Tribal Leaders Institute

A service of Spirit Lake Consulting, Inc.

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The Tribal Leaders Institute (TLI) has two goals:

1. Provide character education that will decrease funds lost by tribal programs through ethical violations, and
2. Galvanize tribal members to demand ethical behavior from their leaders and themselves. What makes SLC’s ethics workshops unique? Our training is based on traditional Native American values of honesty, courage, perseverance, and generosity. We focus not on theory but on leading by example.

"Among the Dakotas lying and stealing from other tribal members was a capital offense. A person who was capable of lying was believed to be capable of committing other cowardly crimes against the tribe and was put to death to prevent the evil from doing more harm. If a person stole from another tribal member he was forever after called Wamanon (thief) and this distinction followed him for the rest of his life. " - Charles Eastman, Dakota 1858 – 1939

1. Introduction to Ethical Issues on Indian Reservations
This “introductory” course gives an overview of ethical issues on Indian Reservations today.

2. Courageous and Ethical Managers Managers need four basic functions of management: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling but even more they need four traditional values of courage, honesty, perseverance and generosity to guide them.

3. Courageous and Ethical Governing Boards Encourage governing board members to make courageous and ethical decisions.

4. Becoming a Responsible Worker How values of courage, honesty, perseverance and generosity will help you become a valuable employee.

5. Ethical Decision-making for Tribal LeadersCourageous, ethical and responsible government.

Dr Longie’s Most Recent Entries

Guest Author Stuart Rieke talked about arrogance and inter-racial marriage

I spent some time over New Years with a man named Dr. Erich Longie, a Dakota man from the Spirit Lake Reservation in North Dakota.  Erich is a tall man of basketball-player proportions, about 6 foot 2, (actually I'm...

Spirit Lake Special General Assembly

From what I gather, there are enough of us Spirit Lake Tribal Members who want the Woodlake tribal council representative to step down due to his having been convicted of a sexual assault (misdemeanor).  As a result, a Special...

The Real Thanksgiving

Quoted from: The Hidden History of MassachusettsMuch of America's understanding of the early relationship between the Indian and the European is conveyed through the story of Thanksgiving. Proclaimed a holiday in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln, this fairy tale of a...

Tanyan wowunkdakapi (Dakota for good conversation) is our free, on-line discussion forum. Join tribal members from around the country to discuss:

• Reservation Ethics Reservation Ethics – discuss contemporary reservation ethics; the good, the bad, and the ugly.
• Ethics in the News Ethics in the News – Comment on and/or post links to news articles
• Ethics in History Ethics in History – Post examples of our ancestors highly ethical behavior and comment on them.
• Joe The Tribal Worker and Susie Sainte. Have your own Joe or Susie story? Share it here.

Dr. De Mars’ recent entries:

On-the-job training at Spirit Lake

Image via WikipediaOkay, admit it, as a new employee, those first few weeks or months on a new job, everyone is pretty useless. Find savings in the budget, heck, you can't even find the room where the coffee pot is!Then,...

Everything is someone else's problem

Image via Wikipedia"How many of you believe the government doesn't do enough to address environmental issues - air pollution, water pollution, saving the rain forests?"Even in 1978, every student in my college economics class raised a hand."How many of you...

Crime and no punishment?

The last couple of days, I've been blogging about the non-judgmental nature of the responses we have gotten in many of the ethics tests and surveys. As I was reading over our material for the meeting with the North...

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