Indigenist leadership

The following is an excerpt from my dissertation The Ontology of Love: A Framework for Re-Indigenizing Community ©2015

The result of an exploration of the connections between complexity theory, autopoiesis, and indigenous leadership models, one can infer the concept of Indigenist Leadership and define it as a living practice that has six core characteristics:
0 1. It must be congruent with indigenous ontologiess
0 2. It is performative (lived practice)
0 3. It is communal
0 4. It operates with multiple timelines (short, intermediate, and long term, as is the case with the famous Mayan calendar)
0 5. It integrates the environmental needs that support entire ecosystems.
0 6. It is creative.

In his “Individual and Collective Evolution: Leadership as Emergent Social Structuring,” David R. Schwandt states that “emergence, schemata, non-linearity, and self organizing…provide the essence of the dynamic uniqueness of the human social system.” (113) He explains that more study needs to take place to understand how a collectivist approach to leadership can help leaders manage complex environments: 

By focusing on the structuring [structural coupling] that is inherent in human actions and treating these acts and interactions as comprising a complex adaptive system, we may not have to rely or, or default to, a person in position of model of leadership. If we focus on structuring as an isomorphic function, then we find that many means for ordering emerge and are the responsibility of us all. (120)

Indigenous societies by and far, acknowledge our existence as members of complex natural and human-made systems. The practice of leadership in indigenous societies has developed over centuries in full recognition and acceptance of the complexity of the natural world and of our inherent place in it. 

Leadership models and practices in indigenous communities are understudied and therefore misunderstood. When applying a mainstream understanding of leadership, one may highlight the role of tribal governments and councils and their governing functions, staff, and programs as a type of leadership infrastructure in what some call Indian Country. In fact, the Bureau of Indian Affairs proudly shares a Leadership Directory on its website and describes tribal representatives as Tribal Leaders. However, a solid historically-grounded critique of the emergence of tribal governments and tribal councils as the result of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 complicates that mainstream understanding. 

Instead, a critical, visionary, and vibrant critique and articulation of leadership models is emerging among indigenous intellectuals that challenges the mainstream understanding of leaders and intellectuals as somehow being different people fulfilling different roles, of the social and political being dichotomized. This dialogue also points us towards a strategic intent to change the academy and by consequence begin to shift the Western values of capitalism, individualism, and materialism in order to build the capacity to accept and integrate indigenous values. 

I argue that there may be a fundamental difference between the values that govern indigenous communities and the types of indicators tracked by Western research systems premised on key Western values. Sanchez and Stuckey argue that leaders often reflect the values of the community systems they serve. They state: “It is commonplace in political communication research that political leaders in the ‘American’ context serve as representative and definitional function, that their words reflect the values and ideals of the people who elected them…” (104) Lopez and Lyons concur with Sanchez and Stuckey. As a traditional elder of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people, Lyons’ leadership practice reflects Haudenosaunee ontology. (9) 

Portman and Garrett also support the idea that indigenous leadership is reflective of the ontologies of indigenous cultures. They state that although there is a vast diversity in ways of being across indigenous nations, leadership is seen as a “shared vision and responsibility.” (284) Another way in which cultural values may be shaping a different definition/understanding of leadership among indigenous peoples from that of mainstream culture is rooted in the very source of a sense of self worth and status:

For many American Indians, cultural identity is rooted in tribal membership, community, and heritage. The tribe is an interdependent system of people who perceive themselves as parts of the greater whole rather than a whole consisting of individual parts... Likewise, traditional American Indian people judge themselves and their actions according to whether or not they are benefiting the tribal community and its continued harmonious functioning. In mainstream American society, worth and status appear to be based on occupation or achievements. For American Indians, one is who one belongs to or where one came from… Disconnection is perceived as a dishonor or disgrace, such as passing judgment on an Indian by saying someone “acts as if he didn’t have any relatives….” (287-8)

Therefore, it stands to reason that leadership models and their outcomes may be very different and unrecognizable to the gaze of the West. The first composite picture that presents an understanding of American Indian communities might evoke grief, while the second may in turn evoke hope. 

There is no body of work that looks at what I have begun to call the “ships passing in the night” leadership phenomenon that seems to occur in the spaces between ontologies that co-inhabit the same social, geographic, linguistic, spiritual, economic, technological, and political spaces.  When experiencing this phenomenon, two equally valid interpretations can emerge, co-inhabit, and be reified from the same data. Neither can be completely invalidated, although more often than not we are unable to perceive the interpretation that differs most from the values and ways of knowing that dominant cultural paradigms continually reify though hegemonic processes. Like ships passing in the night, we are bound to be most aware of the one we are standing on, and most likely we might be unable to see the other altogether.

