A young fancy dancer at the annual Harvard powwow last spring. Russell Karu

Native Americans in the Present Tense

An Indian tribe is in many ways like a sovereign country within the territorial boundaries of the United States. This raises vexing legal questions about the respective powers of the tribe and the federal government. An example: Indian tribal courts have no inherent authority to try non-Indians, but should the Navajo Nation be able to try Russell Means, an Oglala Sioux living on Navajo land and married to a Navajo woman?

Yes, according to a law passed by Congress in 1991 giving Indian tribes the right to prosecute non-tribal-member Indians. No, says Means, who is accused of threatening and assaulting his father-in-law and another man at Means's home in the Navajo Nation in Arizona. He argues that to permit prosecution by the Navajos because he is Indian--and not, say, white or black--is racist.

Law School assistant dean Alan Ray, left, a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and Dean Robert Clark, who is part Choctaw, wear honorific "ribbon shirts" made for them by Kay Wood, C.A.S. '94, a Potawatomi and former administrative fellow at the Native American Program. Patrik Johansson

Earlier this year, the Navajo Supreme Court--sitting at Harvard Law School, to which they had been invited by the dean--considered this jurisdictional issue. The venue gave the case heightened visibility. It was already highly visible among Native Americans because Means was the first leader of the American Indian Movement and a champion of Indian sovereignty and self-determination. The court later ruled that it does have the authority to try Means, but the case "could go to the U.S. Supreme Court," says Alan Ray, Ph.D. '86, assistant dean for academic affairs at the Law School and himself a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

The appearance of Native American jurists at the Law School was not anomalous. Ray cites an initiative to expand the school's curriculum and educational opportunities in this field. "The goal," he says, "is to have at least one course in native legal studies offered each year" in addition to "Federal Indian Law," a curricular standby.

Interest in Indian matters is mounting throughout the University. The American Indian Program, founded in 1970 at the School of Education to train Native American educators, had lost its federal funding by the late 1980s and was languishing. Refocused in 1990 on the development of native leaders in all disciplines, renamed the Harvard University Native American Program, and revivified by students, the program was later designated an interfaculty initiative and given $450,000 in seed money by the provost's office and the nine faculties. With its headquarters at the School of Education, the program now has a full-time staff of five and a faculty advisory board with representatives from all the faculties (Ray is on it), and is poised to launch a capital campaign to raise $11,250,000 in endowment money. Robin McLay, M.P.A. '99, a Canadian and Métis, started work as interim director August 23 and will oversee the fundraising effort.

Performing a blanket dance at the Harvard powwow is Amanda Proctor '99, far right, of Winthrop House and Wichita, who is Quapaw and Osage. Russell Karu

The program has a three-part mission: curriculum innovation, leadership development, and outreach to Native American communities. An outreach case in point: a two-day session held at the Business School, perhaps the first of its kind anywhere, brought Indian leaders together with leaders of Goldman, Sachs and others to consider "Native Asset Management and Nation Building: Investment Strategies for Indian Country."

The curricular cornerstone of the program is the two-part "Native Americans in the Twenty-first Century: Nation Building," taught at the Kennedy School by faculty members from the schools of education, government, law, and medicine. "'Nation Building' is an excellent introduction to the contemporary challenges that tribes are facing," says Wenona Singel '95, J.D. '99, of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians. "Many Native American programs elsewhere focus on the anthropological aspects of tribes in the past. This course is about today, about sovereignty, economic development, constitutional reform, healthcare, education."

"It puts native peoples in the present tense, rather than in the past tense," says Manley Begay, Ed.M. '89, an organizer of the course, lecturer at the School of Education, director of the National Executive Education Program for Native American Leadership at the Kennedy School, and a Navajo. "We consider various philosophies of nation building, using American Indian tribes as examples. We ask why some Indian nations work relatively well, and others do not. What we discover has tremendous implications for other developing nations--in Eastern Europe, Africa, South America."

A Harvard recruiter erected this welcoming teepee at a powwow in Bismarck. Helen Klassen

The University currently offers nine courses in education, culture, and law that focus exclusively on Native American issues. The program's long-term goal is for the faculties to develop complementary courses in economics, government, health, and language and also to establish a certificate program in native studies.

Leadership development, a critical part of the mission, begins with an effort to further native education. Another case in point: an admissions workshop August 12 through 15, cosponsored by the program, brought 45 pre-medical students from across the country to the Medical School for guidance in how to apply successfully to medical schools. Staff from Harvard, Yale, Brown, Tufts, and Boston University were on hand. Leaders of the workshop included Yvette D. Roubideaux '85, M.D. '89, M.P.H. '97, a Rosebud Sioux, deputy director of the Center for Native American Health at the University of Arizona, and Darrell Smith, M.D. '89, M.E.P. '90, a Cherokee, director of mammography at Brigham and Women's Hospital and a member of the program's faculty advisory board.

Eileen Egan, a Hopi and the program's administrative director, who expects to get her master's degree in education this fall, does a lot of admissions recruiting. "When young people learn that 120 native students will be studying at Harvard this year, and that the program has 759 alumni, they are blown away," she says. "In the past two years alone we have graduated 73 native students--11 of whom received doctorates." Egan notes that today "a significant percentage of Indians who get graduate degrees get them from Harvard."