Tribal Wisdom for Business Ethics

Video Series

Contact: Grace Ann Rosile.
Entire videos and instructor notes (PDFs) are provided below.

Preview. Offers an ethic of business practice that is relationship-based and community-oriented, fostering a harmonious web of life which includes the natural environment. In this brief film, tribal drumbeats, scenes of the vast outdoors, and colorful personal reflections from native and non-native scholars present a fascinating view of American Indian tribal values and indigenous cultures.

Also available are six additional, related @ 10-minute video teaching modules with instructor notes.

Intro. A 30-minute educational film that offers an ethic of business practice that is relationship-based and community-oriented, fostering a harmonious web of life which includes the natural environment.
PDF: Intro: Tribal Wisdom for Business Ethics

Module 1, Marketing Strategy: Dr. Bruce Huhmann. Gifting as a marketing strategy, relationship marketing, and creating buyer trust (instead of buyer beware) with disclosure and honesty. Huhmann cites business examples including Domino’s Pizza, Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Proctor & Gamble. Huhmann also briefly explains the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative at NMSU’s College of Business.
PDF: Module 1: Marketing Strategy.

Module 2, Indigenous Ways of Knowing: Dr. Don Pepion. Aspects of indigenous cosmology and related quantum concepts.

This indigenous experience is rooted in a living dynamic view of the world, and emphasizes ceremony in fostering respect for, and harmony with, this world.
PDF: Module 2: Indigenous Ways of Knowing.

Module 3, Indigenous Trading Disclosure and Barter: Dr. Cal Boardman. Alternative bid-ask processes, traditional barter practices, and the role of trust and disclosure in building trading relationships cross-culturally. Boardman uses simple examples — like selling your used car — to convey abstract concepts and their impacts on relationships. Boardman suggests there is contemporary relevance for historical American Indian trading practices.
PDF: Module 3: Indigenous Trading Disclosure and Barter

Module 4, Storytelling: Drs. David Boje and Gregory Cajete. Boje discusses the differences between indigenous ways of storytelling versus euro-western ways. These differences are demonstrated in Cajete’s telling of a traditional American Indian story called Coyote Loses His Eyes. Indigenous storytelling teaches attunement to the environment, respect for community, and other traditional values, in a living, participative process.
PDF: Module 4: Storytelling.
PDF: Module 4: Storytelling & Venn Diagram.

Module 5, Entrepreneurship: Dr. Joe Gladstone (dissertation on American Indian entrepreneurs), Yolanda Martinez (singer/songwriter/drum maker, entrepreneur), Dr. Dan Stewart (DarDan Enterprises), and Alicia Ortega (Junior Strategist, Blue Stone Strategy Group). These academics and entrepreneurs share approaches to incorporating tribal values into business ventures.
PDF: Module 5: Entrepreneurship.

Module 6, Life-Enhancing Relationships: Dr. Gregory Cajete and Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees. Cajete discusses the “mutual reciprocal relationships” which humans can learn from observing the natural world, and use as a model to create balance and harmony in human society. TwoTrees discusses her work with corporations seeking to understand their position within the natural world which is not “human-centric,” and where relationships are more important than profits. She says “The trees are breathing us.”
PDF: Module 6: Life-Enhancing Relationships.

Cases

• Calk, Rusty and Cindy Seipel 2012. BBB Oil Enterprises Case
• McGuckin, Thomas. 2012. Tribal Indian School versus City of Azure