LOVE AND LEADERSHIP
BY ALEX WILSON

        Whether in New York City or in Northern Canada, Native women are leading our people, by example, and by love. In an era when our world sometimes seems unbalanced, these women continue to stand strong. All of us know women—our grandmothers, mothers, aunties, sisters, daughters, lovers and friends—who strive for equality, work for change and pass it on. Their leadership includes actions done simply out of love, no strings attached, as they offer a listening ear, a $10 bill slipped into your pocket or a gentle, encouraging smile. The message is simple and profound: "You are loved. Be proud."
        As Indians, we are too familiar with violence and loss, and it is easy for us, as individuals and communities, to slide into bitterness. Our leaders must assume responsibility to help us move beyond anger and toward a positive future. Thinking of examples provided by women who are leaders in my communities, I could not help but wonder: "What would our Nations look like if we based our decisions on love?" Embarrassed by the dreamy turn my inquiry was taking, I looked for help from some experts on leadership.
        Naturally, the first person I talked to was my grandmother. When I asked about her experiences of and understandings about Native women and leadership, she replied, "Oh, I don't know much about that." Her humble reply spoke volumes and left me slightly embarrassed that I had needed to ask such a question in the first place. I thought about the many times that my grandmother had defended our past chiefs when they messed up. During the 1990 armed standoff at Oka/Kanesatake, Quebec between the Mohawk Nation and Canada-Quebec police and army, I recalled the day my grandmother stopped her car in the middle of a bridge, blocking traffic to proclaim her support for the Mohawk people.
        I remembered gratefully how, at 84 years of age, she had searched alone through the wilderness at four in the morning for her great-granddaughter, who had called her from a phone somewhere after running away from home. My grandmother had given me a lifetime of examples. After a long silence, she added, "My friend Martha was a leader. She was a spiritual woman. She lived the life of respect. She loved people."
After talking to my grandmother, I considered other people I knew who, like my grandmother and her friend Martha, were leaders without a title. What would they have to say about leadership? And how would they say it? I phoned an old friend, Kate McHale, a New York-based lawyer. Kate's response began with a description of her Mescalero Apache mother: "She was a twospirit woman who came of age in a difficult time. Her consciousness about issues, about Native identity and integration of spiritual and physical and health issues, of indigenous ways of healing—she was someone who really sought to bring those things to life which had been stolen, reallyÖIt can be a lonely thing to see what's wrong and start to work for change. My mother was one of those people." As Kate points out, our leaders show tremendous commitment to community. "[Leadership] involves enormous amounts of emotional and spiritual energy. We can learn from what happened in the past, we can build coalitions and work for change. In all of our endeavors, build each other up and try to love each other, because service can't make a difference without love."
      In a time when countries are at war, service may have another meaning. My brother Jamie is a counselor at the school operated by our Opaskwayak Cree Nation and a former U.S. Army Ranger and current officer in the Canadian Armed Forces. In his blunt but gentle style, he offered, "Well, we have to be critical of our own practices. The more you talk, the less you walk. It's about oppression. We buy into it, usually without realizing it." He then described, with sadness, going to a spiritual gathering where women were chastised for not wearing skirts.
         Self-reflection requires humility and honesty. For Marlon Mousseau, an Oglala Lakota, self-reflection has lead him to dedicate his life to community service. Marlon works to end the oppression of Native women by educating people about, and stopping, domestic violence. Marlon concluded our discussion of Native women and leadership with the comment, "If we are really going to get back to some sense of balance, a feminine Supreme Being has to be acknowledged. It is incredibly powerful. All these years we've been made to believe that [the Supreme Being] is masculine... Our belief systems are formed by the time we are five, so no matter how good or kind a man is, the misogynistic belief system is ingrained in us and what we have learned wasn't good... Women will lead us out of this time. Women have to reclaim the leadership role. That time is now."
        Understanding and educating our people about oppression is a necessary component of self-determination and sovereignty. Rebecca Sockbeson, a Penobscot educator, is committed to helping her people resist internalizing racism. She works with students and other people in her community to understand and undo the ways in which they act out racism and other forms of oppression, both as ideologies and as practices. "Someone told me once, for United States and North America to be rid of racism, Native people have to lead the way. I thought that she was just saying that to empower me to have voice, but the more I do the work, the more I understand the importance of color and identity. I have an investment in working on this. I think and I believe it's imperative that we lead in undoing racism." Understanding that internalized racism manifests as self-hatred, Rebecca believes that, to be effective leaders, we must start with an assumption that Native people are fundamentally good, a condition that we cannot achieve without love.
        Sharon Day, a Nett Lake Ojibwe, recognizes that you can have leadership without love, but adds her observation that "sustained leadership over a lifetime has to be based on love." Several years ago, Sharon left a comfortable career-track position with the state, to help found the Minnesota American Indian AIDS Task Force. Sharon's choice to change direction happened when people she loved called to tell her that they were HIV positive. She recognized that there was little support available to them and inadequate public education on HIV in her community. Sharon did not set out to become a community leader on this issue; rather, she arrived at a point in her life where there was no way she could get around her responsibility to take leadership. Leadership, she feels, requires integrity and perseverance: "If you believe in something you continue on with it, no matter what the obstacles. In hindsight, huge obstacles are smaller. Like a hill, once you are up it or around it, it wasn't so bad." The rewards of our leaders' integrity and perseverance are shared by all of us. Sharon recalls an Elder telling her: "Thanks for what you did. It would have been easier sometimes to compromise (and there is a time for that); there are other times when to compromise would be too much. They say thank you, thank you for standing strong."
        These conversations behind me, I reconsidered what I had learned about Native women and leadership. I had learned that we should not be embarrassed to ask what our Nations would look like if we based our decisions on love. Love provides the fundamental motivation for many of the women (and men) who currently provide leadership in our communities. Love implies commitment, understanding, constancy and faith, and enables us to look beyond our immediate frustrations when we engage with people and communities. The confident vision of love gives us the momentum to get past things that might defeat us, to take risks and to move gracefully and powerfully into our future. I return to the words with which my grandmother described her friend: "She was a spiritual woman. She lived that life of respect. She loved people." Now that's leadership.

Alex Wilson, Swampy Cree from the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, is currently living and working in Winnipeg, Manitoba.