ELY - Jon Gilbert, the director of Biological Sciences at the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, recently talked to a Tuesday Group gathering here about “Six Essential Elements in Working with Indian Tribes.”

He said it was more of his personal story, about his past and how he got to where he is today. “Along the way I learned some lessons and figured out some essential elements in working with Indian tribes,” he said.

His presentation was borne out of the goal to help University of Minnesota students and professors conduct successful research. He noted that the lessons he learned are applicable to a wide variety of audiences.

Gilbert graduated from Pennsylvania’s Washington & Jefferson College in 1975, and being “sick and tired” of school, he wanted to see the world and experience other cultures.

He joined the Peace Corps and wound up as a teacher in the Fiji Islands. “I was young and idealistic and wanted to become a Fijian and learn the way they live,” he said. “I went two years without wearing shoes and became fluent in their language and accustomed with the ways.”

He then went to the Ivory Coast of Africa and worked in the national park system there. “Africa is a very complicated continent. Ivory Coast is about the size of New Mexico and they speak 65 different languages and have at least that many different cultures,” he said.

In his three years in Africa, he realized, “one can never not be an American. That is my culture,” he said.

After his Peace Corps experience he applied to a Masters Degree program at Michigan State University. While he was at MSU he applied for a job opportunity to work with indigenous people on wildlife management issues in northern Wisconsin.

Fast-forward 35 years and Gilbert continues to work with the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) as a wildlife biologist. He works with as many as 11 tribes of the Ojibwe nation. Part of his early work involved writing rules for the tribe’s rights to hunt and fish. “I spent the first seven years as an expert witness in federal court and wrote rules that were biologically sound and culturally appropriate.” he said.

Over the last 35 years, Gilbert said he learned some things about how to interact with the Indian tribes to accomplish goals.

He packaged them into six essential elements.

 Communication: “The easiest element to fulfill is going and meeting with people one on one,” he said. “When you work with the tribes, you have to talk with them, tell them your ideas and ask them about their ideas. Then tell them about what you learned. Writing letters or emails is not the way to communicate. Talk face-to-face. Go meet them.”

 Empathy: “Become comfortable with them,” he said. “I call it, ‘going Fiji,’ from my time on the islands. Understand their cultural norms and appreciate them. This is the really the first step in developing relationships with tribal peoples.”

 Respect: “Respect goes two ways,” Gilbert said. “Like the Ivory Coast, as much as I tried to learn the language, understand their ceremonies and culture, I have to remember, respectfully, that I am an American. I’m not Ojibwe and never will be.”

 Flexibility: “If you come in and say you have your own methodology and research techniques and I’m doing it my way, you will fail,” he said. “You must adapt to the way they see things and the way they do things.” He related a story of working with graduate students in setting fisher and marten traps for mammal study that taught him to take his time and be respectful of the animal.

Time: “This is the hardest to master,” he said. “It takes time to develop relationships with Indian people. You can’t just zip them an email as your contact. Work one on one. Build trust. Understand where they’re coming from. Let them understand where you are coming from. It takes a long time.” He described the difference between a chronological and a place-based world view.

 Humor: “Anyone who knows anything about Ojibwe people knows that humor is an important part of their daily lives,” he said. “A tense subject may be discussed and someone cracks a joke and the tension is gone. This is the way (Ojibwe) interact with people, especially with self-deprecating humor. I’m still reminded from 1984 that I didn’t know the difference between a pile of pine cones and pile of deer pellets. That still gets big laughs.”

“In many ways, I feel like I never left the Peace Corps,” Gilbert said. “I still feel like I’m doing the same thing as I did so many years ago in Fiji.”