How can people gain meaningful authority over their futures?

What matters to me is that someone’s effort actually creates opportunities in their life, like a good job and financial prosperity. If a person completes training, earns a credential, and meets an employer’s definition of success, we still need to ask whether the resulting work pays enough, offers safe conditions, fits the realities of their life, and provides a way forward. And sometimes, we need to ask if the resulting work will come to fruition at all, or if it will be a promise broken by gatekeepers making money off a person's attempt to improve their life.

Workforce development must be designed to account for the conditions surrounding someone’s effort: transportation, childcare, access, and job quality.

An infrastructure investment, for example, can produce an asset, revenue, or even jobs, while still leaving operating capability and capacity outside the community. That's a strong justification for community consent being a priority, isn't it?

For Tribal Nations, community consent answsers questions about who sets priorities and what those priorities are, including what capacity can be built and how much value circulates locally. Those questions require answers in the very beginning, way before any agreements are even considered.

Especially important to me is community consideration, conversation, and consent. We elect representatives to carry out our collective decisions, not 'leaders' who act on behalf of, and work to support, their own self-interests.

Training affects what a person can do and what skills they attain. Ownership and bargaining power affect the terms under which they exercise those skills, along with their share of the value they help create.

Infrastructure necessitates ongoing decisions about work, revenue, maintenance, and control. In these ways, Tribal sovereignty and worker power are distinct and aligned. Each requires serious attention to authority and the institutions through which decisions are made.