Volume 16 Fall 2004 Issue No. 1

The Rights and Responsibilities of Sovereignty

by Marjane Ambler

Sovereignty has been a topic of intense debate in the past year as the United States tries to sort out its responsibilities in Iraq. It is not the first time in history, of course, that a powerful nation has struggled with questions about its role in a conquered or colonized country.

At what point does the foreign power's involvement stop being helpful and start being paternalistic? When should that power back off and allow the fledgling government to make its own mistakes and learn from them?

Does a sovereign power use its authority to control the press or to guarantee freedom of the press? When does sovereignty become an excuse for defying laws, conventions, and treaties without regard for the responsibilities of power?

When is it appropriate to transplant foreign concepts of justice and education? And when must the foreign government honor the cultural traditions of the people instead?

The sovereignty of Indian nations within the United States may be even more complicated and less understood. This issue introduces this topic and its implications for education and journalism.

The subject is delicate, but it is not the first time that the Tribal College Journal (TCJ) has broached difficult subjects since the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) created TCJ 15 years ago.

Indians and the Media

Ever since Europeans first arrived on this continent, the media have not treated Indian people kindly. Newspapers in towns bordering reservations typically focus upon the violence and the alcoholism rather than upon what is being done by the community to tackle those problems. Textbooks and films often portray Indians as one-dimensional savages or extinct. Both Indians and non-Indians consume these images and internalize them.

When tribes started to exercise their sovereignty and won significant battles over fishing rights, jurisdiction, taxation, and most recently gaming, they were met with disbelief and outrage. The media have covered and sometimes participated in this backlash.

Many of the media problems stem from ignorance. Students should learn about tribal sovereignty in high school civics classes at the same time that they learn about the powers of federal, state, and local governments. It is difficult for learning to take place in the heat of a polarizing battle.

In addition to ignorance, fear and racial stereotypes also undermine equitable media coverage. There are not enough American Indians working in the newsrooms, and diversity studies indicate the percentages are not improving.

It is predictable although regrettable that when tribal governments publish their own newspapers, some tribal officials would try to suppress criticism of themselves. The Native American Journalists Association, supported by the National Congress of American Indians, is working on a campaign to support freedom of the press on reservations.

AIHEC and the tribal colleges have honored freedom of the press in their power over the Tribal College Journal. This magazine is owned by AIHEC, a nonprofit corporation directed by the presidents. When they created the journal 15 years ago, they established a separate advisory board of presidents to provide policy direction for the journal.

The advisory board has not only allowed but in fact insisted upon tackling difficult issues, such as unsuccessful financial investments by tribal colleges (Vol.7, N.3); conflicts between college boards and colleges (Vol.13, N.4); dysfunctional tribal organizations and how to heal them (Vol.14, N.4); HIV/AIDS in Indian Country (Vol.15, N.2); and this issue on sovereignty.

Appropriate Standards for Education

Dr. Bob Roessel and people quoted by Dr. Paul Boyer in this issue suggest that tribal governments could be asserting their sovereignty more responsibly, creating innovative infrastructures that better serve local needs and culture. Roessel, one of the founders of Diné College, says tribes should use their sovereign powers to set appropriate criteria for school administrator certification.

Some have argued that tribes could defy "foreign" criteria for excellence, but that is not Roessel's argument. He wants tribes to act responsibly, assuring excellence by appropriate, not lower, standards.

Similarly AIHEC is now developing better, more appropriate criteria for measuring American Indian college students' success. The Lumina Foundation is funding this major research effort, which is described elsewhere in this issue.

Surveys have found that when tribal college students stop going to classes, it is frequently because they feel responsible for other family members: A parent is bedridden; day care can't be found for a child; or the family depends upon the student to get a firefighting job to pay for food.

Within tribal colleges, faculty and administrators use the term "stop out" for students who stop taking classes temporarily and then return. If a student takes four years to earn an associate degree and then finds a job on a reservation where there is 75% unemployment, isn't that success?

If 85% of the students arrive at the college unprepared for college courses and the college in turn nurtures those students through GED classes and eventually through completion of associate or bachelor degrees, should the college be penalized for this help? The AIHEC/Lumina study may find ways to consider such factors.

Since the organization was born 31 years ago, AIHEC has debated establishing its own criteria for accreditation. All of the member colleges now adhere to the standards set by non-Indian, regional accrediting bodies because they need that legitimacy to get funding and articulation agreements for student transfers to other universities. At the same time, they want the regional accrediting bodies to better understand the importance of the colleges' cultural mission.

In the last few years, two indigenous education organizations (the First Nations Adult and Higher Education Consortium in western Canada and the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium) have both adopted their own accreditation standards that establish cultural criteria. These models might be utilized by AIHEC to either augment or supplant external accreditation standards.

As tribal education institutions are well aware, with rights come responsibilities, which is one reason why decision-making bodies have been slow to act in the past. Whether setting criteria for school administrators, accreditation, or student success, the emphasis will be on appropriate, not lower, standards. Thus such actions will be important statements of sovereignty.

It has been only 70 years since federal government first acknowledged the right of tribal governments to exist and 36 years since the first tribe created a tribal college. With increasing levels of education and with the free exchange of ideas in the media and elsewhere in the community, sovereignty will become an increasingly important tool.

Marjane Ambler has been editor of Tribal College Journal since 1995. For more information on the numbers of American Indian journalists and biased coverage of American Indians, see the website for the Native American Journalists Association, www.naja.com.

What do you think? TCJ invites you to submit your comments about sovereignty in a letter to the editor (250 words or less). If selected, your letter will be posted on our website and printed in the next journal. Write editor@tribalcollegejournal.org.