In “From Ethnic Bourgeoisie to Organic Intellectuals: Speculations on North American Native Leadership,” Suichi Nagata picks up on what he sarcastically describes as a type of “forked tongue” practice and calls established tribal leaders the “ethnic bourgeoisie” in indigenous communities. (62-3) These “élites,” as he calls them, constitute the leadership of bureaucratic indigenous organizations. He describes them as “speaking in two communication codes: the codes of bureaucrats, and those of the Indian ‘spirit’.” (63) Nagata uses the example of the impact of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 on Hopi traditional leadership structures to explain the rise of this “élite” class. He explains the erosion of the Hopi traditional leadership system as the direct result of the Indian Reorganization Act’s imposition of centralized government and tribal councils.

The role of traditional Hopi leadership can be characterized as religious, economic, and political, all fused into one. Of these three dimensions, the political has lost its importance since the implementation of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Until then, chiefs were taken seriously by the people themselves, by the government, and by non-Indian missionaries and traders... After the Hopi tribal council was established, the authority of Hopi chiefs was further eroded by the government’s refusal to deal with them. (65)

Nagata argues for a leadership model that is modeled after Gramsci’s idea of the organic intellectual because in Gramsci’s model, the intellectual is “’actively involved in practical life.’ (S)he is also a ‘leader’ who is both a specialist and a politician.” (71) Nagata posits that the task of indigenous leaders is to “build a new culture and identity that will impinge on the consciousness of the encapsulating society.” (72) In other words, indigenous leaders should focus on building a culture that will change Western culture. This conclusion is shared by other indigenous scholars.

In Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions, Robert Allen Warrior states:

…it is now critical for American Indian intellectuals committed to sovereignty to realize that we too must struggle for sovereignty, intellectual sovereignty, and allow the definition and articulation of what that means to emerge as we critically reflect on that struggle. (98) 

Therefore, for Warrior, intellectuals must practice intellectual sovereignty as one would another critical skill set. He understands that the practice of intellectual sovereignty is not “a struggle to be free from the influence of anything outside ourselves, but a process of asserting the power we possess as communities and individuals to make decisions that affect our lives” (124). Likewise, let’s remember that in A Basic Call to Consciousness, John Mohawk proposes a far more radical effort:

A strategy for survival must include a liberation theology— call it a philosophy or cosmology if you will, but we believe it to be a theology— or humankind will simply continue to view the earth as a commodity and will continue to seek more efficient ways to exploit that which they have not come to respect. If these processes continue unabated and unchanged at the foundation of the colonizer’s ideology, our species will never be liberated from the undeniable reality that we do live on a planet of limited resources and that sooner or later we must exploit our environment beyond its ability to renew itself. (118)

Other intellectuals like Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Eva Marie Garroutte also argue for the ongoing development of indigenous ontologies and for their recognition by Western institutions. In Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Smith argues for the establishment of an “indigenous research agenda” that leads to the continued development of self-determination of indigenous peoples. (115-8) Similarly, in Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America, Garroutte argues for the generation of radical indigenism as a strategy to change the way the academy produces knowledge while also then creating enough safety for indigenous ontologies to continue to produce knowledge and evolve. (101)

Although the connection between the role of intellectuals and leaders may be elusive in other types of instances, in the indigenous context, where the exercise of leadership is fundamentally tied to the ongoing cultural survival of indigenous nations, the role intellectuals play in the preservation and development of knowledge goes hand in hand with leadership practice; and, if indeed, the task of leaders is to create new “cultures,” “technologies,” “liberation theologies,” or “new knowledge,” they need to understand how knowledge is produced, conserved, and replicated within cultural systems. Indigenist leadership is about the intentional evolution of indigenous ontologies in service to the ongoing conservation of the planet. As such indigenist leaders are in the business of generating knowledge while building communities of practice. Western organizational models may at times be helpful, just not as a default practice. Western models of management and leadership may be helpful too but not in a compulsory manner.  Hierarchy is useful at times and detrimental in others. The mastery lies in understanding what the difference is, when and where these structures and practices as useful. Being rooted in an indigenist stance allows for the enactment of love politics in community and organizational life and the emergence of sustainable systems of production.