Tag Archives: history

October 10, 2025 · 1:59 pm

An Honorary Doctorate

I am, at this moment, completely stunned. I understand I was nominated by Dr. Elmer Guy, President of Navajo Technical University and Carrie Billie, the former Executive Director of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium. I cannot thank them and the selection committee at WINU enough.

World Indigenous Nations University

1 October 2025

The Office of the Chancellery

World Indigenous Nations University

winuenquiries@gmail.com

Mr Thomas (Tom) Davis Navajo Technical University

Lowerpoint Road, State Hwy 371 Crownpoint, New Mexico, 87313 Email: tdavis@navajotech.edu

Dear Tom

Re: Recommendation to receive a 2025 WINU Honorary Doctorate – Education (EdD) for Indigenous Education

The World Indigenous Nations University (WINU) was launched in 2014 at Crownpoint, New Mexico, USA, heralding in a new era of Indigenous higher education. The formation of WINU represented the culmination of global consultations with a gathering of First Nations educators, scholars, knowledge holders and Elders over an extensive period to establish a more culturally inclusive and responsive higher education system for their people. An inspiring source of WINU’s formation has been the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium (WINHEC), which called for critical changes to take place in the engagement of First Nations peoples in higher education.

Every year nominations are called for the WINU Honorary Doctorate Awards. They recognize the meritorious work of Indigenous Educators, Scholars, Knowledge Holders/Elders who their peers and community acknowledge as an inspirational leader. It gives me immense pleasure to advise you that a successful nomination has been received by the WINU International Review Committee nominating you for a 2025 World Indigenous Nations University (WINU) Honorary Doctorate as an outstanding Educator and Knowledge Holder.

The nomination received from Dr Elmer J. Guy and Carrie L. Billy and supported by the Navajo Technical University, acknowledges and honors your contributions as a transformative leader and active participant in the Tribal College movement since the 1990s, in the United States and globally. Carrie’s biographical statement of your achievements provides details of your leadership, advice and expertise that has helped transform Navajo Technical University and several other tribal colleges and universities, through partnerships, research programs, initiatives and new academic programs. Globally, you are recognized as instrumental in the creation of the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium.

The conferral of the WINU Honorary Doctorate upon you is seen as honoring and profiling your exemplary dedication and contributions through your work at the local, national and global levels. Your nominees seek to celebrate and salute you for the many gains you have made through your meritorious and scholarly contributions, which have advanced Indigenous education through your transformational leadership, diligence and commitment.

The WINU Board of Governors and the International Review Committee have endorsed that the meritorious Award of WINU Honorary Doctorate – Education (EdD) for Indigenous Education, be conferred upon you at this year’s annual WINU Conferral Ceremony, which will be hosted by Te Wananga o Aotearoa, Mangere Campus, Auckland, Aotearoa, New Zealand. This ceremony is an integral part of the WINHEC AGM scheduled for 13-14 November 2025.

The conferral of the WINU Honorary Doctorate upon you pays homage to the pertinence of your work to the Articles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and to the foundational goals and objectives of the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium (WINHEC) and the World Indigenous Nations University (WINU).

Congratulations on the success of your nomination for this most meritorious Honorary Award.

Accordingly, you are invited to attend this year’s Ceremony at the 2025 WINHEC/WINU Annual General Meeting being hosted by Te Wananga o Aotearoa, Mangere Campus, 15 Canning Crescent, Mangere, Auckland, Aotearoa, New Zealand, where you will be officially conferred with the WINU Honorary Doctorate – Education (EdD) for Indigenous Education.

Unfortunately, WINU cannot assist with travel, accommodation or the WINHEC registration fee. However, should you wish to attend the meetings the registration and accommodation details can be found on the WINHEC website www.winhec.org. Please contact Dr Berice Anning, the Deputy Vice Chancellor WINU via email: winuenquiries@gmail.com to advise if you will be attending the Conferral Ceremony in person.

