By
Jeremy Duda
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Focus will be on tribal leadership
American Indian nations will get a boost from Tucson's Morris K. Udall Foundation in the form of the new Native Nations Institute.
A congressional initiative allocated $12.3 million over the next five years for American Indian tribes to encourage self-governance. Tribal sovereignty was a concern of former Arizona representative Morris Udall, for whom the federal educational foundation was named.
"He believed in education, and he believed that native people should govern themselves," said Terrance L. Bracy, Udall Foundation board of trustees chair.
The Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy will focus on leadership education for tribal leaders and policy research, said Manley Begay, director-designate for the institute. Begay said the institute is expected to be renamed the Native Nations Program.
Working closely with the institute is Harvard University's Project on American Indian Economic Development. Begay co-directs the program, along with Udall Center director Steve Cornell and Joseph Kalt, a professor of international political economics at Harvard.
The Harvard project is a research endeavor formed to study the economic development of American Indian nations and the problems associated with that progress, such as poverty and unemployment.
"The problems Indian nations face are similar to the problems faced by other developing nations," said Begay. "What makes them unique is that they are inside the wealthiest nation in the world."
Economic woes aside, tribal governments must also confront the problem of establishing institutions that conflict with cultural practice, Begay said. He compared these problems to ones caused in Africa by European colonialism.
One example is the Confederated Tribes of Salish and Kootenai, an Indian nation in Montana. To overcome the problem of governing three tribes on the same land - the Pendoreille tribe is included but not mentioned in the nation's name - tribal leaders have instituted a parliamentary structure of government in which tribal executives are chosen by a council.
"They responded to a contemporary cultural issue with a culturally appropriate system," said Begay.
The scope of the institute's curriculum will cross national boundaries to include Canada's native nations, as well as ones in the U.S. Between the two countries, there are more than 1,100 tribes.
"For many Indian nations there isn't really a 49th parallel per se," said Begay, in reference to the fact that many Indians have family on both sides of the border. The 49th parallel is the boundary between the U.S. and Canada.
Although new, the institute is already thinking ahead. Plans for the future include a master's program in tribal leadership and an internship program for American Indian students in Washington, D.C.
One of the new institutes biggest proponents in Congress id Arizona Sen. John McCain, who was one of its main architects, Bracy said.
This is the second such initiative created by McCain through the Udall Foundation. The first was the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, a service set up to mediate environmental disputes.
