Twentieth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

Marginalized and excluded in American society are Native people, in general, and urban Natives, in particular, who for many are invisible although they represent nearly 67 percent of the total Native American population. This study is a mini-ethnographic case study that includes observations, artifacts collection and interviews, and was conducted in Spokane, Washington within The NATIVE Project, a Native American social movement organization (SMO) that struggles for social justice. From perspectives of critical theory and intercultural studies, adapting a relational-centered approach that overcomes dichotomies between leader/follower, individual/social, and agency/structure, I examine how The NATIVE Project understands culture as a field for struggle developing frameworks and structures to shape an organizational culture that raises critical consciousness among its members while unfolding a process of emancipatory ethnogenesis. The four findings of my research are: (1) Making visible the invisible: The sanctuary; (2) We struggle, therefore I am: The platform; (3) United by our differences: The intercultural society; and (4) Emancipatory doxa/Pluri-doxa and transformation: The lines in the sand. I conclude that subordinated social groups seeking recognition and social change to balance asymmetries of power within postcolonial societies need to prioritize a struggle for the categories that make possible the order of the world and for transforming the categories of perception of that world. Through a lens of Postcolonial studies and Bourdieu’s concepts of symbolic power and violence, my work opens a new direction for the field of leadership studies bringing alternative forms of power and organizational culture as domination/emancipation to the discussion.