[Applause]
yeah they shake it oh she done it
Vince red house Anisha Irish you surely
Filipino Bachchan German de chelly arrow
kiss Jimmy – lolly I gotta go you know
initially I hear as a Navajo man I’d
like to pay my respects to the
traditional owners of this land and not
a wall people and their elders past
present and future night I’m going to
talk about self-determination I’ll talk
a little bit about my own personal
experiences with it and a little bit
about the experiences of Native
Americans in general you know we’re also
going to talk a little bit about
self-determination in Australia so about
me I grew up like a lot of Native
Americans very poor I grew up in a
neighborhood and then a family that had
issues with drugs and alcohol
growing up education was not very
important to me I was the youngest of
four siblings and I was the first to
complete high school on time however
that came with a caveat when I graduated
high school I graduated with the most
unexcused absences of anyone ever
graduate from that school it’s been
around since the 1960s as a teenager and
a young adult I had my own issues with
drugs and alcohol being arrested for
both and as a young adult I also found
myself homeless for a brief period of
time
with the help of some truly amazing
friends I was I would get my life back
on track to find work to create some
stability and after a while what I
realized is that I wanted to give back I
wanted to provide opportunities for
people who grew up like me and if I
could I wanted to help future
generations so they didn’t have to grow
up like me now in order to achieve those
goals I figured I should probably get an
education
getting an education in the United
States is not the cheapest thing and as
you can imagine I’m not the wealthiest
guy around but nonetheless I was able to
get an education and I was able to do
that because my tribe the Navajo Nation
was able to provide me with scholarships
to pay for my tuition and even more when
I arrived at the University campus as a
first-generation college student I found
there was a resource center there just
for Native American students ran by
Native Americans
this Resource Center gave me a place
where I could feel at home a place where
I could be myself a place where I could
get support
now that Center was not there simply out
of the decency of my University it was
there because my tribe as well as other
tribes across the country have donated
millions of dollars to universities to
get them to build these centers to
support us to provide their children our
future generations with opportunities to
succeed my tribe would not have been in
that position had it not been through
the United States Congress passing the
Indian self-determination and Education
Act in 1975 now in 1970 President
Richard M Nixon delivered a message to
the US Congress on Indian Affairs since
assuming his presidency Nixon had been
meeting with tribal leaders from all
over the country he wanted to understand
what was happening it’s a Native
Americans what was happening on these
reservations in the previous decades
US policy for Indians had been mostly
paternalistic the federal government had
assumed almost near complete control of
all the affairs happening on
reservations and when Nixon noticed is
that this wasn’t working outcomes for
Native Americans where the remaining
stagnant or getting worse in his message
Nixon identified three areas and
particularly
that needed to be addressed economic
outcomes health outcomes and education
outcomes terms of account economics the
average unemployment rate for Native
Americans in 1970 he said was ten times
higher than the national average with
some reservations experiencing
unemployment of up to eighty percent the
average life expectancy for Native
Americans he said was 44 years old
infant mortality rates were 50 percent
higher than the rest of the population
and suicide rates were nearly double the
rest of the population the average
education level for Native Americans was
er6 in order to address those poor
outcomes Nixon working together closely
with tribal leaders developed a policy
of self-determination they wanted the
shift away from the paternalistic
policies the government had towards
tribal self-determination in his
proposal
Nixon listed five key elements to
achieving self-determination for tribes
first the federal government needs to
provide training and supports so tribes
could learn how to take advantage of
self-determination could learn how to
administer their own programs and govern
themselves second special subcommittees
and councils should be created by Native
Americans and for Native Americans to
assist the United States Congress in
creating federal Indian policies third
that none of that should be taken as
diminishing or mitigating the special
relationship between the United States
and its tribes a nation-to-nation
relationship fourth that this needed to
become the norm we could not simply have
self-determination as an experiment 5 10
15 years but it needed to be the thing
that was done now and always and lastly
he told
Congress that they needed to raise the
budget on Indian Affairs so the
self-determination could actually take
hold in five years later in 1975 the
united states congress took those words
and turned them into action for the most
part they passed the Indian
self-determination and Education Act and
that realized four of the elements Nixon
was talking about where it failed was it
didn’t provide additional funding for
tribes and in fact over the next 10
years funding for tribes was reduced by
over half and has continued to fall this
day to the point in which Native
Americans per capita received less
federal funding than any other group in
the United States despite the lack of
funding however tribes beginning
primarily in the 1990s started enrolling
in self-determination programs and today
over half of the 567 federally
recognized tribes from Arizona where I’m
from all the way up to Alaska are able
to exercise some form of
self-determination so what have the
results been well obviously they’ve been
good or else I wouldn’t be up here
unemployment for Native Americans on
reservations is just about above 11
