Tribal Administration Handbook: A Guide for Native Nations in the United States (Makwa Enewed)

A direct response to the needs and ambitions articulated by tribal administrators and leaders, this handbook seeks to serve practitioners, students, researchers, and community members alike. It grew out of an ongoing collaboration among scholars and practitioners from tribal nations, universities, tribal colleges, and nonprofit organizations who are developing practical and teaching resources in the field of tribal administration and governance. Designed as a readable, accessible volume, it focuses on three key areas: tribal management, funding and delivering core services, and sovereign tribes engaging settler governments. While the chapters complement one another by presenting a coherent and unified constellation of voices that illuminates a shared terrain of practical Indigenous governance, each chapter ultimately stands alone to accommodate a variety of needs and interests with specific best practices, quick-reference executive summaries, and practitioner notes to aid lesson applications. This humble collection of remarkable voices initiates a conversation about tribal administration that will hopefully continue to grow in service to Native nations.

Rebecca M. Webster is an enrolled citizen of the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin. She serves on the faculty at the University of Minnesota Duluth in their Department of American Indian Studies. She is a founding member of Ohe∙láku (among the cornstalks), a co-op of ten Oneida families that grow multiple acres of traditional heirloom corn together. She and her husband also own a farmstead on the Oneida Reservation where they primarily grow Haudenosaunee varieties of corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, sunchokes, and tobacco. Their philosophy is that every time an Indigenous person plants a seed, it is an act of resistance, an assertion of sovereignty, and a reclamation of identity. In light of this philosophy, an Oneida faithkeeper named the ten-acre homestead Ukwakhwa: Tsinu Niyukwayayʌthoslu (Our foods: Where we plant things), a name which also lends itself to the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Ukwakhwa Inc., that Webster formed with her family to help advance their goals of helping share knowledge with the community.