Having lived in the neighborhood of Canyon de Chelly, at the center of the Navajo Nation four four years, I may have some useful observations about how Indian Country voter turnout should be linked to a deep and sweeping change agenda that includes an overhaul of federal policy towards sovereign tribal governments and Indian people, and how this should inform US foreign policy where indigenous Third World populations are involved.
In his book, Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama recounts his experiences as a community organizer in Chicago's poorer neighborhoods. Can Saul Alinsky's
methods be brought into Indian Country, in conjunction with the purposes of an Obama Administration interested in real change?
If Democrats want to see Indian Country turnout to vote in the fall at or near full potential, people must see how they can really benefit from the hope that is being talked about. A GOTV campaign for the fall has to be based around policy formulation that comes from a dialogue with Indian communities that sets up real White House participation after the inauguration.
There is no place in the repertoire of federal issues that needs more change.
Case in point: The Navajo Nation. The largest and most well organized nation within a nation is about the size of West Virginia. Overlapping the state boundaries of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, it sits in a vast Southwestern landscape that is as hard to define as a mirage because it sits in as vast a scale of time as of present geography. Its towns like Window Rock, the seat of government, are hours by car from main interstate routes, or big cities like Albuquerque of Flagstaff. The geographic isolation has drawbacks, but also benefits. It has been a factor in allowing the Navajo people to quietly rise, to develop a professional and middle class on Navajo terms, and to create an educational system based on incorporating Navajo pride, culture and language into local school systems' k-12 curriculi. In 1968 the Nation founded America's first tribal college to help bright young kids succeed.
The Founding Fathers of this modern era, however, are mostly still around and some, like Peterson Zah, still haven't fully retired. The former legal aid leader and Navajo Nation President is still active as an educator, albeit with emeritus status.
The Navajo Nation Council is composed of 114 Chapter House representatives. A Chapter is a local jurisdiction that meets as a subdivision of the Nation and elects a representative to the Council. The President is elected at large, as is the Vice President. There is a significant Executive Branch administration, and a Judicial Branch led by a Supreme Court.
In this presidential election year the Obama campaign will place some priority on getting out the vote here, as did the Kerry campaign in 2004.
But, the enthusiasm of young campaign organizers may be blunted by a lack of Democratic Party grassroots organizing between elections and the fact that Navajos have learned to be skeptical of well meaning liberals likely to be gone as suddenly as they appear. Many many promises have been made going back into time only to have been broken, forgotten, or a set up for betrayal.
Yet, hope is what Navajos are all about. If you live out here, you find when you make friends and begin to get to know people as part of the community, that they are not their stereotypes. They are hard working. They see the long run and what endures and what is real.
Some folks we know have moved away from Christianity and back into traditional lifeways, because the networks of clans and families are sustained by placing the concept of Ke' at the center of things. Ke' is about how the world and one's own life can be kept in balance and in harmony specifically in this place, through observing ancient connections with other people, and with the legacies of the land, its mythologies, legends and spirits.
A traditional wedding ceremony powerfully demonstrates this. This primarily involves two familes coming together in a ceremonial hogan, an eight sided, one-room traditional log cabin that inside, is about the size of a suburban living room. Perhaps a hundred people will spend several hours giving the happy couple advice or recounting the family history.
Sitting against a wall opposite from me, I will never forget a tiny, frail woman who may well have been over 100. In a matrilineal society, she was the family matriarch. Everyone listened in absolute respect as she took her time to tell the origin story of the family entirely in Navajo. The entire family on the bride's side, on whose land this ceremony was taking place began with one baby girl who might easily have not lived.
The Long Walk was a forced march from the Nation's territory (centered around Canyon de Chelly) for several hundred miles across New Mexico in the mid 1860s. Kit Carson wanted to keep up the fastest pace possible with about 8,000 children, women, wounded, sick and elderly people.
Whenever someone fell behind they were shot.
