Why take an Ethics Course?

In this course you will learn about Native American traditions of ethics, research on ethical leadership, problems identified in Indian country, the effects of not-so-innocent bystanders, outstanding examples of both unethical and ethical behavior. With your classmates, you will identify and, we hope, begin to implement solutions to the ethical dilemmas threatening our reservations.

We hope you did not enroll in this course so you can go out and start accusing different tribal members of ethical violations. Instead, we hope you enrolled in this course to learn what you have to do to conduct yourself in an ethical manner. Only when you apply ethical standards of behavior yourself will you have the moral authority to speak up against unethical pratices in others.

How could we make such an unappreciative statement? After all, you are the one taking this course. That in itself should speak for your concern for ethics. Funny, but we find every time there is a discussion, each person thinks he is the most ethical person in the room.

In traditional Native American education, we did not have textbooks and pop quizzes. The elders told stories, and they asked the younger people what lessons they drew from those stories. Throughout this course, we tell many stories and we ask you to give us your ideas on lessons that could be learned.

As Indians, we are taught never to forget our history, our culture, so let's begin with Ethics in Native American history.