Living In Two Worlds: American Indian Women Managers

In the past few years, scholars have established that racio-ethnic diversity is significant for organizational and management theory and practice (Chemers, Oskamp & Costanzo, 1995; Cox, 1993; Fernandez, 1991; Jackson, 1992; Morrison, 1992, “Special Topic,” 1996). The issues posed by such diversity have tangible consequences for the productivity and management of organizations (Cox, 1993; Ely & Thomas, 1996; Simons, Vázquez, & Harris, 1993; Tsui, Egan & O’Reilly, 1992). Nevertheless, much of the organization and management literature refrains from incorporating these insights and portrays itself as "race-neutral" (Cox & Nkomo, 1990; Nkomo, 1992). The women and management literature is an exception. Feminist management theorists advocate analyzing racio-ethnicity and gender (Fagenson, 1993; Bell, Denton & Nkomo, 1993) in response to criticism that this body of research is biased toward white women (Bell, Denton, & Nkomo, 1993; Betters-Reed & Moore, 1995; Calás & Smircich; 1996). I intend to increase the complexity of our knowledge about the intersections of gender and racio-ethnicity in the organization and management literature with my findings from the first empirical study of American Indian women managers, a group that has been ignored in the literature.

In this article, I explore the complex linkages of gender and racio-ethnicity in an analysis of the work lives of a select group of American Indian women managers in the southwestern U.S. In-depth interviews with twenty women managers reveal a common theme which I refer to as “living in two worlds.” This theme has been developed in the social sciences and cultural studies fields, by different groups of authors. American Indian writers elaborate on this theme in describing the experience of indigenous people surviving within a colonized state or of negotiating the native and Anglo cultures (Coltelli, 1996; Crozier-Hogle & Wilson, 1997; Harjo & Bird, 1997; Pelly, 1991; Witt, 1979). Scholars writing about immigrants and middle class American women’s experiences use the “two worlds” theme to describe the disparate and contradictory aspects of life (Baily & Ramella, 1988; Dinnerstein, 1992; Van Donzel, 1993). Although several of the issues faced by American Indians, and immigrants, and women (who bridge the gap between traditional and contemporary roles) may seem similar on the surface, American Indian experiences are distinct from those of the other groups to whom the “two worlds” theme has been applied. American Indians, to a greater degree than many other groups, were subjected to “cultural assaults” (Caulfield as cited in Zinn & Dill, 1994) by Europeans who sought to “civilize” or exterminate them (Jaimes, 1992).

To contextualize this study, I draw upon the theoretical framework of the women in management literature, the social sciences literature on American Indian women and other women of color, and work by recent American Indian women writers. Developing greater awareness in the organizational studies literature about American Indian people is critical because American Indian cultural values differ significantly from Anglo-American (or white middle class) cultural values that inform most U.S. work organizations. Furthermore, American Indians are one of many racio-ethnic groups that are entering the workforce in greater numbers but in unequal terms (Work, 1984; Zinn & Dill, 1994). Understanding American Indian women managers’ contemporary behavior is important because they are making inroads into managerial positions despite enduring cultural conflicts and “traditional” tribal gender expectations, and they have developed unique techniques for working in different cultural environments. The successful manager of the future may be a transcultural leader (Simons, Vázquez, & Harris, 1993), like the women in this study, who effectively manage cultural interfaces with sensitive behaviors and attitudes, often speaking several languages.

In this article, textual material from the interviews is organized around various articulations of the “two worlds” theme to illustrate cultural aspects of working in the American Indian and Anglo worlds and to describe gender-based interaction patterns within and between tribes. I analyze location factors that place women in two worlds and their various domains and switching techniques that permit women to effectively work and balance their lives. Drawing upon the literature of anthropologists and American Indian women, I contend that contemporary tribal gender relations are the product, in part, of Spanish and Anglo colonists’ assimilation and deculturation practices. Understanding the historical context of such relations is crucial to developing a deeper awareness of the complex interplay of these women’s work lives in organizations. Finally, I draw from the data analysis to augment the women in management theoretical framework that pertains to racio-ethnic diversity and to call for greater attention to historical and cultural patterns that locate contemporary groups of organizational players.

The women in management literature over the past twenty years has legitimized the inclusion of gender into organization and management scholarship as well as established its importance. One assumes in reading this literature, however, that women experience their lives primarily as gendered-beings and that “woman” is a universal analytical category. White women who, for the most part, developed this literature assumed that their findings applied to all women (Bell, Denton & Nkomo, 1993; Betters-Reed & Moore, 1995), and failed to recognize that racio-ethnicity constitutes gendered identities. Furthermore, each nonwhite racio-ethnic group has been historically constructed and socially constituted in distinct ways, and each has a particular relationship to the dominant white (or Anglo) group (Amott & Matthaei, 1996). Group distinctiveness is reflected in culturally-specific understandings of gender and gender differences. And, members of nonwhite groups may be themselves culturally pluralistic, because their lives mediate their own culture and the dominant Anglo culture. In sum, the management literature became gender-conscious but racio-ethnically blind. For example, Powell’s (1993) widely cited book in the field lacks attention to cultural variations among women and minimally acknowledges racio-ethnicity as an important factor in the study of women managers. The women in management literature, like the feminist literature, treats the social construction of race as secondary to gender (Zavella as cited in Zinn & Dill, 1994).

As the nineties unfold, several important trends are emerging. First, studies on women in management worldwide acknowledge the importance of cultural factors in analyzing women’s status and progress toward managerial positions (Adler & Izraeli, 1988; 1994). Cross-national comparisons help to underscore the cultural and attitudinal factors that influence women’s access to power. Second, Fagenson’s (1993) gender-organizational-system approach argues that culture is an integral factor in understanding people and organizations, and that racio-ethnicity and historical processes influencing the position of people in organizations today needs to be addressed (Bell, Denton & Nkomo, 1993). Third, emerging alternative perspectives to the liberal feminist perspective in the social sciences, such as “post-colonial” analysis, may offer relevant and more appropriate insights for issues of racio-ethnicity and gender in contemporary organizations (Calás & Smircich, 1996). Such analyses question the frozen and homogenous categories such as American Indian and third world women (that perpetuate stereotypes), incorporate historical and cultural factors as critical research components, unveil the subtle and overt power relations between the state and marginalized people that affect gender roles, and deconstruct racio-ethnic identities as constructed by Western positive science (Alexander & Mohanty, 1997; Mohanty, 1994). Already, several non-organizational studies’ scholars have employed post-colonial analysis to reconstruct and deepen our understanding of the situation of historical and contemporary American Indian women (Etienne & Leacock, 1980; Guerrero, 1997; Sparks, 1995).

At present, nonwhite managers are constrained by social attitudes and contemporary organizational structures which reflect inequalities in the labor market (Amott & Matthaei, 1996; Fernandez, 1991; Morrison & Von Glinow, 1990). Moreover, women of color have argued that their social identities are as equally (or even more) structured by racio-ethnicity as by gender (Amott & Matthaei, 1996; Bell, 1990; Bell, Denton & Nkomo, 1993; Guerrero, 1997; Jaimes with Halsey, 1992; Zinn & Dill, 1994). To date, empirical studies of nonwhite women managers have focused primarily on black women (Higgenbotham, 1994; Nkomo & Cox, 1989; Sokoloff, 1992). Bell (1990) posits that black professional women are bicultural and compartmentalize their lives to distinguish black and white cultures. Parker & ogilvie (1996), in their review of black women leaders, argue for a culturally distinct model of African-American women executives’ leadership. They believe that black women’s leadership strategies reflect and are shaped by their socialization as black women, and by their unique social location within dominant culture organizations. Moreover, they argue that African American women must negotiate organizational interactions constrained by the effects of centuries-old, stereotypical images that pervade Western society (Parker & ogilvie, 1996).

More attention to nonwhite groups in the organization and management literature is warranted because their presence in both management and in the general workforce is increasing. Each nonwhite group is likely to forge a path towards full equality as different and distinctive as the nonmajority statuses and forms of exclusion each seeks to overcome. Neither European immigrants nor blacks provide useful analogies for the barriers that American Indians, Asians and Hispanics face or will encounter (Harrison & Bennett, 1995). As such it is important to locate the experience of each racio-ethnic group with its own socially and historically specific context (Segura, 1992; Segura & Pierce, 1993).