percent average life expectancy for
Native Americans whose primary health
care comes from their tribe is 73 years
infant mortality rates and suicide rates
had decreased dramatically and have also
decreased relative to the rest of the
population and over 80 percent of Native
Americans under the age of 25 have high
school diplomas or equivalent and over
30 percent have college degrees like
myself now it took a long time for these
results to come about almost twenty
years until you started seeing them pop
up much of that had to do with the fact
that the government did not properly
fund self-determination much of it also
had to do with the situation
the indigenous people were in at the
time it’s not easy to dig yourself out
of a hole like that much of it likely
also had to do with the attitudes of
American citizens who by and large have
often view Native Americans as being
savage antiquated unfit to govern but
despite all of those obstacles
self-determination has been a success
things are not perfect in the United
States the numbers are still acceptable
but self-determination has worked and it
continues to work to this day so why
hasn’t it worked here in Australia when
I present those results to Australians
the reply usually get us something like
mate listen we tried that it failed and
I think really you guys really tried
that and I looked at it and sure enough
in the 1960s beginning and then
Australia started to talk about
self-determination you had voting in
1962 for Indigenous Australians the
census in 67 and so on and so forth some
really great things happened here but
none of those things were
self-determination as I’ve described it
there are positive steps they weren’t
self-determination the closest perhaps
the Australia has come to
self-determination was at Sikh the
Australian tourist area under commission
now from anyone’s perspective at SiC was
not perfect it was a bit of a mess
nonetheless it was a step in the right
direction towards self-determination
unfortunately after only lasting roughly
10 years it was abolished and when it
was abolished the assailing government
claimed that self-determination as an
experiment had failed and since then
Australia’s policies towards indigenous
people have primarily been paternalistic
now I shared my story with you in the
story of self-determination in the US
because I wanted you to see the success
that can happen when you really give
self-determination a chance when you
give it as Australians would say a fair
go you haven’t done that yet now I do
believe they can work here
I know Australia in America they’re not
the same places obviously but there’s no
reason to think that you’re indigenous
people can’t govern themselves and
you’ve heard the success now of what
happens in the u.s. despite the beliefs
that people have despite the conditions
the tribes are in it can work and if you
listen to what your indigenous people
are saying if you work with them and you
give them the time you give them the
space you give them the resources they
will create that transformation they
will create success
you
yeah they shake it oh she done it
Vince red house Anisha Irish you surely
Filipino Bachchan German de chelly arrow
kiss Jimmy – lolly I gotta go you know
initially I hear as a Navajo man I’d
like to pay my respects to the
traditional owners of this land and not
a wall people and their elders past
present and future night I’m going to
talk about self-determination I’ll talk
a little bit about my own personal
experiences with it and a little bit
about the experiences of Native
Americans in general you know we’re also
going to talk a little bit about
self-determination in Australia so about
me I grew up like a lot of Native
Americans very poor I grew up in a
neighborhood and then a family that had
issues with drugs and alcohol
growing up education was not very
important to me I was the youngest of
four siblings and I was the first to
complete high school on time however
that came with a caveat when I graduated
high school I graduated with the most
unexcused absences of anyone ever
graduate from that school it’s been
around since the 1960s as a teenager and
a young adult I had my own issues with
drugs and alcohol being arrested for
both and as a young adult I also found
myself homeless for a brief period of
time
with the help of some truly amazing
friends I was I would get my life back
on track to find work to create some
stability and after a while what I
realized is that I wanted to give back I
wanted to provide opportunities for
people who grew up like me and if I
could I wanted to help future
generations so they didn’t have to grow
up like me now in order to achieve those
goals I figured I should probably get an
education
getting an education in the United
States is not the cheapest thing and as
you can imagine I’m not the wealthiest
guy around but nonetheless I was able to
get an education and I was able to do
that because my tribe the Navajo Nation
was able to provide me with scholarships
to pay for my tuition and even more when
I arrived at the University campus as a
first-generation college student I found
there was a resource center there just
for Native American students ran by
Native Americans
this Resource Center gave me a place
where I could feel at home a place where
I could be myself a place where I could
get support
now that Center was not there simply out
of the decency of my University it was
there because my tribe as well as other
tribes across the country have donated
millions of dollars to universities to
get them to build these centers to
support us to provide their children our
future generations with opportunities to
succeed my tribe would not have been in
that position had it not been through
the United States Congress passing the
Indian self-determination and Education
Act in 1975 now in 1970 President
Richard M Nixon delivered a message to
the US Congress on Indian Affairs since
assuming his presidency Nixon had been
meeting with tribal leaders from all
over the country he wanted to understand
what was happening it’s a Native
Americans what was happening on these
reservations in the previous decades
US policy for Indians had been mostly
