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I. NNI Research Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. The State of the Native Nations: Conditions under U.S. Policies of Self-Determination. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007, 448 pp. Since the 1970s, conditions within the Indigenous population of the United States have been rapidly changing. Taking advantage of—and often moving well beyond—U.S. self-determination policies, a growing number of Indian nations have been asserting greater powers of self-government. While some of their actions have involved little more than taking over management of social programs formerly provided by the federal government, many of them have gone much further, reorganizing their governing systems, building sustainable economies, launching major efforts to revitalize language and culture, and exercising substantive jurisdiction over lands, resources, and civil affairs. Not all their efforts have been successful, and not all changes have been positive, but the last three decades have seen significant transformations in Indian Country. Written by a diverse group of researchers and practitioners, The State of the Native Nations provides a comprehensive view of Native America in the first decade of the 21st century. The coverage is broad, from tribal government to the arts, from economic and social development to urban populations, from tribal-state relations to education. Twenty-one thematic chapters are interspersed with fourteen essays by Native national and community leaders and with brief case accounts of innovative tribal programs, enterprises, and other initiatives. Each chapter buttresses reviews of current conditions with both historical context and a look ahead, identifying areas of change and continuing issues. The book documents not only the challenges that still face Native America but shows with hard data the substantial progress that Indian nations have made in recent years in addressing some of those challenges effectively and in their own ways. Hot off the press, the book can be purchased from Oxford University Press by phone at (800) 451-7556 or online ($29.00, ISBN 978-0-19-530126-7, paper). NNIRR readers can receive a 20 percent discount by ordering the book by August 15, 2007. Use promotional code 26175.
Eric D. Lemont, editor. American Indian Constitutional Reform and the Rebuilding of Native Nations. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006, 360 pp. Over the last two decades, a growing number of American Indian nations have taken a hard look at their formal structures of self-governance, including constitutions. Few of those constitutions were truly Indigenous products, and many depart from Indigenous ideas about how to govern. In addition, as Indian nations have sought to expand their own governing powers and improve the quality of governance for their peoples, many have felt the need for more robust and appropriate constitutional foundations. Beginning in 2000, the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development carried out a program of research and dialogue on the constitutional reform efforts undertaken by many of these nations. This program turned into an ongoing forum where tribal leaders, scholars, and legal practitioners shared information about the processes and products of constitutional reform. This book brings together much of the material presented in or emerging from that program, including not only scholarly articles addressing key issues in tribal constitutional reform but first-hand accounts by tribal leaders themselves, talking about why they undertook reform, how they pursued it, and the effects it has had. Their revealing and powerful words capture nation building processes at ground level, in communities seeking to back up self-determination with effective governance. The book is divided into three parts. Part One “investigates the historical, cultural, economic, and political motivations behind American Indian nations’ recent reform efforts”; Part Two takes up key issues addressed in reform efforts, including governing institutions and citizenship criteria; Part Three examines the process of reform, including matters of citizen participation and internal politics. The book can be purchased from the University of Texas Press by phone at (800) 252-3206 or online ($21.95, ISBN 978-0-292-71317-8, paper).
Stephen Cornell. “Organizing Indigenous Governance in Canada, Australia, and the United States.” In Aboriginal Policy Research, Vol. IV: Moving Forward, Making a Difference. Ed. Jerry P. White, Susan Wingert, Dan Beavon, and Paul Maxim. Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing, 2007, pp. 159-70. Cornell traces the recent rise of governance as an Indigenous issue in these three countries. He then considers four challenges that this phenomenon poses for both state and Indigenous policy makers. The first has to do with the meaning of governance. When states and Indigenous peoples talk about governance, they often have quite different things in mind and, as a result, talk past each other. A second and related issue has to do with the scope of Indigenous jurisdiction. Will it be limited to administration or will Indigenous governance systems be empowered to address more fundamental problems? The third issue has to do with the institutional form of Indigenous governance and with the reluctance of states to accept diversity in governmental form among Indigenous peoples within their borders. The fourth question—and the one that forms the focus of much of the paper—asks, “who’s the ‘self’ in self-governance?” Or, along what social boundaries will Indigenous governance be organized? Answering this question may be less of a challenge in much of the United States, where the political boundaries of most contemporary Indian nations are long established, but it is a central and dynamic issue in Canada and Australia, where fragmentation and mixing have complicated relationships between governmental/administrative boundaries and more substantive bases of peoplehood. The book can be purchased from Thompson Educational Publishing by phone at (416) 766-2763 or online ($36.95 CDN / $29.95 US, ISBN 978-1-55077-164-7, paper).