Nevertheless, there is little literature on Hispanic and Asian women managers although the social and behavioral sciences and women’s studies literature has widely addressed the experiences of these groups in other settings. Likewise, there are no studies of American Indian women in the organization and management literature. Even review articles, such as Morrison and Von Glinow’s (1990), that address minorities and women in management do not acknowledge tribal women. Clearly much work remains to be done. This article is the first on American Indian women managers in the organizational studies literature.

This major part of the article describes, in the following three subsections, the research setting and context of American Indian women in the workforce, the design of the study, and concludes with a profile of the women interviewed.

Contemporary labor force participation by American Indian women more than doubled from 26 percent (of all American Indian women over 16 years ) in 1960 (Ortiz, 1994) to 55 percent in 1990 (Amott & Matthaei, 1996). During the period 1970 - 90, American Indian women made substantive inroads into sales jobs in commodities and finance, and into executive, managerial and administrative jobs (Amott & Matthaei, 1996). The Glass Ceiling Commission (1995) reports that almost three-quarters of American Indian women managers work in government employment (tribal, state, local and federal), and employed American Indians have the highest proportionate representation in the public administration sector followed by the utilities sector. Moreover negative stereotypes of American Indians by CEO’s distort perceptions about the suitability of tribal people for business positions and few American Indian female or male executives are employed in the private sector: American Indians are “invisible at the top management level” in the private sector (Glass Ceiling Commission, 1995, p.86)

By 1990, there were 705,518 employed American Indians ages 16 years and over of whom 11.6 percent held executive, administrative and managerial positions (Bureau of the Census, 1992). American Indian women hold about half of all of the total workforce positions held by American Indians (Glass Ceiling Commission, 1995) and they occupy 50.8 percent of all managerial positions held by American Indians (Bureau of the Census, 1992). The proportion of American Indian women employed in executive, administrative and managerial positions is proportionately greater than white women who hold 41.2 percent of all such positions held by whites (Bureau of the Census, 1992). Some American Indians, including several of the study women, advanced with the help of the federal American Indian preference policy, affecting the Indian Health Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs among others, to promote American Indians to posts previously held by whites.

The educational attainment of American Indians is improving but remains low relative to the general population: Nine percent hold college degrees and 3,277 hold post graduate degrees; it is estimated that half of American Indians who earn MBAs or equivalent degrees are employed with tribes or their ventures (Glass Ceiling Commission, 1995). While American Indian women have made inroads into employment and management, the median income of American Indian women ($7310) is the lowest of the major racio-ethnic groups’ median income, and it is 33 percent of Anglo women’s median income (Amott & Matthaei, 1996). In New Mexico, 46 percent of American Indians are below the poverty level (Department of Health, 1994). Clearly, American Indians as a whole are economically disadvantaged and, by comparison, those American Indian women managers making appropriate salaries are economically advantaged.

In tribal leadership positions, American Indian women have attained some representation. By 1981, women held the top leadership position in about 70 of the 482 federally recognized Indian nations (Amott & Matthaei, 1996). Nationwide, Chiefs such as Wilma Mankiller of the Cherokee Nation have helped other Americans to understand tribal history and tribal women’s roles. Other nationally prominent American Indian women, such as Ada Deer, who recently headed the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and Winona Laduke, who with Ralph Nadar made up the Green Party ticket in the 1996 Presidential election, occupy prominent public service positions.

The study region is an area where tribal lands are prevalent and where tribes have retained their cultures and identities. This region includes the Navajo Nation, the largest American Indian community in the United States with approximately 200,000 people, located in a large territory bordering northern Arizona and northwest New Mexico, and portions of New Mexico where a broad spectrum of tribes live both in their sovereign nations (sometimes referred to as reservations) and in urban areas. In New Mexico, there are 19 Pueblo tribal nations, who form their own governmental coalition, as well as many other tribal nations, for example, the Mescalero Apache, and people from other tribes, such as the Cherokee, and the Comanche who do not live within tribally owned lands. Tribal membership does not require living “on the reservation” as this study will illustrate. To officially belong to a tribe and be eligible for benefits, such as land and voting rights, an individual must have a particular “blood quantum” that is determined by each tribe (Wilson, 1992). The Laguna tribe, for example, requires ¼ “Laguna blood” for enrolled tribal status and parental origin determines the bloodline. In some tribes membership is contingent upon only one parent’s bloodline.

To participate in this exploratory study, I sought out a broad cross-section of American Indian women in various organizational sectors, in both urban and rural locations, in different types of senior-level management positions, and from different tribal affiliations.[i] Several of my co-workers and graduate students assisted me by serving as liaisons to establish relationships with women managers who readily agreed to participate in the study. I believe that these women are representative of the diversity of American Indian women managers who work and live in the study region.

Because there are no previous studies of American Indian women managers, I chose a historical-biographical approach to explore, in-depth, the manager’s lives. This holistic approach has been suggested by several authors for studying experiences of women of color in management, especially when there is little previous information (Bell & Nkomo, 1992; Bell, Denton & Nkomo, 1993). Moreover, Bowker (1993) used this approach to study the educational experiences of American Indian women.

My study design includes a brief look at the literature on American Indian women. Several prominent American Indian women writers (Allen, Harjo and Silko are from the study area) argue that the subordinate status of contemporary tribal women results from the imposition of Spanish and Anglo colonists’ policies, programs, and gender-role stereotypes, and not from pre-colonial tribal gender roles. Their contention is an important facet of incorporating a more accurate understanding of the contemporary intersection of racio-ethnicity and gender in organizations.

I conducted most of the interviews. Three graduate students in business and education, one of whom is Navajo, assisted with eight of the interviews. The interviews are tape recorded and each interviewee had the opportunity to review her transcript and correct it. Because these managers occupy unique positions, their names are not revealed, nor is any other information that could readily identify them. The interviews lasted from one and one half to over three hours. Interviews took place either at the work site or at the interviewee’s home, and, in one case, at a commercial establishment. I tape recorded and transcribed several public talks that interviewees delivered in which they revealed details of their personal and professional lives. In addition, because her administrative experience parallels that of other women in the study, I videotaped, transcribed, and analyzed a university classroom presentation to one of my classes by Verna Williamson Teller, former Chairperson at Isleta Pueblo.[ii] The Isleta tribe is one of the Pueblo tribes represented by the women in the study.

I developed a semi-structured format to guide the women through a series of open-ended questions pertaining to four areas:

The open dialogue between interviewer and interviewee permitted women to explore issues in as much depth as they wanted.[iv] We conducted the interviews in English, although English is not some women’s first language.

To analyze the data two people independently coded and grouped into coding categories all material that related to a particular theme. Material within these thematic categories was compared for variations in meaning, and material across categories was compared to find connections between themes (Rubin & Rubin, 1995). In this article, I analyze the interviewees experiences as they play out around the major theme “living in two worlds.” Within this major theme, two subordinate themes emerged from the data analysis: 1) work related conflicts between tribal culture and Anglo culture, and 2) gender-related conflicts within the tribe. In the subsections that follow, I discuss several characteristics of the women managers, including demographics, organizational affiliations, tribal identity, and language.

Demographic characteristics of the women managers are displayed in Table 1: Job position, age at interview, age at first management position, educational status or degree, languages spoken, and marital status, including number of children. At the time of the interview, the women’s average age was 44.2 years. Sixteen women had an average of 2.9 children. The 20 interviewees hold mostly senior level posts in different organizational sectors: 1) federal government: Health agency and tribal affairs agency, 2) state government: Tribal affairs agency and a major university, 3) major research enterprise, 4) tribal government: Department and enterprise, and 5) small business: For-profit and non-profit consulting. Collectively, the women manage between one and 800 people. The size of the above organizations range from small business (less than 6 employees) to large bureaucracies (up to 15,000 employees). Most of the women’s staff are either human service employees of Anglo, Hispanic or tribal background, or tribal government/enterprise employees who are American Indian. A few women supervise more technically oriented people who come from a mix of the above backgrounds. There is no discernible gender pattern among their subordinates. Half of the managers are the first American Indian woman to attain a high-level position in their organization. Two women hold elected legislative positions: A non-tribal post and a tribal post. A third woman holds an important state-level gubernatorial appointment.

The educational status of the interviewees ranges from high school diploma to the doctorate. Several women stated that they are the first person in their family to complete a college degree. Their degrees in higher education, generally, are in traditionally female fields such as education, health care, and counseling. Another woman said that she was the only American Indian in her college’s business program. All of the women, except one, married, remarried, or were involved in long term stable relationships. In general, marriage is important to the women’s lives. Although these women are not a statistically representative sample, the data could imply that American Indian women managers are by percentage more likely to be married than Anglo women managers.

