20 Hours of Sunshine

I probably travel the least on Council. In 2006 that was basically a fact. But 2007 has been rather different, in part because as Tribal Chair I’ve had to make three separate trips to D.C. to meet with numerous representatives. Other than that, I haven’t really done much travel over the past year, aside from the popular trip to South Korea last fall.
It has been more than two years since I attended an ATNI (Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians) Conference. I’ve yet to attend an NCAI (National Congress of American Indians) meeting. The more general the conference, in my opinion, the less I usually get out of it.
Two weeks ago I attended the annual NIHSDA (National Indian HeadStart Director’s Association) Conference in Anchorage, Alaska. That might seem kind of unusual given two things, one that I am childless, two that I am a man. The ratio of women to men in the HeadStart field was used as the source of more than one joke during the conference. During one of the workshops I was the only man, among more than 50 women.
So why then would a child-less man barely into his thirties and 25 years removed from kindergarten have any interest in such a conference? I’m getting to that.
Two years ago I attended a HeadStart Conference in Palm Springs. It featured some of the best speakers I’ve ever heard in person, and touched on some of the major issues that confront all tribes nationally, from cuts in government funding (vital to non-gaming tribes) to of all things, meth.
What I remember from two years ago, and this is repeated in Anchorage, was a question put to the audience. “How many of you were HeadStart kids?” It’s safe to say that probably one out of every four or five tribal leaders, directors, and/or teachers present at these conferences benefited from the program they continue to support. Were it not for this program, how many of them would have been here today? Something about that never fails to impress me. Not until my first conference did I learn the window that is childhood and the importance of getting kids on the right path at a young age. Everywhere there were Indian people from throughout the country, and Canada too, who served as living testament.
There were a handful of workshops at this NIHSDA conference which caught my eye. The first one I sat in on was a study of workplace personality types, clearly a topic with depth because the session lasted more than three hours. I’m always reluctant to categorize people, it seems a disservice to the individual nature of our personas, but psychological and sociological studies have provided convincing truth that we all belong in some sort of niche, even if constantly fluctuating. I’ve chosen in my life to read a number of books on the topic. What this workshop yielded for me was the realization that my own personality, of the five types presented, is a “squiggly”, as opposed to squares, rectangles, triangles, and circles. That basically means I enjoy being creative (check), irreverent (check), unorthodox (check), and disguise myself as some other shape in the workplace so as not to be alienated or drive co-workers crazy (check). Darn, I thought I was unique too.
A workshop the next day, the one in which I was definitely unique being a man, featured two aspects. One was an exhibit by a tribe in Minnesota (or was it Wisconsin, they had the same accent?) that demonstrated some of the exercises they use to promote teamwork and harmony amongst their tribal children. The second aspect was a team-building exercise, one that we had to build a tower out of two materials: uncooked spaghetti and marshmallows. We had to rotate in pairs as two people were charged with defending the structure from beachballs hit around by opposing teams, meant to symbolize the different problems confronting early childhood education programs, from drug-use, abusive parents, budget cuts, etc. Having grown up with Legos, my innate talents for structure building carried our team to victory, as I wedged one last stalk of spaghetti into a plump marshmallow, giving us that additional two inches for the win over the runner-up. It got pretty cutthroat.
I would end up winning another prize for being able to name a woman of note, in a trivia question, Bill Clinton’s Attorney General Janet Reno. A prize is also given to me for being the only man in the workshop, and the only Tribal Chair.
Beyond doubt, the most valuable workshop I sit in on is themed “one-on-one communication”, and is led by a priest of Russian orthodox faith and heritage. It is absolutely fascinating, and insightful. He has worked in numerous Alaskan native villages, bridging the cultural gap that I never realized still existed. But then again, Alaska is so isolated from the lower 48 states, and so untouched in comparison, I should have known. I learn about the “music” of our voices, and how tone in one culture might mean something completely different in another. He also shares with us anecdotes of his work with the University of Alaska, including an episode wherein he had to counsel nearly 90 Nigerian students whose overaggressive body language and physical spacing was a huge obstacle in their ability to make new friends in Anchorage.
I can’t help but marvel at what a diverse place Alaska is. There really is a frontier feeling to Anchorage, a sense that we are bordering on a true wilderness. In one of only two times I get to leave the conference site for dinner, the restaurant where we (the different staff and I) eat abounds with accents—German, British, and who knows?
What is also obvious is that for a tribe to have a tribal leader present, much less a Chair, is not ordinary for HeadStart Conferences. People attending the conference seemed surprised, even honored that a tribal leader would take such an interest in this subject. One of the conference hosts makes a point to approach me and let me know. More than 60 tribes are represented here, and I am only one of nine tribal leaders.
So why did I come? For one, to learn. Two, to see what a difference enthusiasm and passion make in one’s job, because people in this conference have plenty of both. These individuals know they make a difference, even if that difference isn’t always apparent for another 20 years, when somewhere, somebody asks “How many of you were HeadStart kids?”