Kristen Wagner, Karen Edwards, Miriam Jorgensen, and Dana Klar. “Contributions of the Earned Income Tax Credit to Community Development in Indian Country.” Report to the Annie E. Casey Foundation 2005 Native Community VITA Site Project. Prepared by the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies, George Brown School of Social Work, and the Center for Social Development, both at Washington University, St. Louis, 2006. There’s a growing effort across Indian Country to improve financial literacy at both personal and community levels and to find ways of capturing more of the dollars that flow into (and out of) Native communities. The Buder Center for American Indian Studies at Washington University in St. Louis worked with ten Native American community Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) sites in a preliminary effort to better understand the roles that VITA campaigns and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) could play in this effort. The resultant data showed that VITA services helped participants recapture thousands of dollars that might otherwise have been spent in tax preparation fees, lost to poor tax filing, or paid in penalties for not filing taxes at all. Participants in these services identified what they planned to do with their refunds. Many indicated a desire to invest in savings accounts or other means of building assets. However, the study also found that some participants did not have bank accounts, and that even a majority of participants with bank accounts rely on grocery and convenience stores, check-cashing operations, and pawn shops for core banking services. This indicates a significant gap between the desire to invest or save and the institutional ability or resources to do so. The research highlights for tribal governments and community organizations the need not only for financial education but for financial services such as flexible banking and community development financial institutions (CDFIs) that can enable tribal citizens to invest in their communities and themselves. Materials that NNI researchers recently have found valuable for thinking about Indigenous self-determination and nation building The Spring 2006 issue of Natural Resources Journal (vol. 46, no. 2) presents papers from a symposium titled “Moving Beyond the Current Paradigm: Redefining the Federal-Tribal Trust Relationship for this Century.” While the entire issue will be of interest to practitioners in Indian law, natural resource management, and nation building, we provide here brief summaries of three of the papers. The collection focuses on Native American natural resource issues in the context of changing conceptions of sovereignty. Separate papers by Kevin Gover and Stacy Leeds focus on the brokenness of the tribal-federal trust relationship. Both emphasize that past and current trust policy is based on out-dated and racist understandings of Indians and describe how such policy promotes tribal dependency. They have contrasting ideas, however, on how to change the trust relationship to put more control over land tenure and transactions into the hands of Native nations and their citizens. On the other hand, Judith Royster argues that the trust relationship should be retained but that more should be done to hold the federal government to its trust responsibility. Focusing specifically on Indian water rights, Royster calls for legislation that will bolster tribal power over water resources within the model of federal fiduciary responsibility.
Kevin Gover, “An Indian Trust for the Twenty-First Century,” pp. 317-74. Gover reviews the history and evaluates the current state of the federal-tribal trust relationship. While arguing that this relationship is based on the idea that Indians are incompetent to control their own affairs, he also suggests that, in view of the current Cobell litigation and of passage of the American Indian Trust Fund Management Act, reform in the relationship may now be possible. Recognizing the policy movement toward tribal self-governance, he suggests that authorization over land transactions should be assumed by tribes. This would give tribes leverage in loans and mortgage situations in which tribal land could be used as collateral, opening doors for home-ownership, construction, and enterprise development. Instead of relying on Congressional reforms that would apply to all tribes, Gover proposes that the trust relationship be redefined on a tribe-by-tribe basis, giving individual Indian nations the opportunity to decide for themselves which parts of the trust relationship they wish to retain. This would require negotiation on many points. Admitting that the idea is controversial, he addresses a number of points in detail, including state taxation and regulation immunity, tribal jurisdiction, retention of specific trust lands, alienability, lease approvals, enforcement, acquiring additional trust lands, and liability.
