Harvard mulls challenges facing Native Americans (fwd)

Fri Dec 12 18:55:22 UTC 2003

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/12.11/17-natamer.html
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Professor of Business Administration James Austin delivers opening
remarks at the Native Issues Research Symposium, an event designed to
promote research and scholarly work at Harvard relevant to Native
Americans. (Staff photos Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard News Office)

Harvard mulls challenges facing Native Americans

First research symposium on Native American issues unites University
researchers
By Alvin Powell
Harvard News Office

Invoking the "Great Creator" to guide them, Native Americans and
researchers examining Native American challenges convened their
first-ever Harvard-wide symposium Thursday (Dec. 4), joining forces to
improve Native American lives.

Called the Native Issues Research Symposium, the event's purpose was to
promote research and scholarly work at Harvard relevant to Native
Americans.

Topics covered a broad range, representing research in disciplines
across the University. Among the issues examined during the symposium
were leadership, archaeology, cancer education, gaming compacts,
resolving disputes between tribes and other governments, family life,
language preservation, and the legal and economic realities of tribal
sovereignty.

Joe Kalt, faculty chair of the Harvard University Native American
Program and Ford Foundation Professor of International Political
Economy at the Kennedy School of Government, said organizers plan to
gather research presented at the symposium into a book that they hope
will be the first in a series of research publications centered on
Native Americans.

"We will hopefully produce the first of a steady effort that goes on
for years and years," Kalt said.

The symposium, sponsored by the Ernst Fund for Native American Studies
of the Harvard University Native American Program, drew about 40
researchers from a variety of schools across Harvard, including the
Kennedy School of Government, the Medical School, and the Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences.

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Carmen Lopez, interim executive director of the Native American
Program, addresses the symposium.

Leadership key

One of the first presentations examined challenges facing Native
American leaders. From questions of governance to education to cultural
preservation and language loss, tribal leaders have an important role
in determining the future course of different tribal groups.

That leadership has to be adaptive and responsive, according to Tim
Begaye, who presented a paper he co-authored with Lecturer in Public
Policy at the Kennedy School Ronald Heifetz, "Adaptive Leadership:
Challenges Native Leaders Face in a Contemporary Society."

Native American leaders have been dealing with fundamental change for
hundreds of years, Begaye said. Challenges they face today include
guiding the pace and direction of that continuing change.

Key to being a successful leader is understanding not just the changes,
but the underlying community. The community can be extremely diverse,
encompassing elders who speak only their tribal language, younger
people who speak only English, as well as tribal members currently
living outside the community.

Language loss is a particularly difficult problem, Begaye said. More
than half of young people under 25 don't speak their tribal language
anymore, and some adults question the usefulness of even trying to
teach it to their children.

"I hear parents saying, 'I don't need the language, it's English-only
out there,'" Begaye said.

Other challenges include loss of tribal land, loss of identity,
cultural mixing, integration of Christianity with traditional beliefs,
functioning with government and educational systems imposed by the
federal government, and the "brain drain" from reservations.

Successful leaders, Begaye said, must have a vision based on the needs
and desires of their community.

Lessons from the Pequots

Another researcher drew lessons from the financially successful
Mashantucket Pequot casino in Connecticut. Gavin Clarkson, the Reginald
F. Lewis Fellow at Harvard Law School, presented the paper "Gaming
Compact Negotiations (Pequot Case Study)," co-authored with Jim
Sebenius, the Gordon Donaldson Professor of Business Administration at
Harvard Business School.

Clarkson outlined the circumstances surrounding the founding of the
Mashantucket Pequot's casino, Foxwoods, 10 years ago. The tribe, which
had run bingo games from their eastern Connecticut reservation, asked
the state to enter into negotiations for a casino, but, contrary to
federal law, the state refused. The state's refusal opened the door to
a unilateral decision by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which approved
the casino, only without slot machines.

The tribe and state then entered into negotiations over whether the
slot machines would be allowed and the tribe offered to give the state
a portion of the proceeds if it were allowed slot machines and if it
were allowed to have a monopoly on casino gambling in Connecticut. The
state, in the midst of a budget crisis, approved. The Pequots, in
exchange, got a casino gaming monopoly and a financial windfall.

"It was a brilliant move on the part of the tribe," Clarkson said.

Though gaming compacts are the most familiar kinds of agreements
between tribes and states, many other compacts exist governing law
enforcement, resource use, hunting, fishing, and other areas where
tribal and state authority overlap.

The Mashantucket Pequot case, Clarkson said, has lessons beyond the
arena of Indian gaming, offering an example of how a tribe can improve
its own position in negotiations at the same time it worsens the
state's bargaining position.

"The framework isn't limited to gaming compacts," Clarkson said. "Any
time you approach negotiations with the state with the mind to improve
your alternative [positions] and worsen the state's you can reach a
deal favorable to the tribe."

alvin_powell at harvard.edu