This is NOT a REAL Partnership but a project I completed to better understand the complexities of weaving partnerships between sovereign indigenous communities, Native Hawaiians, Inuit and Native Alaskans, and all Tribal nations with government and private institutions. Some of it is mocked up, some of it includes organizations and individuals who have inspired parts, and other pieces come from a lot of research (but likely not nearly enough) of the ‘barriers’. I highlight the word barriers because, throughout private industry, organizations go a long way to bridging the cultural differences and needs of partners. When American businesses seek to partner with foreign industry leaders, the profitable companies research the nuances of culture before entering conversations. It is the stuff of 1980’s comedies like Goldie Hawn’s Protocol and Michael Keaton’s Gung-Ho, which as an immigrant and a woman, have a whole host of other issues, but shows the length we go to make the deal. But why not with Native American and Tribal Communities? Why can’t we overcome and reach through in the spirit of positive coactions for these communities?

The complexities of partnerships in this realm comes down to barriers of injustice, inequity, and disrespect piled high from history. Modern failures continue to illustrate the continued blindness of systems. The rules, regulations, and ideologies inside them embedded in cultures of racism and ethnocentricity, like rusting nuts and bolts in the machine.

As an immigrant, my father recognized these types of power dynamics in American partnerships. In no way was he coming to a table with a white, native-born person at the same level. As a man with a heavy, vaguely Middle Eastern accent it was automatically assumed that he was less intelligent. The fact that he spoke 6 languages, wrote and read in most of them, and continuously spent his life learning meant nothing in this American caste system (which has been widely written about). I had the opportunity of sitting on his lap, sitting under the table, and eventually sitting next to him as he negotiated everything from cases of tomatoes to the buying and selling of restaurants. I got to hear the voice inflections of people who thought they could hide their lack of respect for my father’s identity just because he was born somewhere else with somewhere else’s morals, ethics and customs. I heard what partnerships sound like from people who did not see value (nor had the values) my father did.

But, as a refugee, my dad also knew that partnerships build and rebuild communities. Cross-community partnerships can help everyone thrive. That’s why our dinner table was an example of the local United Nations with all kinds of cultures represented and big ideas being broken like bread over ethnic potluck meals (another gift of our indigenous family). My father’s Egyptiote community in Egypt and as refugees around the world have always been one of being a minority culture inside other dominant cultures. There is no land for us, there is only what we carry. For my people that is the width and breadth of thousands of years of accumulated wisdom. That’s the lens I was taught to view the world through and in some small way, that’s where I find some kind of social and emotional value.

When I come to this partnership project, I come to it through the eyes of that child at the big table, with all the child-like wonder of listening to people talk about how they do things where they are from; sometimes having to glean it through another language. I watched my dad artfully tell stories in clever ways to tease out responses from others, both foreign and strange, that highlighted what they found most precious, most annoying, odd, fanciful, but also how they lived their lives, who they loved, and why that mattered. Culture, language, and all that wisdom has value at my partnership table, and I tried to pull this project out of the typical Western framework and elevate culture in the hierarchical framework.

At the end of the day, this project was a lot. I learned and relearned the ethics of research and partnerships with indigenous groups. I gained new knowledge about the frameworks of indigenous research itself and what does the hierarchical values of STEM research looks like through the filter of these complicated and diverse cultures. I found inspiration in the narratives of indigenous folks working in technology and what do their amazing projects look like. I also took a deep dive into some indigenous philosophy on conflict resolutions for business and how that could be integrated in project leadership, especially using Team Leadership approaches.

This project made me consider my own community and other small ethnic groups, including the thousands of indigenous peoples around the world. I worked the partnership looking up and now, I think that building a partnership looking horizontally may be more productive. I believe building a manual could help these small, underrepresented groups partner with each other, especially one that was built on a foundation that placed culture higher in the value hierarchy. The fact of the matter is that unless people unite, we leave a major part of our collective strengths off the table. We can all wait around for somebody from the outside, bigger, and more influential group to come help us thrive, or we can partner together and, in the process, influence the status quo.

I think that’s why we Danias often hammer out partnerships over food, because even if it all goes badly and no deal is reached, at least we ate good. In the end, the failure of horizontal partnerships still gets us all at the table, talking. Conversation is the only process that has worked for all us humans when confronting challenges, no matter where we’re from. I guess it’s true what they say around Tulane School of Social Work, we are #bettertogether.

Below is my fake partnership website I created to hold some of the work I collected, some that I made, and some that I wanted to use to highlight the need, like Healthy People 2030. The Thrive Commercial was created attempting to highlight the voices of Native American tribes as the sun crossed the continent, beginning with our own local Wampanoag. The document at the bottom shows the ‘legal’ partnership and mocks out 1 year’s worth of progress through celebratory emails. Thanks to Microsoft, IHS, and Professor Bradley Dean for helping me breathe life into my idea.

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Our Commercial from Thrive and Microsoft

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The Tulane Disaster Resiliency Leadership Student Project that Inspired This Website