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“Kiowa Honor Song” by Cozad Singers plays.

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I'm a rookie council member, and I say that because I'm still in my first term here. I don't think I've reached 18 months yet. And to say that I hit the ground running well, I think I'm still wearing my running shoes here, but what I expected and what I'm facing right now are two different things. When going into office.,

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you know, I learned with the cultural foundation growing up on the reservation, which I'm passing down the knowledge to my children about. So when I was going into this, I talked to my husband. “This is the opportunity. What do you think?” I have two little ones at home, at this time they were two and four. So, to have that strong foundation at home, that support system is what I was really hoping for

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and we both agreed we could take this next step. Reaching out to my grandmother because I grew up with the traditions of any next journey, any next step we take, we reach out to our elders. We get their knowledge and their blessing. So that's what I did with my grandmother. Well, and then she goes, “Well, let me think about it.”

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It kind of caught me off guard. I was like, “Okay,” And she did. She took a few hours before she called me and she said, “Okay, you know, your uncles and your mom, they're all in some type of leadership. So it's your turn. It's your turn to take the next step, the next journey. But don't forget where you come from and who you are.

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It's no longer I. It's we. We paved the... Our ancestors paved this road for you guys to take down, to take this journey. And it's up for you guys to continue this road for the next seven generations out.” So some of the things going into this, I thought I had a good understanding. When I took office, I had a lot of catching up to do because, based off the cultural foundation, we do culture in everything that we do, including our government. That part I knew. All the other things, the laws, the financial...

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I know when we were doing that little segment right here, instant heartburn, I'm not going to lie. I got it instantly. I was like, “Oh, I'm back at work.” But these are some of the challenges that I'm facing right now. But I take my time. I ask the questions. I've asked our past leaders, “Can you help me? Help me catch up?”

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And that's been the road I've been going down right now.

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I remember my first week on the job detail was important. Everything we do, you had to understand the details and if not, you could fall quickly behind. But coming into office, the details were kind of new for everybody that was sitting there. And I say that because we were going through a transitional within our own government. We used to run on our 1966 Articles of Association for so long, which, by the way, was signed by an all-women council, just wanted to throw that out there.

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But that's what we based our government on for years and years. It wasn't until these past few years we started working on our own constitution, which we passed. We, our people were all involved. They had their input. We worked on it for five years, if not more, of going back and forth amongst our people. Well we passed and we adopted our new constitution right before I came into office.

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Speaker 4
So everything that we've known up to then, prior to the new constitution, we knew this is about to change. So I was actually coming in at a simple playing field, if you will, amongst those who've been on council for many years, because we all had to work on this transitional period. There is no how-to rulebook of doing this the right way.

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So we all kind of butted heads in the beginning and I thought, “Okay, I'm new, so I'm going to be butting heads.” But to see everybody, including our chair, our secretary to treasurer, everybody butting heads, I was like, “Okay, so we're all on the same playing field here.” That I didn't expect. I was like, “Okay, these are growing pains.”

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It took a couple months for us to kind of work through things, and it really was “Okay, let's just take a step back. Let's try the strategic planning of our priorities in order to make this transitional a little bit better.” Part of the new constitution broke our government down into three pillars, which was brand new for us.

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Our pillars were a Growth Pillar, which oversees our economic and financial accountabilities, our long term investments; our Government Pillar which oversees a lot of our ordinances; and then the Culture Pillar, which I helped oversee, and this is a brand new pillar that many have never really incorporated with our government. So to be walking in and taking on a new role with a new pillar...

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But the thing is, that cultural foundation was embedded in everything that we've done, everything that we do. We did adopt our mission, vision and values statement back in 2015. Within the, within that are the expectations that our Tribal People hold dearly. That's what the expectations are not just for our Tribal People but for our government and even our enterprises that we do today.

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We always fall back on that. So that was one of the, in the beginning it was unexpected. We weren't expecting, you know, and I wasn't expecting that. This was brand new. But to reflect back on what our people said and our mission, vision and values statement, those expectations, even to this day, everything we do: well, does it tie back into that?

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If not, then let's explain to the Tribe why. Let's bring them on the journey with us instead of siloing, putting them out on the side. That's not how we're going to be productive. And my elders will make noise if we leave them out. So, we don't want that either. So those are the unexpected turns that going into office that I, I’ve encountered so far.

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There was, oh, I don't know. Do we have enough time to talk about that? Okay. So, going... dealing with catching up. Wow. I knew the... overseeing the culture pillar. One can say it's... we have our own pillar that's what we focus on. The culture pillar bleeds into all the other pillars. Culture’s... in everything that we've done in our families and our government,

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I take on a little more than I expected. So, I remember going into an investment board meeting, looking at the financial structures of everything I looked at it and I almost had a heart attack. Like, ‘Okay, I know basic finance, but to see the breakdown of all these assets and revenues, I need to catch up.’ So I sat down with our treasurer, who has always had an open door policy.

