Tribal Leadership in Alaska

Tribal Leadership in Alaska

By James Gore

1/11/11

Our host here on these tribal consultations is Barbara Blake, a young Alaskan Native who thinks, feels, and ultimately knows subsistence in the context of her brethren. Tomorrow morning, she has arranged for us to attend a meeting focused on developing a new generation of male leaders in Alaskan tribes. As I was told by an organizer of this group, “We have seen a disconnect between generations in Alaskan Native males. In the old days, male leadership of tribal issues was assumed. These days, not only is that assumption wrong, but this void of male leaders in Tribal affairs continues to expand.”

I didn’t understand this sentiment until a conversation with Barbara this evening.

As she put it, “You have to understand our culture and history to grasp this disconnect. Alaska has a generation of young female leaders emerging amongst the 229 Alaskan tribes, and this is a good thing; however, at the same time young Alaskan tribal male leaders are harder and harder to find. If you look back a few generations, tribal women stayed close to the village. They worked on deliberate projects such as child care, cooking, basket weaving, and family development. The men went off to hunt each day, and their work yielded a unique combination of instant and intermittent success. They went on hunting trips, some of which were successful, some of which were not. They either came home with meat or did not. Unlike the native woman who deliberately and continually nurtured the creation of a plant, a basket, or a child, the male had hits and misses.”

This cycle continues to this day with respect to personal development and leadership. Leadership today is all about persistence; it is not a hit or miss thing. One has to get an education; one has to understand the complex issues that confront the tribe with respect to local, state, and federal regulations; one must to be deliberate in his learning of the attributes necessary to, for example, negotiate with energy companies and environmentalist alike. Overall, our current model of leadership development is more attuned to basket weaving than it is hunting. While this emergence of women leaders in Alaskan tribal life is a fantastic development, many tribes feel it imperative to develop young male leaders to compliment their female counterparts.

Tomorrow morning, we will visit one of these such programs focused on addressing the issue of leadership development for Alaskan native males.

I am ready to attend.

I am ready to listen.

I am ready to learn.