We look forward to receiving your advice as to whether you wish to accept the 2025 WINU Honorary Doctorate – Education (EdD) for Indigenous Education, and if so, whether you can attend this year’s formal Conferral Ceremony in Aotearoa.

On closing, the WINU Executive again extends to you the sincerest congratulations on the success of your nomination for this most deserving and meritorious honorary award

Professor Boni Robertson     Professor Jolan Hsieh

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March 30, 2025 · 3:48 pm

Hayes Lewis

Too many of the great American Indian leaders in education are passing. I keep mourning each one as they go beyond the blanket to where I cannot see. Thomas Davis

Hayes Lewis

I have been thinking about Hayes today,
How Agent Orange and his time in Viet Nam got him in the end,
But like all of us,
The ending is not the story,
Not the stone that has been shaped into a fetish
That means more than what it represents.

He was gentle, softspoken,
But the dreams he had!
He wanted to somehow reach into the spirit
Of every Zuni and American Indian child and young person
And stir alive with what they really are,
A blessing on the earth.
A gentle rain after weeks of unrelenting sun
That explodes the high desert into wildflowers,
Sun flowers, bee balm, Indian paintbrush,
The colors of life as bright as any rainbow.

As a Superintendent of Schools
He worked hard to stir up accomplishments
Inherent in spirits touched by the spirit
Of the Zuni heritage and history.
At the Institute of American Indian Arts
He worked to allow the creative fires
At the heart of who American tribal people are
To create a renaissance 
So powerful it would wipe away
The foolish prejudices and preconceptions
Of those who still believe that Indian live in teepees
And have failed to join the contemporary world.
At A:shwi College he labored
To bring a college into being,
A tribal college that honored language, culture, and history
By bringing it alive,
Making it the heart of what learning should be.

But even this is only a little bit of what he was.
He has been one of those people
Who speak and people listen.
One of those people whose courage
Is not in their deeds alone,
But in the presence of how they hold themselves
As season passes season and days become a summation
Of all that is good and perfect upon the good earth.

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March 28, 2025 · 8:00 am

The News About Ron His Horse Is Thunder

By Thomas Davis

In the midst of all the insanity in this country right now, yesterday I was sent news about one of the great leaders of the tribal colleges and universities movement in the United States and the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education movement worldwide.


I am walking through the wilderness.
Time has twisted on me.
I keep wondering who I am
as my hair grows white,
my bones ache more fiercely.

Ron His Horse Is Thunder is gone?
Gone where?
To the top of a tall mountain
where clouds of snow-dust blow
into a sky so blue
it’s not a dome but a song
that lasts forever and ever?

I imagine him lean as he rides a golden stallion
running with a herd of wild golden stallions,
his face alive with the spirit of Sitting Bull,
with the fire of the tribal colleges in his black hair
as it streams backward in the wind,
as the colleges bloom out of the prairie, in the deep woods, in the shadows of great mountains, in the high deserts, and beside the Pacific Ocean
into history, the meaning of history.

I could tell you stories.
How he became a tribal chairman
and then came to an AIHEC board meeting
where tribal college Presidents
treated him like a rock star,
cheering every time he took a breath.

How he walked out on a narrow runway in Albuquerque
dressed only in a loin cloth,
holding a spear as old as the stories
told around campfires on cold nights.
Dressed only in a loin cloth,
his legs and abs shining.

How he and I argued for a different funding stream
for the colleges as the eyes of Presidents glared
and linked us into visions
of a future where Native men and women
dance and sing as the drum of the future thunders
and wildflowers bloom every time a foot touches ground.

And now the news.
The old leaders, the beautiful people, my friends,
those who would sit in cheap motel rooms
and fiercely debate for hours
as they conjured alive a movement
that is changing history,
are fading, fading, fading.

The fire in their eyes,
the power of their gestures,
the song of their voices
disappearing, disappearing, disappearing.

