By ROBERT JUMPER
Tutiyi (Snowbird) and Clyde, N.C.
I have watched some of the confirmation hearings, and there is a bit of a troubling trend starting to appear…again. For many years, confirmation hearings were not a thing on the Qualla Boundary. Appointments came via resolution without looping in the Legislative Branch to the point of dedicating what is basically a work session to an appointment. What is a little bit of a head-scratcher is that the Dinilawigi (Tribal Council) does have the power to interrogate and investigate these candidates without a formal confirmation hearing. We see it is routinely done with other items on the agenda when they “move to the table for a work session”. A confirmation hearing is essentially just a work session because the actual vote on the nominee doesn’t take place until the resolution to do so is on the floor during a session.
During this confirmation session, it was noted that there was an inequity in the standards for personnel versus appointees. Part of the discussion was about allowing community members to be aware of and participate in the selection process. This was during a session specifically to confirm nominees for appointments to the hospital board.
I have received criticism in the past for saying that we, as a tribe, should do hiring differently. I am a 100 percent proponent of Indian preference in hiring for our tribe. I am also 100 percent against the term “minimally qualified applicant” in all its forms. Our tribe has likely been set back decades because of this language in our personnel policy and in our law. The practice forces the tribe to hire someone who minimally meets the requirements of a position rather than the best-qualified person to serve our people.
For example, if you were on trial for murder, and the cost of losing that case might be your life, would you seek the representation of a lawyer who was minimally qualified to try murder cases, or would you try to find the best educated, experienced person available? And in that time, when you know the stakes are your freedom and possibly your life, would you be concerned about whether your lawyer was a particular race or nationality? In those circumstances, no honest and sane person is going to put their life in the hands of the less experienced and educated hands.
Speaking of hands, what if it were determined through tests that you needed open-heart surgery? Again, would you look for a person fresh out of med school or a surgeon who has performed several of these surgeries successfully? Would your mentality be, concerning the less qualified doctor, “Well, he is my cousin, and he has to learn sometime”?
Yes, those are dramatic examples, but even in the so-called less important positions, we as a community should care that things are done right instead of who gets to do them. In the entertainment field, there is an old saying that goes, “There are no small parts, only small actors”. The meaning is that every action or service that is needed is a big part for someone who needs it, but that same vision may not be shared by the person who is charged with performing that action or service. That is why it is so important to have a proper standard and proper vetting of candidates for those who apply to serve. By proper, I mean a standard that will provide the most benefit to the community.
I am no better or brighter when it comes to these things than you are. I do not, in most cases, get to sit in on panels, selections, or community boards. I have served on volunteer boards. I feel that, to the best of our ability, we should be of service to our community through service on boards without the incentive of pay. But that is just me, and I know it is not the reality of community service for most in the new world of our post-adult gaming in our tribal community. To land the expertise we want for these boards, we are in a time when pay is sometimes the only way you can get it. In some cases, we won’t even volunteer for community yard or river cleanups without the promise of pay (which defies the definition of volunteer, but I digress).
The word “nepotism” was brought up during this confirmation hearing, and I would like to share a thought and hear your feedback on this. One definition of nepotism is, according to Merriam-Webster, “favoritism (as in appointment to a job) based on kinship”.
Let that definition sink in. Because what do we say about the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI)? Don’t we say that we are a family culture and that EBCI is one big happy (sometimes) family? Truly, in a body of people numbering a little less than 17,000, of that, 5,000 to 6,000 who are socially and politically active in our community, how realistic is it to think that decision makers and panel participants who make decisions on board service won’t in some way have some intimate understanding or relationship with a nominee? During my first visit to a Dinilawigi session to be introduced as a media coordinator for the tribe back in 2002, the first question from the representatives wasn’t “What is your experience or education for this position?” The first question was “Who is your kin and what is your community?”
The irony of asserting nepotism, particularly in this case, was that the candidate in question was identified as a very well-qualified candidate. To the person who got up and spoke, or the Dinilawigi members around the table, each said that this candidate appeared to be well qualified to serve. The problem seemed to be that this candidate was kin to someone in power. In this case, it wasn’t the qualifications of the candidate but the political nature of kinship that was the focus. All precautions in the selection process seem to have been followed, even to the extreme of a leader removing himself from the process to give a fair hearing to the candidate, yet what typically takes Dinilawigi a few minutes to do in a confirmation hearing turned into an approximately 90-minute interview (excluding the 45 minutes devoted to two other nominees who were reappointments). So, when we question or challenge a nominee not for their qualifications, but for who their kin are, would that be reverse nepotism or anti-nepotism? The mind boggles.
Surely the discussion of how we make appointments, and, for that matter, hire personnel, needs to be had. The way we do things on the Boundary has been ingrained in us for longer than I have been a part of the system. In the short time that I have been privileged to serve the community, I have seen things done that challenge the boundaries of policy and law, both for the good of many and sometimes for the good of the few or the one. To get to ethical, equitable fairness in appointments and in hiring, the government will have to make some tough choices. Because in politics, doing the right thing can come with a much higher cost than doing the wrong thing. It is truly a condemned-if-you-do-or-if-you-don’t scenario, primarily because most of us are kinfolk and getting an impartial assessment or perception thereof is next to impossible.
I’ll leave you with something that at first will seem a little high-toned, but it’s really just thoughtful and logical. It comes from Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote.
He says, “When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where the madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender to dreams-this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness-and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”
