NNI 2026 Remaking Tribal Constitutions Seminar Sets Organizational Attendance Record
The two-day Native Nation Building event welcomed 65 Tribal leaders from 21 Native nations.
What does the constitution of a Native nation do?
Over the course of two days in July 2026, Tribal leaders from across Turtle Island (aka North America) gathered at Desert Diamond Casino on the homelands of the Tohono O’odham Nation in southeastern Arizona near Tucson to address this question for their individual nations.
The passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934 marked a shift in federal Indian policy from the stated goal of forced assimilation toward a focus on Tribal self-determination. This provided Native nations with the opportunity to formally adopt constitutions to define their own systems of governance.
“But there are going to be some conditions,” said Native Nations Institute (NNI) Director Dave Beeksma (Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa) to KJZZ Phoenix. “So, what the U.S. government did was they provided these boilerplate templates. In some cases, these were literally fill-in-the-blank constitutions. We the people of — state your tribe — are constituting a constitution to do x, y and z. That created some challenges for us over the next 90 years.”
Those “fill-in-the-blank constitutions” included clauses that limited the authority of Tribal governments, such as the requirement that any changes made to that constitution by a Tribal nation be subject to approval by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Thus, many Native nations have since grappled with the need to revise or, in some cases, draft from scratch new constitutional documents that will serve their nations effectively for the foreseeable future. It is in service of these goals that the NNI holds its Remaking Tribal Constitutions Seminar (RTC) for interested Tribal leaders every two years.
A Record-Setting Year
Though NNI’s RTC events are typically capped at 50 attendees, this year’s seminar saw a spike in demand driven by delegations of multiple representatives from several tribes, including Cedarville Rancheria, the Quechan Tribe of the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation, the Squaxin Island Tribe, White Earth Nation, and the Forest County Potawatomi Community.
In total, 69 individuals, including 65 Tribal leaders representing 21 Native nations from the continental U.S. and Alaska were in attendance, not including University of Arizona faculty, staff, and presenters.
The two-day educational and networking event featured multiple sessions on Native Nation Building delivered by Beeksma and NNI Indigenous Governance and Direct Services Outreach Specialist Kevin Fortuin. Fortuin also led planning and curriculum development efforts for the seminar after serving a supporting role under NNI’s previous executive director Joan Timeche (Hopi) for three years. University of Arizona Regents Professor and Morris K. Udall Professor of Law Rebecca Tsosie provided a primer on Federal Indian Law. Perhaps the highlight of the event, though, was a pair of panels showcasing the firsthand experience of several Tribal leaders who worked in some capacity as part of their nation’s constitutional committees.
Hearing from Those Who Have Been There
The final panel on the second day of the seminar proved especially powerful due to its multigenerational representation from the Pascua Yaqui Tribe’s 1988 and 2026 constitutional committees. One panelist, Maria Mercy Molina Whillock, was involved in helping the Pascua Yaqui Tribe achieve federal recognition in 1978. Whillock, who has a Master of Science degree in speech therapy from the University of Arizona, emphasized the importance of holding true to the values of one’s own Indigenous community when laboring to design a Tribal constitution.
“You can go to a university, you can learn the techniques, the knowledge, the how-to, but you have to maintain your Indian-ness,” said Whillock, “…you still have to back up and say… how is my education, my way of doing things, going to affect my relationship with the Tribe. You can never leave that out. You can never forget who you are.”
Whillock was careful to point out that those in the room that were actively working on their nations’ constitutions were accepting immense responsibility that would impact the wellbeing, culture, and even the citizenship requirements for their people for generations to come. “Think of yourself like a pebble. When you throw yourself into a placid lake, you will create ripples. What you do will affect everybody else,” she said.
Moved by her mentor and predecessor’s words, current Pascua Yaqui Constitutional Committee Chairwoman Elvia Bustamante echoed Whillock’s sentiments and added her own remarks on the gravity of the work taking place at the RTC.
“Constitutional reform is not about changing words on paper,” Bustamante said. “It’s about returning power to the people and strengthening a foundation that will carry generations into a future we cannot yet see.”
NNI’s RTC Seminar will return in 2028 while an Emerging Leaders Seminar for rising and veteran Tribal leaders is scheduled for summer 2027.
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