Harvard group gives FNGA thumbs down

BY KEN YOUNG
AFN VICE-CHIEF MANITOBA REGION

In the spring of 2002, the Office of the British Columbia Regional Vice-Chief of the
AFN asked the principals of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development to analyze the First Nations Governance Act to identify its strengths and weaknesses. The report is important, because the author of the Governance Act, Minister Robert Nault, claims that his approach is based on the Harvard Project findings.

The Harvard Project has identified three factors essential for sustainable economic development:

• practical sovereignty, meaning genuine decision-making power over internal affairs, governance, resources, institutions, development strategies;

• capable governing institutions which exercise power effectively, responsibly, and reliably;

• cultural match: formal institutions of government match indigenous conceptions of how authority should be organized and exercised.

Also important are

• strategic thinking, moving away from crisis management and opportunistic quick-fix responses to development dilemmas and toward long-term decision making that incorporates community priorities, concerns, circumstances, and assets.

• leadership, persons who are willing to break with the status quo and can articulate a new vision of the nation's futures, and can both understand and encourage the foundational changes that such visions require.

Where these five elements are not in place, assets are more often squandered, failing to deliver sustainable economic performance or lasting improvements in community welfare. Putting these elements in place and mobilizing them are "nation building".

So, based on this criteria, how did the Nault Governance Act fare? The verdict of the Harvard Project authors:

• "Despite the stated concern with self-government and with helping First nations develop effective tools of self-governance, what is most striking to us is the degree to which matters of governance in the FNGA are not left to First Nations' discretion.

• "The provisions of the FNGA makes us question the extent of the federal government's commitment to indigenous self-governance.

• "We are also concerned by the time-frames set by this legislation. In effect, it asks a First Nation to produce a government in two years-a complex task for any society and one which involves not only the design of institutions but internal dialogue and the resolution of internal disputes. They have to do all this with limited human capital and other resources.

• "We believe the Canadian government is in danger of following a common but flawed approach to governmental decentralization: develop a template for government, and then impose it on local communities. This process ignores diversity across local communities, ignores the fact that communities are more likely to support institutions they help create, and often leads to governments local communities do not want and do not support.

• "The Canadian Government appears... to have largely ignored Harvard Project findings on the need for indigenous communities to have real jurisdictional power... Good governance without sovereign power is about as likely to be effective in improving the welfare of First Nations as sovereign powers are without good governance. Our research indicates that the two have to go together.

• "The FNGA pays a great deal of attention to issues of accountability. However, decision-making and accountability are linked. If the federal government wants to hold indigenous nations accountable for what happens, then it has to vest those nations with genuine decision-making power. If, on the other hand, the federal government wants to retain decision-making in its own hands, then it must bear primary responsibility for outcomes.

• "We are concerned that the FNGA pays insufficient attention to diversity among First Nations. . . The legitimacy of government institutions with their own peoples depends significantly on the fit between those institutions and indigenous political culture. But neither cultural match nor legitimacy receives significant attention in the FNGA.

• "The legislation appears to believe that significant portions of First Nation Government 1) should be organized according to a single template, applied indiscriminately to all First Nations, and 2) that the federal government knows what that model is... This is not a successful recipe either for good governance or for effectively responding to the 'particular needs and aspirations' of diverse indigenous peoples.

• "We have three general reasons to doubt that the FNGA will achieve its stasted objectives:

• "Over the last five years or so, the Canadian government has shown considerable interest in the research results of the Harvard Project.1 Our impression, however, is that they have responded more to our findings on good governance than to our findings on practical sovereignty. The FNGA appears to confirm this...

• "Nor does the legislation anywhere acknowledge that there might be any substantial differences in political culture among First Nations, or between mainstream Canadian political culture and at least some First Nations' governmental preferences.

The founders of the Harvard Project summed it up: "We are as little uncertain what the Canadian government's objective really is. Does it wish simply to improve administrative and electoral practices among First Nations? Or does it wish to assist those nations in moving out of dependency and poverty and creating viable, sustainable economies?

"If the objective is the latter, then we believe two things are necessary:

• First, there has to be a transfer of substantial constitutional authority and decision-making power to First Nations.

• Second, the government will have to invest in First Nations own efforts to build capable governing institutions. This would mean providing First Nations with assistance in nation-building, with useful (and diverse) models as sources of inspiration and ideas, and with the freedom... to decide for themselves how to govern.

"Effective governance is not simply a matter of establishing good government practices. It is a matter also of enlisting citizens as willing, active participants in the effort to build societies that work, empowering them to build those societies in their own ways, and making them feel that the future, to a significant degree, is in their hands.

Who Is "The Harvard Project"?

Dr. Stephen Cornell is Professor of Sociology and Public Administration and Policy and Director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona. He is co-director of the Harvard Project.

Dr. Miriam Jorgenson is associate director for research of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy at the University of Arizona and research director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at Harvard University.

Dr. Joseph P. Kalt is Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is co-director of the Harvard Project.

Dr. Manley Begay, co-director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at Harvard University.

Standing committee on Aboriginal affairs

The Harvard Project principals will appear before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs in early February, 2003, by teleconference.
1 Dr. Cornell appeared before the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, House of Commons, Ottawa, on June 6, 2000.