A woman whose husband had succumbed knew she would fall behind soon, so she asked another woman to raise her child as her own. The very elderly matriarch was the grandchild of that infant, who lived through the concentration camp years that killed hundreds of others. A man in a stetson got up and continued the story. He was her grandson, now in his sixties. He had been denied an education because his generation's best minds had been lost to the BIA and missionary boarding schools.
He had been given to believe that he could only aspire to manual labor. He worked hard as a ranch hand, raised livestock and was finally able to buy into a McDonald's franchise, then another couple of franchises. Recently, he had retired and decided to start a venture capital enterprise to help young Navajos start up businesses. His daughter had completed a graduate degree and was working as an engineer.
Working through limitations imposed by the outside world, this family endured, sharing resources, producing hope for themselves and their community, through 150 years of sustained effort.
Bright eyed young white people, eager to bring hope to Indian Country are always confused at first that people give them tolerance, but don't seem to share their enthusiasm.
Meaningful change will have to come from setting up a process that involves the wisdom of such people and an involvement by a White House that means to create an enduring path to the future that empowers Indian sovereignty, and supports communities, cultures and their choice of lifeways.
Washington has tended to speak a good line of friendship, but has come with lawyers to write contracts for resources such as uranium that end up hurting Indian people badly.
This is a prime example of something that needs to change. Fair rates of return on contracts for oil, coal, natural gas, uranium or other resources would go a long way towards helping Indian people gain self sustainability.
Since the system is set up to keep Indian communities dependant on federal resources, funding for social services and law enforcement need to be maintained. Educational efforts must be fully supported, because they are the key to creating future economic development on local terms that can mean eventual independence.
The BIA really ought to be overhauled. There is no excuse for the agency losing records of billions of dollars in trust funds that it was supposedly keeping track of. The government ought to settle the Cobell case at the highest level of funding that everyone can agree is just, and move on. The BIA itself ought to be examined from one end to the other and reorganized for realigned twenty first century goals - or abolished.
Just taking inventory of this problem could take a whole four years by itself. Again, this needs to be done with engagement by Indian leaders who bring experienced insight to the problem.
There are lots of ways that an engaged White House, led by a former community organizer could bring needed and positive change to the situation.
I would hope that at some point, Obama would take some time to meet with some Indian Country leaders, such as the Navajo Nation President, and begin to formulate a departure towards a better future. This would probably help turnout more than any number of GOTV organizers the campaign could send out.
Obama's stated intention to bring an Indian leader into the cabinet is not a bad idea. He should renew that commitment and flesh that out a little.
It would be a good idea to create a high profile meeting with leaders such as Joe Shirley, The Navajo Nation President, Robert Yazzie, retired Navajo Supreme Court Chief Justice and head of the Dine' Policy Institute, a policy think tank. Peterson Zah, and a variety of others who might represent the best minds of Indian Country across the US could be very useful in beginning the process of developing sensible policy for the 21st century.
The Navajo Nation is but one facet of what is called, "Indian Country," comprised of tribal groups that have territories and governments, a diaspora of Indian people living in cities, and people who represent every walk of life from Harvard lawyers and successful businesspeople to homeless people who have pretty much given up.
Original Americans are long overdue the respect that they deserve as fellow citizens with a cultural legacy as valuable as any among humanity worldwide. America in fact, must come to terms with its indigenous heritage and embrace it, must overcome its past history and learn the lessons from its colonialist past which is still present in the form of the Iraq war and a forerign policy based on a version of Manifest Destiny.
The number of voters on a given Indian reservation may not be the larger question. These issues bring into focus who we are as an America of the twenty first century in a larger world full of many different peoples.
Are we still operating from nineteenth century assumptions?
Do we have a permanent "elite" running this country that views the world through the same basic frame as the "elite" of the nineteenth century?
For further policy and political considerations, see:
INDNS List Indigenous Democratic Network
http://www.indnslist.org/
Sage Council/Native American Voter Action
http://www.sagecouncil.org/...