And who will remember where they have walked?
Who will know the force of who they were?

They created a movement.
They fashioned it out of dreams,
out of old bar rooms and trailer houses
and abandoned buildings that should have been condemned.
They did! They did! All of them together!

And now,
an email. An email!
A technology that wasn’t invented yet
when the tribal colleges first came to be.
It says that Ron His Horse Is Thunder,
a man so glorious they put his glory
on national posters and posted them all over the country,
is gone.

Nothing more than that.
That’s what it says.
How can that possibly have any meaning at all?

I feel the wilderness around me,
time twisting,
my spirit feeling how it felt
whenever I heard Ron His Horse Is Thunder laughing.

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March 7, 2025 · 9:45 am

Recipe for Metamorphosis, Democracy to Dictatorship

By Thomas Davis

First, secure a charismatic character,
preferably a male who has lived a flawed life 
seething with perceived slights and resentments.
Then have him attract two kinds of followers:
those who believe society has left them unfairly behind
and those who can imagine their support for such a leader
can help them gain power, wealth, or prestige.

After the charismatic leader secures followers 
through outrageous statements and dramatic performative art,
enflame resentments against elites and their status quo,
laying claim to a mythological glorious past with glorious values
that only a Great Leader can magically bring back to life—
as Christ did with Lazarus.
Claim divine intervention in the Great Leader’s life,
proving beyond doubt that God is on the Great Leader’s side
as he crusades against society’s carnage brought about by elites,
even if they masquerade as common people,
that have gained benefits they clearly don’t deserve.

Then, have the Anointed One win His election
by making Him the only news worth covering by the press
as he attacks the press and paints them as part of the hated elite.
Let the Great Leader encourage his followers 
to attack those not absolutely on his and their side
so that everyone begins to fear being the target of the Great Leader’s wrath.
Attack the integrity of elections, 
claiming fraud where no fraud exists.
Eliminate voters from voting rolls in places where the vote might be negative.
And always, let the Great Leader be outrageous and bold
and filled with the glory of who He is and who He will be.

Then mix in rich oligarchs willing to fund
ugly campaigns against any opposition,
creating division among different populations of people whenever possible,
making good people afraid to step out in the line fire,
fearing to have reputations and lives damaged by lies advertised against them.
Enrich the supporting rich with government largesse beyond measure.
as power flows into the Great Leader’s glory.
Develop and implement policies that hurt
the stranger, the poor, the old, the handicapped, anyone
who his followers can see as lesser than themselves because of his actions.

Create a new Golden Age 
brought to fruition by the Great Leader’s genius
as he thumps his chest and has his minions praise his glorious leadership
over and over again.

Celebrate dictators around the world and attack democracies as leeches
taking unfair advantage of a country that has benefited from their trade
and become the rich democracy it has become.
Get the public to recognize the glorious strength of strong men.

Accustom those who have always seen themselves as good people
to cruelty as immigrant children and families are deported,
starving children in famine areas die as aid that kept them alive is yanked away,
and families with the need for special programs spend nights crying
as they worry about whether they are going to lose benefits
and lose all as they face increased disability, illness, or some other devastation.

Let the Great Leader mock those who fought in the War to End All Wars 
or the soldiers who protected the country 
or became prisoners of war because they were fools
as he declares love for the military he attacks,
weakening the honor a country has for its independent military structure.
Then begin to erode the rights of the press and poets who write poems he doesn’t like
or artists who create art that anybody who is Great can see is ugly.
And always, create dramas that dominate the news
as He mocks those who report on or oppose his antics,
claiming He is the only one whose words count,
that the Great Leader who saves the country can break no law or tell no lie.

And as you are doing all of this, 
use raw power to begin dismantling society’s norms and institutions, 
creating norms and institutions in Your image,
claiming norms and institutions that created and maintained
peace and prosperity for seventy years has led to carnage and failure.