Stacy L. Leeds, “Moving Toward Exclusive Tribal Autonomy over Lands and Natural Resources,” pp. 439-61. Leeds likewise claims that an end to the federal trust relationship over Indian lands is the only means to tribal control and autonomy. Under current policy, tribes have the options of keeping their land in federal trusteeship or maintaining fee ownership under state regulations; either way they are not truly autonomous land holders. Leeds outlines the means for a gradual end to federal control and return to Indian land tenure. This can happen through a combination of (1) property conveyances that would change fee title from the federal government to tribal governments or to individuals, or to put the tribes in the position of trustee of tribal lands, and (2) amending current federal law to allow tribes exclusive jurisdiction over tribal lands to avoid the disadvantage of putting land under state regulatory control once it is taken out of federal trust. Paying particular attention to the goals of exclusive tribal jurisdiction, the elimination of regulatory interference, and establishment of Indian ownership of tribal land bases, Leeds claims such a proposal is required for self-determination.
Judith V. Royster, “Indian Water and the Federal Trust: Some Proposals for Federal Action,” pp. 375-98. Indian water resources, says Royster, are trust resources; under the Winters doctrine, the federal fiduciary responsibility to tribes on reservations implies access to water that would make living on reservation lands possible. Additionally, the rights guaranteed to tribes through treaties and agreements include the protection of traditional practices, including the use of water and access to fishing places. However, Indian water rights are commonly left unprotected by the federal trusteeship. While the federal government could protect tribal water rights through regulatory legislation that would establish a comprehensive federal management plan or place the Department of the Interior in control, such legislation would not promote Indian self-determination. Alternatively, the author proposes five actions the federal government could take that would promote tribal authority over tribal water resources. (1) The Department of the Interior could lift an outdated moratorium on approval of tribal water codes for those tribes that must get Interior approval of their laws. (2) Interior could account for all tribal rights when determining if activities adversely affect endangered species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Currently, such assessments are measured against exercised rights which often do not include tribal rights. (3) Congress could change the McCarran Amendment of 1954, under which, in general stream adjudication, tribes face the choice of relying on the federal government to adjudicate or waiving sovereign immunity to suit in state court. Royster further suggests that all tribal v. state water rights cases be adjudicated in federal courts unless tribes waive that option. (4) Congress could create a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) “trust exemption” that would protect information shared between the federal government and a tribe from other parties involved in litigation with the tribe. (5) Finally, Congress could authorize tribal water marketing, allowing tribes to sell or lease their water or water rights to non-tribal users, and therefore enable tribes to benefit from existing non-tribal free use of tribal waters.
Two articles on the geographical distribution of Native peoples and rights… John Taylor, “Population and Diversity: Policy Implications of Emerging Indigenous Demographic Trends.” Discussion Paper No. 283/2006. Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University, 2006. Taylor, a geographer and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University, argues in this paper that the monitoring of Aboriginal Australian socioeconomic conditions has for the most part been organized and presented jurisdictionally, usually in terms of State or Territory units. This tends to hide the complex spatial dimensions of changing Aboriginal demography. Trends in Aboriginal population dynamics coalesce around structural categories or categories of place, such as “city suburbs, regional towns, town camps, remote Indigenous towns, and outstations” (p. 69). Emergent policy issues, particularly those having to do with economic and social participation, would be better addressed in terms of such categories instead of the State and Territorial categories that currently dominate the organization of both data and decision making. In support of his arguments and to illustrate the complexities of Aboriginal demography and socioeconomic conditions, Taylor’s paper also presents a large quantity of data on topics ranging from Aboriginal location, migration, and self-identification to mortality and intermarriage.
