Feature
Every year, “Native Americans in the 21st Century: Nation Building I” brings students from around the world to learn where and when tribal sovereignty leads to improved economic, social, and cultural outcomes for Indigenous nations.
It’s the second week in January, a cold and quiet time in Cambridge, and nearly a hundred Harvard graduate students have ended their winter break early to return to campus for a course on Native American governance and nation building.
“Not all my stories are true,” teases course instructor Joe Kalt, Ford Foundation Professor (Emeritus) of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School, to the classroom full of students and winter coats. “But this one, this one, is true,” he adds, smiling, before launching into one of his many experiences with the tribal leaders and community members he’s worked with over the years.
After decades of research and teaching aimed at helping Indigenous communities around the world strengthen their internal governance structures and develop successful social and economic development strategies, it’s no surprise that Kalt has an abundance of stories to share with the much-anticipated class held each January. The joint Kennedy School and Harvard Graduate School of Education course, “Native Americans in the 21st Century: Nation Building I” is as full of stories and anecdotes from Kalt’s own experiences in Indian Country as it is with stories from the more than twenty leaders from Indigenous communities around the world that Kalt and his co-teacher Angela Riley (Citizen Potawatomi Nation), Professor of Law and American Indian Studies at the University of California Los Angeles, regularly invite to engage with the class in person.
Lessons from tribal leaders and Indigenous voices have been core to the course from its very inception. A fact that Riley, a Harvard Law School graduate, can attest to as she was a student the first time the course was taught by Kalt in 1998. “It was uncharted territory for all of us,” she recalls. “It felt like we were on a grand journey together.”
Though Nation Building was first launched 25 years ago, much of the intellectual underpinnings of the course were developed years prior through research led by Kalt and his longtime academic collaborator Stephen Cornell. Over the ensuing decades, Kalt and Cornell have worked to answer the question: Why do some tribes succeed in strengthening their economies, cultures, and governance where others fail?
Time and time again, Kalt and Cornell saw in their work that Native nations were achieving better outcomes not through federal intervention or increased financial assistance, but through improved self-governance. Tribes that were allowed to make their own decisions and effectively exercise their sovereignty were performing better than their peers across a broad spectrum of economic and social indicators.
Much of this research into successful tribal self-governance was conducted over the last thirty-five years by the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development (HPAIED), which Kalt still leads today. Now housed at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, HPAIED is a leader in helping Indigenous communities prosper and grow through self-determination. The HPAIED team has been at the fore of documenting success stories and helping to share how tribal sovereignty is driving economic, social, and cultural growth.
“The course has changed a great deal over the last twenty-five years,” says Kalt. Since Nation Building was first offered, Native economies have grown at a remarkable rate. “While recognizing that decades and centuries of disempowerment have left hard-to-reverse deficits, we now show the students data on rates of economic development within tribal nations that have been far outpacing the U.S. as a whole.”
Indian Country has also demonstrated firsthand the vital role that culture can play in economic development according to Kalt: “The institutions which are most likely to enable the people to succeed in their collective nation-building efforts are self-designed and self-run institutions which embody that people’s shared cultural norms regarding the proper and improper use of power and authority.”
According to Kalt, this principle explains why the federal policy of tribal self-determination through self-government is “the only approach that has ever worked to reverse the decades, and even centuries, of disempowerment and deprivation that Native people have endured.”
The lesson of “cultural match”—a term coined by Kalt to describe how institutions that result in good governance match community values and traditions—has proven to be valuable for Indigenous students and non-Native students alike. “Every year, multiple students tell us that, ‘this needs to be a required course for Harvard graduate students,’” says Kalt.
“I really believe that with the short amount of time that we have [as graduate students], this course needs to be a part of our core curriculum,” says Joy Lacanienta MC/MPA 2023, a participant in this year’s course. “This class connects you with the Indigenous community. The professors and speakers in this course shared their expertise, lived experiences, and have so much passion about the issues that are going on in their community because they are invested in it themselves.”
The course’s interdisciplinary approach and exceptional speakers attract students from across Harvard’s campus, and as a result, the course’s impact extends far beyond Cambridge. “I hear from alums all the time that this course was eye-opening, life-changing, and career-defining,” says Riley. “Leaders across Indian Country have taken this course and incorporated its central principles into their work with and for Indian tribes.”
Over a thousand former Nation building students are now spread across every corner of the globe – a fact that can make it a challenge for even Kalt to keep track of their success. “Stories that stand out include: the now-member of parliament of a nation in Africa who helped solve a constitutional crisis in his own country by drawing on lessons from the course; the US military officer who carried lessons in self-determined nation-rebuilding to multiple post-conflict regions of the Middle East; the Canadian and Australian Indigenous leaders who have gone on to replicate in their own countries the Harvard Project’s Honoring Nations program of recognition for excellence in Indigenous self-governance; the tribal chair who now has his tribe at the table as a powerful force in the negotiations over the future of the Colorado River; and the former child services professional who took the course and then went onto become chair of her tribal nation and, eventually, White House advisor on Indian Affairs.”
Through the course, students can see how their specific backgrounds, interests, and expertise can play a role in creating stronger nations, communities, and organizations. And that, according to Kalt, is the reason course alumni regularly go on to make such an impact.
And he believes that anyone who takes the course is primed to make that impact. “Regardless of our backgrounds, ethnicities, or nationalities, we face a common set of challenges in building and strengthening our communities and nations,” says Kalt. “We want communities and nations in which the people can and want to live, work, raise their families, belong, and care for each other.”
Media Release
The Harvard Kennedy School’s Project on Indigenous Governance and Development is pleased to announce Chief Sophie Pierre as its inaugural Senior Fellow in Indigenous Governance and Development for Spring 2025.
Policy Brief
This policy brief analyzes the likely effects of newly Proposed Rules by the U.S. Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service. These Rules would (1) expand the governmental authority of federally recognized American Indian nations to design programs for the general welfare of their citizens, and (2) clarify the federal tax status of tribal government-owned enterprises. The study finds that adoption of the Proposed Rules would greatly strengthen the capacities of tribal governments, to the benefit of tribes and the United States as a whole.
Feature
From a fictional thriller to a leading report on Native children, the HKS Project on Indigenous Governance and Development shares recommendations for must-reads this summer.
Policy Brief
This policy brief analyzes the likely effects of newly Proposed Rules by the U.S. Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service. These Rules would (1) expand the governmental authority of federally recognized American Indian nations to design programs for the general welfare of their citizens, and (2) clarify the federal tax status of tribal government-owned enterprises. The study finds that adoption of the Proposed Rules would greatly strengthen the capacities of tribal governments, to the benefit of tribes and the United States as a whole.
Feature
From a fictional thriller to a leading report on Native children, the HKS Project on Indigenous Governance and Development shares recommendations for must-reads this summer.
Feature
Back-to-school recommended reads from the Harvard Project on Indigenous Governance and Development include books, articles, and podcasts that highlight Indigenous governance narratives.