The tribal and racio-ethnic origins of the interviewees are multifaceted. Table 2 illustrates the predominant tribal and other racio-ethnic origins of the women’s parents because one’s tribal identity, as mentioned earlier, depends on one’s parents. In reality, many women’s parents are of more than one tribal background. I group the various Pueblo tribes under the category “Pueblo” in order to protect identities. Seven women identify their tribal affiliation as Navajo. Another woman claims identity to both Navajo and Pueblo. Eleven women claim identity with one of the following Pueblo tribes: Laguna, Tesuque, Acoma, San Felipe, Isleta, Santa Clara, Taos, and Jemez. One other woman identifies herself as a member of a Great Plains tribe.

The women speak, collectively, seven tribal languages that belong to four different American Indian language families: Athapaskan, Numic, Siouian, and Tanoan (see Table 3). The Tanoan and Numic language groups comprise the four different languages spoken by the Pueblo tribes represented in the study, whereas the Athapaskan language group includes the Navajo language. As children, six women spoke predominantly a tribal language, eight women spoke predominantly English, and six women spoke both English and a tribal language. The eight women who grew up speaking predominantly English also understand their tribal language to varying degrees. Today, half of the women are at least bilingual; the others have various degrees of subordinate bilingualism (de Anda, 1984) because they have incomplete knowledge of at least one American Indian language. Bilingual ability permits women to work and be located in two or more worlds.

The American Indian women in this study live and work in distinctive yet interconnected worlds. In this section of the article, I present the analysis of the empirical data that pertains to the “two worlds” theme. There are three subsections to this empirical analysis: First, American Indian and Anglo cultural values are compared to contextualize the detailed analysis of the interviewee’s work experiences. Second, gender role expectations among American Indian men and women are explored contemporarily and historically. Third, strategies and techniques that women managers use to balance the two worlds are presented.

In order to develop the analysis of women’s work experiences, it is useful to compare the major features of the American Indian and Anglo cultures. The two categories - American Indian and Anglo - are each social constructs that have fluid and permeable boundaries and variations. I have selected the traditional Navajo tribal culture to represent “American Indian” culture because it is the largest tribe in the southwest. It is beyond the scope of this article to articulate all the particular distinctions among the various Pueblo tribes and then contrast these features with the Navajo tribe. The Navajo, Pueblo, and Plains tribes share similar values and traditions in contrast to the Anglo culture, yet there are many particular distinctions among them. The Hispanic culture is also prevalent in the study area, but its influence is less apparent in the organizations where the women work. Table 4 illustrates several features of Navajo and Anglo culture to illustrate their profound differences in which, and to varying degrees, the study women live and work. In summary, Winfield (1995) characterizes the Navajo culture as collectivist and the Anglo culture as individualist.

Cultural differences in relationship to work behavior have been studied but mostly in cross-national contexts (Adler, 1997; Hofstede, 1984; Simons, Vázquez & Harris, 1993; Stewart & Bennett, 1991). I have chosen to discuss the following aspects of work behavior that appeared most frequently in the data analysis: Competition, achievement, orientation to time, motivation, and interpersonal interactions. In addition, discriminatory behaviors and prejudicial attitudes affect women’s work behavior; these are dealt with in both this and the following subsections. The interviewees managed and transitioned among different cultural aspects of work behavior, often on a daily basis, with customers, employees, peers, bosses and competitors. I examine below the five major categories of cultural differences in work behavior, and, briefly, prejudicial attitudes.

First, the American Indian women managers are not brought up to be assertive and competitive. They often cited childhood experiences to illustrate differences between appropriate tribal behavior and job requisites. One manager, at a large technical enterprise, said that she was brought up to be unassuming, noncompetitive, and to act in a manner that was very different from the behaviors that she had to adopt at work:

… how we were brought up is very different and that continues to be a struggle on a daily basis…as a young child, out of respect for adults, you listen and not interrupt and not have eye-to-eye contact… I certainly have had to work hard in being able to do the opposite of some of those things…in this setting I … deal with people…talk, make presentations and have that eye contact...Certainly there’s competition everywhere, but especially at this level. You have to be able to show that you’re good. And that’s not something that…I was taught growing up. You don’t do things to stand out, to make yourself look good. But over here, you almost have to do that to survive here. To be out there, visible, and to show people that you can do your job…and it’s just sometimes a struggle for me…to kind of totally feel comfortable that, yes, I’m doing a good job. And I can stand out. It’s something that, still, I have to work at…it’s not something that is natural for me because that’s not the way I think…

Another woman, who manages a large government organization providing human services to tribes, described the assertive and competitive behaviors expected by her job that contrast with tribal cultural expectations and different modes of information transmission:

The position in management is…regular, certain…to be assertive, to be asking questions, to be inquisitive and to be planning for the future; to be competitive; those things that are not really a part of Pueblo women’s culture…Cultural traditions are unwritten and passed down from elders; at work, everything is documented with deadlines and regiments.

A second feature of organizational work, implied in the quote above, is the Anglo linear orientation to time that is represented by planning. This is not a feature of traditional tribal culture, yet the women managers must continually plan activities in all of their jobs. Moreover, the work attributes that the women managers discussed portray organizational structures and work patterns of both American Indian organizations and federal and state organizations as modeled after Anglo work norms, especially bureaucratic features. The tribal governments and tribal enterprises in which the women work, for the most part, have adopted Anglo-oriented work norms. Alongside such Anglo work patterns, tribal cultural patterns and values co-exist; they are manifested in particular tribal celebrations (such as blessing ceremonies and dances), in the use of tribal languages, in the laws and regulations that pertain to tribal traditions and treaties, and in interpersonal relationships, especially those involving family matters.

Third, women face dramatically different attitudes toward achievement in the two worlds, and consequently, to the meaning of life. Another Pueblo woman manager commented: “All of my achievements, education-wise, academically, they just disappear when I go into my community.” She explained that in the Anglo work world her professional status increases with acquiring grants and writing proposals, whereas in the Pueblo world, one’s “standing” is associated with religion. “Anglo” work and educational achievements have little relevance to tribal religion. This point was reinforced by another Pueblo woman who explained that the people who are most valued in her tribe, and who are the strongest in terms of “the traditional way of life, were often the ones least valued in school.” This situation, she said, “made me feel bad because to me those were some of the more, most important people…because they were our culture.” These women’s words illustrate the profound differences around what is fundamentally important in the tribal and Anglo worlds, and they suggest the cultural chasms with which professional women must contend.

Fourth, cultural differences affect people’s perceptions of work motivation. American Indian religious priorities that hold great importance and that can take tribal employees away from their jobs can be interpreted by non tribal managers as a lack of job commitment or a lack of motivation. A woman manager in a large technical enterprise explained:

That’s been a real puzzlement to people, to say, why is it that American Indians don’t want to stay here…there is a very different culture here. The corporate culture is where everything is for the good of the company and you will do everything as an employee to push the company, and with American Indians…their values are different in that the community and family activities come before the corporate values. And so if they’re called on to do this or that, either for the family or for the community, that comes first.

Verna Teller, the former Chairperson of Isleta Pueblo, elaborated further on some of the dilemmas posed by tribal priorities and formal, wage work in Anglo-oriented organizations:

[Tribal people] may have positions in the community that they’re not going to talk about…because of those positions that they hold, they have some real responsibilities to the tribe [that] takes them away from work or even going off the reservation for two or three days sometimes…It’s hard on them, not only because of the responsibility, but they also have to feed their families and pay their bills…they’ve got a responsibility to the reservation…if it means losing their job, they’ll lose their job [rather] than to be absent from the thing they have to be at, at Isleta.

Ms. Teller’s comments illustrate the significance and private nature of tribal religious matters, especially where they clash with Anglo work expectations. The women managers work in organizations that are able to accommodate, in general, their obligation to participate in tribal activities. In some cases, their superiors are unaware of such tribal commitments because the women choose not to reveal them. More often, the women take normal vacation time for tribal activities. One interviewee explained that American Indians do not take “vacation” time in the usual sense because it is used for tribal related matters.