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I said, “What do I need to look at to understand this kind of fast so I could help make the best decisions for our people?” So she took the time out to show me, “Here. Here's a breakdown of what we're doing. These are the next steps. Once you figure out these next steps, you're going to be on the right path that we're that we need to go to. ”

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Now, I'm not going to lie, it took a few months just to understand the first step, step number one. I was like, “Whew. Right when I thought I figured it out, another curveball came.” Because things are always changing, especially in finances. And then when we come to the cultural side, I understand the culture. But then to throw NAGPRA into this, California NAGPRA, all the bills and everything that goes into... developers when they come across artifacts and remains.

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I had to catch up on that, too. I think since I've been in office, I've had to partake in three Re-burials of our ancestors. And that was tough. The mental aspect of things. That right there's what they don't prepare you for. So, to try to learn and catch up, sometimes you could get mentally exhausted. And to understand that, to understand you're going to learn some of this new things.

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But right when you figure it out, okay, I learned it. Okay. Surprise. Here's another thing that, the state is trying to do to tribes. Now, let's get educated on that. So we could be the voice not just for our nation, but everything across the board, for all nations. So, it's been a learning curve in many ways.

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But would I trade it? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Now the mental exhaustion. Maybe I'll trade that from time to time if I could. Right? But then again, I got two little ones at home. So do I really get that break? I don't think so. But I wouldn't change it. Even going, first term, the learning curve. I welcome it.

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I could think of different things I could have done leading up to taking office. I could have got a different degree in a whole different study that could prepare me, for instance, like with finance or, Indian law. But to kind of look back at it and wonder, should I have done that differently?

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Well, would it prepare me for what I'm doing today on that road that I had to take to get to where I'm at now? I wouldn't change it so much. What I probably took, you know, a minor in some of those things. Maybe I should have to help me understand the things that leadership had to entail. You know, those are things that at that time I didn't know.

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And at that time, our leadership really kept things close knit. So it wasn't really expressing all that went into things, into the leadership roles. It wasn't until we started really shifting over from this standard approach, I guess, is what we've been calling it these past couple of days into more of a Native approach, Native nation. And like my cousin had said in the video yesterday, we needed the community to buy back into this concept and during that buyback and getting the community involved,

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yes, it took, I want to say about 15 years to get where we're at now from when he did that interview. But the good thing that we did was they included the youth in this transition, the youth have that voice. So I understood some of the things at that time. But I was already starting to go from high school to college during this, this change.

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So my focus was already on criminal justice. If I could go back, I probably would have sat down more and listened to these conversations to know these are the avenues that might be best for our people. So that's one thing I would have done differently. But we've learned. We've learned by going through this, and now we have these pathways for our youth to understand the roles that our Tribal government takes on.

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Yes, it's finance. Yes, it's, archeology, it's education, it's political science. It's law, it's health. We were expressing this to our youth, especially the young ones that are coming through the schools. And believe it or not our youth are a lot louder than we were at that time. They're asking these questions. We have our youth actually going to our state capitol to, to push bills

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dealing with education in our state wanting to know why is our Native history not accurate in these books? This is our youth. So, to say, to change it, to change things differently. Well, that might have changed some of the trajectory of what we're doing now. So I try not to think about it like that, but moving forward, I'm going to do my best to get whatever certificates I may need.

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But I'm gonna pass that knowledge and that pathway down to our youth. So they could already be on board by the time they're sitting in our positions.

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I would say communication and transparency. When we're talking amongst our Tribal citizens, we talk about our community buy-in and the feedback they had to go through so we could get our new constitution going. But the journey doesn't stop there. We have to continue bringing our people along on this journey. There are... they have these expectations for the Tribal leadership that as leaders, we need to fulfill.

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If not, they're going to yank us out of this office and put someone in that's going to fulfill these expectations. So when we think of it that way, communication is key. Communication is what keeps us out of the silos that we've been trying to avoid. Sometimes these conversations aren't easy. Sometimes they... our people will tell us, “What is going on?

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You're not communicating .” Then we have to take a step back and wonder, ‘Where did we go wrong and drop that ball of communication?’ And we we have to humble ourselves and apologize. ”You're right. We haven't. We weren't transparent enough. But we're also going through these growing pains. So please, have patience with us.” And a lot of times just being upfront about it, they...

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It gets us a little further along amongst our people. I know in the past when I was younger and I was raised by a single mother, so I tagged along to a lot of these meetings. I remember being four years old and seeing the fist fights, seeing the arguments, all the, you know, because the lack of communication, everybody just had a perception or the hearsay of what's going on and that communication,

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if that communication was there, you know, I probably would have never saw my cousins fighting in a meeting when I was six years old, you know, and be rushed out. “Oh, you can't see this.” But it was a lack of communication. It was the, the you know, the hearsay. That's not positive. We needed to be more open with our own people

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so we understood that. Now, I say that now because I'm sitting in the role at this stage right now, I don't know, it might change. 5 or 6 years down the road, if you ask me again, I might have a different answer. But that's what I'm seeing right now, and that's the experiences I've been seeing up until this point.

