Living Indigenous Leadership: Native Narratives on Building Strong Communities ed. by Carolyn Kenny and Tina Ngaroimata Fraser (review)

Carolyn Kenny and Tina Ngaroimata Fraser have assembled a collection of essays by Indigenous scholars addressing and remedying a critical gap in Indigenous and leadership studies from an Indigenous perspective. According to the authors, Indigenous leadership is embodied and cultivated by Indigenous core values and traditional teaching practices rooted in a series of elements that include the ability to navigate between Indigenous and non-Indigenous worlds, holistic practice, spiritual leadership through the guidance of family and elders, the emphasis on interconnectedness, an understanding of leadership as aesthetic engagement, narrative, and leadership as fluid, liberating, relational, and collaborative. The authors argue that for Indigenous leaders to be effective, they must assume their leadership journeys through traditional pathways of leaders in Indigenous communities while making those journeys relevant according to the present needs of the communities. The book features fourteen essays by Indigenous women scholars from Canada and the United States whose work intersects with leadership training or education in a variety of institutional, community, and governance settings.

Several essays examine the role of elders, and in particular of the grandmothers, in fostering Indigenous leadership. In part 1, entitled “Leadership, Native Style,” for example, Alannah Young Leon argues in her essay, “Elders’ Teachings on Leadership,” that Indigenous leadership is achieved through the empowerment of people vis-à-vis their discovery of “local, living genealogies, oral histories, and reflexive praxis.” She also identifies four pedagogical components necessary for Indigenous leadership programs: land interaction, cultural practices, community service, and language and genealogy. In Leon’s view, these components are accessed through mentorship and relationships cultivated with elders since they maintain these core values of Indigenous society. Similarly, Yvonne G. MacLeod in “Learning to Lead Kokum Style” studies eight intergenerational First Nations women in order to trace a process of leadership development through reflection, experience, and self-direction, emphasizing that key leadership roles are retained specifically by women. Here, too, MacLeod emphasizes the prominence of community, elders, history, genealogy, language, storytelling, and a holistic spiritual foundation for the cultivation of leadership skills. MacLeod also compares the non-Indigenous system of leadership training to the Indigenous system, citing the disastrous effects of residential schools, separation from community, and linear thinking imposed by that experience.

In part 2, “Collaboration Is the Key,” authors emphasize Indigenous world views that privilege interconnectedness and community by way of demonstrating the centrality of collaboration in leadership training. Stelómethet Ethel B. Gardiner in “The Four R’s of Leadership in Indigenous Language Revitalization” locates her argument in the premise of the interconnectedness of “language, land, identity, culture, and spirit.” She defines the four R’s as respect, relevance, responsibility, and reciprocity. To achieve effectual language revitalization, these key leadership qualities need to be healthy, and all imply interconnectedness through the community and collaboration among members to achieve revitalization. Like many other contributors, Gardiner emphasizes that successful leadership in Indigenous communities, specifically focused on language revitalization, is grassroots in origin.

In part 3, “Healing and Perseverance,” authors imagine moving beyond current struggles by addressing continuing practices of colonization. For instance, Michelle Jacob in “We Want a Lifelong Commitment, Not Just Sweet Words” examines the continuing, ongoing, and detrimental effects of microaggressions experienced by Native people that “perpetuate historical trauma,” and the way in which Native leadership styles rooted in core Indigenous values of community, cultural honour, and decolonization offer healing from historical and ongoing experiences of cultural harm. She achieves this through a study of one college campus in California. Likewise, in the essay “Leaders Walking Backwards: Male Ex-Gang Members’ Perspectives and Experiences,” Alanaise Goodwill specifically examines cultural harm through the interconnectedness of gang violence and colonial experience in First Nations communities. Goodwill goes on to explore ways in which potentially detrimental qualities that lead to gang affiliation can be nurtured for positive outcomes and strong community leadership.

Kenny and Fraser’s book is a strong, inspiring example of...