Fifth, personal interaction patterns differ in American Indian and Anglo cultures. One Navajo manager highlighted differing cultural interaction norms when she explained that non tribal developers, with whom she works, often talk about family matters to her. In her Navajo culture, she says, conversation about family matters with strangers is inappropriate. She “kind of has to switch gears,” she said, to accommodate to the different conversational norms. Another example of different cultural interaction patterns pertains to informality and formality. A prominent official who has worked with numerous tribal groups and many types of organizations recalled:

…they’re [tribe] usually informal and you can express almost anything…we always express our very personal feelings…[non tribal group] meetings are very formal and you have to be objective…we have to take everything into consideration, we have to look at options.

The point illustrated by these two women’s comments is that, within tribal culture, appropriate conversational norms among tribal members differ from appropriate conversational norms between tribal and non tribal members, and from norms in formal work settings where non American Indian people predominate. Women managers must be sensitive to each particular context and then respond appropriately. Hall (1981) explains that high-context cultures, such as Navajo, make greater distinctions between insiders and outsiders than low context cultures, such as Anglo.

In a different example of conversational/decision-making patterns, a woman, who formerly held a senior-level position in the Navajo government, described the ambiance at tribal meetings and the importance of tribal values to decisions:

The Navajo value system is a big factor in how decisions are made. And here, [corporate] there’s really not that much emphasis on any types of values like that other than: ‘is this in line with our mission?’…For instance an [tribe] example would be, before a decision is made a lot of times people, which is typical, ask what the elders think about this. ‘What do you think the elders would think about this? Have you consulted with any of the elders before you’re making this recommendation?’ And so, there’s always a time when there would be some statement or some respect as to what the traditional people or older people would think about this. And the other thing is the Earth’s kind of values, I guess…we pay a lot of emphasis put on, “well, we couldn’t do that because there is a burial ground.”

This same manager elaborated on the ambiance at tribal meetings and its contrast to the corporate mentality of her job with a large non American Indian enterprise:

[at tribal meetings] there’s a lot more attention paid to what people think, how they feel about things…there was a lot more in the way of shaking hands and saying hello to everyone…And I don’t see that [at current job]…at all…on the reservation if you’re in a meeting, most likely the meeting will run a lot longer and most likely everyone will have a chance to talk, even if it’s just to say whatever you observed or whatever your comments are…meetings take as long as they have to take…it’s not a matter of liking one another or not liking one another…there’s a lot more of personal interaction and people enjoy the meeting and just kind of liking being there. So there’s a more social aspect to it and it doesn’t matter if it goes a long time…They always begin with a prayer and always end with a prayer.

Hall (1994) characterizes the Navajo mode of communication, illustrated in these quotes, as a “mutual assessment of feelings and expression,” in contrast to the Anglo pattern of “showing relative strength and dominance (p.90)”. Such communication patterns reflect fundamental cultural contextual differences that can result in cross-cultural problems and misunderstandings (Simons, Vázquez & Harris, 1993; Stewart & Bennett, 1991; Tannen, 1994). Because American Indian communication patterns differ markedly from Anglo patterns, the women managers must skillfully work with and respond to each particular pattern.

Another Navajo manager elaborated on Navajo communication patterns. She emphasized the highly contextualized non-verbal behavioral component of communication which she effectively uses in public situations where she interacts with Anglos:

Most non-Indian women are very assertive…and confident…I don’t conduct myself that assertively, but I get my point across and I make people understand what I believe in…not a lot of talk, just a real pleasant persuasion…using my traditional beliefs to persuade people…Something that’s very…deep seated to us, if it pertains to land, water - there’s a certain way we expose our emotions to get our point across. There’s a certain attitude or a certain personality or a certain body language that we use…to express our emotion that these things are sacred…In those kind of issues that I deal with, a non-Indian would speak to it in a way where there’s no feelings…what’s more meaningful to them is the economics.

Sixth, other issues of interaction between the dominant culture and American Indians require the women’s attention. Most of the women encountered discriminatory behaviors and negative stereotyping as children and they found such behaviors and attitudes to persist later on in life. One manager’s remarks illustrate how she perceived the dominant culture’s biases towards her as an American Indian and how she reacted to it:

I have noticed that the way people view me and society views me. The disadvantage to them, the way they perceive it is that I’m a woman, I’m from a minority group - Indians. And so immediately, I have two strikes against me. [But]I don’t view it as a handicap or a disadvantage at all!

A manager working in a city told of her encounter with prejudicial attitudes and her response:

Sometimes I come across condescending attitudes…and then I get bugged by that…so they [non-Indians] feel like some of them have the mentality that because you’re Native American, you may not always know what you’re talking about…but I always let them know…

In both of these examples, the interviewees demonstrate a resolve to view themselves as competent people, thus transcending the potentially disabling attitudes and behaviors of others. Although in these examples the women refer to “interracial” prejudice, several of them also note such attitudes by members of other tribal groups that from time to time affect their work.

In order to negotiate the world of work, the women adopted behaviors and acquired skills that are substantively different from those cultivated by the tribal cultures in which they grew up. Many of them believe that they learned these behaviors and skills as children when they located to different places and related to relatives from different tribes or racio-ethnicities thus involuntarily experiencing two worlds. No matter where they lived, where they worked, or who they lived with, all the interviewees emphasized the importance of their tribal values and their tribal identity. Each woman participates periodically in tribal religious and family activities to reaffirm bonds and to feel renewed. For those who live and work on the reservation, these are readily accessible; for the others, such participation involved considerable travel. Many women practice both a Christian religion and their tribal religion. The substantive differences between the Anglo-oriented world of wage work and tribal traditions may explain, in part, why the women in this study chose to work for tribally-related organizations or organizations in which their work was directed at American Indian people. Because cultural values are so different, and because of the widespread stereotypical perceptions of non-American Indians with which tribal people have to contend (Fernandez, 1991; Glass Ceiling Commission, 1995), working with people who hold similar values and being in locations where such stereotypes are less common makes sense.

In this subsection I focus on gender-based interaction patterns among women and men in the American Indian world. First, I briefly review the transformation of tribal gender relations from a historical perspective, and then I rely on the interview data to analyze contemporary gender interactions. Kibria (1994) argues that gender conflicts occur within particular racio-ethnic groups as men and women struggle for control. She further argues that “traditional” cultures do not necessarily become more modern as they assimilate into the dominant culture nor are they necessarily freed from the patriarchy of traditional men. Tannen (1994) argues that men and women, cross-culturally, have different conversational rituals that affect their performance at work, and that women’s styles more often place them in the subordinate positions. The situation of tribal gender relations in the study area illustrates their points. Paradoxically, American Indian women in the study area feel subordinated by patriarchal behaviors and policies that tribes adopted as the Spanish and Anglo colonists sought to assimilate and deculture them.

There is ample evidence in the anthropological literature and in the literature by American Indian women that, in many tribes, women attained a high or equal-complementary status with men prior to European contact.[v] The existence of egalitarian relationships has been under-researched and more recent work exposes the biases of previous researchers who failed to adequately consider the important roles that women played (Guerrero, 1997; LaFromboise, Heyle & Ozer, 1990; Mankiller & Wallis, 1993; Sparks, 1994). Moreover, gender identity did not necessarily conform to the binary sexual distinctions common to Spanish and Anglo cultures (Albers, 1989; Amott & Mattthaei, 1996; Blackwood, 1984; Green, 1980; Gutiérrez, 1991). Some tribes permitted women to assume male roles and to live their lives as men and to marry women; alternatively some men assumed female roles. In the study area, the most famous case of the latter is the Zuni Pueblo man-woman known as We’wha (Roscoe, 1991). Tribal societies viewed these “berdaches,” as they are called in the literature, as productive and valuable individuals.

The early Spaniards in the southwest attempted to impose their patriarchal forms of religion and government on the native population (Allen, 1992). The European colonizers’ assimilation strategies resulted in the breakdown of the traditional complementary male-female relations in the tribes and a general increase in tribal male dominance and control over Indian women (LaFromboise, Heyle, & Ozer, 1990; Allen, 1992; Jaimes with Halsey, 1992). Patterns of governance and authority varied among the tribes. Both matrilineal and patrilineal patterns of inheritance and ownership existed. In some tribal social systems, it is clear that women played critical economic, political and spiritual roles (Allen, 1992; Foote & Schackel, 1986; Jaimes with Halsey, 1992; LaFromboise, Heyle, & Ozer, 1990; Sparks, 1995). For example, the Navajo, Zuni, and Laguna tribes had matrilineal descent patterns while the Cherokee and Iroquois had matriarchal forms of governance (Albers, 1989; Bonvillain, 1989; Hamamsy, 1957). Mankiller & Wallis (1993) note that early European observers, in discovering the prominent role that tribal women had in policy decisions, made disparaging remarks such as “The Cherokees have a petticoat government (p. 19).”

