A Different Approach to Tribal Youth Education

The Ina’am Project has identified 10-15 accomplished and active organizers throughout Arizona who are currently dedicated to critical and often urgent campaigns in their indigenous, refugee and immigrant communities. Examples include an Apache organizer training his community on how to effectively advocate to legislators and pass good laws; and Oodham organizer and her collective who are fighting back the construction of the illegal border wall through their reservation; several young Muslim Arizonans who currently volunteer for free to help protect the rights of their community; recent Sudanese and Somali immigrants who are trying to teach their communities about how to engage in their new democracy; and many Arab community leaders intent on sharing their culture with their neighbors and working together to establish a stronger, more united voice civically. The Ina’am Project will launch officially in January 2020, after a brief delay in Fall of 2019 in implementing in order to better assess and tailor the program for participants, as well as wonderfully take time to plan for better, expanded programming after generous match donations increased the budget and thus timeline for this project.

Ina’am Project Initial overview

The Ina’am Project would be a first-time non-partisan training program for indigenous and refugee organizers in Arizona focused on developing their legislative and electoral ability in the run-up to the 2020 elections. The program will include training and mentorship for running successful candidates and issue campaigns on every level, as well as topics identified and prioritized by participants. Participants will hone pre-existing and essential organizing skills while simultaneously learning how to share them with others, thus building ability, confidence, and networks. This train-the-trainer program will focus on sharpening skills, talents, and interests to support participants’ own organizing goals and exponentially increase the political engagement and effectiveness of their communities.

The immediate goal of the Ina’am Project is to identify, recruit, train, support and mentor potential and/or current nonprofit and campaign staff, as well as possible candidates for office, from the indigenous and refugee communities of Arizona in preparation for 2020. If the Ina’am project proves successful, the eventual goal is the establishment of the Ina’am Foundation, a home-grown think tank and speaker’s bureau of indigenous and refugee activist experts with local, national and international reach.

Why

On the heels of largely successful midterm elections in 2018 with record-smashing levels of engagement and voter participation, it is apparent that the progressive community of Arizona is full of talented organizers at many levels with almost limitless potential, hungry to excel and succeed in their shared goals. Indigenous and refugee populations across the Southwest and Midwest are building their collective power and using it to win elected office and issue campaigns, a trend that promises to continue into 2020 as critical issues force them to urgently organize effectively. Rightly so, many outside organizations are eager to invest in strengthening the progressive community in Arizona as it prepares to yet again take on electoral and legislative fights on all levels that have regional, national and international consequences.

However, outside engagement has historically been intermittent and unreliable. Organizers and stakeholders in Arizona, often one and the same, have seen crucial campaigns lost because of the sudden departure of such actors and resources, sometimes with brutal consequences for themselves and their communities. Meanwhile, an estimated 80-90% of the funds that came into Arizona to support election work here in 2018 went directly to out-of-state consultants, who take with them that investment when they leave. Given this incessant pattern, it’s no surprise that Arizona today has almost no progressive infrastructure with which to effectively capture the majority of outside investment. As proven best actors whose campaigns have consequences for everyone, local dedicated organizers deserve this investment finally to flow more directly to them and stay within their local economy.

With Arizona on the precipice of becoming a majority-minority state, once seemingly disparate groups are connecting their issues and struggle to one another. Indigenous and refugee people are natural allies given the challenges they face. In fact, these labels are often interchangeable depending upon which side of a border someone happens to be on at the time. For instance, many recent migrants across the US/Mexico border were, up until making the trek north, living in their indigenous communities and now are refugees in the US. As another example, the Tohono O’odham reservation straddles the US/Mexico border, splitting their community and making them each refugee in effect stranded on their own indigenous homeland. Additionally, generations of refugees from places such as Somalia and Palestine are finding common cause with Natives in Arizona as they all address issues such as racism, representation, militarism, and land/water resources. 

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