Musings on Political Development and Political Culture

My tribe, called the Huu-ay-aht, is currently involved in a treaty with the Crown governments of Canada, the federal government and the province of British Columbia. We're in together with four other tribes and we call our group the Maa-nulth Treaty Society. As a people, we all speak roughly the same language and we are all members of a greater organization called the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council. Currently, the Maa-nulth Treaty Society has successfully negotiated and ratified the treaty and we're currently in a state of limbo between negotiation and implementation.

In any event, we have to prepare ourselves for self-government. We have done this in committees and I am a member of two of these committees: communications and governance. My current position with the Huu-ay-aht First Nations is in the Communications Department -- I am the Communications Coordinator. I maintain our Huu-ay-aht Website, the Huu-ay-aht Facebook Group, manage e-mails and other media relations. My most enjoyable tasks is putting together the monthly community newsletter, I both write articles and do most of the layout work on Adobe InDesign -- a fine program.

Today, I am more concerned with my involvement with the Huu-ay-aht Governance Committee. It is our task to read through the Maa-nulth Final Agreement, its Side Agreements, and the Huu-ay-aht Constitution and identify the laws, policies and other tasks that need to be done before we take over our collective destinies. Our mandate goes beyond the creation of laws, however, and this is where my mind has been going for the past while. 

When I think of governance, not only do I think of the laws and policies that are developed, but also the operating procedures of administrations and bureaucracies, infrastructure like communications and meeting space, human resource development, education and socialization. I think about the political development of the Huu-ay-aht First Nations. 

I wonder how we may identify those institutions that influence the overall political culture of our community. It's more than just the government. In thinking this way, I am reminded of the agents of socialization that I learned whilst earning my BA:

• Family
• Peer Group
• School
• Mass Media
• Work
• The State
• Religion

The State is listed, but it goes further than that. Areas of influence overlap for each of the agents. I work for my government but I utilize contacts in the mass media to get our message out to our members and the general public. My government can have a distinct impact on how our children are educated and how our parents are employed. Influence is pervasive and reciprocal. It moves in all directions and it is difficult to predict how one change at the state level can influence the economy or our schools. Is it a science, or an art?

Thoughts to ponder, but I remain focused enough to keep thinking about it

Stay tuned to this blog, I'll post notions as they take form and etch themselves into my mind.

UVic Journal Summary

The following is the entirety of my reflections during a course on First Nations Governance, Administration and Management that I participated in at the University of Victoria from March 17 to March 21.

- - -

For me, the greatest theme of this most recent session was a reflection on change. Each First Nations community is changing in a different way. Just as it has been said by a wise and far-seeing man, the only constant is change. Building on my journal summary from the last session, it is my firm belief that we are not points in space, but rather vectors -- not islands on a map, but ships on headings. The chief responsibility of any leader has been the management of resources in a long and constant period of transition. My favourite author, William Gibson, wrote in the novel Pattern Recognition a stark but altogether accurate explanation of the world I believe we now live in:

"[W]e have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which 'now' was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents' have insufficient 'now' to stand on. We have no future our because our present is too volatile. ... We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition."

I sometimes worry if the vision and goals that I am working toward will result in my community living in this world without a future. How do we reconcile the "long now" of the past with this nigh-constant era flux that seems to be upon us for the foreseeable future? This is why I was quite impressed with our discussion on the first day regarding authentic long term planning -- beyond the fiscal year, beyond the term of office, beyond the infamous five year plan. It evoked images of planning for decades in the future, generations in the future. It evoked images of our ancestors finally nodding their heads in agreement.

I know that we can construct institutions that can last for generations, the trick is learning more from the reed in the wind. What I became concerned about was not the endurance of our processes, but rather the health and capacity of our people. It was by the end of the second day that I had settled on a topic for my individual assignment. I wanted to propose a program that would improve First Nations governance by augmenting its safeguards: the hearts and minds of the people. Upon reflection, it my belief that we have an opportunity embedded in the consequences of our systemic oppression: we can help to create a community that is vital in ways that the current dominant one is not, or has seem to forgotten that it once was... I want to live in a community where every citizen not only has the opportunity to be involved in the decisions that affect us all, but have a real chance at having something to contribute. My proposal would be for the teaching of "First Nations Civics" as a part of social studies.

After looking back at Vine Deloria's writings on education and self-determination, I realize that this is no small task. The term "First Nations Civics" paints an image of bored children sitting in a classroom with an underpaid teacher reading aloud eloquent words in that characteristic droning that the disillusioned tend to utter after decades of disappointment. I merely want to propose that each community would do well to inform its members of not only collective and individual rights, but also individual and collective responsibilities. This can be done without ever a classroom being filled, but the trick becomes choosing the message and selecting the proper mediums. As Deloria wrote, knowledge is not lists and categories but a holistic understanding of relationships and interconnectedness. We all need to know how all relationships, at least in the socially-constructed world of human societies, are reciprocal. Education influences and is influenced by governance, and vice-versa. Linear lines of causality are relics of the past; we need to learn to live in a two-lane world.