American Indian women scholars have studied the problematic situation of American Indian women in various tribes under the Spanish and American colonialists. The U.S. government was unwilling to recognize a woman as the representative of her people’s interest nor as able to argue for water rights (Jaimes with Halsey, 1992). Moreover, it is clear that there was a conscious effort on the part of Western administrators and missionaries to subordinate women’s roles (Klein & Ackerman, 1995). Several compelling and well-documented case studies illustrate the unwillingness of the colonists to deal with matriarchal forms of governance and women leaders among the tribes. For example, the colonists convinced the Cherokee men that women ought not to comprise their governing council and the constitution was changed to prevent women from serving as council members (Allen, 1992). On Navajo lands, the U.S. government refused to recognize land ownership patterns that accorded such rights to women; it allotted reservation lands to Navajo men and listed men as household heads; these practices totally ignored Navajo clan relationships based on matrilineal principles (Bluehouse, 1993; Shepardson, 1995).

Paula Gunn Allen (1992), the noted scholar from Laguna Pueblo, argues that the colonists fundamentally altered gender roles in many tribes by forcing women to accept marginal and subordinate roles that were not indigenous to their cultures. In many cases, this was accomplished by U.S. government and missionary boarding schools that took American Indian children from their homes and to schools that forbade them to speak their languages and attempted to assimilate them into Euro-American culture (Trimble, 1987). Several interviewees experienced such assimilation programs or relocation programs.

The women managers in the study often found themselves in difficult work situations because tribal men could not accept their professional status. They all cited tribal male attitudes that they believe constrain women’s opportunities to advance at work and to obtain policy making posts. On the other hand, the women’s managerial status often resulted from the influence of a prominent tribal man. Almost all of the women in the study consider the Pueblo and Navajo tribes to be “male dominated,” especially in issues of public policy and tribal politics, and to be “traditional” with respect to what is appropriate behavior for contemporary women.

In the Navajo Nation only five out of 88 elected members are women. Women have held tribal chair positions in three out of 19 Pueblo tribes. In some Pueblo tribal governments women are not allowed to hold positions on the tribal council nor allowed to vote (Linthicum, 1996). In at least one case, women are not even allowed to speak at tribal meetings. Some Pueblo tribes, that were matrilineal, adopted patriarchal inheritance rules. For example, the “modern” constitution of Santa Clara Pueblo disenfranchises children of Santa Clara women, who marry a non-Santa Clara man, from inheriting property on the reservation even if the father is American Indian. This policy does not apply to the children of Santa Clara men who married non-Santa Clara women (James with Halsey, 1992; Guerrero, 1997).

In an effort to explain the sexist behaviors and attitudes of American Indian men towards tribal women, several interviewees blamed boarding school experience for altering men’s attitudes from long-standing tribal egalitarian traditions. One prominent woman expressed this well:

In our…mythology, in the legends…it’s never been where the woman was put in the background or taken a secondary role. Never…It’s been a full partnership…And a lot of that changed in the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, and the 50s because…we were sent off to boarding school. We were assimilated. We were acculturated…we know what the dominant society thinks about their women. So some of those ideas, they imposed on us…I think that accounts…to a large degree, affects the type of attitudes [our] men have today. It’s a product of their schooling.

The manager of Plains tribal origin was perplexed by her discovery through her work that men are in charge of Pueblo governments:

I was surprised by this…because with the Plains, the women are assumed to be pretty tough…and be leaders. And we’ve had women chiefs…it surprised me, the attitude of Indian men toward women here…And it’s a Spanish holdover. Machismo…and they [tribal men] still haven’t figured out that they just got acculturated to oppressing their own women.

An interviewee who formerly held one of only a few high-level positions occupied by women in a particular tribal government administration revealed her frustration about gender relations:

[Tribal] men just can’t handle women in positions who are competent people…a double standard…they give preferential treatment to the males in the office - talking with him and ignoring her.

This woman added that she would use humor to deal with these issues, for example: “Gee, it must be nice to be male.” Another high ranking manager who had a difficult time gaining acceptance by tribal men feels that the tribal work environment is bureaucratic, sexist, and difficult for senior-level women especially:

It’s just really interesting their egos…if you walk into a room and you’re the only woman at a meeting, you can just feel the ego, the testosterones, we call it.

Another high ranking Navajo manager said that both tribal men and women had trouble accepting the amount of power that she held, but particularly men, and there was gossip:

…there were a lot of times that people would come in, especially men, and ‘cause I was a woman, in really a non-traditional kind of appointment. And they couldn’t understand how I could get the job…they thought it was because my father…had donated so much money…and another thing that people would think…really…is, well, you must be having an affair. And, you know, real dirty kind of stuff…it’s really too bad, but I think women just take a harder hit from society in general when they’re out in the public eye so much. I think men can be very mean as far as ‘well, she just slept her way to the top.’ I’ve heard a lot of really ugly kind of things about women who were doing a good job and really not doing that, and I think too often that [we] are willing to listen to that kind of thing…And other people don’t know if it’s true or not.

Even public charges of sexism have rung through the Navajo Nation Council’s chambers (Shebala, 1995).

The women’s managerial status, an achieved status in Anglo-oriented work cultures, can be the source of difficulty when women interact or supervise men at work, who, according to tribal custom, hold important ascribed religious positions. This can be particularly problematic when a woman manager has to supervise a lower work-status, and at the same time, high religious-status man. Such was the case of a Pueblo manager who recalled problems she encountered:

Whatever you do at home is not part of [business] environment…for some, I come across very strong…I will take immediate action, discipline…but again, in that business environment, we are not related. We are boss and employee…I can see managers struggle - even I struggle. Because some of the men…are kiva[vi] leaders. They’re maintenance workers…when I’m a manager and I need something done, then to talk to them in that way is hard for me. One of our managers is a kiva leader. So when I disagree with him, I’ll get up in his face and then all of a sudden, I remember, and I’ll back off…that’s confusing for me…a lot of my dreams were struggling with the Anglo and the cultural side of it.

Policies, practices and attitudes such as those mentioned above affect the lives of the women managers. Some women deal with such issues on a daily basis, others try to minimize the encounters by living off the reservation, avoiding certain tribal functions, or, in a few cases, working for non-tribal organizations. Most women have a difficult time accepting the sexist behaviors of male tribal members, but some still prefer to live on the reservation. Despite these kinds of problems and despite the traditional attitudes of some of their professional colleagues and other tribal members, all of the women indicated unwavering respect for tribal traditions and values.

Their interviewees’ skills at adeptly managing difficult gender relations may be related to their general adaptability, acquired in childhood, when they learned to accommodate to different tribal customs, cultural differences between their parents, and to Anglo social behavior at schools. The historical context, discussed above, reveals the colonially imposed legacy of patriarchy with which contemporary tribal women, at least in the study area, have to contend. This presents an interesting paradox in their lives: Matrilineal and sometimes matrilocal tribal traditions co-exist with patriarchal behaviors at work and in government policies. The subsection that follows analyses the women managers’ strategies and techniques to balance both worlds.

The preceding sections illustrate that there are a complexity of tribal, cultural, and gender issues within the American Indian world. Moreover, I have identified various domains within the two worlds which the women managers negotiate and strive to balance: Men and women in the tribal world, nontraditional and traditional tribal people, the different tribal societies, and Anglo-oriented work organizations and traditional reservation life. The interviewees refer to many events and they use a variety of concepts to describe and explain the continual transitions and adjustments that they make between the two worlds and among these various domains. There are two general categories that emerged from the data analysis relevant to negotiating, transitioning, and balancing the two worlds and domains. I call these location factors and switching techniques; each is discussed in one of the following two subsections.

The places and situations, or locations, where women lived, worked, or found themselves forced them, in many cases, to adapt or balance their lives. Some of these places resulted from other’s decisions and actions, for example parents and school authorities, other situations came about as a consequence of their own choice, for example marriage partners. The interviewees’ parents’ tribal origin and their own place of residence determined what languages they learned. These factors, along with where they went to school and worked, would determine what languages they retained and subsequently could use at work. Many of the factors are interrelated: Residence, school, work, family, and language. Family origin and work locations are described in earlier sections of this article. Residence, school, language, and marriage locations are described below.

