TITLE:
Recognizing Typology in Historical Native American Leadership: Implications for Contemporary Praxes
AUTHORS:
Robb Elton, Amy Moore
KEYWORDS:
Indigenous Leadership, Decision-Making, Native American Leadership, Native Studies, Indigenous History
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Leadership,
Vol.10 No.4,
November
11,
2021
ABSTRACT: The
various forms of damage, to include genocide that historic colonialism has
instituted upon Native American people, are no longer a secret. Native Americans have suffered through many negative
socio-psychological effects through this process. Despite their historical maltreatment,
Native Americans have proven resilient. The authors hypothesized that specific
traits have been prominent in the histories of Native American leaders although
they mostly came from distinct tribal systems. What does this type of
leadership look like? To engage the hypothesis, we used Boolean operator search functions which
helped refine keywords in searches. We then used computer-aided random selection for data with which to analyze leadership
behavior of four Indigenous leaders. These leaders (n = 50) were drawn from a historic
pool of people, from four separate databases. Through surveying the literature, it became necessary to conduct extensive case studies of select leaders.
We detailed various leadership traits exhibited by a randomly selected Native
American population (5-percent) and were able to synthesize and classify the
results in a word cloud as either innate or cognate characteristics. While
these leaders were separated by time, tribe, and vast geographical distance—in
an area that became the United States—their traits, when integrated, revealed a
thematic framework of Native American leadership—a typology that could inform
and guide leaders (and managers) in various contemporary praxes.