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I would say a commitment to learn the issues that Tribal government is facing. Have that commitment. I would also say that reaching out to your elders for the knowledge of what led to these things, lead to who we are as a people, you got to understand that. You got to understand that history. You got to understand that everything that we do, we have to remember, like my grandmother told me when I, when I took office, “It's no longer I, it's we.”

00:16:02:26 - 00:16:31:02
So that advice going in, you got to have that mindset. We plan for seven generations down the road. So everything we're doing today isn't for today's gratification. It's for the generations to come. Sometimes some could lose sight of that, and sometimes it's just redirecting them to realize we're here right now because of what the leaders did in the past.

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It's our job to continue that, to push forward for the next generations to come. That commitment is big. That commitment is what I'm learning: to pick up those issues, to learn them and keep running. Like I said, I hit the ground running when I came into office and I've yet to take off my running shoes. I know it may not show in this area, but it does feel like, yeah, it does feel like this short amount of time that I've been in office that I've been in for years with all the things that we've been doing.

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So the advice I have, those coming in young and old or whoever it may be to understand that commitment of these issues that you may not know, but it's okay. Just ask those questions. Don't be afraid to be vocal. Don't be afraid to sometimes have these internal debates. Sometimes I know going in some of the younger ones, like my age, back off on these internal debates.

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They're a little scared, but how are we going to be able to make the rightful decisions for our communities if we stay quiet? I know, the gentleman yesterday said being quiet during a meeting gets you nowhere, really. And I'm one of... I may be young on my council, but I'm very vocal and I even expressed to them in the beginning coming into this,

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“I may be quiet for the first two weeks, but it's just for me to learn. I'm soaking it all in. And then afterwards, I can't guarantee I'm not going to be loud, but I'm going to ask questions.” And sometimes that change is different for others. Sometimes the veterans don't like that change. But I sit down with them and I explain “These are why I'm asking these questions.”

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I don't leave that lingering effect because that gets us nowhere. But being transparent with them and explaining, “This is why I was saying no, these are my thoughts. Can we have this conversation so I can understand your point of view? These internal debates, yes, they could get a little bumpy and a little ugly, but in the end, we come to respectfully understand the best options.

00:18:50:24 - 00:19:11:00
Sometimes, we've done it recently, it could take... we could be in a meeting from 10 o’clock and get done and it's almost 6 p.m. But I'm taking notes, Chairman Rambler, on limiting that time when motions are in. I'm taking these notes. I'm learning. So I appreciate that knowledge.

00:19:11:24 - 00:19:30:03
- (Moderator) So, I do have a question, because you both heavily talked a lot about culture being the center of why you guys do what you do. Have you had any instances or issues, in your experience, that you had to address when decisions were deviating from your culture?

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And then how did you deal with that?

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- (Bolden) So when we think of culture, especially what we're doing right now is when we've been focusing on trying to reclaim our ancestral territory. Our ancestral territory used to consist of 7.4 million acres. And to be where we are currently. When, presidential executive order put us in a reservation, we were at 640 acres. That's a far cry of what our ancestral territory was.

00:20:01:15 - 00:20:26:15
The focus right now is reclaiming these lands, which isn't easy. And even within our own people, sometimes it's, “Well, it's just a flick of the wrist. Why can't we do it?” You know, that's the pushback. But then when we turn everything around and say, “We have different processes and we gotta follow this in order to gain our ancestral territory back.

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We have to buy back our land. It's not just going to be given to us.” Breaking things down for everybody to understand and to tie it back into everything that we have as a cultural foundation is key. Sometimes we have, some of the younger ones who question, “Well, why can't we just buy it? Why can't we just sue?

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Why can't we just...” all these different avenues and it's like, no, no, no, we need to take a step back. We have a cultural obligation to work, to not just get this area, but to try to get it all back. We need to find ways to do that, not just respectfully, but we need to also implement these policies, these areas, to protect them.

00:21:15:09 - 00:21:39:11
Just because we get it back doesn't mean, oh, you're going to go build something, you're going to go build a building so you guys could open your businesses. We have to think of this culturally. We're buying back our ancestral lands because we have our artifacts and our remains that are there that we're trying to protect. So other developers don't come and just do what some of you are thinking you want to do.

00:21:39:13 - 00:22:03:12
We have that as a Native People, that cultural responsibility to think about that. So sometimes we get that pushback. Luckily, right now we're not getting that pushback. Right now, our people are all about this. And, yes, it's put a lot on my plate to see this through, but, well, that's what I'm working on.