And after institutions and norms have been damaged beyond repair,
point out how terrible the previous leadership was to allow such failures
and blame them for every problem the Great Leader creates.
Surround the Great Leader with sycophants
as everyone must acknowledge the gloriousness of the Great Leader’s Glory.

Metamorphosis is complete:
Democracy is no longer needed.  The Great, divine Leader is the country that serves him.

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November 10, 2018 · 2:11 pm

At A Kellogg Foundation Meeting in Mesa, Arizona

By Thomas Davis

He was a big man in Arizona
And sincere.
We were in Mesa, Arizona during the winter at a meeting
Sponsored by the Kellogg Foundation,
Tribal college Presidents and administrators, students, Board members, and faculty.
The white man in the tailored black suit
Had shown up and was invited up front to speak.
The Foundation wanted the mainstream universities and tribal colleges to work together with a common purpose.

The Chancellor of the University was careful and polite to begin with,
But then, as if he couldn’t quite help himself, he said:
“You know, I really don’t know what you people want.”
He gestured toward the crowd of Indian eyes and faces.
“I mean, the University of Arizona has developed programs
And reached out to the Reservations
Since signing of the treaties.”

The crowd of tribal college presidents and the others there
Didn’t say anything, didn’t move, didn’t clap, but looked interested and polite.
He clearly didn’t understand what Indian people needed.

Note: This is a poem from the tribal college movement. The incident happened a long time ago.

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April 22, 2016 · 11:58 am

Two Sonnets: Washington Island’s Black Community

by Thomas Davis

Like Moses in the Wilderness

Like Moses fleeing from the Pharaoh’s wrath
Before the miracle of waters parting,
The Preacher blazed a trail on freedom’s path
As fear possessed their endless fleeing.
 
What was that man or woman really seeing
That passed them while they tried to run and hide?
What accident of fate would send them running
When slavers found them tired and terrified?
 
The Preacher prayed away grim miles and tried
To make their spirits testify that dreams
Are greater than the fear that crucified
Their faith that they could get across the streams
 
And past the towns that blocked their way and threatened
To let the slavers pounce and leave them bludgeoned.
 
The Bridge that was a Wall

The bridge, inside the night, was like a wall,
Small, wooden, unassuming, houses dark
Beside a path that seemed to be a call
To all who needed passage to embark
Upon a journey to the river’s other side.
They hid in brush, mouths dry, dread strong enough
To make them sick, and, silently, wide-eyed,
Saw spectres armed with whips and iron cuffs
Stand shining where they’d have to cross the bridge
Without disturbing dogs or waking up
The people in the houses as the ridge
Beyond the river beckoned past the interrupt
That stood between their anxious dreams and where
Their breaths would feel God’s freedom in the air.

Note:
These two sonnets continue the long series that tells the fictional story of the people of a black community that actually lived on Washington Island in the 1850s before unexpectedly disappearing. Two sonnets from this series were posted earlier.

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November 28, 2012 · 6:18 am

The People

by Ethel Mortenson Davis to the Navajo

I’ll bring a peach sapling
for you–
for the peach trees
that were cut
and burned.

And I’ll bring seed corn
for you–
for the corn that was pulled
out before it gave birth.

I’ll bring two lambs
for you–
for all the sheep
they killed and laid
at your feet
there on the ground
with your tears.

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March 12, 2012 · 7:06 am

Train Ride

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

She feeds him sweets;
he, her, in the seat
ahead of us.

Yesterday, we were young,
but today,
as we climbed
in the Adirondacks,
we felt our age–
hand over hand,
root over root,
tripping over history
and boulders.

I waited for you,
you, for me,
our legs straining
like stressed trees,
trees that send out
a chemical substance
like aspirin
to buffer
their dying–

a train we too
will have to catch.

All four of us stopped
to photograph
droplets of water
on the red maple leaves
suspended like placid lakes
in the rain-soaked day.

But now,
the conductor calls out,
“Express train to
Manhattan,
Grand Central Station–
The Big Apple.”

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