Gyasi Ross: Indian Country needs leaders who can break the rules

Muhammad Ali shepherded race relations in America for such a very long time—sometimes unintentionally—and now he’s gone. America is entering a new era and will have to figure out what that means.

It got me thinking about the Native heroes, legends, warriors and leaders that we’ve lost within the past couple of years. Wilma Mankiller, Russell Means, Billy Frank, Jr., Elouise Cobell, Darrell Robes Kipp, Harold Belmont, Alison Bridges Gottfriedson, Charles "Etok" Edwardsen Jr, John Trudell. There are others, of course. All of these leaders had a level of accountability to larger organizations and Nations, yet most of them worked outside the structure of being an elected official.

Those Native folks were revolutionaries, powerful people who conceptualized and then executed outside-the-box solutions to serious, serious issues within Native communities. Just like Muhammad Ali, they have been the faces of Native America for a very long time—the rejection, the power, the beauty, the anger and the brilliance. All of these heroes have different periods of activity and inactivity—it seems impossible to sustain that revolutionary fire all the time. Yet like Muhammad Ali, we did not have to see them every single day or even once a year. It did not matter; we were just much more at peace and comfortable knowing that they were there. Our security blankets. That is not to imply that these folks were perfect or all-knowing or anything of the sort—they had flaws and shortcomings just like anybody else. But they were unquestionably recognized by others within their communities as “leaders.”