![]() ![]() In the past, when scholars used essentialism like “AI/AN peoples are more inclined to be ‘X’ than non-Native peoples” as a point of departure, the direction of the ensuing debate has not always been productive. Such approaches fail to engage the complexities of both historical and contemporary AI/AN communities (Valadez, 2010 Sayre, 2000). Exploring the connection of deliberation and tribal discourses is not without liabilities and we are wary of representing deliberation as either wholly consistent with or wholly opposed to AI/AN traditions. Public deliberation has risen to the forefront in governance theory discourses in recent years both domestically (Gastil and Levine, 2005 Nabatchi et al., 2013) and internationally (Carson et al., 2013 Fishkin, 2009 Gastil and Levine, 2005 Souza, 2001), and questions of culture have increasingly been engaged (Abdel-Monem et al., 2010 Cronin and Ostergren, 2007). As Horn-Miller notes on the Haudenosaunee, a term used within the Iroquois to refer to ‘people of the longhouse’, ‘Community Decision Making Process itself is a bridge between old practices and the modern world’ ( 2013, p. ![]() Such an exercise is inevitably fraught with difficulties, since even at the time such accounts were written, AI/AN communities already had centuries of experience with European colonialism, but we suggest that it remains useful as a way of thinking through some of the challenges that can arise when thinking about the uses of deliberation in AI/AN communities. Our goal in this paper is to examine historical accounts of governance and decision-making in AI/AN communities to understand the fit between these systems and contemporary articulations of public deliberation. federal government (Jacobs, 1991) and the centrality of liberty (Johansen, 1982) have been attributed to Indigenous, rather than European sources. The relationship between traditional tribal systems and democracy is of enduring interest, and both the structure of the U.S. Such inquiry is especially indicated when we think about using these methods in the context of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities, where tribal entities regularly balance Indigenous and imposed forms of governance. While many have approached deliberative methods as tools potentially separable from their political and philosophical underpinnings, it is important to acknowledge their rootedness in this broader intellectual context, which shapes the methods in crucial ways. The rise of public deliberation, in both research and politics, inevitably raises questions about the origin and value of deliberative democracy, especially in the presence of competing political orders. We note that deliberative scholars and practitioners should be wary of overgeneralizing about AI/AN tribes. We then explore the potential implications of our findings for public deliberation within and in AI/AN tribes. Social components of deliberation, such as respectful discussion and equal opportunities to participate, were partially or fully present in many accounts of governance practices, but it was less clear whether the analytic components, such as discussion of a range of solutions, were included in some forms of tribal governance. We find variations between these historical tribal contexts in our analysis. We then apply two sets of key criteria for deliberative democracy-from the scholars Robert Dahl and John Gastil-to these accounts and note the ways in which each system is or is not congruent with these frameworks of deliberation. We conduct a close reading of key historical and ethnographic accounts of four historical AI/AN contexts-the Iroquois Confederation under the Great Law of Peace, 19th century accounts of the Ojibwa village, the Santa Clara Pueblo government in pre-19th century, and Yup’ik village life in the early 20th century-and a more contemporary case in the form of the Santa Clara Pueblo’s Constitution from the Indian Reorganization Act period. In this paper, we begin to address this gap by analyzing accounts of AI/AN governance from the perspective of deliberation, and note areas of overlap, synergy, and conflict. However, there has been less attention paid to the potential fit between the ideals of deliberation and the governance and decision making practices of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) peoples. ![]() Scholars and practitioners have also noted the potential for deliberation to give greater influence to historically marginalized populations, such as Indigenous peoples. Public deliberation has risen to the forefront of governance as a technique for increasing participation in policy making.
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