I must admit that I have difficulty practicing what I preach. My methods of learning seem very Western in outlook. I learn by lists and categories and breaking things down into its constituent parts. I understand by putting it all back together in my head and trying to repeat the process in the real world. I have discovered much to the amusement of my grandfather, that this is easier said than done. I believe I am partway there -- I do not see myself as someone who will ever specialize too much when it comes to education. My undergraduate degree is in Global Studies, a self-described "interdisciplinary" approach" to the current fundamental shift in global politics, economics and society called globalization.

In any event, I still endeavour to integrate my big ideas and love of theory with the realities of the world. It is all well and good to wax poetic about the virtues of civic understanding, but how do we actually do it? I have trouble with detail. I have learned from those in class, both instructors and fellow students, that details are just as important as visions and ideas. I have often felt isolated, thinking my thoughts and never feeling like I was alllowed to articulate them due to my position in my tribal government. A particular student, a member of my group, Dave, taught me otherwise. I know now that I was merely afraid of my beloved ideas being criticized. I realize now that in order to actually help the condition of my community, I need to speak up and I need to let my ideas be viewed and evaluated. My ego is not as important as the discourse my potentially flawed ideas may instigate.

Trust, as ever, is center stage. It's about time someone took that first leap, it might as well be me.

Tribal Utterances

I currently work for my tribal government. My tribe is called the Huu-ay-aht First Nations. It used to be called the Ohiat Band back when we did not bother to correct inaccurate, anglicized labels given to us by bureaucrats of the federal government. Many of our elders still call our First Nation the Ohiat Band, but I suspect (and hope) that this has more to do with habit than assimilation.


The Huu-ay-aht First Nations are located in the Barkley Sound region on the west coast of Vancouver Island. As far as I know, they have been there since time immemorial. Legend has it that we originated on Diana Island, named after a spring on that very island. Thus, it is a sacred place to us. We are a small band with approximately seven hundred members. The Huu-ay-aht main settlements are located principally along the Pachena River and next to Pachena Bay, though we have historically important settlements in a place called Numukamis on the Sarita River and on Diana Island. In truth, we are very much a tribal diaspora: seventy percent of our number live away from our traditional territory. I am one such person.

My relationship with "the band" had until recently been one held at arm's length from the core of my identity. As a child, I can only remember being ashamed of my heritage. Returning to the reserve was fretful, if not frightening, and the only thing I ever seemed to like about going there was getting home again. As I grew, I became more aware of my heritage and it became less embarrassing. When I graduated, I met many of the people from the band who my mother held in high esteem. They helped change my outlook on the nature of my first nation.

The Huu-ay-aht are a part of the Nuu-chah-nulth culture group. We speak the same language and inhabit the same general area of Vancouver Island. We are members of a larger entity known as the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, or NTC -- a group dedicated to having a unified voice in promotion, protection and preservation of our collective interests. In practice, the NTC is affected by -- surprise, surprise -- tribalism. It is little wonder that the NTC still struggles to cooperate enough to pursue a treaty with the Crown. There are too many cooks in this particular kitchen and it seems most people know it.

The Huu-ay-aht were one such tribe. In the mid-1990s, we broke away from the NTC on treaty matters and got together with four other like-minded members and formed our own treaty group: the Maa-nulth Treaty Society. We applied and entered into the British Columbia Treaty Commission's system for negotiating a treaty with the Crown governments and have since worked to successfully adopt a treaty.

My band paid for my post-secondary education. While I am deeply grateful, I find that I am also somewhat embarrassed by that fact. I can sense the discontent that this brings out in my non-aboriginal friends and colleagues and it affects me more than I tend to let on. I will not apologize for it. One need only look up economic and demographic information on the Statistics Canada website to understand that aboriginal people in this country are disadvantaged in ways that would take college-level lecture courses for most people to fully appreciate. The cynical part of me wants to tell people who complain about how tax dollars are spent on aboriginal issues that they should consider it the bare minimum rent payments on the lands that they occupy (but that might be seen as a bit bitter, so...)

Needless to say, my outlook has changed since I was fifteen years old. I am proud to call myself Huu-ay-aht and I am excited to be a part of something so special and unique. I feel a part of something larger than myself, but not so large that it is a mere abstract idea.

I am slowly learning about my heritage. I have participated in cultural events and rituals. I am becoming Huu-ay-aht. It fills a void and I am glad for it.

I will tell you more about my experiences later, but I think this is a good introduction. There are plenty of links, too!