paternalistic the federal government had
assumed almost near complete control of
all the affairs happening on
reservations and when Nixon noticed is
that this wasn’t working outcomes for
Native Americans where the remaining
stagnant or getting worse in his message
Nixon identified three areas and
particularly
that needed to be addressed economic
outcomes health outcomes and education
outcomes terms of account economics the
average unemployment rate for Native
Americans in 1970 he said was ten times
higher than the national average with
some reservations experiencing
unemployment of up to eighty percent the
average life expectancy for Native
Americans he said was 44 years old
infant mortality rates were 50 percent
higher than the rest of the population
and suicide rates were nearly double the
rest of the population the average
education level for Native Americans was
er6 in order to address those poor
outcomes Nixon working together closely
with tribal leaders developed a policy
of self-determination they wanted the
shift away from the paternalistic
policies the government had towards
tribal self-determination in his
proposal
Nixon listed five key elements to
achieving self-determination for tribes
first the federal government needs to
provide training and supports so tribes
could learn how to take advantage of
self-determination could learn how to
administer their own programs and govern
themselves second special subcommittees
and councils should be created by Native
Americans and for Native Americans to
assist the United States Congress in
creating federal Indian policies third
that none of that should be taken as
diminishing or mitigating the special
relationship between the United States
and its tribes a nation-to-nation
relationship fourth that this needed to
become the norm we could not simply have
self-determination as an experiment 5 10
15 years but it needed to be the thing
that was done now and always and lastly
he told
Congress that they needed to raise the
budget on Indian Affairs so the
self-determination could actually take
hold in five years later in 1975 the
united states congress took those words
and turned them into action for the most
part they passed the Indian
self-determination and Education Act and
that realized four of the elements Nixon
was talking about where it failed was it
didn’t provide additional funding for
tribes and in fact over the next 10
years funding for tribes was reduced by
over half and has continued to fall this
day to the point in which Native
Americans per capita received less
federal funding than any other group in
the United States despite the lack of
funding however tribes beginning
primarily in the 1990s started enrolling
in self-determination programs and today
over half of the 567 federally
recognized tribes from Arizona where I’m
from all the way up to Alaska are able
to exercise some form of
self-determination so what have the
results been well obviously they’ve been
good or else I wouldn’t be up here
unemployment for Native Americans on
reservations is just about above 11
percent average life expectancy for
Native Americans whose primary health
care comes from their tribe is 73 years
infant mortality rates and suicide rates
had decreased dramatically and have also
decreased relative to the rest of the
population and over 80 percent of Native
Americans under the age of 25 have high
school diplomas or equivalent and over
30 percent have college degrees like
myself now it took a long time for these
results to come about almost twenty
years until you started seeing them pop
up much of that had to do with the fact
that the government did not properly
fund self-determination much of it also
had to do with the situation
the indigenous people were in at the
time it’s not easy to dig yourself out
of a hole like that much of it likely
also had to do with the attitudes of
American citizens who by and large have
often view Native Americans as being
savage antiquated unfit to govern but
despite all of those obstacles
self-determination has been a success
things are not perfect in the United
States the numbers are still acceptable
but self-determination has worked and it
continues to work to this day so why
hasn’t it worked here in Australia when
I present those results to Australians
the reply usually get us something like
mate listen we tried that it failed and
I think really you guys really tried
that and I looked at it and sure enough
in the 1960s beginning and then
Australia started to talk about
self-determination you had voting in
1962 for Indigenous Australians the
census in 67 and so on and so forth some
really great things happened here but
none of those things were
self-determination as I’ve described it
there are positive steps they weren’t
self-determination the closest perhaps
the Australia has come to
self-determination was at Sikh the
Australian tourist area under commission
now from anyone’s perspective at SiC was
not perfect it was a bit of a mess
nonetheless it was a step in the right
direction towards self-determination
unfortunately after only lasting roughly
10 years it was abolished and when it
was abolished the assailing government
claimed that self-determination as an
experiment had failed and since then
Australia’s policies towards indigenous
people have primarily been paternalistic
now I shared my story with you in the
story of self-determination in the US
because I wanted you to see the success
that can happen when you really give
self-determination a chance when you
give it as Australians would say a fair
go you haven’t done that yet now I do
believe they can work here
I know Australia in America they’re not
the same places obviously but there’s no
reason to think that you’re indigenous
people can’t govern themselves and
you’ve heard the success now of what
happens in the u.s. despite the beliefs
that people have despite the conditions
the tribes are in it can work and if you
listen to what your indigenous people
are saying if you work with them and you
give them the time you give them the
space you give them the resources they
will create that transformation they
will create success
you
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