I RESIGN IN PROTEST FROM THE NATIVE AMERICAN VETERAN COUNCIL

Below is the back story to my decision to resign and the contingencies for my return as an active NAVC Council member. Additionally I have provided some insights into my thinking in regards to the healthy practice of Indigenous spirituality and leadership.

As of August 15th, 2025, I was the longest serving member of the NAVC (Native American Veteran Council) at the VA Hospital, American Lake. As a 70 year old Metis Elder I helped to provide healing ceremony for Veterans and their families who found themselves in need or in crisis. In September 2008, I was asked to gather Willows by a Seneca Elder (representing JAVAC), to help establish a new healing Sweatlodge on the American Lake Hospital campus. For over ten years I served in a supporting role with the Seneca Elder and a Blackfeet Ceremonial Elder in charge of maintaining our traditional protocols and practices. In my supporting role I was asked on occasion to pour water (leading the Sweatlodge) and facilitate talking circle ceremonies. Over that ten year period of time, we tended to the needs of well over 3,600 Veterans. The positive outcomes were profound and recognized as a significant contribution to Veteran health by the VA administration at American Lake Hospital.

After the Seneca Elder's move to Mexico and the Blackfeet Elder's decision to resign as Ceremonial Elder a new council was formed and eventually named NAVC (Native American Veteran Council). I continued in my supporting role and was instrumental in nominating both a Male and Female as co-chairs to lead the new council with a gender balanced sensitivity, cooperation and perspective.

Robert's Rules of Order was adopted to help us organizing council meetings protocols and priorities...

"Robert's Rules of Order is a manual of parliamentary procedure used to conduct meetings and make decisions in an organized and fair manner. It provides a framework for deliberation, debate, and voting, ensuring that all members have an opportunity to participate and that decisions are made with a majority vote." - Google search

At first the Robert's system of order seemed positive and fair. In hind sight however, it's use tended to support a ruling Patriarchal mindset that recognizes, prioritizes and supports the dominant cultural model that has historically censored, subdued and extinguished indigenous ways of thinking, participating and contributing. The end result, in practical terms, was that the NAVC council became another example of heavy handed control and over reach and Native American in name only. 

Years before the creation of the NAVC Council and among the many positive teachings that was shared by the Blackfeet Ceremonial Elder (I am paraphrasing here) was the need for every council member to be vigilant with their tendency to think and act in a "white" or Eurocentric way. I understood this to mean that our modern cultural thinking and biases can significantly obscure the nature based and intuitive flow of Indigenous thought that struggles to survive, expressed and in turn become manifest in the world today. I believe he was reminding us to be attentive and challenge the thinking that can subtly but profoundly influence the way each person purposes themselves in ceremony, council participation and decision making.

It's difficult to give specific examples of what I speak but suffice it to say that ceremonial leaders can either be supportive of directive. Both have a role in leadership, but to often I have witnessed leadership that crosses the line into a disturbing interference of the personal and private experience available during ceremony and at times outright dominating control.

I also have come to believe that one needs guard against the trending use of rehursed ridgid practices and "traditional" language. I believe one can discover much, much more through the use of language that is spontaneus, authentic and inspired (which is usually spoken in one's first language).