other as relatives. It replaces this recognition with an “enemy camp,” an enemy camp of personal ambition within our tribal organizations and Indigenous Nations and whose objective is to stunt our lives as Native peoples.
The immoral leaders will be given everything, and they will return nothing to Indigenous Nations.
IV.
To confront immoral leadership comes, of course, at a cost and should never be undertaken lightly. Ideally, it ought to be done from a position of remarkable spiritual and psychological strength. After all, who among us does not know of those who have undergone the horrible experience of being subjected to retaliation and reprisal for speaking openly about the problems of immoral leaders within our tribal organizations or councils? Who among us does understand what it is like to work with immoral leaders, in the Time of Sorrow, day in and day out, whether or not we feel up for it? We each know what it is like when these leaders assault us psychologically and financially, which is a form of violence because it is directed not just toward us, but also against our families and children.
Yet, with support, guidance, and knowledge, one can prepare her or his self to openly discuss the problems that chronic immoral leadership has caused us. This is true whether at the local level or at the highest U.S. governmental posts that Natives occupy. Their anti-Native and dishonest behavior and distorted thinking are attempts to keep Native Peoples from realizing authentic politics of decolonization and self-determination, while they instead eye how to put another notch on their resumes and only enrich their pocketbooks and professional reputations (and those of their supporters) among non-Natives.
To intelligently speak up and to share about the dysfunction and to practice enough! is great medicine—and so is documenting the truth, well-told, about their actions against Native People. To speak up is one antitoxin to immoral leaders; these anti-Native folks in local and U.S. federal power are the lingering gifts to us from the colonizers—flesh and blood manifestations of divide and conquer tactics. We can prepare ourselves for the possibility of being called upon to speak out; to not mentor each other and to fail to prepare ourselves will result in remaining an amateur against their tactics.
And to not speak up when asked is to acquiesce to the anti-Indians and their lies while they build layer upon layer of deception against us while they work diligently to create their tiny, insulated enclaves of “Indian aristocracy” or feeble mafia family—all in an attempt to keep us from reclaiming Sovereignty and the liberation of our lands.
Julia Good Fox
2 responses so far ↓
Ahni // 20 January 2009 at 10:50 am
I really hope lots of people come across this essay, and then apply the values you are pointing to.
Corrupt leadership is very much a sickness in our Nations, we see it all over the place, (eg http://tribalcorruption.com ) and it is something that must be confronted if we ever want to live again as truly Sovereign Nations, to stand with political strength as equals to colonial states and with integrity to preserve our lands and ways for future generations.
After all, we are all leaders in our own right. We all have the power to influence the lives of others — but those who do so for profit, power, and approval should step down from their positions and make way for those of us who will obey the needs of family, community, and Nation.
With Respect,
Ahni
Howard D. Valandra // 27 January 2009 at 10:32 am
Thank you for the nice comment about my father. The leadership qualitities of the 50′ and 60’s are needed today. Tribal leaders are facing many issues and with communication and technology the overload of information and data could place a great deal of stress and strain on them.
I still have the portable typewriter used by my father when he went to meetings. This was new technology for his era. It allowed tribal leaders to put down their thoughts and present them to others, which created a written record and did not allow others to distort their words or positions. This was important then, and important today.
Tribal leaders have been learning to harness the communication and technologies for the betterment of their tribe. If tomorrows leaders are not prepared for the challenges, Indian Country will face difficult times.
The judgement line between moral and immoral is as wide or narrow as a leaders’ education, culture, background and understanding. Fortunately, most of Indian Country has good leaders, but as with any political system there are a few outcases.
Howard D. Valandra