Tribal and Direct Services Team Expands Educational Offerings to Include Enrollment for Pascua Yaqui Tribe Conference
The NNI team were responsible for content at two separate conferences for Tribal leaders in the summer of 2024.
Photo by Craig Baker
It was a busy summer for the Native Nations Institute (NNI) Tribal and Direct Services (TDS) team!
In the midst of attending to a surge in demand for their in-person Tribal facilitation and executive education services, the lean team of four also held their standard annual seminar for Tribal leaders and presented a full day of new content for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe’s (PYT) first annual Tribal Enrollment and Enhanced Tribal Card Program Conference (Enrollment Conference).
Remaking Tribal Constitutions
Linda Austin and Zeke Garcia of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo present at the 2024 RTC Conference.
Each year, TDS holds an annual summer seminar on Tribal lands in Arizona to support Native Nation Building efforts by Tribes across North America..
The program typically alternates between leadership and governance education for Emerging Tribal Leaders one year, and content dedicated to the subject of Remaking Tribal Constitutions the next.
In 2024, TDS held its biannual “Remaking Tribal Constitutions Seminar” on June 26-27, 2024 at Wild Horse Pass Casino Resort on the lands of the Gila River Indian Community in Chandler, AZ.
Fifty-two individuals representing more than two-dozen Native nations attended the two-day event which featured presentations by NNI Executive Director Joan Timeche (Hopi), Senior Researcher Miriam Jorgensen, TDS Manager Naomi Tom (Tohono O’odham) and Outreach Specialist Kevin Fortuin along with several invited scholars and Tribal leaders, including:
- Heather Whiteman Runs Him, Associate Clinical Professor and the Director of the Tribal Justice Clinic at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law
- Linda Austin, Chief Operations Officer of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo
- Zeke “Shi U Pathu” Garcia, Director of the Tribal Court and Records Department for the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo
- Roman Kihega, Chair of the Constitutions Committee for the Quapaw Nation
- Dr. Richard Luarkie, Former Governor of the Pueblo of Laguna
- Kennis M. Bellmard, Director of Governmental Affairs for the Kaw Nation
Administrative support for that program was provided by NNI Program Coordinator Sara Rodriguez (Pascua Yaqui Tribe).
The event featured a number of presentations and discussions about first-hand experiences of working within Tribal communities to draft, revise and build consensus for constitutions in Native nations.
PYT Tribal Enrollment Conference
Austin and Garcia returned to Arizona for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe's first annual Tribal Enrollment Conference.
Following the conclusion of the Remaking Tribal Constitutions Seminar, the TDS team had less than a month to prepare for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe’s (PYT) Tribal Enrollment and Enhanced Tribal Card Program Conference on August 13 at Casino Del Sol Resort and Conference Center.
Enrollment criteria and citizenship have become an increasingly popular topic among Native nations in the United States over the last several years, especially as it concerns issues of disenrollment of members by some Tribes and issues associated with the deleterious effects of relying on blood quantum to determine eligibility for Tribal citizenship or membership.
The PYT has become a national leader for their successful government identification engine known as Sacred Path, which helps Native nations develop Enhanced Tribal Cards for members that conform to national REAL ID standards set and enforced by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
TDS staff worked with the NNI research team to create an extensive overview of Native nation citizenship policies that primed the crowd for two more days of conference activities. NNI researchers Miriam Jorgensen, Britnee Johnston (Blackfeet), Torivio Fodder (Taos Pueblo), Kyra James (Diné), and Angelica Santiago Gonzalez also created a jointly authored paper specifically for the Tribal Enrollment Conference for attendees to engage with and to assist in the TDS presentations.
Content was delivered by Timeche, Tom and Fortuin with tabling support from Ms. Rodriguez.
Three Tribal leaders who participated in the Remaking Tribal Constitutions Seminar in late June – Linda Austin, Chief Operations Officer of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo; Zeke “Shi U Pathu” Garcia, Director of the Tribal Court and Records Department for the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo; and Dr. Richard Luarkie, former Governor of the Pueblo of Laguna – returned to Arizona to deliver remarks about their Tribes’ enrollment processes and criteria at the Enrollment Conference.
The event attracted nearly 300 attendees from 80 Native nations. Sentiments collected in an anonymous feedback survey indicated that the new enrollment content developed by NNI did a good job of setting the stage for the rest of the conference.
“I appreciate this… information because we are all working toward the same goals in many, many different languages,” said one attendee.
“All of the speakers have been incredibly informative and helpful,” said another.
The TDS team is currently working on a summary report from their participation in the PYT Conference with the goal of aggregating and sharing strategies that tribes are already employing to address enrollment issues. They are also working with Tribal leaders at PYT and Ysleta delSur Pueblo to identify other opportunities to present on lessons learned related to Tribal enrollment.
The NNI research team is also in the process of fleshing out an academic paper on enrollment criteria for future publication.