Institutions in Indian Country

When we talk about contemporary nation building or institution building, we should not suggest that Indigenous nations do not have institutions or nations. Rather Indigenous nations have very strong institutions and nations which are organized very differently from the Western models, especially the government and market-based institutions in Canadian or American societies.

The colonial period introduced new institutions into Indigenous communities such as Christianity, new forms of government, market economies, nation-state forms of bureaucracy, courts, and police. One major challenge with colonial institutions is that they often are not accepted voluntarily by Indigenous communities. Often colonial institutions conflict deeply with Indigenous institutions and create cultural and organizational schisms in the community. They also tend to give significant decision-making powers to external political, economic, and cultural groups and organizations.

Contemporary institutions in Indian country are a combination of traditional, colonial, and contemporary institutional relations. Consequently, contemporary nation building is not simply a matter of adopting Western institutional forms of political, economic, community, and cultural organization. Nation building does not occur in an institutional vacuum, and new institutions must have general acceptance or consensual support, otherwise they will not last or work well.

However, returning to traditional national forms is not likely because today’s world is a very different and highly nationalized and globalized place. Contemporary institution building is about moving values, norms, social, and community organization in ways that help ensure cultural and political autonomy, as well as economic self-sufficiency. The process is one of maintaining community and cultural continuity through adjusting institutional relations whether  traditional, colonial, or contemporary, to meet the cultural, political and economic needs of the communities. Institutional change is achieved best through processes of consensus building which help ensure cultural continuity and acceptance of compatible change.

Most communities are composed of institutions such as ceremonial circles, kinship groups, or government organizations. Shared understandings, norms, rules, or laws are characteristic of communities that are endowed with strong institutions. While leadership and responsibility are major features of institutions, most depend on agreements or consensus about rules, behaviors, goals, and methods. In traditional societies, institutions are often handed down from previous generations, and are shared in creation and related teachings. For example, the trickster figure Raven gave the Tlingit people on the Western Coast their clans, moieties, potlatch ceremonies, and moral and ethical teachings. Because Raven gave the ceremonies and clans, people honor and maintain them as sacred gifts from the creator. Indigenous peoples have very strong institutional relations that are different from one another and other peoples.

Each Indigenous nation has its own political, cultural, economic, and community organization, but overall the nations tend to have overlapping political, family, economic and cultural relations embedded within a sacred community or nation. Furthermore, Indigenous nations are not only about relations with other peoples, but also with the plants, animals, sun, moon, stars, and forces that compose the cosmic universe.

In critical ways, Indigenous nations are not political nations in the modern Western sense of a politically mobilized body of citizens. Rather, Indigenous nations are more like religious communities that speak a common language and practice a common ceremonial cycle. There are more commitments to the ceremonial cycle than to political unity, which is divided among clans, families, and individuals. Political norms in Indigenous nations are generally decentralized and consensual with great respect for the autonomy of families, groups, and individuals in political and spiritual matters.

Duane Champagne is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa from North Dakota. He is professor of Sociology and American Indian Studies at UCLA, a member of the Faculty Advisory Committee for the UCLA Native Nations Law and Policy Center, and is acting director of the Tribal Learning Community and Educational Exchange (TLCEE). Champagne's research focuses primarily on issues of social and cultural change in both historical and contemporary Native American communities. He is a faculty leader for Establishing Institutions of Good Governance.