The women in the study moved back and forth between tribal lands in more rural areas and urban environments. Fourteen women grew up on a reservation, four women grew up both on and off reservation, and two women grew up off reservation. Each was encouraged by at least one family member to place a high value on education, to respect tribal traditions, and to venture out into the non tribal world location. Such encouragement was instrumental in setting career expectations early in life for these women. One woman’s recollections of her father reflects this:

My dad…used to tell me, we’re not going to be able to rely on the livestock forever. You kids need to move on, get into the white man’s world, learn all about their trades, their way of life, so that someday you might be able to use that and come back and maybe live a different way and yet still hang on to your tradition.

Early experiences in school distinguished these women as “achievers” and they perceived themselves to be different from other women. While young, they readily sought to overcome discriminatory behavior and to use other problems they encountered as opportunities.

Prior to college, most of them attended more than one type of school and moved frequently with their families. They attended boarding schools, both parochial or private preparatory schools, Bureau of Indian Affair (BIA) schools, some of which were boarding schools, and public, non-tribal schools. The women grew up when both government and missionary boarding schools tried to assimilate American Indian children into the dominant culture. School was often the first point of contact with the dominant culture, and several of them described, in depth, problems with non-American Indians and struggles to retain their tribal identity. Verna Teller recalled that at elementary school on the Isleta reservation she was “slapped around by the teachers for talking Indian.” Even so, in this location she felt safe and comfortable, whereas, later in off-reservation schools, she encountered racism:

When you were in junior high is when you finally went off the reservation into a school in Albuquerque public schools, and that’s the first time that we were [with] kids that were not Indians…it is a culture shock. I remember going through that, and our [non tribal] friends used to tease us…when we’d talk Indian, they’d mock us.

One women frequently ran away because she intensely disliked boarding school. Several women told how missionary or BIA authorities did not permit students to speak their tribal language. One woman recalled her experience:

…cause we were brought up in the [time] where you couldn’t talk your own language. You’d get slapped on the hand with a ruler…you couldn’t be mean. You couldn’t answer back, but then Indian children always were raised to be respectful…

One woman adopted various western religions as a result of where she resided and went to school. Her story illustrates how residence, religion and language interrelate and locate her in two worlds and various domains and force her to adapt:

We learned to talk Navajo, too. We were very fluent when we were very young, until they took us to boarding school. That’s when [we] quit talking, because, you know, English was the one they wanted us to learn. That’s what we did…I was about five years old…because at that time the roads were pretty bad and it was hard for the bus to get there…we always had to pray a lot. I don’t think it was Catholic, though, because a Catholic came in for me when I was a little bit older, like seven. And we moved back to my mom’s reservation And there was all these nuns…at Santa Fe….that’s where I learned - where we were - Catholics…I think that - it depended- when we were Navajo, we were Mormons and whatever, because they’d always come to our house…come around and bug us, and the only reason we invited them in, was, they always gave us food or clothes, and then they would baptize us, or something. But it didn’t mean nothing to us. I maybe got baptized I don’t know how many times. It was just what they gave us that was free.

Another women recalled a critical moment in the fourth grade that affected her identity and retention of her tribal language:

I caught myself thinking in English; I remember that day very vividly. And I thought what’s happening to me? I’m thinking in English…I realized the impact of what had happened to me. I guess I had become assimilated or acculturated, and I hated it. And I cried and cried because I didn’t want it. I wanted to be Navajo…and there was no turning back. And I tried to retrain myself to think in Navajo and I couldn’t do it…I knew I had lost something there.

As adults the women’s residences were nearly equally divided: At the time of the interview eight women lived on a reservation and nine women lived in cities within several hours of the reservation. Three women spent their adulthood living in both locations. In a few cases, tribal rules made it difficult for the women to live on tribal lands. In a few other cases, women chose to live off - reservation for job convenience or because they no longer felt comfortable there. One manager explained: “[I] have changed too much…the community gets involved in every aspect of a person’s life.”

Language permits the women to locate in different worlds and tribes and to negotiate different worlds and domains. American Indian languages could not be more different from English: Some are so dissimilar, Navajo and English, for example, that they force the speaker into two different images of reality (Hall, 1959, p. 96). Linguists have found that people who are bilingual people, in contrast to monolinguals, display greater cognitive flexibility, creativity, and divergent thought patterns (Lambert, 1977). The women in the study are fluent in English and have some degree of proficiency in at least one tribal language. For some of them, lack of fluency in a tribal language prevents them from working in some tribal contexts, and it can hinder their participation in other tribal activities. Two women still consider English to be their “foreign” language and prior to conversing in English they translate their ideas from their tribal language.

At one of the work sites and prior to an interview, I saw the advantage of one women’s bilingual ability. I participated in a ceremony where an American Indian medicine man was blessing the building and purging the center of spirits related to the hunta virus which was prevalent in the study area at the time. The women manager there actively participated in the ceremony with her multicultural staff and American Indian clients, and carefully explained the ceremony to her non American Indian employees.

Those interviewees who attained fluency in English as children later went to work in off-reservation jobs, mostly in hierarchical bureaucracies that provided social and educational services to American Indians, and a few went to bureaucracies that conduct research and development. Those women who grew up speaking a tribal language or two languages tended to return to the reservation after completing college to work with American Indian service-oriented programs or tribal government programs. The women who grew up predominantly speaking fluent English belong to families where parents came from different racio-ethnic groups or tribes, thus English was the common language of the parents. The women who are fluent in a tribal language use it in talking with clients, others use the tribal language in greetings and ceremonies.

Male partners, many of whom had different predominant tribal or racio-ethnicities from their spouses, are another means of locating women in different worlds. Thirteen women have or had American Indian partners; only five of these women have partners with the same predominant tribal affiliation. Six women partnered with white, Hispanic, or Asian men. The remarried women commented that their former spouses had not been supportive of their professional lives. Three other married women described marital difficulties over their professional careers and indicated that they had to “train” their husbands to accept their busy work lives and to help with household chores. One manager’s comments illustrate some of the family conflicts that women managers confronted at their home location:

And [he] always thought of me as the wife and the secretary. As I became a leader, it was - “how are you a leader? Because you can’t even find the mall!” “But you can’t lead”…even my kids, they’re like, “mom, mom’s a manager? But mom, you’re silly”…I totally succumb to [him] and he takes the lead role…I always gave in…but I don’t do that anymore. Now what I try to do is compromise. Well, today…[he]’s proud of me…that I have all these people under me…maybe the change was just difficult for him in the beginning because I always valued everything he told me…our exchange of ideas are better now. I really think he’s proud of me. I get that in the way he treats me, the way he is concerned about my work and makes sure that I’m okay and happy…he cooks, he does laundry…

The interviewees carefully chose spouses who supported their professional aspirations and trained or rejected those who did not. Most of them crossed racio-ethnic or tribal boundaries to obtain partners whom they perceived to be supportive of their careers.

Switching techniques are methods to transition and balance between worlds and various domains. They include, in the women’s own words, “switching gears,” “shifting roles,” “walking two paths,” “adapting,” “shutting down,” “disregarding,” “balancing,” and “going home.” A few examples illustrate the contexts in which women use their individually developed switching techniques. The women believe that early childhood experiences are a training ground for their switching techniques. One manager, whose parents come from different tribal language families, feels that a childhood of learning to understand two cultures and languages helped her:

Just living in [Pueblo] and growing up as a [Pueblo] Navajo, I’ve had to grow up already with two cultures. My father’s values and my mother’s values were not necessarily the same… growing up like that…I’ve learned to take those values that are meaningful, that are going to help, and others that weren’t going to add anything…I just disregarded.

My brothers and I used to feel like we were walking two paths. Because my folks were strongly believing in our Indian ways. They were also very devout Catholics, so we did both…as soon as we finished Indian prayers, we’d be off to the church to do our Catholic ways…I feel like I am two religions because we believe in both of them almost the same…I like our Indian religion, and the beliefs and the spirituality is much more genuine.

Those kinds of values that my grandmother taught me is what I used, and I could come to a balance between the world - the Western way of thinking as well as my own traditional values, kind of balance them out and that’s what really kept me - that’s how I prevailed and that’s how I endured and that’s how I tolerated a lot of things, even in tough times.

One woman, who went to “white schools,” did not reveal her tribal world to people as a school child; she said that she “withdrew.” Now, in her professional work, she can call upon this technique when she needs to:

That’s how I learned to go into situations without it bothering me. You just shut down part of it, and you watch yourself do something.