Thomas Biolsi, “Imagined Geographies: Sovereignty, Indigenous Space, and American Indian Struggle,” American Ethnologist, vol. 32, no. 2, 2005, pp. 239-59. Biolsi, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, challenges the common, modular, nation-state paradigm for analyzing Native issues. He argues that when Native nations push for rights, justice, or self-determination, they are doing so in four different kinds of Indigenous political space. First, they are concerned with governing their physical territory—the reservation space—and enforcing their rights to do so. Second, many of them have land-use interests beyond reservation borders. In this political space, for purposes such as fishing, sacred and traditional uses of ancestral territory, or environmental regulation, they have to cooperate with local, state, and federal governments. Third, American Indians have a shared interest in what Biolsi calls “national indigenous space”—common rights to North America by virtue of being its first peoples. And finally, they have an interest in protecting their rights as citizens of the United States. Biolsi concludes that many scholars focus on the first of these, treating Indian groups in a nation-state framework and missing the multiple geographies of Native American politics. Selected research projects worth watching Improving Health Care Access and Outcomes in Native American Communities, Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, The University of Arizona Despite impressive progress over the last few decades, disparities in health access and outcomes by race, ethnicity, and income persist in the United States. Among those with the worst health outcomes—including disability and mortality due to preventable causes—are American Indians and Alaska Natives. Over the last two decades, concerned by the continuing health crisis in their communities, many American Indian nations and Alaska Native villages have been increasingly proactive in health care, expanding their management role, asserting their own priorities, and developing innovative programming to improve access to high quality, culturally-tailored health care services. With a grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Native Nations Institute (NNI) has moved into the planning stage of an extended exploration of Indigenous efforts to improve access to quality health care. NNI researchers are assembling and analyzing information in response to four key questions: (1) What initiatives have Native communities taken recently in the health care arena? (2) What—if anything—do we currently know about the impact of these initiatives on access to health care and on health outcomes? (3) Where are the gaps in our knowledge about these initiatives and their effects? (4) What should a subsequent research effort look like that could identify best practices in tribal health care management and provide usable knowledge about what works for both tribal and federal policy-makers? News, sound bites, and bits of information Native Nation Building DVD/CD Release The Native Nation Building TV and radio series, produced by the Native Nations Institute and KUAT-TV at The University of Arizona and aired in the last year by numerous stations and networks across the country, has now been released for purchase on DVD and CD. Native Nation Building is a series of thematic interviews that presents stories of successful Native nation building and examines the roots of that success. Each thematic thirty-minute segment—taking up such topics as constitutional reform, intergovernmental relations, enterprise management, and judicial systems—can stand alone, but taken together, the series provides a comprehensive overview of the ways Native nations are working to make sustainable, self-determined community and economic development a reality. For more information on purchasing this series, contact Dr. Ian Record at <recordi@u.arizona.edu> or (520) 626-0664.
Coming in November from the University of Arizona Press... Rebuilding Native Nations: Strategies for Governance and Development. This new book, edited by Miriam Jorgensen and with a foreword by Oren Lyons and an afterword by Satsan (Herb George), brings together more than twenty years of research on Indigenous nation building. Part report, part analysis, and part how-to manual for Native leaders, it discusses strategies for governance and community and economic development being employed by American Indian nations and First Nations in Canada as they move to assert greater control over their own affairs. Pre-publication orders are now being received at the University of Arizona Press by phone at (800) 426-3797 or online ($20.00, ISBN 978-0-8165-2423-5, paper). NNIRR readers can receive a 20 percent discount by ordering the book using promotional code FLR.
Additions to the JOPNA series… Since our last Research Report, three papers have been added to the Joint Occasional Papers on Native Affairs (JOPNA) series, published by the Native Nations Institute and the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. One is brand new; the other two were previously available only as chapters in books. All are now downloadable in pdf formats online.
A new book from Duane Champagne… Duane Champagne, professor of sociology and director of the Native Nations Law and Policy Center at UCLA and a member of NNI’s International Advisory Council, has been writing penetrating papers on social change in Native communities for more than twenty years. His new volume, Social Change and Cultural Continuity among Native Nations (Altamira Press, 2007), pulls together many of those papers in one place. The book is divided into three parts: I. Culture, Institutional Order, and Worldview; II. Economic, Political, and Cultural Relations with Colonizing Nations; and, III. Change and Continuity.
