Harvard Study group finds fault with FNGA

Page 1

The team of academics that conducted the highly-respected Harvard University study of Native American governance and economic development has examined the First Nations governance act (FNGA) and found it lacking.

The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development produced conclusions about what works-and what doesn't-in Native American communities in regards to governance and self-sufficiency, so the British Columbia office of the Assembly of First Nations asked the four professors to analyze the FNGA. Their recently released report has caused a sensation among the First Nations technicians fighting the federal legislation.

Dr. Stephen Cornell, professor of sociology and public administration and policy at the University of Arizona, is also the director of the school's Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy. He and Dr. Joseph P. Kalt were the co-directors of the Harvard Project.

Dr. Miriam Jorgenson and Dr. Manley Begay were the other team members. They are scheduled to appear before Canada's House of Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs by teleconference in early February.

Windspeaker reached Cornell at his office in Arizona. He began by making the limitations of the team's FNGA report quite clear.

"We're not qualified to analyze the legislation from the point of view of Canadian law or Aboriginal relations with the Crown or anything like that," he said. "All we can do is say, 'Given what we know, here's what we think.'"

The report concluded that there are three central requirements that are essential for sustainable economic development:

1. Practical sovereignty, meaning genuine decision-making power over internal affairs, governance, resources, institutions, and development strategies;

2. Capable governing institutions, which exercise power effectively, responsibly, and reliably; and

3. Cultural match-formal institutions of government that match Indigenous conceptions of how authority should be organized and exercised.

Comments in the report about ask if the conclusion reached was that the FNGA does not make the fundamental changes needed to start the growth of self-government.

"I would start from a different place," Cornell said. "Part of our criticism of the act is that it says that it respects First Nations' right to self-governance, but it seems to have a very modest conception of self-governance. The act then goes on to specify all sorts of things about First Nations government that First Nations have to or should adopt. Our research suggests that a crucial piece of self-government is having some control over how you're governed. If some outsider is going to specify how you govern yourself, that doesn't look much like self-governance to us."

The United States has legislated a form of Native sovereignty, but it appears to Cornell and his fellow researchers that Canada doesn't want to go down the road of sovereignty, even dependant sovereignty, and that shows through clearly in the act.

"The act to us doesn't address issues of jurisdiction. The U.S. research says that issues of jurisdiction are critical. And when I talk about jurisdiction what I really mean is, who is calling the shots? Who's deciding what governmental form will look like? Who's deciding how resources will be used? Who's deciding what development priorities will be? Who's deciding how internal affairs shall operate? The research from the U.S. shows very decidedly that where outsiders are making those decisions, you shouldn't expect to see much in the way of sustainable development," he said.

"When First Nations are making those decisions, it's no guarantee of development, but it does open the door to development. In other words, moving significant jurisdiction-this doesn't mean everything-but significant jurisdiction into the hands of Native nations tends to open up the possibility of sustainable development. One of the concerns about the act is that it doesn't address jurisdictional issues and in fact he act itself constitutes a kind of an imposition of particular governmental models on Native nations which seems to be the opposite of substantive jurisdiction."

Minister Robert Nault's public comments about the bill and the bill itself emphasize improved accountability for First Nation governments. Cornell said there's an important element of accountability that's missing from the FNGA.

"I'm an American Indian nation and I get some money from Washington to run a program that's designed in Washington, reflects Washington bureaucrats concerns and interests, reflects their need to justify what they do to the U.S. Congress or to higher ups within their agencies. It reflects their needs for certain budgetary procedures and concerns," he explained. "Yet I am told that I am accountable for whether or not this program actually works and or whether or not it meets their expectations of how it should perform. Furthermore, I know that is probably the only source of significant resources that I'm going to receive to address a serious problem.

"So I'm being held accountable for whether or not this program I did not design that reflects somebody else's interests, solves my problem. Now I think accountability is critical. But I don't know why the Indian nation in that case should be held accountable for the performance of the program. They had no decision-making power. If they designed the program, then I think they should be held absolutely accountable. And I fully understand that they should have some accountability for how funds are used. I'm not saying we should hand out money and just say, 'Do what you want.' But there is a big range between my giving you money and saying you don't have to account for it and my demanding absolute accountability for you but retaining decision-making power in my own hands."

And there is a second issue related to accountability, he said.

"We are not critical of the concern with accountability, although we think there's a second issue wih accountability other than the decision-making power link and that is: to whom are you being accountable? I firmly believe in accountability upwards but we also have to think about accountability downwards and sometimes those two get into conflict," he said. "If I'm a First Nations government, I'm trying to be accountable to my own citizens, I'm trying to be accountable to funders because of the regulations under which I'm operating. And there are times when those things conflict. My citizens are going to be saying to me, 'Why are you running a program like this? It doesn't make sense.' "Accountability is a great buzzword, but it is a complicated business and it has links to other things. And the idea that you can keep decision-making power in your hands and make somebody else accountable, that's simply escaping responsibility. The right wing talks a lot about responsibility. Well, that's what we're talking about. If you're going to take the decision-making power you better take some of the responsibility for what happens."

The report also stated that Canada has tried to fit all First Nations into the same box. Cornell said that can be very harmful.

"I think this is something that often the mainstream part of a large society like the United States or like Canada has some difficulty in recognizing. There's enormous diversity out there. People think, 'Oh sure, there's diversity. These guys do this kind of dance and these guys do that kind of ceremony.' We're talking about a more fundamental kind of diversity than that, which is that the citizens of these nations see themselves as peoples. They have distinctive ways of life. They make, in some cases, different assumptions about things. Culture can reach fairly deeply. It's not just a matter of what kind of ceremonies you put on or what kind of art you like," he said. "There's a critical challenge for any government. The people you are governing have to have some fundamental faith in the institutions by which they'r being governed. They've got to believe that these institutions resonate somehow with their own sense of what is an appropriate way to govern. In the United States, there's a lot of diversity in those values and in that sense of how it's appropriate to govern. A lot of governing institutions become the objects of rip-off artists and corruption and so forth because people don't believe in them. People think, 'These aren't our institutions, why should we respect them? We didn't plan these institutions.'"

Accommodating diversity is essential for success, he added.

"In the United States we see successful Indian nations governing themselves in radically-and I mean radically-different ways. From traditional pueblos in the American Southwest who have no written constitutions and no electoral codes, not even any elections, but who are doing a very professional and productive job of economic development. They may not have written constitutions and elections codes but they have deeply imbedded cultural rules that manage people's behavior and the people in the community believe in those rules and treat them with respect," he said. "And we have successful Indian nations whose governing institutions look like they came out of my high school civics textbook. What these nations have in common is that in each case the people have respect for the institutions by which they're being governed.

"The danger in a one-size-fits-all solution to these governing problems is that you go out there and impose, fundamentally, a single template of how to govern, paying very little attention to whether or not this template resonates with the Indigenous conception of what government ought to look like. And where it doesn't resonate, I think what you're buying is a whole lot of trouble because within that community what you're effectively going to do is reduce respect for government.

You're going to frustrate people who feel, 'We're supposed to be governing ourselves, but we cannot do it in ou