Switching on and off from a highly visible leadership role at work, where she has responsibility for hundreds of employees, to a subordinate role on the reservation where she prefers to live, is illustrated by a Pueblo woman:

You have to just be able to somehow balance the two worlds, ‘cause I’m not the leader when I take part in everything…it’s going to be a man…and I accept that in that [Indian] environment. I come out of that environment and…go to the workplace, and I’m different. And that’s the difficult part, I think, for a Native American woman is to balance the two.

Other women switched between two languages and two cultures to work with staff as the following example illustrates:

There are times when we get together…I’ll translate something that I say in English to the staff to make things clearer, in my Navajo way of thinking to get a point across. I can’t just say, “don’t criticize people.” They’ll say “why is she saying that?” When I say don’t criticize people, what I’m actually saying is, as a Navajo, that’s not our teaching. “Doo Dine’ baa niji’ t’ i i da.” You have to look into your own backyard; you have to look at your own identity before you say something about somebody else…You have to try to relate and put into detail what you’re trying to get across.

Another Pueblo manager, who spoke about “shifting roles” between work and the tribal cultures, illustrates the women’s respect for and identification with their tribal culture, and her concern with the tribe’s continuity:

… you have to be very careful when you shift roles. From here, outside world, to go back home, and not be as assertive and as open. So I have to be very careful, shifting. ‘Cause I believe very strongly in my identity as a Indian. But I also believe very strongly in my identity as a woman…I guess if anything I identify most strongly, if it came to mind, would be my Indianness, and my culture, by background, my heritage, and then identify as a woman. And you know all the other hats - you’re a mom, your work, I coach. I mean I do a lot of different roles. Wife, you know. All the other roles that come. Mostly I guess, where ever I go or whatever I do, I identify - I identify first with being Indian…But I just have to remember that when I am in my own community that I have to make a shift, and sometimes there’s times when I have to hold back and not say certain things, or not be so, what they would say…outspoken, direct. And that there’s certain things only men can do that women can’t do…And I’ve just been real accepting of it. I don’t want to deviate too much from past traditions. Because I think that, if you start deviating, you’re changing a lot. You lose a lot. There’s nothing wrong with change but, a culture can stay, be intact so long. There is not a whole lot of deviation in that. Something that people have to accept for it to continue. So that my kids and grand kids and their grand kids will have it still, when I’m gone.

This woman juxtaposes her concern for tribal cultural survival, acknowledgment of how her own gender influences her status at work (where she functions in a managerial capacity interacting with Anglo, Hispanic and American Indian men and women), with her role as mother and spouse on the reservation where her achieved status becomes insignificant in tribal religious and social matters.

The location factors and switching techniques that the interviewees experienced and developed enable them to lead highly visible and successful, professional lives. Each woman emphasized the importance of tribal “traditional” cultural values to her life, even when values regarding gender role behavior differed significantly from expectations of her work organizations and job. The tribal worlds, today, they encounter, as we have seen, to different degrees depending on their place of work, their place of residence and their spouses and families.

The women who live off-reservation with partners who are non-American Indian or who work in enterprises that focus minimally on American Indians may be more rooted in the non-tribal world than the women who live with an American Indian spouse on the reservation and work in tribally-based organizations. Yet the women who lived in more urban areas periodically “went home” to the reservation for renewal - this they said was vitally important to them to balance their lives. Most women constantly juggled transitions because they worked in mid to large bureaucratic organizations that, for the most part, have Anglo work norms. Each interviewee’s experience with transitions is different; she experienced unique location factors and developed particular switching techniques to deal with cultural transitions and changing gender role expectations. In sum, some women adapt to and balance their worlds and domains more easily than others. The women hold a profound respect for their tribal traditions and values. Tribal values are the heart of their tribal identity and unity.

This study has found that American Indian women managers have multiple tribal origins, speak several languages in addition to English, hold significant managerial positions, and continually negotiate within and between the more individualist, materialist Anglo culture and the more collectivist, holistic tribal culture. The women developed, independently from one another, location strategies and switching techniques to transition between and balance two worlds. They learned many of these techniques as children as they adjusted to various locations and demands. Almost all of the women focus their professional work on American Indian-related activities whether or not they are employed by a tribally-affiliated organization. In this respect, they work with others who share similar cultural values. Yet, in almost all of their jobs, the women work in situations where Anglo work values co-exist with tribal traditional values, both of which influence interpersonal interaction patterns. The phenomenon of two cultural patterns co-existing at work also was noted by Kibra (1994) who studied work organizations in which traditional Asian cultural values co-existed with Anglo work values.

The interviewees are bicultural and multilingual. All of them, except for one, identify with their mother’s tribal affiliation, demonstrating the endurance of pre-colonial matrilineal traditions among the tribes. This contrasts to pre-colonial egalitarian traditions (e.g. food generation and intertribal decision making) that gradually transformed to conform with the more patriarchally-oriented values of the colonists. In general, the interviewees in this study appear to have acculturated to the dominant white society rather than been assimilated into it (Domino, 1992; Simons, Vázquez & Harris, 1993). They continue to retain particular tribal identities and hold tribal traditions in high regard. Because these women are not a statistically representative group from the entire U.S., however, we must exercise caution in generalizing the results. In fact, many other American Indian women, particularly in large urban areas, have assimilated into the dominant culture and “pass” for white (Trimble, 1987). Because of the great diversity of American Indian cultures, I would expect the findings from this study to vary from region to region. I am hopeful that other researchers will find merit in exploring these and other facets of this robust subject.

The implications of this research suggest a broader framework for understanding the intersections of gender and racio-ethnicity in organizations and management. I recommend that the following factors be taken into account in further research and discourse in this area.

1) Historical contexts. By elevating historical perspectives to the forefront of the discourse surrounding culture, racio-ethnicity and gender, tensions, struggles, and problems are explicated that can contextualize current organizational issues. Such broader contexts enable a more profound understanding of various groups’ status in the workforce and the dynamics of organizational behavior. Historical contexts can reveal themes that form the subtext of current dilemmas and structural inequalities among women (and men), and racio-ethnic groups. Patterns of racism that pervade society and organizations can be deconstructed through such analyses. Alternative analytical frameworks, such as post-colonial analyses and postmodernism, question the fundamental assumptions to which the “West” has grown accustomed. This study has reviewed material that employed alternative analytical frameworks to examine the roles of American Indian women in tribal society and to challenge the Western patriarchal and ethnocentric biases which obfuscated the reality of tribal roles. Women’s egalitarian and prominent decision-making roles in an earlier era are revealed; these may be re-emerging and in reconstruction through their current work lives.

2) Complex identities. The analysis of the complex identities of women managers, and managers in general, deconstructs frozen assumptions about homogenous identity categories such as women, American Indian, or indigenous people. Also, both differences and similarities across racio-ethnic groups and within such groups are revealed. The implicit assumption, in much of the management literature, that white men’s or white women’s experience applies to other racio-ethnic groups is antiquated and distorts the experience of people with diverse and multifaceted identities. In the case of the women in the study, data analysis uncovered their complex identities from mixed tribal and racio-ethnic origins and languages. Equally important, the data analysis showed that these women consider their identities as tribal people to be paramount.

3) Domestic cultural values. Cultural values in organizational contexts are investigated primarily in cross-national contexts. More attention needs to be drawn to elevating the discourse around domestic cultural values to the forefront of research and practice. As suggested earlier in this article, the organizational studies literature has been dominated by white researchers. However well meaning they are, their biases and assumptions underpin epistemological and methodological issues thus pushing domestic cultural issues to the background. As the U.S. workforce continues to diversify toward a more balanced white-nonwhite society, people with cultural values that differ significantly from white or Anglo values may increasingly negotiate issues such as land exploitation for business purposes, work versus family, and the nature of work, including its underlying competitive, individualist orientation. This study has revealed the subtleties of the interplay of traditional American Indian tribal values and Anglo work-oriented values. It is apparent that the interviewees are very skillful at diagnosing and working within both contexts.

4) Management skills for the multicultural world. Despite the evolving workforce diversity literature, managerial skills for managing cross-culturally or within multicultural environments lack attention because this literature focuses on what the dominant group needs to do to be more inclusive of diverse identity groups (e.g. creating new structures or training employees). Research is lacking on bicultural people who, already, effectively work across multicultural environments and their unique skills. The bicultural interviewees in this study, by virtue of their successful careers, have proven their effectiveness in managing “two worlds.” The switching techniques and balancing skills that they developed, independent of formal education, are models of managerial techniques that may be increasingly required for future managers.