A report on the International Cross Border Security Summit, March 17-18, 2006, Cornwall, Ontario, Canada In March 2006, the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne hosted a border security summit in consultation with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Canadian Border Security Service Agency, and other federal, state, provincial, local, and Indigenous organizations. The conference produced a general consensus that government agencies at all levels must work closely with American Indian nations and First Nations in Canada to achieve an effective border strategy, and must also develop measures to uphold Indigenous rights of free passage across the U.S.-Canada border under the Jay Treaty of 1794. Copies of the report, which details the proceedings of the event, including summaries of all presentations, plenary discussions, and the plenary caucus, can be obtained from: Robert Holden, Director of Nuclear Waste Program Wendall Nicholas
CNPR Monitor vol. 1, no. 3 (March 2006). The March 2006 issue of the CNPR Monitor details several aspects of business development and employment in First Nations. The issue contains articles on the impact British Columbia economic growth has on Natives; entrepreneurship in Native communities; the benefits of regional service delivery programs; the inequity of spending on Aboriginal communities vis-à-vis the general Canadian population; developing Aboriginal entrepreneurial leaders; urban Aboriginal community development; concepts of governance; women’s poverty; alternate measures of national economic conditions; and the contributions of Native governance to forest land management. The CNPR Monitor is available through membership in the Centre for Native Policy and Research.
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Links to other research and policy sites relevant to Indigenous nation building New... First Peoples Worldwide
Aboriginal Leadership and Management Program, The Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta, Canada Alaska Native Policy Center, First Alaskans Institute, Anchorage, Alaska Center for Indigenous Law, Governance and Citizenship, College of Law, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y. Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR), The Australian National University, Canberra Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia First Nations Development Institute, Arlington, Va. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program, Rogers College of Law, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz. Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University, Portland, Ore. Mira Szászy Research Centre for Mäori and Pacific Economic Development, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand National Centre for First Nations Governance, Chilliwack, British Columbia Native American Studies Department, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M. Native Nations Law and Policy Center, School of Law, University of California, Los Angeles Northwest Indian Applied Research Institute, Evergreen State College, Olympia, Wash. Reconciliation Australia, Canberra School of Maori and Pacific Development, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
About the Native Nations Institute and NNI Research Report Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy (NNI) Manley A. Begay, Jr., Director The Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy (NNI) is part of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, a research and outreach unit of The University of Arizona. Founded in 2001 by the university and the Morris K. Udall Foundation, NNI serves as a self-determination, development, and self-governance resource to Native nations in the United States and elsewhere. Its programs include research and policy analysis, leadership and management training, and strategic and organizational development. Much of NNI’s work builds on and continues research originally carried out by the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at Harvard University. The two organizations share some staff and work closely together in a variety of research and educational activities. Introductions to the research on which NNI/Harvard Project work is based can be found in: Cornell, Stephen, and Joseph P. Kalt. 1998. “Sovereignty and Nation-Building: The Development Challenge in Indian Country Today.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 22:3 187-214. Cornell, Stephen, and Joseph P. Kalt. 2000. “Where’s the Glue: Institutional and Cultural Foundations of American Indian Economic Development.” Journal of Socio-Economics 29: 443-70.
NNI Research Report Editors: Miriam Jorgensen and Stephen Cornell NNI Research Report is published under the direction of the Native Nations Institute’s associate director for research, Dr. Miriam Jorgensen. The newsletter is posted every few months on NNI’s “What’s New” Web site at: Subscribers are notified by e-mail, free of charge, whenever a new issue is posted. Past issues are archived on the site at: To subscribe or unsubscribe to e-mail notification of new issues of NNI Research Report, or to notify us of material you think we should consider for mention in a future issue, please contact us at nnirr@u.arizona.edu.
Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy
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