COMING SOON FROM THE NATIVE

NATIONS INSTITUTE...

This month the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy (NNI) at the University of Arizona will be rolling out a Governance Analysis for Native Nations (GANN), an analytical tool designed to help Native nations assess their own governing structures and capacities.

Largely self-administered with modest facilitation, the GANN takes participants--individually or in groups--through a series of questions about a nation's governing institutions, helping the nation identify areas that need attention as it strengthens its system of governance.

Supported by the Archibald Bush Foundation and the Udall Foundation, the GANN has been in the works over the last year, building on more than two decades of research on Indigenous governance carried out by NNI and the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. NNI piloted the new tool this past autumn with the Mescalero Apache Tribe in New Mexico and with several nations in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota--the three-state region served by the Archibald Bush Foundation. Over the winter, NNI revised the tool based on feedback from these nations. Several tribes in the Bush Foundation region will be using the final version of the GANN this month as part of an ongoing effort to enhance the governmental foundations of tribal self-determination.

The GANN will be available on the NNI website soon at www.nni.arizona.edu.