5) Cultural assimilation. The legacy of colonization in the U.S. has permeated organizational settings. This is manifest in dominant cultural group expectations that nonwhites assimilate such values, especially in work organizations. The underlying values of competition, individualism, exploitation of the environment, and material acquisition are, in general, not critically debated. In a multicultural environment, it is necessary to raise the question regarding the extent to which diverse cultural group members are expected to assimilate dominant group norms and what consequences result if assimilation is resisted or not valued. Furthermore, what accommodations are necessary by majority-oriented organizations to respect the dignity and identity of diverse cultures in order to prevent deculturation? As majority-minority group compositions shift, this will become an increasingly vital issue.

The legacy of subordination of the U.S. continent’s indigenous people offers a significant lesson. It is a lesson that necessitates our learning to respect and values one another’s unique cultural identities and distinctive historical legacies in a common effort to peacefully coexist and survive. The women in this study are role models for future American Indian women managers and leaders, and for other aspiring managers and leaders who want to work effectively in our multicultural world. The future role of women managers may well be modeled by the experiences of women managers, like the American Indian managers in this study, who are skilled at negotiating between cultures and within various domains. A continuing effort to achieve a deeper understanding of these skills and techniques may assist others to be effective in multicultural organizations, and in the global economy.

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* Pueblo tribes include: Acoma, Hopi, Isleta, Jemez, Laguna, Santa Clara, San Felipe, San Juan, Taos and Tesuque.

Sources: Navajo material is adapted from Winfield (1995), from Stewart & Bennett (1991), and from the American Indian Business Association, NM; Anglo material is adapted from Simon, V<zquez, and Harris (1993), and Stewart & Bennett (1991).

[i] My background has influenced the construction of this study. Because I am not American Indian, I feel impelled to disclose some of my background. My immediate family’s experience with oppression and dislocation has influenced my research interests: My parents, a white American scientist and a German-Jewish refugee, and a Southeast Asian former spouse fled, respectively, Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, and a military state that had been a European colony. I have many years of administrative work in multicultural environments where whites are “minorities.” My experience interviewing women of different racio-ethnicities and nationalities on various continents has informed my more recent research. I embarked upon this particular study because of the absence of organizational studies literature pertaining to American Indians, and because my encounters with dynamic tribal women in the region created an opportunity. I consulted periodically with two American Indian women during this research. The support of my academic department’s administrative assistant, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, has been invaluable throughout the study.

[ii] Mrs. Teller was elected the first woman governor of Isleta Pueblo in 1987 for a four year term (Sando, 1992). She is a prominent figure in the study area because of her outspokenness on issues of tribal sovereignty, water rights, and survival, and she has on several occasions discussed her role as a tribal leader. Currently she is an Isleta tribal council member and owns her own consulting business on American Indian affairs.

[iii] Questions to identify the backgrounds of each woman included: Year and place of birth, racio-ethnicity of self, father, mother, and spouse, number and gender of children and siblings, and marital status. Questions on language included languages spoken, learned, and used at work. Other questions addressed various facets of the women’s lives: Educational background, work history, managerial experience, people who influenced their career, expressed managerial style, compatibility of job with the role of women in their culture, methods to interface and transition between tribal cultures and the dominant culture, problems and issues at work due to gender or racio-ethnicity, relationships with spouses, and cultural values. We also asked for suggestions on sharing the results of the interviews, and names of other potential study participants.

[iv] This became evident as the interviewees generously gave of their time and did not hesitate to describe many personal struggles in their professional experience and their efforts to attain respect for their competency in both the American Indian and Anglo worlds. A few women commented to me that religion was the only issue they could not discuss in any detail - they would only discuss it with some other tribal members. Also, I assume that some issues regarding prejudice and discrimination by the Anglo culture may not have been disclosed to me as my appearance is that of an “Anglo.” The private nature of the tribal religious world was reaffirmed recently in a court case involving the San Ildefonso Pueblo tribe. The tribe filed a claim against a non American Indian man and Los Alamos National Labs who “found” a “sacred and powerful prehistoric double pot” outside current tribal boundaries and who did not want to return the sacred object to the tribe. When the court required the tribe to reveal the nature of the object, the tribe withdrew its lawsuit rather than “place pueblo members in the position of violating traditional laws concerning secrecy in matters of pueblo custom and belief” (Sandlin, 1997, p.D3).

[v] It is estimated that around the year 1500, just prior to Spanish settlement, over 300 different nations existed with between 10 to 20 million people (Amott & Matthaei, 1996). The Glass Ceiling Commission (1995) reports that by the time the “ ‘West was won,’ 250,000 survivors remained within what is now the borders of the contiguous 48 states (p. 96).” Survival originally depended on cooperation and harmony with all things animate and inanimate (Silko, 1996). In the southwest, the “basketmaker culture,” occupied the Four Corners area around 200 B.C. and evolved into the present Pueblo tribes. The Navajo came into the southwest in the 15^th century.

[vi] A Kiva is an underground ceremonial chamber of the Pueblo Indian tribes; it can also refer to the Pueblo Indian religious ceremonies. According to Sando (1992) the Pueblo tribes took their entire religion underground in 1692 when the Spaniards attempted to impose their religion on them.

Job Position		Age at Interview	Age at first Mgt. Position	Education/Degree Status	Languages Spoken	Marital Status and Children
Industrial Develop-ment Manager		32	25	Bachelors	Navajo/ English	Married
Executive Director	37		27	Bachelors	Towa/English	Married, 5
Assistant Director	39		34	Bachelors	English	Divorced, 5
Program Manager	39		32	Masters	Keres/English	Married, 3
Education Specialist	40		32	Masters	Tiwa/ Spanish/ English	Re-married, 4
Director of Human Services Agency	41		27	Associates	Spanish/Tiwa/ English	Married, 2
Engineering Curri-culum Manager	41		28	Masters	Navajo/ English	Married, 1
Director of Health Services	43		37	Masters	Navajo/ English	Divorced, 2
Tribal Administrator	43		33	Bachelors	Navajo/English	Re-married, 3
Manager of Capital Projects	43		43	Some college study	Tewa/ English	Divorced, 1
Inventory Control Manager	43		36	Bachelors	Navajo/Keres/ English	Married, 3
Training Director	45		30	Masters	Keres/English	Married
Educational Administrator	45		38	Bachelors	Keres/English	Married, 2
Director of Health Agency	46		22	Masters	Navajo/ English	Widowed,1
Materials Manager	47		33	Some college study	Tewa/English	Married
Program Coordinator	48		30	Doctorate	Towa/ English	Married, 2
Chairperson	49			Masters	Navajo/English	Married, 6
Accounting Manager	49		37	Bachelors	Navajo/English	Single
President of Company	57		37	High School Diploma	Tiwa/English	Married, 3
Director of Health Services	57		45	Health Profes-sional License	Keres/Tiwa/ English	Married, 4

Language Group	Tribal Language	Tribe
Tanoan	Tiwa Tewa Towa	Taos Isleta San Juan Santa Clara Tesuque Jemez
Numic	Hopic Keresan	Hopi Acoma Laguna San Felipe
Athapaskan	Navajo Apache	Navajo (Diné) Mescalero
Siouian		Omaha Osage

Category	Navajo	Anglo
Interaction	Communication is face to face and verbal; agreement of everyone a vital requirement; consensus-oriented.	Communication is written and spoken. Differences of opinion are encouraged, as is competition.
Association	Family organization based on clan of wife’s relatives. Land held in common.	Family organization based on nuclear family. Ownership is individual .
Authority	Ascribed authority - Spiritual leaders have significant power; today’s tribal government is based on US constitutional system.	Secular authority, achieved status, US federal system of government.
Work	Primarily agrarian-oriented; sheep important; “work” is part of life activity and may be subordinate to other activities.	Industrialized economy; technical orientation; work holds high priority in life; people value money.
Temporality	Present-oriented. Time measured by the season or task to be accomplished (cyclic).	Time measured by minutes and hours and is important (lineal)
Learning	Teaching is verbal; learning is by mimic and rote; instructors are respected elders.	Teaching is multifaceted - emphasis is on practical/applied. Teachers have college degrees.
Spirituality	Religion is an integral part of life in general and everyday life.	Religion and work are separate.
Natural Resources	Adapts and respects environment; People and nature are integrated.	Seeks to control and exploit environment. People are separate from nature.